Author: chris

Algorithmic Feeds Trend to Homogeneity

Posted on by chris

Republished from the April 23, 2018 Newsletter.

The medium is the message and our mediums are shaping the messages we’re willing to share.

The allure of the algorithmic feed is that it shows more relevant information to individual users. However, it maps very poorly with how people WANT the services to act. For example, I want to see everything my wife posts on any of the services we’re both on. This is important because they are often about her, our daughter, or our family in general. As far as Content I’d Like to Consume this ranks up so so so high on the list that it’s shocking to me whenever the Algorithm doesn’t surface this content. Surely with all of that Big Data they could make that connection that, yeah, these two people enjoy each other’s company.

When you trust the algorithm you start to use the only signals you have from the service to inform that algorithm. If those are based on things like likes and retweets…well…guess what’s not going to show up as often? A tweet that is perhaps highly relevant, but didn’t get enough engagement to push it over the edge to appear in your feed.

Most of my followers and people I follow are (by design) people with sub-1000 numbers. They are likely to never see a tweet go viral and most tweets might go by “unliked”. Then they get suppressed and likely don’t want to tweet similar things again. Imagine a twitter that had more controls over what you see. Imagine if you could go back to a chronological timeline!

Posted in y

The Passing of CATACA

Posted on by chris

Our cat, CATACA, died suddenly yesterday. She was acting normally and seemingly fine and then in the span of an hour she was gone. I found her lying on the ground her stomach heaving. Within a half hour we had her packed up to get to an emergency vet. My wife took her there and sometime between leaving the house and being taken into the back CATACA died.

Digging

When it came down to it I found that I wanted to dig the grave. The rain had been going all day; earlier it was freezing rain, by the time the shovel struck the earth it was just soggy and gross.

I got the first plot down about two feet, just beyond the clay, and then the water began to fill the bottom of the hole. Ah, the practicalities of nature. I filled it back in and moved to a new spot in our backyard.

The new spot was covered with ivy, yet just beneath was good dirt. I lifted and turned the earth and wished dearly I was in shape for times like this.

The box they sent her home in was too big for her small body and definitely too big to bury. We transferred her to a smaller shoebox, my wife wrapped her in a favorite scarf. We felt the kink in her tail one last time before putting her in the ground.

And for reasons that don’t make sense to me, I knelt down and used my hands to help cover her back up while my wife used the shovel. It felt important to do it that way. To feel the grit and weight of the earth as it covered her up. Filling a hole while leaving one.

Before

Last week we had the vet come because CATACA was passing blood in her urine and doing so in strange places. It looked like a UTI, something she’d had before and easily fixed with antibiotics and some rest. Annoying, yet treatable. So we did the antibiotics and the rest and she was on the mend. She was returning to her normal self (alternating between playful, curious, but mostly sleepy). We were relaxing in the afternoon and then…

It’s hard not think that maybe we should have reacted quicker. That had we been a few minutes quicker that instead of waking up bleary eyed this morning I would have woken up before my alarm because CATACA was meowing and trying to get up into the windowsill.

She was always a small cat. The runt of the litter which made her seem about the size of a large kitten even into adulthood. She had a little kink at the end of her tail that we used to tell her apart from her sister when they were younger. Later I got to know her gait, her eyes, and her slink. She would slink her way around the house the very definition of lithe.

She was a good cat and as curious as they come. She and her sister, Susuwatari, came to us from the humane society where they’d suffered under the indignity of being named Tilly and Twinkle (we’re still unsure which one CATACA was. Regardless, she never answered to either of them, but would answer to the name we gave her if the circumstances were convenient to her). She would play fetch like a dog and curl up with us whenever anyone was settling into sleep. They told us when we got them that “the little one relied on the big one”. This was not true. CATACA was clearly the alpha, tiny as she was.

She’d be the first there with concern on her face when our toddler would be throwing a tantrum. Of course, she didn’t know what to do with that concern, but she knew that the toddler was important and that it was important the toddler be soothed.

Wondering

The thought bangs around in our heads that maybe she was sicker than she was letting on. It’s hard not to look back at all the small things from the months and wonder if those odd circumstances were a hint of a decline actively happening. Maybe there was more to why she needed to do something we didn’t think she should be doing? It’s hard. You question yourself. Yet, honestly, it’s been less than 24 hours so maybe just give yourself time to grieve. CATACA was easing into what should have been a long adulthood.

We also wonder about Susu. Towards the end they were fighting more, but still friends and sisters. This morning I saw that Susu, as normal, had left half of the wet food we set out for them. They were always good about sharing their food. Susu has been quiet since it happened, sometimes seeming to look around for something, but mostly quiet. I wonder if she knew and is happy that CATACA is gone, or doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, or is expecting her to come back at any moment. I wonder if Susu will spend the rest of her life in a state of perpetual waiting. I also wonder if, maybe, animals move on and I’m being ridiculous to anthropomorphize them in this way.

I will miss CATACA tremendously even if it turns out Susu does not. I will miss her small little meow and how sometimes it would come out silent, sometimes larger than her frame should allow. I’ll miss how she would try to lean against you, or hunker in the crook of your legs for a long nap. I’ll miss how she would remind me on days they got the fancy wet food about everything about how it worked: first you get the dish from the cupboard, then we trot over to the pantry, pull the food out, open the can, get it on the dish, and then you put it down and we can eat. Yes, I will do the thing you ask me to do where we stand up because it is cute, we will suffer this indignity, but be quick about it.

Now

As I’m writing this the vet contacts my wife to tell her that she thinks it was Silent Heart Disease. Likely what happened in the end was a heart attack. A blood clot detached and made its way to her heart. I google for more on this and see that there are articles calling it the “silent killer”. It’s comforting to know that there wasn’t some obvious sign we missed. “Well, of course, if you’d just known that black cats with yellow eyes are more susceptible…why didn’t you know that? Didn’t you feel the kink in her tail? Didn’t you listen to her small meow? Didn’t you know that those high flying leaps when she played were masking something deeper?”

Puzzled Response

This morning I saw the puzzle we’ve been working on on the table. It features two black cats in the flowers and their eyes match CATACA’s and Susu’s. It’s like the artist made a puzzle of our cats. Of course, putting it together had been a protracted fight with the cats over whether the pieces were toys to be knocked off the table or not. Today I look at it and would gladly have the floor covered in little colored puzzle pieces if it meant CATACA was the one knocking them off the table.

I’m in one of the stages of grief, but I don’t have the energy to figure out which one. It’s the wistful and sad one.

I’m not sure how I should be feeling either. This is the first pet I’ve lost that really meant something to me. I remember remarking a few months ago that we were in a life stage where our friends were losing their pets. If you puzzle out the timeline it make sense. Many had gotten cats or dogs when they set out on their own for the first time 10 or 15 years ago, and, well… I remember when making that remark thinking that we had a good decade before that would happen to our sweet black cats.

They were young! Just barely not kittens. Cats can sometimes live 15 or 20 years, right?

Today we reminisce. We’ll do it a lot over the coming weeks and months, I’m sure. We’ll scroll through our photos and it’ll be a kick in the gut or a happy memory to see a series of photos of her, trying to get the angle or lighting right. I always wanted to know what they thought of these exercises. “The humans are pointing their rectangles at us again. Why do they do that?” Well, we did that because we loved you, CATACA, and needed others to know that how lucky we were to have such an adorable and fierce little cat. We needed everyone to know that you made our lives better and more full.

Newsletter April 9, 2018

Posted on by chris

Here are the Other Local Newsletters You Should be Reading

Reader and RSS

Anil Dash tweeted a sentiment that resonated a lot with me:

Google’s decision to kill Google Reader was a turning point in enabling media to be manipulated by misinformation campaigns. The difference between individuals choosing the feeds they read & companies doing it for you affects all other forms of media.

I used to be a multiple-times-daily checker of my RSS feeds. I’d read a bunch, follow threads, add more feeds, and repeat. Then twitter came along. I joined because my friend Keller was into it and it became just one part of Being Extremely Online.

The Timeline slowly started sucking my attention away from RSS. Then Reader went away, but it was okay, most of my feeds were still in twitter, or people were sharing the important stuff. Then, well, then twitter and facebook started becoming just completely outsized and I am adrift.

They are less like a curated timeline and more like a vicious surprise machine. That machine used to be set on “compelling links and ideas” and is now cranked to “emotional whiplash, you coward”. Someone broke the level off too.

Anil also wrote a piece about The Missing Building Blocks of the Web that, goodness, is good. Whatever it is I’m saying poorly, Anil has said much better.

Twitter and APIs

Speaking of Twitter. It’s still marginally useful through the use of a 3rd party app–I use Tweetbot. That might go away soon though.

Moves like this are exactly why we all need our own spaces. In the beginning Twitter was extremely permissive of developers using its API. They’ve slowly been cutting features from that and this next moves sounds like it might spell the end for most of the mainstay apps.

The Angry Motorcylce Men Meme

It’s my favorite meme at the moment

This is Just to Say.

AI.

And this is a fantastic cap to whatever it is current meme culture is at right now.

This is absolutely going to be unparseable in a few years. Right now it’s very good.

Macbooks should have touchscreens

Turning a MacBook into a Touchscreen with $1 of Hardware.

I used to think touchscreens on laptops was a bad idea until I observed that, no, people actually do use them. Apple has held the line that this is a bad user interface. I think they’re wrong about it. I mean, they sell a keyboard attachment for the ipad that also doesn’t turn off the touch functionality of the ipad…clearly there’s some disagreement within the company.

If you’ve seen a normal non-coder someone operate a computer with a touchscreen you’ll see them use it. Touching the screen is such a great affordance that we all carry devices around in our pockets that are purpose built to do such a thing. My toddler is confused when you can’t touch the screen and make it do something.

Toddler QA

Speaking of toddlers, if you ever want to find interface bugs hand your app to a toddler.

We released the 1.1 bug fix update to Night Lights last week and then promptly found that the main issue we were trying to fix (sometimes you get the same color, shape, or BOTH) was still happening. After a lot of fiddling we figured out that our toddlers were executing a frame perfect trick to reshuffle the available colors in the middle of them changing. Good job toddlers!

1.2 fixes that bug and the other one we introduced where the light bulb wouldn’t light up. Trust me, there is no such thing as a simple app.

Codename Hyper Hunter

Kyle made a bunch of concept pixel art for a game we’re Codenaming Hyper Hunter. The pitch for it is that it’s a cross between Mega Man and Mario. You can both shoot and jump on enemy’s heads. As part of our discussion on what the game should be we’ve been replaying various NES Mega Man’s and taking notes. What’s most interesting about that exercise is that most of the difficulty in Mega Man is environmental platforming (tricky jumps, modified friction/physics, different combinations of simple enemies) until you hit the Robot Master in each level. Then it’s mostly what you remember: combat and weapon choices.

If you have a favorite Mega Man level please let me know. We’re planning more deep dive level dissections and I’d love to take a look at particularly interesting ones.

You Should Blog

This is my invitation for you to start blogging. Start it up again, or start it for the first time. Over a year ago I started blogging again. Nothing major, just small things here and there mostly for my own reference. It’s a good habit and it’s freeing to have a place to put things. I talked last week about ownership on the web and have gotten a lot of nudges from folks that this is something. I’m now nudging you to actually do it because I know you’ve been thinking about it. Talk to me if you need help getting setup, or need accountability. I’m very good at positive peer pressure.

Being Happy For Your Friends

Friends, I want to share one of the most important things I learned in grad school: other people’s success is not your failure. You’ll be so much happier if you learn to celebrate the achievements of other people as well as your own.

A while back on Workantile’s slack we created channel for #shamelessplugs. Its a channel devoted to talking about the cool things you are up to. This has been lovely and provides a valuable service to a community: giving people the space to be excited about their thing. If you’re on slack or discord or whatever and don’t have a channel like this, go make one.

Newsletter April 2, 2018

Posted on by chris

Newsletters, Local Newsletter Type Things

Internet, Ownership

If I had a mission statement right now it’d be this: more people exhibiting more ownership over more of what they produce online. Right now we’ve swung almost entirely to allowing social media to own everything about our activity online: both in terms of consumption and production. Social media, however, interlaces consumption and production in order to extract the maximum value from the smallest interactions. I’m convinced that soon enough if you hover your mouse over a link for too long it could result in a post about how you’re interested in it blasted out to the world. Technically speaking that would be a very impressive feature! Shareholders love features like that because engagement goes up because everyone thinks that everyone else is doing more somethings on the site.

Your tools constrain what you’re able to create and how you create it. And the current landscape of widely available, easy to use, tools prioritize only a specific set of behaviors (primarily based around engagement). Imagine if instead of writing this newsletter it existed as a thread on twitter. I’m so tired just thinking of anyone trying to read that let alone writing it!

I’m all for the barrier to creation being lowered. I’m not for the control of the display of that creation to be ceded to a few large publicly traded companies. Again, I want more people to have ways to create and catalog the things they care about in their own space. Owning your own little corner of the internet allows you to do different things with it than trusting The Great Algorithm to sort it out for you.

Maybe you just really want to catalog the paint colors you used on your house so you can reference it later. Maybe you want to write a weekly newsletter. Maybe you want to have a place to post about your hyperlocal D&D zine’s progress. FB isn’t going to give you those tools unless there’s a measurable way for them to monetize it. And the second it’s no longer profitable for them you’re on borrowed time.

We have some good tools to do the making part, but we don’t have all the possible tools to do so. I want more ways to facilitate someone having an idea to the production of that idea. Ideally it doesn’t involve a lot of head scratching about terms like DNS, SSH, NPM, etc. No one in 2018 should have to understand server administration in order to have a website.

If this were a medium piece I’d now bring up how my startup is going to solve this. Alas, this is just a weekly newsletter. Talk to me in person if you’ve been thinking about these things too.

Tools, Impact Drivers

After my cheap Black and Decker’s drill battery failed me, yet again, I went out and bought a used set of 12v Bosch Drills. I went with the wirecutter’s recommendation. Not only do they seem to have more power than the old 18v drill they stay charged for forever. The Black and Decker would need a good hour before it was usable. No one can remember to charge up a drill battery an hour before they need to use it.

I used the drill and impact driver to install a new arm on our screendoor that was closing extremely forcefully–like smack you hard in the back when you’re just trying to get inside forceful. Using the impact driver to screw in the screws was wonderful. They went in smoothly without slipping or stripping the heads. Imagine that!

If all you have is a “normal” drill I’d strongly recommend picking up an impact driver in whatever brand you have. The first time you need to put a screw into something you will thank yourself for doing so. Plus, living the 2 drill lifestyle is downright decadent. For the screen door arm I had the normal drill setup with a quarter-inch drill bit for the pilot holes and the impact driver set up to drive them in. Saved a lot of fumbling which was good because I had a toddler “helping” me.

Also, if the last drill you got wasn’t a lithium ion battery look to see if you can replace whatever your system uses with one. Amazon is filled with cheap ones that I’m sure are more than fine.

Do keep a corded drill around for when a problem requires ALL the power.

Videogames, Bloodborne

Bloodborne on its surface is a lovecraftian horror game. It’s extremely violent (comically so) and the story endlessly talks about blood (naturally), beasts, and death. Playing it though? Playing feels more like a rhythm game, or a series of careful dances of attrition. It’s very enjoyable when its working and very frustrating when its not. A misjudged pattern can result in loss of control of the situation, flailing, and player death. You could reskin with any other lore and I’d happily play it.

Videogames, Hohokum

My wife finished playing Hohokum last night and I’m reminded that the soundtrack is amazing. The game itself is delightful too and maybe the polar opposite of Bloodborne. There’s no violence to speak of, or failure states really, so we’ve happily handed the controller over to our daughter to “play”. She usually gets bored after a a minute and requests we watch “Totoro” instead. Still!

Videogames, Guns

“I get nervous when I’m in the airport and see soldiers with assault rifles, but I can probably tell you what kind of rifles they’re holding.”

I found this piece on Kotaku about the relationship between video game guns and real world guns extremely good and worth reading. Especially in light of playing a game like Bloodborne.

Read it if you too would never carry a gun in real life, but see no problem with carrying a gun in a video game.

Dumpster Fires, Siri

I keep giving Siri a shot. It keeps failing in new and astounding ways. Recently while driving I wanted to look up the location of a business that I knew was within a mile of me. I asked it to find the business and it searched the app store for the business name instead.

Later that day I asked it to do a thing that I really just need to stop asking it: send a text message to a friend. It did a remarkably terrible job of the transcription.

I’m sure there’s a way to get it to work better if I used a different inflection/accent, or learned all the keywords, but I also just don’t think I should have to. Maybe that’s petulant.

I don’t have a point other than to complain that my magic pocket computer should be able to understand when I yell at it. We live in strange times.

Apps, Waiting for Review

Night Lights, the toddler toy app I made with Steve last year, has an update coming out soon. It’s a “bug fixes” update that addresses a few annoying issues that became evident after launch. Nothing will show you your bugs like a release.

Oddly enough we’re still seeing a sale or two a week from it from no marketing, just searches on the app store. That’s heartening to see! Keep buying it, random people! Eventually we might be able to make enough money to get a check from Apple (ha)!

Zine, Ypsi-Arbor Dungeons and Dragons Gazette

Submissions are officially closed for the zine. Now I need to make the thing! There were about 7 or so submissions and I have ideas for a few other things I want to include. Speaking of: I’m looking for people to test out a smallish “dungeon” I’ll be including in it. Let me know if you are interested!

Also, if you have experience in layout or design (or want some experience in layout and design) and want to pitch in on putting this together, please find me!

Internet, Ownership

Posted on by chris

Republished from the April 2, 2018 Newsletter.

If I had a mission statement right now it’d be this: more people exhibiting more ownership over more of what they produce online. Right now we’ve swung almost entirely to allowing social media to own everything about our activity online: both in terms of consumption and production. Social media, however, interlaces consumption and production in order to extract the maximum value from the smallest interactions. I’m convinced that soon enough if you hover your mouse over a link for too long it could result in a post about how you’re interested in it blasted out to the world. Technically speaking that would be a very impressive feature! Shareholders love features like that because engagement goes up because everyone thinks that everyone else is doing more somethings on the site.

Your tools constrain what you’re able to create and how you create it. And the current landscape of widely available, easy to use, tools prioritize only a specific set of behaviors (primarily based around engagement). Imagine if instead of writing this newsletter it existed as a thread on twitter. I’m so tired just thinking of anyone trying to read that let alone writing it!

I’m all for the barrier to creation being lowered. I’m not for the control of the display of that creation to be ceded to a few large publicly traded companies. Again, I want more people to have ways to create and catalog the things they care about in their own space. Owning your own little corner of the internet allows you to do different things with it than trusting The Great Algorithm to sort it out for you.

Maybe you just really want to catalog the paint colors you used on your house so you can reference it later. Maybe you want to write a weekly newsletter. Maybe you want to have a place to post about your hyperlocal D&D zine’s progress. FB isn’t going to give you those tools unless there’s a measurable way for them to monetize it. And the second it’s no longer profitable for them you’re on borrowed time.

We have some good tools to do the making part, but we don’t have all the possible tools to do so. I want more ways to facilitate someone having an idea to the production of that idea. Ideally it doesn’t involve a lot of head scratching about terms like DNS, SSH, NPM, etc. No one in 2018 should have to understand server administration in order to have a website.

If this were a medium piece I’d now bring up how my startup is going to solve this. Alas, this is just a weekly newsletter. Talk to me in person if you’ve been thinking about these things too.

Posted in y

Newsletter: March 26, 2018

Posted on by chris

Ed is up to three. Go, Ed!

Twitter (and Facebook) Break

I’m–well before I tweet about this–on a twitter break. Facebook too, but that’s less of a compulsion for me. It’s good to take breaks. Whenever I take a break it’s a good 24 hours for my brain to stop thinking in 140-240ish character likeable soundbites. Realizing how fractured one’s own inner monologue has become is not a great feeling; however, it’s good to recognize and combat. My strong recommendation is that everyone do this on occasion (or forever?!). For me I found myself more present in moments I might have otherwise been reaching for the phone. Heck, I read an entire book this weekend (Ender’s Game. Total mind candy and I try to not dwell on the author’s personal politics too much.)

Probably missed out on some very good jokes though. Also, depressing news about everything.

More about Facebook Though

No one in digital advertising was very surprised about the Cambridge Analytica stuff. Of course FB would have major issues with giving people too much data. They themselves collect too much data that they don’t need yet have convinced themselves they do in order to maximize engagement. You’d better believe that had they not been caught (doing exactly what they have always promised they would do, mind you) there would have been no apologies.

Most people I talk to actively dislike facebook except for that one feature they do extremely well: Groups. They do this so well that it’s impossible to envision really leaving FB forever until the next big thing comes along. Alas.

Return of the King

“We’re all, of course, temporarily embarrassed Aragorns.”

GoodReads is not a great website, but I will always love it for solving the problem of knowing what my friends are reading. The design and UX on the site needs, ahem, some work. I’ve long since abandoned doing anything on there other than marking books as “to read”, “read”, marking them 1-5 stars (although, as a life rule if a book is trending towards 1 or 2 stars I usually just stop), and leaving reviews. I could write a lengthy post just about problems with GoodReads UX. However, they are the ones who sold their business for a hundreds of millions of dollars and I did not.

Anyyyyway, I finished a reread of The Lord of the Rings last week and wrote a review about it. The short version is that, wow, did I enjoy it quite a bit more than the first time I read it. I took my sweet time cross-referencing the maps as much as possible and it opened up the story in an amazing way.

You can read my “review” on goodreads.

SNES Logos

A wonderful person made high resolution versions of 300 SNES logos and this is just the best:

Replacing the Front Driver’s Side Door Lock Actuator on a 2003 Honda CR-V

All I have to say about this right now is triple check that you’re getting the right part. There are Great Britain AND Japanese made CR-V’s. Turns out that the GB CR-V door lock actuator is quite a bit different from the Japanese one, which I learned only after pulling the door apart, getting confused, and running to YouTube in which there are a hundred dudes holding cell phone cameras walking you through car repairs one-handed.

Newsletter: March 19, 2018

Posted on by chris

I like what Ed is doing over on Github with his weekly newsletter and joked that about doing fork of it (can you fork just a concept?).

I’m still pretty bullish on the personal blog as a format hence here vs. GitHub. Ed validated that going through your twitter feed is a good format for thinking through what you were thinking about during a week. So here we go!

Baseboard

Action Salzman 📎 on Twitter: “A fun fact about houses is that no corner is actually 90 degrees and no wall is actually straight. This message brought to you by “installing baseboards”.”

I’m installing baseboard throughout the house. Most of the corners in our house are +-1 degree off from 90, some more like +-5. This is fine and I knew it going in, but it’s still alarming and makes you wonder about everything else about the house. When we moved in we ripped off the old stuff—thanks, again and again, Matt!—in order to redo the floors. I don’t regret this although it did another project to a house that is full of projects.

I have been pushing off the baseboard for as long as possible. The actual installation gone better than expected, which means I’m getting better at house project time estimates. Not my favorite project, but not terrible aside from the physical toil. Lots of precision cuts, lots of touchup work, and up and down on protesting knees. Sorry knees, you are not in your 20s anymore. All this is complicated by having a toddler and cats so the saw and nail gun need to be in safe places whenever its quitting time.

My wife has also started hanging art up on the walls and it increasingly feels like we really and truly live in the house.

Weather

waluigi, but thicc on Twitter: “the 11 seasons of midwestern states…”

Michigan Summer is why you put up with Michigan Winter. There’s a cruelty to winter in Michigan that I’m still unused to even a decade in. Hints at Spring are more brutal than it just staying winter, and I’ve yet to learn my lesson that we’re not in the clear until sometime in May. Every bone in my body wants it over by February. We got a reprieve last night and took advantage of it by walking to a friend’s place for dinner and an easter egg hunt outside.

Totoro

Scout watched My Neighbor Totoro over the course of a few days and she adored it Here’s a picture of her shouting “Totoro!” when he showed up on screen. There are elements that are scary to her (she’s not a fan of the cat bus, and the soot sprites weren’t her favorite). Thus far she’s mostly shown interest in Sesame Street (“Elmo!”), Sarah and Duck, and Octonauts. I think My Neighbor Totoro might become the first movie she watches over and over and over though. I’m fine with that.

As Eli put it in reply, “it only has 2 antagonists: 1. a goat, and B. DEATH”.

Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer

Action Salzman 📎 on Twitter: “Toddler gets to choose her bedtime song every night. Lately it’s been “reindeer song” aka Rudolf the red nosed reindeer.”

Various dads in Ann Arbor confirm that my toddler is not alone in wanting Rudolf sung even far outside the Christmas Season. As Julie said on twitter“, “Toddlers aren’t constrained by seasonality.

Opioids and Guns

David Erik Nelson on Twitter: “In case it doesn’t go without saying: We have much better ways of treating anxiety (both therapeutically and pharmacologically) that are cheaper and a great deal safer than opioids.”

People smarter than me have said about all I feel qualified to say about both opioids and guns. Mental health care for all and more regulations on both. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that our government do more than blame literally everything else other than access to the things themselves as the cause of their misuse.

Ypsi-Arbor D&D Gazette

I continue to put work into the hyperlocal Dungeons & Dragons Zine. Submissions have trickled in here and there. Thus far the only marketing has been through twitter and a mention or two in various slack channels. I’m trying to work up the gumption to post on Facebook, but Facebook is a bewildering mess such that I’d just rather complain about it instead.

Anyway, given that extremely meek outing I’m kind of astounded at the subscription rate (approaching 30!). My guess is that the actual release will bring in a trickle of additional people and I’m fascinated to see what happens with a second issue. Here’s a tantalizing look at a draft of the top of the cover:

Ypsi-Arbor D&D Gazette: Follow Up

Posted on by chris

We’ve officially crossed over a threshold in which there are subscribers to the Gazette that I don’t recognize by their email addresses. That’s an incredible thing, and also a bit scary!

A few submissions have trickled in as well and they have exceeded expectations. Send yours in too! I promise it’s good enough.

Read more about it on the original post, or sign up to get this thing:



More ideas for submissions:

  • Contextless notes from your last session
  • Description of how your character casts their spells
  • Late Winter fashion for the discerning elf that finds itself shivering and/or sweating in Southeastern Michigan

The sky is the limit! Submit here by emailing me at csalzman@gmail.com

Ypsi-Arbor D&D Gazette: A Zine

Posted on by chris

TL;DR: The Ypsi-Arbor D&D Gazette is a zine for empherma, stories, art, and other whatnot from the tables of Dungeons & Dragons players in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and surrounding cities.

You can sign up to hear more about it and get a digital copy when it comes out in April here:



Or, email your submissions to csalzman@gmail.com with the subject line “Ypsi-Arbor D&D Gazette”.

What a terrible idea

I know, right?

This started out as a joke between me and @mollerwa a few months ago:

David Moll on Twitter: “I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.… “

And the idea wouldn’t go away so I asked about it on twitter and the tweet got more likes and retweets than expected, so here we are.

Never joke on twitter, kids.

Okay, but really, why are you doing this?

Every time I bring up D&D in polite conversation I’m surprised to learn just how many people have played or are currently playing or REALLY want to be playing. That’s a lovely thing and should be celebrated because–oh my goodness!–have you seen the world lately? Exuberance over something as small as a locality’s tabletop gaming scene is perhaps the least we can do to bring a small amount of joy to the world.

I’m acting as editor, which means that I have volunteered to do the work of sifting through submissions and laying it out and making a PDF accessible. I need you to do one or both of the following:

  • Sign up to read the thing
  • Submit to the thing

Sign Up to Read the Thing

I’m aiming for a free PDF. If you really want a paper copy you may print and staple it yourself! Here’s that signup form again:



Submit to the Thing

One to two page somethings that are D&D related and from people in or around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti:

  • Your very cool character
  • Shoutouts to your DM
  • Very good NPCs who everyone loves or hates
  • Combat stories of astounding bravery or astonishing cowardice
  • Doodles of your character
  • Art of your favorite weapon
  • Really good one-liners from your last session
  • DM tips – care and feeding of players
  • Player Tips – care and feeding of DMs
  • Magical items that you dearly love
  • Recipes for easy-to-eat-at-the-table snacks
  • Pictures of your dice: the lucky ones, the unlucky ones, and/or the very pretty ones
  • Small dungeons filled with horrifying secrets

Or: surprise me! For I am a simple human who cannot categorize your contribution to this thing in a bullet pointed list.

Please, send in anything you have that you think would be fun to include. I have no idea what will come of this, but I do know it’s worth trying. Email your submissions to csalzman@gmail.com with the subject line “Ypsi-Arbor D&D Gazette”. Please include how you’d like your name displayed (anonymous, initials, full name, character name, whatever) if you are chosen for inclusion.

Cut off is March 31st. Aiming for an April 30th release.

FAQs

What if I live in LOCATION X?

Look, if you have a thin connection to the area I’m not going to police some arbitrary geographic boundary. Trust your heart.

What about GAME Y?

Lie and tell me it’s for your D&D campaign.

Holiday One Shot

Posted on by chris

In early 2017 I ran a one-shot tabletop game that repurposed the story of A Christmas Carol and some rules from D&D 5e. It was quite fun! I can’t wait to run it again next year!

Overview of What it Was

The players were all newly deceased spirits in purgatory who had been assigned to the Holiday Cheer Special Projects (HCSP) division in order to atone for whatever misdeeds they’d done in life. HCSP’s leader, Jacob Marley, informed them that he was working on an extra special project this year to try to save his old business partner, Ebenezer Scrooge’s soul. All the characters had to do was help out the three spirits as they needed. Really all they should have to do is stand around as security since nothing could possibly go wrong. Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim were the equivalent of undercover agents who had been working on Scrooge for years and hadn’t had much luck. They’d be “on the ground” ready to help too.

Pretty straightforward except for one problem: Krampus and his minions!

You can read my adventure notes if you’re a GM who wants to run it yourself. If you do, please let me know how it goes!

HCSP Adventure Notes

Character Creation

Here’s the character sheet I put together for them inspired by terrible inter-office HR memos:

HCSP Character Sheet

Deeds

Part of making their characters was they had to come up with one “good deed” and “bad deed” they did in life to end up in purgatory. While it’s an overly simplistic system of morality, it provided great fodder for them to role play with throughout the game. Turns out that a name and two facts can go a long way to getting started with a character.

Highlights from their characters included such deeds as:

  • managed to correctly solve the trolley problem (back when trolleys were a thing)
  • saved the police chief’s baby!
  • baked laxatives into the PTA’s cookies
  • invented high fives!
  • taught his chemistry class how to make thermite and chlorine bombs

They were also able to be from any time period they wanted in order to reinforce that time works a little differently in this setting.

Classes and Equipment

From there they picked an archetypal class: Fighter, Rogue, Mage. That determined some basic stat modifiers and which equipment would make sense for them to take. Speaking of equipment: I changed up the names of items. Weapons were things like a Christmas tree (to use as a bludgeoning weapon) or a whip made out of garland. Armor were objects like elvish coats (in red or green!) and a gingerbread shield.

For stats we used a stripped down D&D stat block: Strength, Wisdom, Dexterity. For a one-shot like this you can fudge almost everything a player might want to do into any of those three. For a long-term campaign I don’t think it’s not enough detail to make rolls seem “fair”, but for a one-night game it’s more than enough and vastly reduces referencing of character sheets.

Christmas Spirit

They each choose “Christmas Spirit” spells/cantrips they could cast. Such things like Snow (creates a snowfall in a 10×10 area), Cookies (heals for 1d4), Good Cheer (gives the target an extra 1d4 to their next attack roll), etc. This ended up being a really fun mechanic that they used to solve puzzles and combat in interesting ways.

If you want to see the Character Creation notes they’re here:

link to character creation notes

Notes for the Session

We finished in a few hours, although I think starting earlier in the evening and going another half hour would have let us breath a bit in each scene. There were some story causalities that were cut on the fly to keep everything moving. The original notes had the GM reading longer passages from A Christmas Carol. Pulling out the book turned out to be more of a tonal shift in the game than expected though. Next year I’ll work in the descriptions into the game.

There were also too many spells to choose from vs. interesting equipment or options for the fighting types. Something I planned on doing and quickly abandoned was quick sketches for equipment and spell cards. Since there’s a discrete list of both it would have made for a quicker reference for players who might not love reading blocks of rules, plus gives you another fun visual element. Playing dress up is always fun.

It was nice running a session where the stakes were low. We were trying to tell a fun story together in one night. No one was in danger of really dying (although there was danger they had to contend with!). I wasn’t tracking things like spell slots or really caring too much about combat placement unless it was interesting. Heck, I was even balancing the game on the fly since it was designed to accommodate as many players as who could show up!

It went well enough that I’ll be tweaking it and running it again next year (and the year after that most likely). If you want to be notified of when this happens get in touch!