From the blog of Emerald Gamefest.

From Emerald Gamefest web site, they give out some links about their game day. My blog, this blog that you are reading, got a link as you can see here. Also my Flickr set of pictures of the event got a link also. I say Yea!

I got named.

The latest episode of Fear the Boot (ep 124) was recorded in Seattle with Dan, Tex and Ed Healy (a local guy). About 10 min into the episode I got a shout-out from both Dan and Ed.

Yea me.

Emerald City Gamefest

With my Fear the Boot t-shirt on I went to Emerald City Gamefest and I can say I had fun. The morning game I played in was a 4th Ed Forgotten Realm D&D game that was s sneak-peak at some of the features of Downshadow by Eric Scott de Bie. The afternoon game was a Hollow Earth Expedition game Gmed by Tim Brown (who has GMed other con games I have played in the past).

After the last game was played, I got a chance to look around and spotted Dan (from Fear the Boot) by his well worn FtB 9000 Compliant t-shirt (pix) and got a few min of talk time.

Check out pictures I took at Emerald City Gamefest via my camer phone here.

World Wide Wing Night 5

Not a big turn out. It was just me and my friend Norm. Had some good wings and talked about our D&D game.
Will try again next year and will hope for a larger turn out. From the people I heard from, the day did not work for them.

See pictures from other people here.

Our Pre-Game Meet Up

We are starting our first game of 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. For me, it has been a while sense I have played D&D. I recall some games of 2nd Edition and a few games of 3rd Edition. For some of the others that are playing, they have not played D&D at all. That is including our Game Master (GM). Most every one has play in some kind of Roll Playing game, but one from what I know. We are starting our game from a pre-made adventure called Keep on the Shadowfell.

This last Sunday (11/02/08) we meet to go over our character and get some info on some backgrounds for use with our characters. I had planed and read up on Clerics and Rangers. The Cleric was passed onto Bill for his use. That left me the Ranger. The GM brought up that it was strongly suggested that we have a Rogue in our party and we need some one with a range attack. By the time I left, I was playing 2 character to fill out the party. The Player's Handbook suggests that a balance adventuring party include a wizard, a fighter, a cleric and a rogue. Norm was goint to play the Wizard (a Controller), Janielle is playing the Fighter (a Defender), Bill is playing the Cleric (a Leader) and I am playing the Rogue and the Ranger (both Strikers) to round out the skills for our group. Found out today that we may have a 5th player for our game from where Bill and Bob (our GM) work. Time will tell. If he does play, he can use one of the two character I made for our group adventuring party.

Friday (11/07/08) is our first game with our first level character.

The Samurai 7 DVD

Finished the last episode of Samurai 7 with my workout on the bike today. Great series. My one big problem with the DVD was the color of the menu functions. The color of the selection of the menu was only a small difference and had to look closely to see what was selected.

World Wide Wing Night 5

Started by the Fear the Boot Podcast, its a night of eating wings, meeting other gamers in the areas and eating wings.

For the Seattle/Bellevue area, the meeting is on Saturday, Nov 8th at 7pm at:

Wing Dome
232 Central Way
Kirkland, WA 98033
(425) 822-9464

For those that are planing to show, if you could drop me a message (post a comment, Personal Message, Twitter me, etc . . . ) that you can go and if I could get your email for quicker updates.

> Look for the guy in the Fear The Boot t-shirt, that will be me.




Not in the Seattle check out the post over at Fear The Boot for other areas.

To show support.

As per Wil Wheaton blog, he did a episode of Criminal Minds called Paradise. He filmed the episode a few months ago and aired October 22nd. Last week he released his production diary he wrote during the filming, which go from his point of view from the audition to the final shot. From my end to show support, I took some screencaps from the episode and created a mosaic of his time on screen. On his final post about his time on the show, the mosaic I did got mentioned along with my Flickr user name of heath_bar.

In the style of Simpsons

A friend made me aware of this site that is cool. It is called Springfield Punx by Dean Fraser.

Here is some info from the site about the site:

Springfield Punx is a little pet project of mine. The idea of doing fan art parodying some of my favorite characters and stars in such a fun and simple style got me hooked immediately. Some of these guys and gals have appeared on the Simpsons and I could just work from that, but most I had to do from scratch.

Check it out, the artwork is great.

Christopher Paolini's appearance on the TODAY show

Found this video clip in my not much checked email address for the book Brisingr that came out on Sept 20th.



Check me out on Goodreads.

The Iron Man DVD release

Last week when I went to Best Buy and noted that they were going to release the Iron Man Movie DVD at midnight Monday(09/29/08) night (well early Tuesday morning) with the offer of free stuff. I inform this to a friend and that night we headed on over. We got there about 10 min till. With only a few cars in the lot, we went to the entrance and stood in the small line that has started. At the time we went in to get the DVD. They had some nice freedies to go along with the DVD release. I got 2 Iron Man t-shirt, 2 Iron Man lithograph, 2 poster tube Stark Industries logo on it, a Talk To The Repulsor.com magnet and a gift card from Sideshow Collectibles with a unknown amount (it ended up being $40.00). When I looked around there were some where around 12 to 20 people that showed up for the event.

Click on the picture for a larger picture.

The meeting of old friends.

Found out during the vacation from my brother that the old gang has all oked a get together next year some time in June or July. A time will be nailed down sometime in January. For me, June or early July are good for me. ComicCon begins July 22nd of 2009. From what I know, Chad has his wife's brother's wedding some time in late June (I think). As time goes on, time will tell.

This is close to a group picture as I have.
On the left we have Luke, Heath (thats me) and Chad.
On the right we have Neal, Mark and Will.

It has been a while sense we have all been in the same room together. I thinking of a date of some time in 1991, plus or min a year. We have all spread out all across the US.

The internet is for . . . .

A friend at work asked about my vacation. I stated that I got to go to a Broadway Show of Avenue Q. I also mentioned that a good and funny song was "Internet is for Porn". He had wondered where that came from. He pointed out that a video was done from that song with video clips from the Warcraft game, see below for what I found.

The last day of my vacation in New York.

Gotten some time to sit and blog the last day of vacation (in New York), which was Tuesday (09/16/08).

The morning was not rushed. Kate had go to work for a while. Me and Chad took it easy. He worked on the computer and got some reading done. We got a chance to play We Love Golf on the Wii.
Kate got home and we drove out to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. After we looked around, we headed back to New York, where food was prepared. At that time they brought out enchiladas with birthday candles on them and sang Happy Birthday to me. One thing that was learned was that you do not put wax birthday candles into hot food, they tend to melt. Presents were given and opened. One that I did get a ticket to Avenue Q on Broadway for that night. We left early to look around Time Square and then we headed to the theater. The show was great. We stoped for a snack and headed back.

The last day of my vacation in New York.

It has been a log day. A good many things have been done. At this time it is late in the night. When I get some time in the next day or so I will get my notes and make a proper report of the day and add some pictures to the posts.

My bags are packed and by the door. The alarm clock is set for 6:15am wake up call for my 6:45am ride to the airport.

Good Night.

Monday, a not at work day.

Today we went into New York's Chinatown and Little Italy. We basicly looked around to get a feel for the area. One of the places that we looked into was Mahayana Buddhist Temple. It is the largest Buddhist temple in Chinatown. It was lucky that we also ran across the The Feast of San Gennaro and had some great pasta. After that we headed back to their place to rest play with the kids. Some food was cooked, some games were played (Eco Fluxx and Yahtzee) and a little was watched.

Sunday, traveling incognito.

Today we traveled to Wild Safari, a Six Flags Animal Park in Jackson, NJ. It was basically a 2 hr drive to get there. In the car some reading was done, the DS was played and a iPod was on. Once there, our car was used to drive thru the park (at slow speed) and stopping to look at and take pictures of the different animals in the different sections of the park. It was a great day to do this. The sun was out, a little over cast and there was no rain in sight. We had some time before we had to head back, we headed over to Jenkinson's Boardwalk for some food, rides and video games. For food I had a cheese hot dog and two fried oreos (not all at once). For the rides, we went on three of them (the names to be added later). And for the games, there was two games of air hockey (I won 1 and lost the other), a Deal or No Deal (for tickets) and some video games. We headed on back to home base where dinner was served with some DVD watching of the Star Wars Robot Chicken and 2 Episodes of Mythbusters. The day ended with some needed rest.

Click the picture to see the set of pictures on flickr.

My Review: Inn-Fighting

I picked up Inn-Fighting: D&D Dice Game at PAX 2008. I spotted a demo going and it looked good, so I picked it up at the booth they had there. One half month later, I am in New York with family playing the game for the first time. Well I am sorry to say the fist time we played, we played it wrong. We over looked tow little rules that did make a difference. We decided to give it another try, this time doing it right.
For the game, the box says for ages 12+ and is good for 3 to 6 players. My nephew is 11 and he had no problems with the game (he is close to the age range on the box). There were 3 of us playing and it worked great. I was balanced, so that there was no ganging up on one player and there is no cooperation going on. Like in a bar fight, you are in it for yourself.
One thing the box does not say is how long the game would take. For the games we played, for 3 players, I would say it would take from 1 to 2 hours for a normal game and a little more for a first game. For more players, I could guess it would take longer for each added player.

For a Dungeons & Dragon feel and a good 3 player game. I would give this 4 stars out of 5.

The Saturday away from home.

I am still in New York. With some jet lag, I did stay up late and got at the same time I would normaly go to work (plus 3 hours). We started the day by watching The Gamers: Dorkness Rising DVD and found it a funny movie for the geeks in us. We then headed out and got some groceries for our meal over the next few days. After the food was put away, we set our mind to play a game. We play Inn-Fighting: D&D Dice Game by Wizards of the Coast (see my review on the next post). For dinner we went to S'MAC, located in the heart of Manhattan's East Village, which has some great Macaroni & Cheese.

My first day of my vacation.

Today was my day of travel. I got to sleep in some today. Finished last minute packing and then headed over to my parents place for a ride to the airport. Got checked in with no problems. With the check point they did put my backpack thru twice, no problems there. Just some waiting for the plan to load. Next was waiting for the plane to take off. Then there was waiting for the plane to land. When it did we had to wait to the walkway to the plane to be fixed. Lastly had to wait for my bags. Kate did show up to wait with me while Chad did a few laps in the car around the airport. Dinner was had and talking was done by all. There was a lot of waiting and sitting to get to New York, but the fun is just beginning.