The new fall television season is swiftly approaching, and I figure it's time for my to share my picks for what may be decent shows this season.

We've lost a lot of shows this year, as there were plenty of finales in 2009. Lost, 24, and FlashForward are gone. Thankfully, there are plenty of new shows that look potentially good.

• Sep 20: House We've enjoyed House for a number of years. Medical dramas are generally not my thing, but Huge Laurie is so funny is his obnoxiousness that it's hard not to like the show. Plus, not many of our shows are comedies, so sometimes it's nice to have something lighter. You can only watch Jack Bauer torture so many terrorists before you need a break.
• Sep 20: The Evɚnt My front-runner for new shows is The Event. The show's premise is that while a man is investigating the disappearance of his fiance, he stumbles across "the biggest cover-up in U.S. history", "a coverup which shapes the very core of mankind as a whole, whose implications are lifechanging". It's hard to say at this point whether it will be good, but I'll be watching.
• Sep 22: Undercovers This is J.J. Abrams's new action/comedy spy drama. I tentatively add this one to my list with the understanding that if the show doesn't grab us, we'll simply stop watching.
• Sep 23: Fringe Tied for my most-looked forward to show of the fall. During the second season, Fringe picked up a huge head of steam. I love this show. The parallel dimension plot has really taken off, and I can't wait to see where things go now that we've met "Walternate", and "Bolivia" has infiltrated our world.
• Sep 23: Shit My Dad Says A twitter feed? Seriously? They've based a TV show off of a twitter feed? As if Battleship the Movie wasn't bad enough. The show is technically called $h*! My Dad Says, and is based on a twitter feed which I've been following for years. In all honesty, that twitter feed was pretty damn funny. The TV show is going to star Bill Shatner as the titular Dad, which is really the primary thing the show has going for it. It seems like they're shooting for a modern-day All in the Family. We'll see how that goes.
• Sep 26: Dexter This is my other most-looked forward to show. After an amazing first two seasons, I wasn't shocked that the third season of Dexter wasn't quite up to snuff. But then the fourth season came along and blew me away. I'm very excited for the upcoming fifth season, but I'm becoming skeptical that a show with the premise it has can remain consistently good for much longer. But oh boy do I want it to.
• Sep 28: No Ordinary Family I don't know whether this show is intended as a Heroes knock-off or what, but the premise is that a family's plane crashes in the Amazon, and as a result they somehow gain "special abilities". After reading the show's description, it seems more of a knock-off of The Incredibles than of Heroes.
• October: The Walking Dead This show is based on a comic book of the same name, and tells the story of the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. It follows a group of survivors as they travel, looking for a new home away from hordes of zombies.
• November: V Lastly, the mid-season will bring us a second season of V. Although the show wasn't quite as good as I wanted it to be, I enjoyed it. When Joel Gretch and Elizabeth Mitchell get together in a TV show, it's a big boost.

So those are my picks for television this fall. What do you think? Did I miss anything? (Terra Nova was cancelled before it could even air a pilot, or else I'd be watching that one.)

So I went and wrote another short story. It's been a long time.

Recently, on a drive into work, I heard a story on NPR that had something to do with prescription medications. I don't even remember what the story was. All I know is that it started me on a thought tangent: at what point does big pharma become a legalized form of drug dealing? Addicts steal and prostitute themselves to afford heroin, so how much different is it when the drugs keep you alive rather than getting you high? I know it's not a perfect comparison, but exploring issues like these is one of the things that speculative fiction does well. I know I'm not the best writer, but I thought I could give it a go. I wrote this up in about an hour.

I'll be adding this one to the writing section of my site soon, but for now I'll post it here.

"I'm sorry."

The man cocked the Ruger .22 and took a deep breath, raising the weapon to point at the bespectacled redhead behind the pharmacist's counter.

"Whoawhoawhoa! Wait!" Cringing, Robin took an involuntary step back from the counter, hands raised, speaking quickly. "Just... don't. Let me get whatever it is you need." She glanced around, gesturing with her head at the shelves full of pills, injectables and other pharmaceutical supplies. "There's plenty here. I can get you whatever it is quicker than you can find it yourself. There's no need to... use that."

The man's brow furrowed and he closed his eyes for a moment, lowering the gun a few inches and sighing deeply. He spoke slowly, fixing his eyes on a point near the floor. "Do you think that it's wrong to kill somebody if it saves your life?"

For a moment, her consternation was replaced by confusion as she worked to figure out what this man could possibly mean. "Look", she started, "My name is Robin." She remembered hearing somewhere that telling him her name might make her seem more like a person, maybe make him less likely to shoot her. Clenching her hands at chest level, she dipped her head a bit to the side, trying for eye contact. "What's your name?"

"Just... my name's Steve. Just... what do you think? If I had a knife or something and I was coming at you from back there, if I was gonna stab you, and you had a gun. Would it be wrong for you to shoot me?"

All this shooting and stabbing stuff was not cool. Right now, it was just too damn real. Robin looked at him. He still wouldn't meet her gaze. He didn't look like a thug or a druggie. Just a regular guy in a polo shirt and khakis, late twenties, not bad looking. Just a regular guy, except for the gun he had pointed at her.

Robin swallowed. "I couldn't kill anyone."

Steve shifted where he stood, then lowered the weapon as he closed his eyes again and turned his head, fingering the bridge of his nose. He looked conflicted, Robin thought. When he'd pulled out the gun, the two or three customers in the Rite Aid had exited quickly. So had Josie the cashier. The place was empty now except for herself and this man. Steve.

"Look. Nobody's going to hurt you. Just tell me what it is you want and I'll get it."

Steve snorted. Mirthless laughter. "A lifetime supply of Orthaprase." He glanced over his shoulder at the Rite Aid entrance. No one there. "And a get out of jail free card."

"Orthaprase." Robin smiled in relief, half-turning towards a section of shelving. "Yes. We have that." Then she paused, the worry returning to her face. A terminal patient with a gun did not bode well. "You have IVM?"

"Yeah." Steve didn't look up.

Intrathecal ventricosis meningitis was a disease which affected the cerebrospinal fluid. Until very recently, those diagnosed with IVM had weeks to live. Orthaprase was a new drug. A new and expensive drug. A year's supply of Orthaprase cost nearly a half million dollars. And prescription drug plans weren't going to let their members off with a twenty-five dollar copay when the medication cost that much. Unless the IVM patient was very wealthy, the disease was still fatal.

Robin knew that the pharmacy didn't carry more than a week's supply of Orthaprase, and the only reason they had that was because Mrs. Wentland over on Watch Hill had IVM. She and her husband were retired, living out their twilight years in opulence. She could give Steve the Orthaprase the pharmacy had on-hand, but it wouldn't get him very far.

"Look. You need to understand." Steve was looking at her now, though he still wasn't making eye contact. "I'm not a criminal. I work in the traffic department over at channel 4. I just... after everything that's happened to me, I don't. Have. A choice." Robin still wasn't sure where he was going with all this. If he wasn't here for the Orthaprase, why was he in the Rite Aid with a gun?

"You don't know what it's like. You can't know what it's like. I go a day without Orthaprase, I'm in pain. Three days, and I can't walk. I'm sure I'd be dead in a week. Maybe that'd be better. I know it'd be more noble for me to let myself die than kill someone else, but I can't stand the fucking pain anymore!"

"I borrowed everything I could. Then... I was desperate. I broke into a house." Another snort-laugh. "What the hell do I know about breaking into houses? Selling a stolen plasma screen isn't as easy as you'd think. I sold all my furniture, sold everything. I never thought I'd be a homeless guy. I kept my job. I had to keep my job. But I don't get paid enough to afford half-doses of Orthaprase every day."

Robin stopped him. "We've got seven full doses right here, already in a bag." She showed him her palms again, a gesture of submission. "Let me get the bag for you." In the distance, she could hear the first of the sirens approaching.

"Don't bother." said Steve. "Then what? Running from police? What happens after a week? I just wish I had the goddamn guts to kill myself. Truth is, I just... I don't want to die." The police were minutes away, and Steve didn't want the Orthaprase. So what did he want? Why was he here?

"When I was stealing the TV, I started thinking. Prisons are required by law to provide medicine if it's medically necessary, and I die without this stuff. Prison is just about the best prescription plan out there. But if I got caught breaking and entering, how long would I be in prison? Maybe a few months? By then, who knows what state I'll be in, whether I'll even be able to walk. I'd have no money for the drug, and I'd need to commit some other crime to get back into prison. Otherwise I'd be dead in a few days."

"I'm sorry." said Robin.

"No. I'm sorry." said Steve, and he raised the gun.

Well, not board games exactly, because only one of them actually has a board. But they're tabletop games rather than video games, and I wanted the post title to convey that.

The first game is one I was introduced to by my friend Mark many years ago, and it is awesome. There aren't many games where four players can sit down, play for a few hours, and all lose. Wizard's Quest is a game like that. In Wizard's Quest, the deck is stacked against the players severely. You're trying to move around the board and collect treasures, but the orc horde infests the board like an ever-expanding virus. Meanwhile, you have to hope that your armies aren't killed by a rampaging dragon or the all-powerful wizard. The game gets more turns than the players do. It doesn't sound like very much fun from this description, I'm sure, but the game is a hoot. You just need to go in with the expectation that the game will likely kill all the players.

Clay-o-rama isn't a game you can walk into a hobby store and buy. The rules are available online, and all you really need is modeling clay. The game involves building your creature out of clay and then taking turns trying to destroy everyone else's creatures. Before we found the rules online, we used to play our own version, which was a bit like Calvinball in that the rules constantly changed and evolved. Our clay monsters had "hearts", and when the heart was exposed the creature is killed. Our attacks generally were butter knives thrown at the clay. What can I say? We were boys.

Medieval Economics - Perhaps the most odd and intricate of all the games here is Medieval Economics. Many years ago, we invented the rules for this game using the parts from an old Crossbows and Catapults set. I'm not sure that I can remember all the rules perfectly, since it was probably more than a decade ago when we last played, but I'll try.

We set up a system by which the plastic flags generated income. At the beginning of the game, we'd put all the game pieces in a pile, and players would take turns picking men, flags, catapults, crossbows, ammo chips, and castle blocks. Each man adjacent to a weapon could fire one shot, but ammo was limited. At the end of each round of turns, you'd receive your income and could bid on any destroyed items using ammo chips as currency. Every item in the game could be destroyed, and weapons were destroyed if knocked out of bounds.

The system we invented was remarkably balanced. Too balanced in fact - I don't think anyone ever actually won a game of Medieval Economics.

On my commute to work this morning, I was listening to The Totally Rad Show, and their discussion of The Sorcerer's Apprentice sparked a huge thought tangent within me. I think I missed ten minutes of what they were saying. They'd been discussing the way in which various stories and settings handle magic, and they compared The Sorcerer's Apprentice to Harry Potter. Harry Potter, they said, had some concrete rules and limitations on magic, whereas The Sorcerer's Apprentice did not. I started thinking. Rules? Well, sure, Harry Potter has laid out that it's impossible to resurrect someone, that wands and spoken words help wizards to cast spells but are not necessary, and that there are certain specific spells used by everyone. So yes, I guess there are rules that have been laid out. But while Harry Potter may be an apt comparison to The Sorcerer's Apprentice, it's not the series that I'd have thought of when I thought of magic having rules.

Similar to Harry Potter, The Dresden Files has both rules that apply to magic and rules about how practitioners of magic in the world are allowed to use it. Harry Potter has the unforgivable curses, and the Dresden Files has the rules of magic, as laid out by The White Council. But now I've gone off on another tangent. What I mean to speak of here is the way that magic works. The world of the Dresden Files has magic like the soulgaze, Listening, wards, and the death curse. In this setting, strong emotion can be channelled into magic strength. All of these things strengthen the narrative and make the story more interesting, more engaging.

Compare this to The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf is doubtless a powerful wizard, but he uses magic very infrequently, and his uses of it are never spectacular. The use of magic in Middle-Earth is never spelled out, and aside from The One Ring, glowing swords, and magical creatures, one might easily doubt its existence.

When I began thinking of the rules of magic, the first series that came to mind is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. The descriptions of Saidar and Saidin, how the One Power is channeled, and the means by which a channeler can be shielded lay out a very firm structure for how magic works. Beyond that, new rules are constantly discovered regarding stilling/gentling, The Taint, "The True Power", ter'angreal, tel'aran'rhiod, balefire, traveling/skimming, and dozens of other powers. Jordan has written tens of thousands of pages in his world.

Describing the rules of magic is not limited to worlds with wizards and dragons. Think about The Matrix. I'd argue that a very similar device is in place here. A power is described: the ability to travel into the matrix. Rules are laid out: you can bend reality, but if you die in The Matrix, you die in real life. Enemies appear: agents can dodge bullets and anyone can suddenly become an agent without warning. And if you unplug without clicking that safely remove hardware icon, you die.

This has been an interesting topic to explore - what settings can you think of that make good use of a rules structure to regulate and shape its fantastic elements? I'll leave you with one of my favorites: Master of the Five Magics. I read it when I was fairly young, and I loved the rules it applied to its rigidly laid-out five schools of magic. If you're interested in reading more about them, there's a ton of info here. Very cool.

Holy cow! I just learned that there are two sequels to Master of the Five Magics! Twenty years after reading the original! I'll be getting a copy soon.

I just stumbled across this story after Cory Doctorow retweeted it. It probably falls into the category of short story - readable in one sitting. Some very cool ideas evident in the story.

The Guy Who Worked For Money

I rebuilt our media server this weekend. After a struggle reinstalling Windows XP Pro, my problem turned out to be due to the fact that I was using the correct Windows XP license key with the incorrect install disk. Once that was out of the way, I downloaded all the Windows updates, yadda yadda yadda, and I installed AVG antivirus. (Although I've heard that Microsoft security essentials is quite good - maybe I should've tried that)

Next up was attaching the external hard drive that I've just repurposed. It used to be a semi-permanent backup, but I burned the backup data off onto seven DVDs and I'm now going to use that hard drive to hold all our music and photos. The two hard drives on the server will do for video storage.

You see, we've got a Playstation 3, and we use it for pretty much everything. We haven't had cable TV for years now. First we became addicted to the TiVo, then we started streaming shows from my PC into the HD TiVo, then we ditched the cable entirely when I repurposed my old computer into a media server. Now, we rent blu-rays and stream video from Netflix, we download our TV shows and stream them from the media server into the Playstation, and I've ripped all our CDs - we stream them from the server into the PS3 too. Overall, we've been pretty happy with the situation.

For the past couple years, we've been using the free version of TVersity as our media server program, and it's worked great. But with the recent announcement of Hulu Plus, I've begun thinking more about the ability to stream Hulu to the PS3. It's still unclear whether Hulu Plus will require a Playstation Plus subscription ($50/year) in order to function on the PS3, but if it doesn't I still may try it out. $10 per month doesn't sound so bad if we'd be able to access Hulu's full library. The ads would certainly bug me - since our first DVR I haven't seen an ad at home - but if it bugged me too much, we'd just drop Hulu Plus.

In the meantime, I decided to try TVersity Pro, which says that for a one-time $40 fee, you can stream Hulu and YouTube to your PS3, as well as online video from NBC, BBC, Comedy Central, and other TV networks with online content.

To make a long story short, it doesn't work. I reinstalled TVersity Pro and the related codecs four times and spent a lot of time on their forums. At this point, I'm just ready to be done. Thankfully, TVersity offers a 30-day money back guarantee. I'll be asking for a refund today. I may even check out PS3MediaServer.

Of all the different types of characters out there, the mad scientist has always been one of my favorites. Whether it's Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Horrible, or Dr. Frankenstein, mad scientists have always been great characters. Here, I'll share with you three of my very favorites.

• Dr. Emmett Brown - The penultimate mad scientist, Christopher Lloyd played Doc Brown, the inventor of time travel in Back to the Future. Of course, bring the wildly eccentric genius that he was, he put the time machine into a sports car. I take the De Lorean for granted nowadays, but it really was a fairly wacky idea.
  Favorite Moment:
  Trying to act discreet when chatting with an alternate version of himself about the "weather equipment" that was actually rigged to conduct a bolt of lightning to the flux capacitor.


• Dr. Kevin Burkhoff - played by Jeffrey Combs in The 4400
  Being that I love The 4400 so much,Burkhoff was the first mad scientist that came to mind for this list. He first appeared in a mental institution, where he hadn't spoken for years, and was cured through the actions of Tess Dorner, a character played by Summer Glau. Burkhoff went on to discover the neurotransmitter promicin, which allowed human beings to exhibit supernatural abilities.
  Favorite Moment:
  Needing to experiment on a human and having no willing subjects, Kevin injects himself. Repeatedly. Even after it appears that the injections may be slowly killing him.


• Dr. Walter Bishop - As much as I love the others, John Noble's Walter Bishop takes the cake. Like Kevin Burkhoff, he started out the series in an asylum. But as much as I love the other characters, Walter's got them beat. He overtly loves candy, keeps a cow in his lab, and is keeping a horrible secret from his son. Fringe is a great show, and Walter Bishop is what makes the show great.
  Favorite Moment:
  Investigating a horribly grisly mass murder at a diner, Walter happens to see a bowl of onion soup on the counter and excitedly asks if he can get a cup of that.

How about you? Who's your favorite mad scientist?

This post applies to game design, so if you're a family member looking to keep up with what's going on in Greg's life, be informed that this isn't a post about something at which I've failed recently.

I've recently become aware of a game mechanic which I really enjoy, and it's a game mechanic which can exist in both video games and tabletop RPG games. It has to do with the handling of failure.

When I played the Playstation 3 game Heavy Rain, the thing that struck me most about it was not the graphics, nor the story, nor the way it abstracted everyday actions to controller gestures. Granted - all these things were great, and I enjoyed them all very much. But what really struck me about Heavy Rain was the way in which it handled player failure and resultant consequences. In so many games, when you fail you must replay the sequence. Over and over until you succeed. This is a huge part of the reason that so many games frustrate me. It may in fact be my least favorite thing about video games in general. But in Heavy Rain, when you fail at something, the story continues. It was a failure, and it doesn't halt the progression of the story. Maybe you missed a vital clue that could have helped later. Perhaps you were beaten to a pulp by that mugger. Maybe you even allowed someone to die. Too bad. That person is dead, and now you've got to deal with it rather than reload and have the story turn out the way you might have wanted. More so than any other game I've played, choices and failures in Heavy Rain have consequences, and I absolutely loved that.

Now that I'm back in Connecticut, I'm running a 4th Edition D&D game, and despite my initial resistance to the system, one thing that saved it for me is the system for Skill Challenges. Whereas battles generally have a single consequence for failure, (player death) skill challenges must always allow for a fork in the story as a result of player failure. Failure is an option. And failure can allow the story to move in very interesting directions.

So pardon my stream of consciousness here, I just noticed the similarity between the two games and realized that I was enjoying the same thing in each. I needed to share with the Internet.

I just read an article on David Pakman's blog that I thought bore sharing. I'm going to quote a segment here.

Shouldn't music be decentralized? Not free, but just available everywhere, especially to developers to create more engaging and relevant online music experiences. Music needs to become part of the fabric of the web, not an overlay on top of it. Like I can embed my Twitter stream anywhere, I need to be able to embed the music driving my life all over the web too. Not just the song names, the music itself. I have a need to share it, but I really can't today. If this happened, the businesses that could be built on top of it are quite interesting. The data becomes the value here enabling the new generation of music programmers to emerge based on the collective and specific expertise of the masses.

To me, the businesspeople making the decisions at the big corporations are just too stuck in the past to allow new technologies to emerge that would make more money for the artists and allow listeners new conveniences and new opportunities to discover music.

Linda, Lia, and I are moved into the new place in West Hartford. We had more help moving in on Saturday than I'd expected, which was fantastic. It's so nice to have friends, and such a contrast to moving and loading the UHaul in Colorado where I'd done nearly everything solo. We started at 10am, and by the time 1:30 rolled around, we were all done. Of course, there's still an absolute ton to set up and unbox.

Our back hallway is nearly impasssable, packed as it is with cardboard boxes and paper packing material. I've been struggling to locate a place to recycle all this rather than throw it out, but West Hartford isn't making it easy. They have a recycling program where they'll pick up bins from your home, but since the place I'm living is technically a business (there's a pediatric dentist on the first floor) they won't pick up recycling there.

Living above a pediatric dentist is interesting. There seems to be on average at least once "screamer" per day - a kid who DOESN'T WANNA GO TO THE DENTIST!, and we can hear them all. Lia is very concerned for the kids.

But living as close as we are to West Hartford center is nice. Having cannibalized cables from Linda's PC to set up the television and media server, I needed to buy her a new power cable for her monitor. Looks like one disappeared during the move. So I put Lia in the stroller and walked right down through Blueback Square to Radio Shack. Lia got to learn about crosswalks. The walk was about 1.5 miles round trip, and we stopped at Whole Foods on the way back to pick up dinner.

Back at the house, I spent at least an hour on the phone with Comcast trying to get our internet connection activated. I spent a while researching what ISPs might be available in our area, but in the end Comcast has a monopoly and I don't have many options. I'd had an appointment scheduled for Saturday, but the Comcast guy never showed up. I called and rescheduled for Tuesday, but the guy just dropped off a kit, which I had to set up myself. And when I called to activate things, nothing worked. I got transferred to a technician and then escalated to a supervisor, but they have to send somebody else out tonight to figure out why it's not working. My suspicion is the screwy coax wiring in the house.

I'm also re-evaluating how to set up our home media center. In Colorado, I'd had the media server set up in another room, piping media to the Playstation 3 and the LCD TV through a very long wired connection, since wireless is slow. I've been considering a number of other things, including where to locate the router and the media server, whether to use a monitor on the media server or just use the TV, and whether I should use different software. I've been using TVersity, and it works great. And while part of me thinks that if it ain't broke, I shouldn't try to fix it, another part of me wonders if there's something better out there. I've also got a TV tuner card in my other PC that I've never used, and I'm not even sure of its capabilities. I'd like to make use of it.

I know that it will be a while before we're truly settled in our new place, but I think we'll all be happy here.