Hyperlinks

So, I’m sitting here polishing up some blog posts. I’m grabbing URLs to create hyperlinks. And it strikes me...

It’s taking me longer to create these hyperlinks than it will take you to select some text, search Google, and get to the same page. Not only that, the hyperlinks might grow stale, but a Google search won’t. Heck, Google might turn up more relevant results than what I choose to link to the moment I post. Even after Google, some other even better search engine will be available. For all I know, what you’ll really be interested in following up on won’t even be anything I create a hyperlink for.

Google is making hyperlinks obsolete. But Google is built on hyperlinks. It’s only by analyzing hyperlinks that Google can come up with such good results.

Weird.

Edition wars

If I have ever offended anyone when discussing differences between editions of D&D, I hereby apologize. That was never my intention, though I can have a hard time seeing someone else’s point-of-view.

D&D Next Classes

From EN World: What We Know About “D&D Next”:

The goal at the moment is to include all the classes that were in the first PH style book for each edition.

Surely someone else has already compiled this list, but since I didn’t find it, I compiled it myself.

Note that many classes appeared first in a supplement for a previous edition. I’m not listing the first appearance of each class. I’m listing its first appearance in Men & Magic or a Players Handbook (first PHB for editions with multiple PHBs).

In the non-advanced line, you had race-classes and the Mystic. Race-classes aren’t included because it seems that D&D next isn’t going that direction. The Mystic, rightly or wrongly, I’m counting as Monk.

AD&D2e had the “specialist wizard” & “specialist priest” which I am also omitting from this list.

• Assassin (1e PHB)
• Barbarian (3e PHB)
• Bard (2e PHB; optional 1e PHB)
• Cleric (0e Men & Magic)
• Druid (1e PHB)
• Fighting-man/Fighter (0e Men & Magic)
• Illusionist (1e PHB)
• Magic-user/Mage/Wizard (0e Men & Magic)
• Monk (1e PHB)
• Paladin (1e PHB)
• Ranger (1e PHB)
• Sorcerer (3e PHB)
• Thief/Rogue (1e PHB; the Holmes Basic Set)
• Warlock (4e PHB)
• Warlord (4e PHB)

For a grand total of 15 classes. Though I think there is the possibility of some of them being combined.

Note that a Psion class was also mentioned in the D&D Experience seminars.

Here they are in roughly chronological order...

• Cleric (0e Men & Magic)
• Fighting-man/Fighter (0e Men & Magic)
• Magic-user/Mage/Wizard (0e Men & Magic)
• Thief/Rogue (1e PHB; the Holmes Basic Set)
• Assassin (1e PHB)
• Druid (1e PHB)
• Illusionist (1e PHB)
• Monk (1e PHB)
• Paladin (1e PHB)
• Ranger (1e PHB)
• Bard (2e PHB; optional 1e PHB)
• Barbarian (3e PHB)
• Sorcerer (3e PHB)
• Warlock (4e PHB)
• Warlord (4e PHB)

Why are we still talking about piracy?

heavy sigh

I’m so tired of it.

The software industry—other than a few special cases—figured it out decades ago.

The RPG publishers figured it out about five years ago. (Don’t get me started on Wizards of the Coast and this issue.)

The music industry figured it out three to five years ago.

Seriously? Why are we even talking about this anymore? Piracy is not the problem you think it is. The pirates weren’t going to pay you anyway. Copy protection doesn’t work and doesn’t help you make more money. Overreaching legislation doesn’t help you make more money and probably won’t work either. Just make a good product, charge a fair price, and concentrate on the business you’re winning instead of the business you wrongly think you’re losing.

Maybe 3D movies aren’t just a fad this time

Instapaper led me to “Four reasons 3D movies aren’t just a fad”. (And I’d highly recommend reading it through Instapaper or Safari Reader.)

The Wikipedia article on Hugo led me to “Can Martin Scorsese’s Hugo save 3D?”. (The BBC News site is better than Mashable, but I’d still recommend Instapaper or Safari Reader.) With this quote from Martin Scorsese:

I found 3D to be really interesting, because the actors were more upfront emotionally. Their slightest move, their slightest intention is picked up much more precisely.

I think you missed the point of “less is more”

Domo Arigato, Mr Roboto - Boing Boing

Google supplied me with the full family (so far) of 16 faces to examine: a regular and oblique (the sans serif name for a slanted type that's not drawn differently, as with italics) of Light, Thin, Condensed, Bold Condensed, Regular, Medium, Bold, and Black. This warms the cockles of my typographer's heart, because with many different weights of a typeface, you can use differentiation to signify importance or meaning without having to rely solely on placement, size, or other faces. (The sign of a bad design is typically the use of many different sizes and faces. Find a great design, and you'll find remarkable restraint. The exceptions, which are legion, break that rule and prove it at the same time.)

I’m not convinced that using eight different weights of a single typeface in one document is superior to using eight different typefaces. The advantage of eight different weights is that you can pick a subset best suited to the use, not so that you can use them all.

...but what exactly do you mean by “blog”?

Matt Gemmell explains why blogs should have comments turned off.

I don’t know how many bloggers I’ve seen make a comment to the effect of: As usual, the comments contain greater wisdom than my post. It has been a bunch. There is perhaps something of a difference between most bloggers I read and Gemmell, Marco, and Gruber. Indeed, “blog” has become about as meaningless as “anime”.

“Anime” certainly has meaning—animated films/video from Japan. The trouble is that most statements about anime are really about a subset of anime.

Likewise, most of the comments I see made about blogs and blogging are really about some unspecified subset of blogs and bloggers.