Once upon a time I created a Star Wars RPG gamemaster screen inserts for the 2nd Edition Revised and Expanded by West End Games. Recently, online friends sent me photos of the GM screens inserts printed out and used on their gaming tables. Here is the GM screen in Sweden, as used by Daniel Sundström. He sent the photos to me earlier today. Last month, Greuh of France posted his GM screen on Twitter. The player side of the screen has artwork by Najael. I am pleased that the GM screen inserts are being printed and used around the world.
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Sunday Dinosaurs
Several years ago, we drove in to check out Timah Tasoh Resort, right by the Timah Tasoh Lake not too far from the Timah Tasoh dam. I remember it that it was a weekend and although the gates were open, there was hardly anyone there. We did not even take photos as we drove through the resort. Fast forward to this weekend, and we now have dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are quite well-sculpted. They possess no feathers and I suppose featherless Jurassic Park-style dinos would be more popular with the visitors. They seem to be made from foam, so I hope the public does not damage them. Check out the video and photos above. Both contain a guest starring cat. Besides the dinosaurs, there were a whole load of other things you could do such as renting a bicycle, an electric motorbike and a children’s train ride. Check out the video […]
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A Virtual Eye For OBS
Finally OBS Studio virtual camera works! The Story So Far… I have been using OBS Studio to record classes online. I post these recordings on YouTube so students would be able to review the class. The students would do well to review the lesson delivery, activities they did and instructions I vomited out my piehole. I had been attempting to use OBS Studio for another thing, which is as a virtual camera to be used in Google Meet or Discord video chats. There are a lot of neat things you can do with it such as live transitions, camera switching (if one had more than a single camera), overlays and neat filters as well. In Recent Days… I have been having problems with installing the plugins that would allow me to use the OBS screen output as a virtual camera. I cloned the two different modules required, obs-v4l2sink and v4l2loopback, […]
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A Walk at Gua Cenderawasih
There was on Star Trek Adventures session on Discord this fine Sunday morning. Earlier today, Ain and I drove to Gua Cenderawasih to burn some calories there. It was a pleasant, cloudy day. Everything was green. Various flowers were blooming, and pictures do not them any justice. There were fishies in the lake and stream, monkeys in the playground and monitor lizards basking on boulders. See for yourself: Long story short, we would like to return here to burn some more calories in the future.
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View from the Top of Wang Kelian
Earlier today, we thought we would travel to Wang Kelian to take a look at the Perlis countryside from the observation plateau there. It was a Sunday and I had just finished running a Star Trek Adventures game over Discord. We were not disappointed. I made a video of our trip there, which is viewable below.
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STA: The Shadow Passage
Star Trek: Thine Own Self S01 E04 The Shadow Passage *** Stardate 57669.3 – Mon Sep 01 2380 2251 UTC Starfleet Dramatis Personae Lt. Cmdr. Jora Mungar, Trill conn officer Lt. Ekwueme Marwan, human engineering officer (NPC) Commander Kavitha Rajakumar, human command officer (NPC) NIGHT FLIGHT STARDATE 57669.3. Elsewhere: as Lt. Kodar Tamat, Lt. JG Simon Cañete and Ensign Sparik rushed back from Delta Melpomene V aboard the runabout USS Moonstar to rendezvous with their ship the USS Sienkiewicz at New Inverness… The Danube-class runabout the USS Segura had been recently dispatched from Starbase 222 to the colony of New Inverness, orbiting the gas giant Balateen in the Melpomene Sector. Communication out of the Melpomene Sector had been intermittent and they were tasked with repairing a subspace comms satellite which might have been struck by micrometeorites in the wake of a passing comet two weeks earlier. The satellite orbited Balateen and […]
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Web Series: The Drama Aquatic – Season One
Once upon a time, Irfan cared for a fish. It lived with us for quite sometime before expiring. We never had another fish tank after Comeli the fighting fish, until recently. Irfan got a couple of decorative fishes from our neighbour. One thing led to another, and we now have an aquarium in the house. So I did the thing I knew I should do upon faced with such an aquarium: Make a 10-episode web microseries and upload it on YouTube. Presenting the first season of the web series The Drama Aquatic, directed, shot, edited and produced by me. Will there be a second season? I have no idea as I completed and uploaded this whole thing from 6 PM until midnight not an hour ago. It would have been completed sooner if I had thought to insert captions as subtitles onto the videos themselves. I have no idea what […]
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Cortex Prime Arrives
I had a communique with Miriam Robern for whom I did some work before. She would help get a copy of the Cortex Prime Game Handbook published by Fandom Tabletop and author Cam Banks. This was because I have been running role-playing games for language learning at work. According to Miriam, Cam was happy to contribute to games-in-education initiatives. After a couple of weeks, the Cortex Prime shipment came. There was more than just a few books! The admin office called me to pick it up because there was no way they were stuffing the box into my mailing pigeonhole. I opened up the box at the admin office and some colleagues posed with the books. We even took a photo with our department head as she passed by the office. I will be reading the book to learn about the system. A cursory read of its rules reveal that […]
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20th Wedding Anniversary
The story so far… 20 years ago, Ain and I took each other as husband and wife on a sunny afternoon in Pasir Mas. As it was a chaotic day, I had to spend a lot of energy to ignore what things might go wrong, what might come tomorrow and other conjectures. Instead I focused on the moment. One thing at a time, I traversed the day. 20 years later, Ain is a warrior at my side, the same as I try to be one by hers. As I approach middle age and gain a modicum of hindsight, it becomes clear that I would not have any other person by my side, undergoing all the trials and tribulations that were thrown our way a we made our way along two decades. Much more than just a partner… Much of the tribulations have not been recorded on this weblog, but I […]
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STA: A Stitch in Time
Star Trek: Thine Own Self S01 E03 A Stitch in Time *** Stardate 57669.1 – Mon Sep 01 2380 2154 UTC CAPTAIN’S LOG, STARDATE: 57669.1 AFTER FENDING OFF THE SS RAFFLESIA FROM A PIRATE SHIP, WE HAVE RECEIVED INFORMATION FROM CAPTAIN SEIDOV THAT THEY SPOTTED THE MISSING USS NAIROBI AT DELTA MELPOMENE 5 TWO DAYS AGO, ABOUT TO PICK UP A FEDERATION ARCHAEOLOGICAL TEAM THERE. THEY REPORTED BEAMING UP A HIGHLY-IMPORTANT CLASSIFIED ARTEFACT ABOARD FROM THERE. ACCORDING TO LT. MIRAL, THE DIG TEAM WAS AT A SUSPECTED ICONIAN SITE. BASED ON THEIR SKILLS AND TRAINING, I HAVE DISPATCHED ENGINEER KODAR TAMAT AND SECURITY OFFICER SIMON CANETE TO INVESTIGATE THE DIG SITE ON THE RUNABOUT MOONSTAR WHILE THE SIENKIEWICZ GO TO NEW INVERNESS. Starfleet Dramatis Personae Captain Vosgal Toor, Command, Zaranite Male – Bridge NPC Lt. J.G. Kodar Tamat, Support, Engineering officer, Cardassian Male – Martín Lt. Simon Cañete, Support, Security […]
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STA: Search and Rescue
Star Trek: Thine Own Self S1 E02 Search and Rescue *** Stardate 57668.5 – Mon Sep 01 1610 2154 UTC Captain’s Log, USS Sienkiewicz. Stardate: 57079.1. We have been sent to the Melpomene Sector to search for the missing USS Nairobi, a New Orleans class Federation starship. We have a number of clues to our advantage. The cargo ship SS Purzelbaum has spotted the ship in the Balateen system. Also, Director Sukeb of the New Inverness colony on Balateen purported to have received transmissions from it. But the question now is should we first investigate Delta Melpomene where the Nairobi picked up a team of Federation archaeologists. Starfleet Dramatis Personae Captain Vosgal Toor, Command, Zaranite Male – NPC Lt. Kodar Tamat, Support, Engineering, Cardassian Male – Martin Lt. Miral, Sciences, Science, Denobulan Female – Gabriel Lt. Annete Metaxis, Command, Conn, Human Female – NPC Lt. Aaditri Fuentes, Support, Ops, Human […]
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18 Years of Irfan
I still remember the day of Irfan’s birth like it was yesterday. When we left for the hospital, when she was wheeled into the labour room, when I went to see his birth and when I recited the azan in his ear. I cannot believe it has been 18 years since the day. For his 18th birthday, we had dinner at a local restaurant called Watanabe. It was the site of the old Burger Republik. Throughout an odyssey that took us through 12 years in Kuala Lumpur and 6 years in Perlis, Irfan has done nothing but make us be proud of him. I say it every year, but he has come a long way, and I wish him a blessed future and the strength to undergo upcoming tribulations with goodness and dignity. We love you, son.
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STA: Encounter at Volor III
Star Trek: Thine Own Self S01 E01 Encounter at Volor III *** Stardate 57634.9 – Aug 20 2380 0852 UTC Captain’s Log USS Sienkiewicz. Stardate 57048.16. Captain Vosgal Toor reporting. Starfleet has assigned the Sienkiewicz to help with a science station on the craggy mountains on the planet Volor III. The Volor system is located at the border of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. Despite being at a safe location well within the territory of the United Federation of Planets, the planet itself will be a challenge for our crew. Volor III has been wracked by a planet-wide atmospheric disturbance and violent tectonic movements that threaten the Volor Geological Station. If the Away Team is unable to fix the problem, then they will have to evacuate the Federation science team there. Starfleet Dramatis Personae Captain Vosgal Toor, Command, Zaranite Male – Bridge NPC Lt. Kodar Tamat, Support, Engineering officer, Cardassian […]
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Dinner by the Bendang
A bendang is a rice field. Ain and I thought we would try out a new restaurant we saw earlier. Its speciality was char kuey tiau. Irfan decided to sit this one out as he wanted to study. Besides the char kuey tiau, we also had the restaurant cat to keep us company. He just sat at our table without asking for anything from us.
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Mint 20 is Here
I noticed that there as a Mint update notification at the system tray yesterday. When I looked it up, it was the upgrade to 64-bit Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon. Its codebase is Ubuntu 20.04 LTS codenamed Focal Fossa. Since this is a Long Term Support system, I decided to upgrade ASAP. It took two hours or so, and in the end I was running Mint 20:
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Gift Dice at Work
As featured elsewhere on this blog, I run The Laundry RPG sessions for my colleagues at work. There are two more sessions – at this time of writing – that I have yet to produce actual play write-up articles on. I expected my players to have fun, and perhaps uncover new teaching and learning methods from our sessions. One thing that I did not count on was to receive a dice set as a gift from a player! To be precise, Laundry agent Jijah the spy’s player, Yuzie, who bought a set for each player in the campaign. Yes, I sanitised it with soap. One can never be too careful. Thanks for the dice set, Yuzie.
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