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Vote for Legend of Legaia on GOG's Dreamlist!

https://www.gog.com/dreamlist/?title=Legaia&sort=global_wishlist_votes_count&order=desc

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Modern Age Character Creation Guide

If you've got any interest in learning new TTRPG's I've got a new article up walking through Modern Age character creation. Gonna try to actually post with a bit of consistency in the future. https://thebardscollege.blogspot.com/2024/12/a-new-age-introduction-character.html

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A great comic by a phenomenal artist that needs to fund by tomorrow night. Let's do this!

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Please, anyone, everyone nerdy who loves gaming or fantasy or comedy or all of the above, please help make this a reality.  We've only got a couple days left!  Kickstarter ends on the 19th!

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Wonderful. Read, play, live, and make time to actually write. The most difficult simple task you'll ever face.

I'm 14 and I dream of becoming a writer, do you have any advice on what I can do for now so that when I 'grow up' I can achieve my dream?

First of all, you need to read. Read everything you can lay your hands on. Read the ‘classics’ in whatever areas of writing you want to work in, so you know what the high points are. Read outside your areas of comfort, so you know what else is out there. Read.

Second, try things out. Enjoy yourself. If you find a writer you like, write like them. And then sound like something else. Write anything. Don’t worry about it being good or read by other people. Just play, and play a lot. 

Third, read books on writing, use anything that seems interesting and ignore anything that you want to. When I was a boy, I remember the delight with which I found a book called THE CRAFT OF SCIENCE FICTION, edited by Reginald Bretnor with essays by a bunch of writers, although the only things I’ve used (I think) were John Brunner’s descriptions of the different shapes of stories, and Larry Niven’s advice to treasure your typos (which is where CORALINE came from). 

Fourth, live as much as you can. The more things you see, the more places you go, the more lives you touch, the more you will be able to write truthfully, and the more memories you will have to make your imaginings real.

Don’t let people discourage you. (You are under no obligation to tell anyone you are going to be a writer.) You are not on anyone’s timeline. You can get a job  that’s a writing job, or get a different sort of job: neither of these things matter in the long run. Just know that you are going to have to make the time to write.

Beyond that, you are on your own. And, when it’s you in front of a screen or a blank piece of paper, that’s the way it’s always going to be.

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Great advice.

Do yourself a favor. Learn to code. Here's how.

I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.

Learning to code elevates your professional life, and makes you more knowledgeable about the massive changes taking place in the technology sector that are poised to have an immense influence on human life.

(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)

But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.

There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:

Novice

Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:

Dash - by General Assembly

CodeAcademy

w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)

Intermediate

Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:

Khan Academy

CodeAcademy - Ruby, Python, PHP

Difficult

If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.

Programming problems

Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems

Talentbuddy

TopCoder

Web Applications

If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.

Django Tutorial

I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.

Rails Guide

If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:

Cake PHP Book

Symfony 2 - Get Started

Yii PHP - The Comprehensive Guide

Conclusion

If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.

If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.

Best of luck!

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Pixar’s 22 rules to phenomenal storytelling (click in the pictures to zoom)

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Sadly I do not live even remotely nearby. Hope some awesome people take this awesome opportunity.

Live around Burbank and able to get college credit for internships? We’re hiring PAID interns. Please reblog and spread the word! http://geekandsundry.com/view/were-hiring-interns-for-spring-2015

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Awesome art

DC Bombshells - Ant Lucia

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From Neverwear:

David Mack got a hold of Neil Gaiman’s New Year’s Wish…& made magic.

this stunner of a limited edition print is available for $25.00 for the next three days.

http://neverwear.myshopify.com/products/brand-new-neils-new-years-wish-poem-limited-edition-print-by-david-mack

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Nice. I like this party.

Been playing through the Hoard of the Dragon Queen adventure with my roomie and some buddies, so I sketched out the party so far: Roosevelt (Tiefling Warlock), Grinn (Dwarf Paladin), Zephyre (Gnome Ranger) and Allium (Human Cleric). I still have no idea how we survived the first chapter. 

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You guys have all picked up the new Sparks Nevada and Beyond Belief issue #0 comic books now, right?

Just checking.

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We're so fortunate to be able to read freely.

It’s almost one of my favorite times of the year. Next week is Banned Books Week. And since this year, the ALA is putting a special emphasis on graphic novels, I have chosen to read Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series this year.