Ragnarok is the journal of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers. The latest issue, the first with John Wilson as editor, of Rag has been published and is in the post to members.
As we’re all blogging for history, here’s a bit about my day.
Spent most of the day working on a project for our kids’ site (www.kidslovelondon.com). Nothing terribly exciting – a bit of CSS, bit of XSLT, bit of JavaScript (enforcing my own recently written coding standards to avoid document.write and use appendChild() etc.). Minor panic regarding the half term edition of the kids’ newsletter but it got sent out on time and everyone seems very happy with the new style.
Went to lunch with Lettice – she’s working at VL for a few weeks. And after that it was time for today’s round of meetings about the redesign project. Time and money versus ambition. Same as every project I’ve ever worked on. We actually have a very good team (and soon to be a much bigger team, an ad will be appear in this week’s New Media Age for six positions within the web team at VL) and doing most of the work in house will cut down on some of the headaches.
Ended up working until 18:30 which makes up for the late start, though a fair chunk of the last hour was spent playing Bang! Howdy (www.banghowdy.com) whilst waiting for other people to go through the designs of the Christmas pages with me. We need to have some pages up very soon in order to cover the switching on of the Christmas Lights.
London Bridge was busy and I just missed the 18:39. I bought this week’s New Scientist (suckered in by the ‘what would happen to Earth if humans vanished cover story) and this month’s .net (a couple of articles that I can quote mine for a brainstorm in one of Friday’s endless meetings). Ran into Séverine and we caught the 18:51 to Tulse Hill and then walked up to West Norwood together.
Home, sausages for dinner, then watched CSI: Miami with Lettice before sitting down to write this.
thoughtfulThis morning I got on the wrong train. I have never done that on the way to work before, and I’ve only done it twice on the way home (and drink was definitely involved in one of those cases). So I was heading towards Victoria rather than London Bridge, and having a plain return season ticket rather than a travelcard I couldn’t jump off at Balham and hop on the Northern Line. So I jumped off at Balham and waited for the next train to London Bridge, which was late and even if it hadn’t been late would have gone back through West Norwood half an hour after I left.
My web server has been up and down, but mostly down, all day. I think that one of this weekend’s jobs will include taking a complete backup of everything.
For some reason I bought another issue of .net magazine. This one comes with a free CSS reference poster. The credits for which read:
Reprinted courtesy of the W3C
www.w3schools.com
The poster is indeed a version of the w3schools CSS chart which explains why it’s not very good, ‘cos w3schools aren’t very good. w3schools are also nothing whatsoever to do with the W3C. Whoops.
grumpyNot my usual reading matter, but this month’s copy of New Woman was brought to my attention:
Well done Jo on getting the web site URL included.
Best headline in this morning’s Metro was “Man Killed by Gimp Suit”. I suspect Auton involvement but the newspaper gave some mundane explanation instead – UNIT misinformation in full swing.
According to the SFSFW Awards I’m in a minority these days for preferring Wargames Illustrated to Miniatures Wargames. I subscribe to the former but only pick up occasional issues of the latter. Yesterday, I bought the latest issue for the article on the conquest of the Canary Islands – Conquistadors versus Cavemen. I’m a bit miffed that the article (billed as part one) was just two pages long and did nothing more than give the geographical description of the islands. 
There’s a new wargames mag – Battlegames – but its not being distributed to newsagents and whilst I can subscribe or order a sample issue online, there’s nothing like being able to flick through a copy to help decide whether it’s a worthwhile read (which clearly I should have done in WHSmiths yesterday prior to buying Miniatures Wargames). With luck, someone will be selling copies at Salute.
Apart from WI, and with Harbinger having folded, the magazines I either subscribe to or buy every issue of are:
That doesn’t seem like too many (especially as some of them are published rather infrequently), so why do I never seem to have time to read them properly?
complacentTwo OOP HLBS Giraffes of eBay for £4.39.
One Star Wars Universe booster in Canada for $25 which is about £12.
One issue of Polymancer for $6.95 which is about £3.30.
Running total is now £663.83
Polymancer is a new independent RPG magazine from Quebec. In some ways it’s a blast from the past as apart from the glossy paper and CGI cover artwork it could have come from the 1980s – articles on when to kill off PCs; on running swashbuckling games; on using dictatorships as backgrounds; on giving incidental NPCs personalities.
The main feature is a scenario based around an alternative history where World War II came to a stalemate due to the combined use of airships and nukes. The actual scenario is just another trip down the familiar ‘HQ loses contact with isolated base and sends PCs to investigate’ lane but the background is somewhat interesting. The magazine promises more background on their web site but I can’t find it. In fact the website – www.polymancerstudios.com isn’t very good at all. But with the current exchange rate the magazine itself may be worth another look.
I was going to post something about this, but Steve Flanagan said it better on the SFSFW mailing list.
Harbinger is now billing itself as “The Only Independent Miniatures Gaming Magazine” (their emphasis). How true.
Except for Ragnarok, Slingshot, Lone Warrior and all the other society magazines.
And Wargames Journal, Total Model and all the other on-line magazines.
And Ravage and Vae Victis.
And Wargames Soldiers and Strategy, the newly-Englished Dadi & Piombo, and Historical Miniature Gamer.
And Miniature Wargames and Wargames Illustrated.
And is a magazine whose avowed editorial policy is to provide a mouhpiece for medium-sized wargames companies actually “independent”, or is it just multiply-dependent?
I’ve decided that I don’t want to become one of those people who live in a set of cleared passageways between towering piles of old magazines. So I’m having a clear out. But before I chuck them all in the recycling I’m looking at flogging some of them. The piles mostly consist of:
It’s really the first three that are problematic (and I’m definitely keeping all of the last three), so what’s the market in back issues of those like?
Not good it would seem.
Wargames Illustrated have released issues 1-150 on CD-ROM with 151-200 to follow soon, so there’s very little demand for back issues there.
SFX and TV Zone would seem to be the sort of thing that sci-fi collectors should go for but the evidence on eBay seems to suggest otherwise – very few bids, even on issues no longer available from the publishers’ back issue departments.
So before I waste my time listing stuff on eBay that probably won’t sell I’m making an open offer here, if any of the above takes your fancy, or if you want to ask any questions, please post a comment or send me an e-mail and let’s see if we can work something out. I’ll draw up a list of which issues I have and post it later.
“Introducing Happy, the brand new magazine devoted entirely to shopping.”
If Five put The Dead Zone on at a decent time then I wouldn’t be watching late night telly, so I wouldn’t be seeing late night telly ads, so I would still be blissfully ignorant of the existance of Happy.
The newly described South American raptor, Neuquenraptor argentinus, indicates that either the deinonychosaurs had a longer history than was thought, or that South America was not as isolated from the nothern continents. Or both. Anyway cool new dino with totally unpronouncable name.
Meanwhile, Copplestone Castings have released a Young T-Rex, which like the earlier Velociraptors seems to be heavily influenced by the Tamiya plastic kit version, and a pair of Gallimimuses.
And Jeff Valent Studios have re-released their “Raptor Like Dinosaurs” and have a very nice looking Tyrannosaur and Syntarsus available for pre-order. I’m not too taken with the Raptors which a bit cartoony and a bit Jurassic Park, but the new ones look amazing. This is the first time anyone’s done a Syntarsus in wargaming scale (or any scale as far as I know) and I was recently thinking that it was a shame that the same dozen or so genera keep on getting sculpted again and again when there are several hundred genera that have never been done. I’m not sure about the feathers though – as an early Jurassic Coelophysoid it’s a quite distant from those dinosaurs known, or even suspected, to have had feathers.
Prehistoric Times Issue 70 arrived last week. Lots of lovely pics as ever but for me the highlight was the well deserved fisking given to pterosaur crank David Peters by S. Christopher Bennett.
Finally, there’s Dino-Opoly. The complete absence of any reference to Parker Bros on or inside the box suggests that the subtle rule changes (start with $1630 rather than $1500; money from taxes, etc. go into a pot which is collected by the next player to land on Free Parking.) are a way to avoid paying any licensing fees. Sneaky.
Played one game. Lettice won.