Matthew Ford’s Infernal Blog

We went to Maroochydore, which is a beach town up the Sunshine Coast, about 1.5 hours’ drive north from our Brisbane home. We stayed at the Sebel, a wonderful, new hotel which was both lush and affordable! I surfed, Dylan boogie-boarded, Kat sunbaked. (Kira was in the loving care of Dee back home.) We had a great weekend away. Some pictures of the trip, and Dylan’s 14th birthday, are now in the Flickr photostream.

The local paper the Courier-Mail came out today in print and online with an article I was interviewed for earlier in the week. I am going to be in a forum in a couple days about the same subject. The article quotes me on my views about games and parenting. Check out the article online.

(Please sing the above title to the tune of “Holiday in Cambodia” by the Dead Kennedys… we did…) We just got back from a holiday in Tasmania, we three running about in a campervan for a week. It was great! Not sure if we are campervan types but we enjoyed Tassie and enjoyed the freedom of carrying our home around the island. (continued »)

Kat and I (and by extension, Dylan) became Australian citizens on Australia Day 2008, which is… come on, you know it! I know it! (In fact I took a citizenship qualification test which made me memorize it forever, along with the wattle and Phar Lap) …January 26th. (continued »)

Muhuahaha… I set up Dylan’s PC so that the icons were hidden as well as the taskbar and set the following as his desktop background. An oldie but a goodie. I made the pic with a few minutes of Photoshop and a quick visit to Hello Kitty Online. Priceless! After a minute of shock, he thought it was funny.

(Text says: Microsoft Windows Required Update in Progress… 14% complete. To comply with USA Family-Friendly regulations, all users under 14 are having their operating system upgraded to safe and friendly Hello Kitty Online.)

Dylan and Kira and I took a walkabout yesterday in the reserve behind the house. In the big loop formed by Moggill Creek there is a hill which every springtime erupts in thick clover, so Dylan suggested we check it out. It was a li’l slice of heaven, and I was lucky enough to get a really nice picture out of it as well.

We’ve done it– moved into the new house in Kenmore. I’m more in love with the house than ever. Kira loves it too, she is looking out at the trees and birds, sniffing, stimulated.

It was a great feeling to wake up in the house, hear the birds, and watch the trees wave from bed. It was lovely to live in our new home. We had neighbors stop by and they were very nice.

Our friend Romi decided to accept our offer to stay with us for a while, using the guest room. She’s looking for fulltime work so in the meantime she’ll be a huge help, staying there to meet tradesmen, teaching Dylan how to get home from school via the bus, helping unpack and get things in order, and such. She’s also a very sweet and energizing person to have around and Kat and I are very pleased to have her along on the adventure.

Here are some notes on my trip to Uluru with Dylan, Kat, and her mom Josie. Photos are still in the camera with Kat. They are still vacationing and I am playing the bachelor at home, then I’ll catch up to them again Saturday. (continued »)

We’re getting to the final stages of looking at houses now. There are a few we like, all of them in Dylan’s school’s neighborhood.

Now I’m writing a Visual Basic app that rolls up random rooms for the mod. This is good because I was getting bored of doing all the dice work. Programming is fun in its own right and now I can start to use it to replace the boring bit, leaving all fun. I may try to sell or give away the whole mod set, with the program, when I’m done and have playtested it a lot more. Dylan is writing some of the code. In Notepad he does the tables for the monsters, which is basically a lot of data entry with code trimmings, but he is excited to be helping and proud to see his code at work.

Dylan got back from his school’s camp out at the reservoir and was delightfully telling us about it last night. He loved it and did lots of fun outdoorsy things. He got a lot of living in the wild advice from an Aboriginal man who showed them plants to chew and ways to learn about animals, and Dylan even broke open a termite nest and ate some live termites! He said they tasted like peanuts. It was wonderful to hear and it’s so good to have him back.

Dylan and I have been playing a lot of Classic Rogue (which you can find and download pretty easily). There is something so entertaining about that old, old game. We compete for the high score. With that as inspiration we spent a lot of the weekend with me DMing a “Rogue style” D&D session where I used the random dungeon generation rules on the fly and he took a party of level 5 adventurers into the depths. It was simple, kick-in-the-door playing with gold as the final score, restarting if any of the party died. I used a modification of the rules I’ve been using lately where you’re encouraged and expected to fully rest between fights, right there in the dungeon, using a little altar gizmo that you have to feed gold. The more HP or hunger you have to recover the more gold you have to feed it. It encourages smart play while avoiding tromps back and forth to town to recharge. Dylan is an enthusiastic and creative player, and we got into all kinds of fun situations just with the simple elements of random dungeons plus a bit of creative interpretation on my part. The d20 rule system really shone.

Dylan and I drove out to the Brisbane Forest Park. It’s not far, maybe 45 minutes west of the city. I even avoided getting very lost on the way there and back, which is quite an accomplishment for me. Dylan and I had a great time. We went to lookouts and saw fantastic views of Samford valley. We ate sandwiches at Jolly Lookout. Then we went to a rainforest walking loop. Dylan loves the rainforest and we explored a bit. It was kind of spooky looking at the strangler figs swallowing up trees. Dylan also remembered and wanted to talk about my Alchemy game concept so we chatted a lot about that. It was a rainy day, which was perfect for the rainforest. It never poured on us except while we were in the car so the timing was good.

I’m taking three days off to spend time with Dylan while he has his school holiday. Today we went down the Gold Coast. It was a fun trip. We stayed on the beach a bit though it was not very warm. Dylan made castles and got his feet wet; Kat and I hung out with Kira. We drove up to Mount Tamborine and it was beautfiul. A windy road through trees. At the top we stopped and walked a trail for a while. No dogs were allowed and it was sunset so we made it short. Dylan had a nice time wandering ahead; it was just his kind of forest. It really was extraordinary with a long view downhill through the trees. Went to see State of Origin at the Ice Bar with Greg. We had a good time though Queensland lost. It is such fun watching sport in Australia; everyone is quite friendly even if rivals, and lots of cheering and yelling at the screen and such. I feel patriotic about being a Queenslander.