Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’m Appearing at Phoenix Comicon

Phoenix Comicon is  June 2-5 and I will be appearing at table AA330.  Please stop by and say hello.  Cosplayers Aria and Cassandra S. Kyle will also be stopping by to join me.

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Vehicles – If You could only choose one…

Which of the following would you pick if you could only have one?

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Cosplay Pictures for Your Saturday!

Cosplayers and cosplay to enjoy!

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Cosplay for Your Saturday Enjoyment!

Cosplayers and cosplay for your enjoyment!  A shout out to all the cosplayers around the world who work hard to come up with such great outfits of their favorite characters.

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D&D now on Steam, complete with dice and a Dungeon Master

By Charlie Hall on Apr 22, 2015 at 5:00p

Fantasy Grounds, one of the leading virtual tabletop platforms, now offers officially licensed Dungeons & Dragons content from Wizards of the Coast. Available through Steam, the software can allow players to virtually recreate the 5th edition D&D tabletop experience complete with dice rolling, 2D maps and a play experience completely controlled by a dungeon master.

Anyone who’s been playing D&D over the last decade remembers the promise of Wizard’s Virtual Table. First publicized in the back pages of 4th edition core rulebooks, it promised a fully-realized, 3D tabletop roleplaying experience. But over the lifecycle of 4th edition the vision wavered, and in 2012 the Virtual Table beta was officially cancelled.

In the meantime, a number of virtual tabletop solutions cropped up organically online, allowing players to come together from remote locations around the world and have an experience very similar to playing at a table together in the same room.

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One of the most capable solutions is Fantasy Grounds, which has a bewildering assortment of features and flexibilities that allow game masters to create everything from homebrew games, to Pathfinder and other established tabletop systems. Add to that the officially licensed D&D modules available for download, including add-on classes and monster collections, as well as entire campaigns.

The first set of products, including the D&D Complete Core Class Pack, D&D Complete Core Monster Pack, and The Lost Mine of Phandelver went on sale last week. Polygon has spent some time checking out the content in The Lost Mine module. Believe it or not, the entire experience, page-for-page, of the physical 5th edition D&D Starter Set is represented there. Beyond that, Fantasy Ground’s modules even include annotated maps hotlinked to spawn enemies onto the grid, ready to roll initiative.

We talked to the president and owner of Fantasy Grounds, Doug Davison, who said that more products are already in the pipeline.

“We have a queue that we’re working through right now,” Davison told Polygon. “We just finished up the preliminary work on the Hoard of the Dragon Queen adventure module, and so that’s currently in review right now. We’ve already conducted our internal reviews, and now it’s out in the hands of a few folks at Wizards of the Coast. So depending on how much needs to be changed during that process, I think you’re looking at a matter of maybe weeks before that’s available.”

Greg Tito, Wizard’s communications manager, confirmed for Polygon that other campaigns, including Rise of Tiamat and the recently released Princes of the Apocalypse, are on the way for Fantasy Grounds.

It’s interesting that Wizards is partnering with a tool which, for all intents and purposes, allows users to scrape content off the internet for free and easily insert it into their games. Fantasy Grounds’ own online tutorials give step-by-step instructions on how to grab maps and art from Google Images and drop it directly into user-generated games.

But Tito says players have been doing this sort of thing for generations, so why not support a tool that lets them do it easily? Furthermore, he hopes that fans will see the value in the for-pay Fantasy Grounds modules, as they leverage the strong work that the Wizards research and development team, as well as their publishing partners, produce in the physical books.

“It goes down to everything that we’ve been excited about in this partnership withFantasy Grounds,” Tito said. “It’s just another tool to allow people to play D&D the way they want to play it.”

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Scientists discover how to ‘upload knowledge to your brain’

Enhanced training through NeurostimulationPlay!04:55

00:0504:56
 Link to video here – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/03/01/scientists-discover-how-to-download-knowledge-to-your-brain/

Researchers claim to have developed a simulator which can feed information directly into a person’s brain and teach them new skills in a shorter amount of time, comparing it to “life imitating art”.

They believe it could be the first steps in developing advanced software that will make Matrix-style instant learning a reality.

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Random Humor to Start the Week

Random humor for your Monday…

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Cosplay for the Weekend

Cosplayers and cosplay for the weekend…

(finishing editing on my sixth book, due out soon, sorry for slow posts…)

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Tucson Festival of Books

I’ll be a guest author at the Tucson Festival of Books.  If you happen to be in the area, come by and get yourself some signed copies of one or more of my novels.

TucsonFestivalFBHeader2016_MichaelBradley

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New glass suspension bridge in China is 980 feet long, 600 feet high, and absolutely terrifying

Visitors walk across a glass-bottomed suspension bridge as seen from the air in a scenic zone in Pingjiang county in southern China's Hunan province, Sept. 24, 2015.

Visitors walk across a glass-bottomed suspension bridge as seen from the air in a scenic zone in Pingjiang county in southern China’s Hunan province, Sept. 24, 2015. (Chinatopix Via AP)

Engineers in China recently completed work on a mesmerizing 980 ft. long suspension bridge primarily made out of glass. Dubbed the Haohan Qiao Bridge — which appropriately translates to Brave Men’s Bridge in English — the engineering marvel towers 600 feet above a canyon below and is situated between two cliffs. Located at the Shiniuizhai National Geological Park in southern China, the Haohan Qiao Bridge is clearly not meant for the faint of heart.

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While the notion of walking across glass that high up in the air is certainly a bit jarring, the glass used is said to be exceedingly safe. Specifically, the glass is three-quarters of an inch thick and is treated to be extremely resistant to both bending and shattering. One of the workers who worked on the bridge told China News that the glass used on the bridge is more than 25 times stronger than ordinary glass. Meanwhile, the glass itself is encapsulated by a steel frame to ensure maximum sturdiness.

“The steel frame used to support and encase the glass bridge is also very strong and densely built, so even if a glass is broken, travelers won’t fall through,” a worker recently told the China News Service.

You can check out video of folks walking through the bridge below.

 

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