zircon

Alright! Thank you to those who joined me for our first session. I hope you enjoyed it - particularly the new players. For our future sessions we will of course spend more time actually playing and less creating characters, but hey, killing 6 goblins and subduing their king... not bad. Everyone gets 300 experience points, so please write that down. For our next session in this adventure I'll be making use of the grid; I just skipped that in the interest of time, and to keep things moving along since we only had about an hour and a half to play the beginning of the dungeon. For next session: Please go over your character sheets and make sure everything is in order. Make sure all your skill #s are properly modified by abilities for example; remember that 10-11 of an ability is a 0 mod, 12-13 = +1, 14-15 = +2, 16-17 = +3, etc. Also make sure you have your attack rolls / damage rolls written down for fast reference, plus your AC. If you have ANY questions at all just post and I'd be happy to help. Again, hope everyone had fun. I'd be up for playing again sometime this week perhaps on a weeknight if you're up for it!

For clarity - that's 6PM EST today (Saturday). Please have a webcam / mic ready as well as access to the Pathfinder rules (can be found online)

OK all, please hop in irc.esper.net #ocrdnd at around 6PM EST. We'll figure things out from there.

OK cool, just need someone to show me around Roll20... can't figure out how to do video/audio yet.

I do most of the following: * Write, produce & sell albums * Custom scoring work for video games, film, TV, ads * Music licensing via libraries / publishers * Create custom sounds + instruments for use by other musicians & producers * Teaching / lessons * Perform & record for other people (i.e. studio session work / remote sessions) * Mixing, mastering, orchestration & other musician services

Yes I would want to keep it going if people are having fun. OK, so suggestion. If you're interested in playing, please go here... http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/gettingStarted.html Read a bit about character creation, races, and classes, so you have some idea of what to expect. Think about what KIND of character you want to play. * Someone who prefers to fight at range with bows? * Someone who sneaks around the battlefield, moving swiftly + striking quickly? * A melee tank type that can soak up damage and dish out big melee hits? * A berserker / rage type character? * A healer? A buffer? * A mage with lots of spells (but squishy?) * A pet character? EDIT: OK, how's this for game #1 on Saturday... kitty Kenogu Labs Koriantor HalcyonSpirit What we could potentially do is alternate each week, have another game on Monday with Brandon, NJ, relyance + 1-2 others.

That's half the fun!

Pathfinder is a pen & paper game like Dungeons & Dragons. If you have no experience at all I would recommend reading a little about D&D/tabletop RPGs to see if it would appeal to you.

We can talk Monday evening as a possibility too, would people be free 6PM then? Show of hands?

Yes, I'd like people to make new characters. We can do that during the start of the session as a group - more fun that way, IMO Especially since we'll be (potentially) teaching a new player too.

OK, who could make 5PM EST this Saturday (9/27)? ~4 hour session or so.

I'm interested in running a Pathfinder campaign - or at least a couple adventures - for a party of 3-5. We can play via the Roll20 system + video chat. Any experience level is welcome, from no D&D/Pathfinder experience to veteran players. 1. Who's interested in playing? 2. What's your availability (weekdays, weekends, which times..) (BTW for my MD/DC/NoVA friends, this is a separate campaign!)

Well, worth noting, video games are WAY bigger than movies. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2614915 As of 2013, the video game industry was about $93 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_industry#Statistics The entire world's film industry is only about $35 billion. TV is a lot bigger than both though.

Whoops, good catch... fixed.

Besides a brand-new full walkthrough showing each and every instrument, we're now offering an ESSENTIALS version of the library. This has two mics (close + hall), 16 bit samples, and about half the instruments of the full library - all the core stuff, like bass drum, two snares, cymbals, aux perc, timpani, etc - for only $89. http://impactsoundworks.com/rhapsody-orchestral-percussion/

Yeah so, that "blowing off the lid stuff"... real good journalism. It was all proven false. Zoe did donate to IFred. Anita did talk to the FBI. Even that scumbag writing for Breitbart admitted it himself. No apologies or anything - it's totally cool to make 100% fabricated accusations up and then not say "I'm sorry" when they're proven false.

Today, Impact Soundworks released our first ever symphonic library. Rhapsody: Orchestral Percussion is designed to be a comprehensive swiss army knife for orchestral percussion in any style. I've been using it as my go-to library for months now, and I'm very excited now that it's finally released. Check out the details below:

Jill and I really wish we could have been there to hang out with people. We ended up working the entire weekend...

Not a surprise that a writer for an ultra-conservative publication like Breitbart is being a shitlord. https://twitter.com/TheQuinnspiracy Quinn did donate to iFred. As for Anita, like Ab said, there are a million explanations for why the SFPD didn't have Anita on record. (1) She might have contacted a different police department - the most obvious explanation. (2) She might have used a different name. (3) She might not have gotten to the point of filing a report, in which case there would be no record. etc. In any case, as Quinn mentioned via Twitter, these ridiculous accusations put the *victims* in the position of having to basically doxx themselves by releasing private information publicly to appease internet trolls.

True, but I've heard the following point which I find has some truth as well. If we take a high fantasy game with dragons, wizards, magic, and lots of other totally made-up elements, it's not reasonable to say that violence/degradation of women is necessary for 'realism'. If we accept all the other made-up stuff, it's fair to say we can also accept a historical past where women are not degraded as much. I can certainly understand the historical angle, just saying, it's not always a compelling argument if the game is full of heavy fantasy elements (and/or a world that is entirely fictional).

My seasonal DH is gross. http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/zircon-1963/Lostria/51751148 http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/zircon-1963/hero/51751148

The first article is long-winded but pretty thorough and concludes with some 'safe' points that I would agree with. I do think it glosses over some of the more obscene actions that were taken by the people harassing Quinn & co. That her personal information was spread over the internet is not a matter of opinion, but fact. Skype accounts being compromised, threats being issued over twitter, these things are public record... perhaps in his attempt to be as neutral as possible, the author may not have done his research on that side of things. But his conclusions are sound. The article about the nuances of victim blaming, practical advice etc. is great. I'm in agreement with all of that.

If you want to lose weight, I have a fairly simple piece of advice: track everything that you eat. Write down every calorie. That means weighing your food (buy a food scale, they're cheap) and beverages. You will likely be very surprised at how much you're consuming - I know I was. Once you get a sense of how much you're eating every day (average over the course of a week), adjust that down by about 500 calories per day. Weigh yourself over time and see how your weight fluctuates. If you aren't losing weight, you need to adjust further downward. For example, I'm 5'9 / ~180 lbs right now.. down from ~191 a few months ago. I shoot to eat 1700-1800 calories a day. Doing this I've been losing a little less than a pound a week. While exercise is very healthy, you could exercise for 6 hours a day and it wouldn't matter to your weight IF you were eating more than you're burning. Thus, you need to TRACK what you eat and adjust your intake. In terms of building muscle, it can be difficult to do WHILE losing weight, but if you're relatively untrained you will see "noob gains" over the course of a month or two. Do you have access to any gym equipment at all? Or just bodyweight stuff?

Progress update - my lowest weight so far has been 178.2 pounds! I'm shooting for 1700-1800 cals a day which is NOT easy but I'm determined to get down to 170, maybe lower. In the meantime, I'm proud of my current lifts on my heavy set: bench 160x7, squat 230x8. I've made some marginal improvements on my bench despite losing weight and on basically everything else I'm maintaining. Not doing deadlift yet due to lower disc injury over a month ago but I'm looking forward to incorporating it into my routine. Speaking of said injury, I'm doing physical therapy a few days a week and the therapist strongly recommended I work on my flexibility / core stabilization. So far that is doing wonders. I was dangerously inflexible due to not stretching at all - he suggested that a lack of flexibility in my hamstrings could have caused my lower back to get pulled in some weird positions during squats. So, I'm now doing a stretch routine (~15-20 mins) almost every day and it feels really nice.

So what's the alternative? Maybe she shouldn't have shared her opinion at all? Yes, everyone knows that there are lots of trolls, misogynists, racists, sexists (etc) on the internet. Even if it's only 1% of the internet that's still millions of people engaging in terrible behavior. However, it's a sad state of affairs where we suggest that to avoid harassment, people should not share their opinions. As for people like Quinn and Anita "exploiting" abusive tweets etc for financial gain, that is frankly absurd. Read what they've been saying on their Twitter feeds. Their lives are in shambles, particularly Quinn's. Nobody would willingly or knowingly subject themselves and their family to that level of exposure, harassment and negativity for a few bucks. https://twitter.com/TheQuinnspiracy