I should just rename my blog to “Jason Talks About Games Louis Dozois Makes” but he’s come up with another one, this time building a game in a weekend that subsequently won Ottawa Game Jam’s “Best Concept” category. Better yet – it’s free! You can download and print the Aion tiles and instructions from their [...]

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Kung-Fu Panda 2: Completely Rad! Po the Dragon Warrior Panda is full-on in a sequel I’d been waiting eagerly for. The story wastes no time throwing Po neck-deep into hordes of kung-fu fighting jackals. The bad guy has discovered gunpowder, and is intent on conquering China with his (beautiful!) fireworks of doom. The ending kindof [...]

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Prolific game designer Louis Dozois released his second game just before the end of the year, this time a card and dice game he calls Shake Out! which he self-published (very cool) through a service called GameCrafter. I really like this one!
The cards are laid out in a 3×3 grid, and each one features a [...]

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I finally got around to reading the much-talked-about Hunger Games Trilogy and really enjoyed them!
The series documents the life of Katniss Everdeen, a miner’s daughter in a dystopian future where the government annually selects children from the colonies to fight to the death in an arena as punishment for a failed rebellion. Katniss volunteers to [...]

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A bunch more things we’ve seen lately, if only to get that cow picture off the top of my blog newsfeed.
Our Idiot Brother: Sweet! Paul Rudd plays a chronically optimistic and naively trusting brother to a bunch of cynical sisters who are ignoring their problems, and as he couch-surfs through their lives he [...]

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Among the very many cool things happening in Paris this week (seriously, what gives?) is an art show by Tom Sachs titled “White”, where he meticulously papercrafts science-fictiony sculptures. His best work, though, is science fact – an enormous Saturn V, Lunar Module and Orbiter. WOW! This blew me away! So much amazing detail!

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I went out with the guys to watch “Immortals” for  John’s birthday, and I have to admit that I was really blown away!
I was already a huge fan of director Tarsem from some of his previous arty-fantasy films, so I knew what to expect: Eiko Ishioka’s absurdly overwrought costumes, hyper-stylistic filmwork and brain-melting settings. What [...]

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Alan Weisman has written a clever science book – a thought experiment that considers what would happen if all of humanity vanished suddenly (a scarily plausible thought), leaving behind our homes, cities, infrastructure and ecosystems to fend for themselves. The result is a gripping account of nature’s unrelenting, powerful forces reclaiming our world and wiping [...]

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In between naps on our flights, Natasha and I caught a couple of movies on the Air Canada in-flight entertainment system.

Limitless – Pretty cool – A film about a guy who gets his hands on a drug that unleashes the full capacity of the mind, with the nasty side-effect that if you stop taking it, [...]

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We haven’t been watching a lot of movies this summer, but on very hot days we retreat to the basement (or to the movie theatre) to take advantage of the air conditioning. A bunch of quick movie reviews!

Horrible Bosses – Hilarious but don’t think about it too hard – Natasha and I thought [...]

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