My host (BlueHost.com) is moving me to a new server tonight, so the site will be down for about four hours. As part of this, my service gets upgraded from 4G of storage to 10G and my bandwidth goes from 100G to 250G, far more than I ever expect to need. Overall, it’s been a great hosting service and reasonably …
Cool Holiday Cards
It’s always wild to see what the various companies I work with send out as holiday cards or gifts. I already mentioned the holiday cards for Fluxx, from Looney Labs. Today, WizKids sent me their Pirates of the North Pole card for their Pirates series of constructible games. It features the festive ship The Sleigh, run by none other than …
Holi-Dragons
As fellow Alliterate writer Jeff Grubb notes, he and Jim Ward and Ed Greenwood have a new book out, just in time for the holidays: We Three Dragons. This anthology features three novellas about dragons and Christmas. I have yet to read it myself, but it’s now on my Christmas list.
Mayfair’s High-Ticket Settlers Sells Out
According to ICv2.com, Mayfair Games has essentially sold out of its super-deluxe 3D edition of its best-selling Settlers of Catan board game. That’s 5,000 copies of a game that sells for $380 in a store, or $1.9 million in retail sales. Wow. Congratulations to all my friends at Mayfair!
Hobby Hearse Ready to Ride
My pal and fellow Alliterate Lester Smith (game designer par excellence, formerly of Fast Forward, TSR, and GDW) just launched HobbyHearse.com, a store for used games. He’s already got some dandies up there, and I’m planning to hand over about a pallet of stuff to him, too, so look for more gently used classics for sale in the near future.
Best Writer’s Gift
If you’re looking for a gift for a writer this season, let me recommend the USB Swiss Army Knife. CompUSA.com has the 512MB variety on sale now for $30 + shipping after rebate. I’ve had the 64MB variety for a couple years now, and I swear by it. I even had it go through the wash in my pants pocket …
Kid Kovalic
My good pal John Kovalic (of Dork Tower and too-many-games-to-list fame) announced publicly that he and his wife Judith are adopting a baby girl from Russia! Congratulations to all three of the Kovalics! They are three of the luckiest people around to have found each other, and I’m looking forward to watching them all grow up with each other.
The Lost Island
I missed the TV show Lost the first time it aired, but I tried it out over the summer, and it hooked me from the first scene. One of the best parts about the show is the island itself. In the DVD extras, the creators described the show as a central character. In that sense, it’s the main character, the …
National Games Week Begins
Today marks the start of the second annual National Games Week. If you haven’t signed up to take part in the week yet, don’t fret. You can find local events on the NGW website. Even if you can’t participate in something official, you can still get together with your friends and family to play games, and the NGW site has …
World Fantasy Con Report
I had a great time at the World Fantasy Convention held in Madison, Wisconsin, this weekend. Since it was local, I only showed up on Friday and Saturday. I wandered around the dealer’s hall and the art exhibit for a bit, but my razor-keen writer’s senses quickly told me that the best places to be were either the nightly parties …