WarFlail's Archives - January 2000

Go to WarFlail's Archives - February 2000

Looking to upgrade your pathetically slow computer? What are you going to get, an Intel Pentium III 733MHz? An AMD Athlon 800MHz? Or maybe you are rich enough to get your hands on a SYS Cold-Fusion Athlon 1GHz PC. Or, perhaps you are hanging out for the new Intel Itanium processor to come out later this year? But how about a 4GHz CPU? Heck, why not a 20GHz! According to this article at CNET.com, if chips increase in speed at the rate they have been in the '90s (about 50% per year), we could be looking at a 4GHz chip as early as 2003, and a 20GHz chip around 2008. Unfortunately, for that to happen, we will have to see some revolutionary breakthroughs in technology, but I'm sure that will become a reality.

Last night's Australia Day celebrations went well for everyone... unless you happened to be among the half-million or so people who had converged on the city to watch the fireworks, that is. After the show, apparently things got way out of hand in a few places. Fights broke out, hooligans threw bottles on cars from high-rise apartments, there was racist abuse hurled at Asians... Apparently, the riot police had to be called in in some areas and dozens of troublemakers were arrested. Looks like it was a good thing that Scully and I watched the fireworks from our street!

Australia Day

Every year on 26th January, we Australians have a national holiday to celebrate our unique heritage, our many achievements and our future endeavours. Every city celebrates this day in its own special way, but here in Perth, we have the Lotto Skyworks, a spectacular fireworks show in the Swan River right in front of the city. This year, Scully and I decided to watch the show from the street before our new house, since the road points directly at the city and the view is perfect because of our elevation. That was certainly better than fighting the crowds at the Perth foreshore.

Tonight I resumed my modern-day Hârn campaign, "Gargun with Guns", now that GunMaster Gold is complete. I had an excellent turnout - six players in all, far more than I had expected! Everyone created new characters and the group looks quite varied so far: a Gargu-Kyani bikie; an assassin-for-hire who is actually a Navehan priest (yikes!); a Savoryan private eye; a Peleahn medic (I guess cauterisations are his specialty...); an ex-Air Force helicopter pilot; and another character who has no occupation assigned to him yet (the player had to leave early). Not your average, typical adventuring party, that's for sure... :-)

Just spent the last three days on vacation with Scully and my mother in the Margaret River wine region 290km south of Perth. We went to several wineries, visited a cheese farm, a chocolate factory, took a drive through a Karri forest, went to the beach, and looked at a number of galleries. We had a very relaxing time! Oh, and if you happen to visit the region, be sure to taste these very fine red wines:

Voyager Estate 1996 Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot;
Amberley 1998 Margaret River Shiraz;
Brookland Valley 1997 Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot.

Of course, if you like beer, you must visit the Bootleg Brewery - their Bitter Beer and Raging Bull are both excellent! :-)

I spent the past four days (including today) on a Workplace First Aid course through St John Amublance Australia. It was immensely interesting - I now feel confident that I know what to do if someone keeled over unconscious in front of me.

The week-long Hopman Cup tennis tournament ended today, with South Africa defeating Thailand and winning the championship. I didn't go to the tennis today, but watched some of it live on TV - what a great match! More news here.

Had a gathering of friends over for a belated housewarming party this evening. It was great fun!

House Rules Update: I converted the HMC House Rules and GunMaster Gold using Adobe Acrobat 4.0 instead of 3.0, which has better file compression and is also able to link references from the Table of Contents to the main body of text. Check 'em out!

Went to yet another session of the Hopman Cup this morning, to watch the Thai team play against the Slovak Republic. Tanasugarn and Srichaphan played really well, whereas the Slovak Republic's Henrieta Nagyova suffered a groin injury and Karol Kucera couldn't get his act together at all. The Slovaks forfeited the doubles match due to Nagyova's injury, so Thailand has a strong chance of making it to the finals! Good for them - it's their debut year at the Hopman Cup so that makes it even more special.

House Rules Update: I posted the vehicle rules for GunMaster Gold for handling car chases and crashes. It is actually a direct conversion from Chameleon Eclectic's brilliant Millennium's End RPG, with very little original material in it.

House Rules Update: Now that GunMaster Gold is out and since it completely supercedes GunMaster III, all GunMaster III documents on the House Rules page will be deleted at the end of this month.

House Rules Update: For those of you who have been eagerly awaiting the release of GunMaster Gold, wait no longer! It is now ready for download, looking better and playing better than GunMaster III ever did. Note that although GMG is fully compatibility with HârnMaster Gold (N. Robin Crossby's 2nd edition HârnMaster rules), it is easy to adapt for use with HârnMaster Core (Columbia Games' 2nd edition HârnMaster rules).

For those who do not know, GunMaster Gold is a rules supplement to realistically handle modern small arms combat in the HârnMaster roleplaying system. It is primarily of use to Game Masters who wish to run campaigns in contemporary settings.

Coming soon... GunMaster Occupations!

We went to another session of the Hopman Cup this afternoon, to watch some of my favourite tennis players - South Africa's Amanda Coetzer and Sweden's Jonas Bjorkman - on the court. It was an excellent match and it was very hard to decide whether to barrack for South Africa or Sweden, both teams were so good. In the end, South Africa won 2 to 1, so they will probably end up in the finals on Saturday.

Some people go to great lengths to get attention. But so far, it's working for DotComGuy (that's his real name!), who has taken on a challenge to isolate himself from society for a whole year in a bare house and attempt to live entirely through e-commerce. It's only Day Two, so he's only just gotten started - his pad still looks spartan without furniture. Obviously not shy about privacy, he even has Web cameras set up around the house for you to constantly monitor his progress...

Bizarre.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

After all the laughable "New Millennium" hype and 21st century nonsense we've had to endure in 1999, we find ourselves still here in the 20th century, still in the second millennium AD. But it was all good fun, a lot of profiteers made a lot of money on a lot of people's ignorance and everyone had a good excuse to get drunk. Plus, it looks like we managed to survive the imaginary threat of the "dreaded" Y2K bug (gee, what are all those highly paid Y2K specialist consultants going to do now? *LOL*). Let's do this again next year...

BTW, there is a good article at Australia's ABC News Online on what happened around the world as midnight echoed across the globe.

We went to the first session of the Hopman Cup tennis this afternoon here in Perth, which was a play-off between Japan and Thailand, to determine which team will participate in the round robin tournament. Well done to Paradorn Srichaphan and Tamarine Tanasugarn of Thailand - both players defeated their Japanese opponents in straight sets.

Go to WarFlail's Archives - December 1999

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