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Over time I have come to apreciate the joy of the written word. More preciesely I should say that I apreciate the difficulty in createing a wonderfull story, wether a short story or a long book. Thus when my computer begins to break down I often find that one tool of creation continues to work through thick and thing. That tool is the basic word processor. I don't mean the high end word processor with spell checking that takes most of the system resources to run. I mean the basic notepad that lets you type a letter and thats about its limits.
Of course I sometimes delve into this writeing process. I outline a story and add a few paragraphs each night. A story evolving for my own enjoyment. Sure they're filled with spelling errors and bad grammer but they were FUN to write. That's what I enjoy about createing them. The shere fun of standing back and with a smile of satisfaction saying to myself. "Grunt.. Word finished. Done! Drink, Eat, happy!" By this i mean the stories are horrible. I put a lot of time into some of them but they're extremly fun to write. So saddle up for a dose of bad spelling and grammer and enjoy what you can.
Click here to read about my "Alone in the Dark" fan fiction.
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Long ago in the early 90's I have quite a few fish tanks. They were all freshwater fish tanks and I always dreamed about a easy to run saltwater tank. Over the year's I've catorgorized many visual features of a saltwater fish tank as my knowledge of fish care grew. I am now 100% confidant I could keep a saltwater tank if I wanted to, but I don't for other reasons. I am also 100% confidant that i could create a freshwater fish tank to appear as though it were a saltwater tank. The exception to this rule would be the fish themselves. Eager to share this information to other fish owners I created the "Aquatic Illusion" web page. It's outdated and old but otherwise still chock full of wonderfull information. Check it out and enjoy!
Click here to visit my "Aquatic Illusion" web page.
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Everyone's seen a card deck and will remember the game played but not the cards themselves.
Over the years a 'standard' poker deck has become little more than a display case for various pictures found between the suite & # symbols.
When I discovered 'tarot' cards and later 'hanafuda' and 'mahjongg' the bueatiful pictures astounded me. Not only were these cards used for games but they were art in themselves. Truely art and not picture frames for the uninterested. On the other hand even tarot cards had been pretty standardized by then. So inspired by tarot artwork, but not the deck themselves, I decided to create my own card deck. It would be a Mahjongg card deck but disguised to look similar to a tarot deck.
The creation of my first card deck seemed weak but artisticly sound. I had dreams of expanding it but it took a full 2 years before I did so. This yielded my "The Compass of Fate" card deck.
NOTE: MINOR UPDATES 8/2005
Click Here to Check out my "Compass of Fate" Web page.
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While I was working on the expansion for 'The Compass of Fate' I decided to make a 'free' standardized mahjongg set.It would be digitally created and intended for free distribution over the internet. I created several cheap and rather low quality decks before aiming my sights on designing a higher quality set. Seeking inspiration from a variety of older mahjongg sets I decided to pay homage to the abandoned game of "Ma Taio". Humerously enough it was Ma Taio that evolved into Mahjongg but it was its drasticaly differnt artwork that inspired me. To this end I created my Ma Taio Mahjongg deck.
Click Here to see my Ma Taio card deck
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Chess was a game I was taught by my father and as such holds a place in my heart. Later I learned of Shogi. That's japanese chess with it's unique "drop" feature. Later I sought something bigger and more complex. I searched for something like a wargame on a grand scale but at the same time holding onto the strings of chess. That's when I discovered Taikyoku Shogi. A monsterous game played on a 36x36 board in which each player has 400 pieces!.
Unfortunately Shogi games and variations seem to title each piece with little other indications as to what they do. With such a huge set it would be nearly impossible for a beginner to learn how to play the game. With that in mind and the desire to play the game I decided to simplify the game piece.
The original pieces were only given a title with no indications as to their purpose. I redesigned the pieces so they showed a lot more usefull information. Facts such as the piece's starting position, what it's promoted to, wether it was an important piece like a king or not, its rank, english title and of course an easy to read diagram to make movement easy, are now all visible on each and every playing piece.
Click Here to see my Taikyoku Shogi Set
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Encourageing some of my friends to play the Mahjongg, I found that others were reluctant to learn. Wanting to ease their discomfort I created a "tutor" mahjongg card deck. This set is unique compared to my others that it is low quality intentionally. The reason is that each card shows exactly what combinations you can use the card in and how many points you would get for those combinations. This deck is also available for internet distribution.
NOTE: MINOR TECHNICAL UPDATES 8/2005
Click Here to see my Mahjongg Tutor card deck
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Hanafuda is a current card game that has struck my intrest. It's unusual suites seem to call to me and beg to be disguised. Just As I had disguised mahjongg with "The compass of Fate" I intend to disguise hanafuda. In this new "game" as It might be known I employ the use of standard poker card imagery. Mainly the King's, Queen's and Jack's. Of course I would create a few other cards with similar imagery but Unique to this 'new' game. A jack is a footsolder aka a Pawn. So the is a noteable chess similarity in the new deck. It's a work in progress so I may have a preview posted here.
NOTE: MINOR TECHNICAL UPDATES 8/2005
Click Here to preview/see my "Hanafuda Disguise" card deck.
At one time I wanted a traditional Hanafuda card deck to experiment with. Not to own or play with, Just to see if the game was worth ordering. Unfortunately most scans of the decks online were verry small or incomplete. After doing a lot of searching I had found a low quality deck scan of a complete deck. It's cards were tilted, the borders of the cards were uneven, and seemed verry difficult for any western player to learn. So I took that deck fixed all those problems and added suit numbers and a few symbols to make learning the game easier for new players. In the end I call this my 'net' deck because it's still a low quality deck.
There is a catch to this deck if you want to print it out to use. The images are too small if you wanted to use them as a card deck. My printing program will rescale an image to fill a sheet of paper. So I divided up the card deck acording to that resizeing ability. Each page now contains only 8 cards. If your printing program does not resize images to print than I would suggest useing an art program to do so.
NOTE: Uploaded 8/2005
Click Here to preview/see my "Net Hanafuda" card deck.
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The game of Go is ancient and easy to play. One could learn to play it in mere minuets but there is a small snag. To show a person how to play go you have to set up the board and take 5 min or more to explain the game. For the guys at work whom often take 10 min breaks or fill their hour lunches with other duties I created the following instructions. They're the simple basics of go meant purely to get the game moving in the shortest time possible.
Click here to download my express 3 page go instructions
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When I took up the light sport of Disc Golf I decided to look for the maps of my local courses. To my suprise there weren't any.
The local park that edges the big city of "Lancaster Pa" is small but well used. I find people playing there on a daily basis. I found a map of it online but it looked as if it had been drawn by a mechanical pencil and left out important information like the location of trees and other visible landmarks. So I updated the map, though it suffered in quality. The end result is to be easier to read while playing the game. You can check out a scaled down version of the map on the link below.
The other closest course is in Roland park, Akron PA. It's about 30 min north of Lancaster. Its much more difficult with it's longer holes. Unfortunately There is no map whatsoever of the course. So With a Compass and an arial photo of the area I grabed from the web I went to work mapping it the best I could. To my suprise I messed up in scale in a lot of locations. The map though acceptable in defining locations of the holes and t-pads was verry out of alignment. It's still a work in progress but Here's the Image I've made so far.
Click Here to See the Disc Golf Map's I've made.
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Online there are virtual communities called "Mucks". They are best described as "chat rooms" with descriptions. You can "look" at things in the room and move from place to place by typing in commands. Nothing like the 3d action games they make today. None the less like radio they are unique and probably will never dissapear. The media interface might change but their basic structure won't. The system requirements to run these mucks are extremely low. This means that the computer you're using to look at this web page with already has the requirements to connect, use, interface or even host your own "muck".
These virtual locale are just that, virtual. Trying to map them out like a real life location becomes verry difficult as path's between differnt rooms can change, or even become erased. None the less a group of people a long time ago did their best to map out the muck I was using. They were unsuccessfull in createing one complete map due to this flexible nature of virtual locations. They did however create many smaller maps that had refferences to one another. Trying to navigate the virtual world of the said muck was difficult using those maps.
The muck seemed verry large and it was easy to get lost. I had been tossing around the idea of updating the map for a while and decided to do my best. Instead of auctually mapping out the virtual world I decided to work with what I was given. The existing maps. I felt that those older smaller maps were still viable. That the permanent core of the muck's virtual landscape was still the same now as it was then. So I began to alter and merge all the maps. It took a while but the end result was an enormous map that was verry helpfull. In fact for many long term 'residents' of the muck it was the first time they had seen it such an easy to understand form.
The map was started in 1994 by "Tom Turrittin" and revised in 1995 by "Leonine". Between Febuary 1999 and November of 2000 "Quill" updated or verified the map. Then compiled and assembled by Robert Kalin in 7/2005.
Click here to see the Virtual Muck Map
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3-D Art & Cartoon Animals
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For a long time I was amazed at the 3d artwork created by computers. How extremely smooth simple shapes turned out, and how complex and detailed the same image could be. When the movie 'Tron' came out I was even more intrested. YEARS later when I was at a computer show I crossed a copy of 'caligari truespace 1.0'. I snaped that up imediately and really havent put it down since. I enjoy it's simplistic interface compared to the more recent versions of 'truespace'. Heck I got version 3.2 free with a magazine and I still preffer the first edition. Since then I've done a bunch of 3d artwork.
Most of it revolves around a ficticious floating island I call "SmithStone". Mainly because I'm too cheap to make new backgrounds and locations. So I just use the same one over and over. Eventually I started to use a variety of characters I had made pictures of and tried to merge them into the 3d world as a kind of comic strip called "SmithStone". At one time I was really working on the comic strip and have essentially droped it as a project. I still use the 3d world in some images and such but Even 3d artwork has droped off in liue of some other art projects.
The inhabitants of SmithStone are cartoon people. They look like animals and I tried to give them somewhat of a personality and background but I'm horrible at storywriteing. The end result is a hackneyed comic strip that more often than not presents more of a 'slice of life' in snippets than any real storyline. Since the strip has stoped I havent really worked on it that much at all.
I tried to keep smithstone available to a limited degree on this web page.
Click below to visit a streamlined version of that old page.
Click Here to visit the remains of my old SmithStone Web Page
Updated sporadically. Includes a Midi Album
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