It's Not Scientology

Oh no, I shouldn't have used the S-word. Now the Xenu-bots are going to go all clam-bake on my ass.

Technology

Quarter tank of gas to go to Kingston and back. Hello, Teh Future.

In Kingston I received some very excellent xmas presents, including a copy of Dominion, an awesome card game. I got the Mothership and my lovely wife to try it, and they both really enjoyed it.

Dominion is a game that I can play and enjoy with my hard-core magic/vampire friends, or with my family members who are much more casual. You can tweak it to whatever sort of game you're looking for and keep the dynamics fresh and interesting and surprising. It's a solid little piece of game design and I highly recommend it.

I also got a t-shirt of two Imperial AT-AT assault transports in flagrente delecto. I showed this to my boss, who is a huge star wars geek, and he felt that it was in no way a walking HR violation -- although to be fair he is possibly not the best touchstone on that sort of subject. He described it as "a perfectly valid tactical posture", which another manager then opined "is great because then they can both watch TV".

I rest my case.

Also on the technology front, I am now plugging my iPod into my car via USB and the Microsoft SYNC package. This allows my iPod to:

a) recharge

b) play over USB for superior audio quality

c) list track and song information on my dashboard display

d) be controlled using dashboard and on-steering-wheel controls

e) be controlled using voice commands (although I haven't tried this yet)

I haven't synched my blackberry yet, but I am planning on it.

iToys

How about that iPad, eh? Eh? Did you hear the one about the guy in Newfoundland who called his local Apple store and they said, Sure, we got lots of those in stock - iPad Touch, iPad Nano, iPad Shuffle ...

(rimshot)

I'll let Serdic blog about the wonderful implications for textbook technology this represents, and his personal connection with same. It's a great story.

In other news, Amazon and Apple are both working to collapse the distribution chain of e-books and define the future of the publishing industry. This is very interesting for people like me, who have pretentions of writing books eventually. I might write a long and tedious rant about the situation, but for now it can be summarized by saying that Apple is trying to shorten the distribution chain in one way, which will ultimately benefit publishers, writers, and readers; and Amazon is trying to shorten it in a different way, which will benefit Amazon and screw over publishers, writers, and readers.

So I hope Amazon fails spectacularly, the Kindle dies a terrible and lonely death, and an unspecified but suitably horrific calamity befalls the person of Jeff Bezos in particular.

Vampire

I have corrupted^Wconverted a new vampire player. Woo!

Also, the new set is totally, totally hawt.

Um, that's about it.