Someone forked Table Slayer and started work trying to make it easily self-hosted. That was basically all I needed to justify putting the time in to do that work myself. I suspect it'll be a mostly academic exercise, but it'll make me feel good about being a good steward.

“You can’t throw oranges on an escalator!“ - California Split. Love the wall of sound dialog in Altman movies.

Realizing that I'm going through a small form of grief knowing that I only have two weeks of Maron's WTF podcast left. It's hard to say goodbye to something that's been in your ear weekly for 15 years.

Taking a break from Marvel Champions to learn how to play Vantage. It's nice having a board game buddy in your fam that bugs you to play.

Is there anything funnier than watching Denzel Washington laugh like a little kid as Don Rickles runs the room? He (Denzel) seems genuinely star struck. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE_B...

Whelp. I'm crazy. I'm doubling down on Table Slayer and have some prototype hardware being shipped. 43 inch display with touch screen support.

Being a little league coach means you are also an amateur weatherman with constant anxiety about making the wrong decision on game day.

Having Claude figure out some random hardware error in my Linux system every once in awhile is worth all the money I pay for it. So nice to just feed it some crash logs and have it figure out an issue. In my case I had memory config issues in my bios, that under heavy load would cause a crash.

Added some new grid tools to Table Slayer that will auto-align maps if you know their grid size. Short demo and explanation in the change log. tableslayer.com/changelog

I picked a hard problem to build - Real time sync and conflict resolution. - 3D in the browser (ironically to mimic a 2D view angle) - Real life physical constraints (How many inches can I draw on a 40" TV?) - Math, and also hand wavy game math (the second diagonal is 10ft) - Multi-touch controls

Sad to read about Robert Redford. Two of his movies, "The String" and "The Natural", made my favorite 25 movies of all time. Of his later work "All is Lost" is likely my favorite. His characters had a way of being optimistic and sincere that showed humans at our best. www.davesnider.com/posts/movies

Improved Table Slayer's marker system. Markers can now "pin" tooltips on the player map. A good use case: this allows the GM to create ephemeral signposts to mark points of interest on a busy overland map (like my Kingmaker campaign).

At every place I've ever worked there was always a focus on the upcoming new feature. There was hardly any time spent making what already existed better. The idea was that your product was missing things that stopped it from growing. In reality, you were already growing, you just weren't retaining.

Love when I learn new things (to me) that are actually really old things. I'm trying to find a way to store Table Slayer's fog of war and drawing layers (which are just image masks with an applied effect) in a more performant way at the DB level. TIL about RLE. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-len...

I really like making little doodles to go along with my maps. It gives a lot more context to players about where they are.

Added a quick product update log to Table Slayer that covers all major features since beta. I always like simple feature announcements rather than bloated, congratulatory blog posts. When evaluating products myself, I tend to just look for consistency over time. tableslayer.com/changelog

Prepping to run Dungeons and Dragons (in my case Pathfinder) sessions is the only thing I have in my adult life that brings back the panic of cramming for a test.

Just about ready to merge support for video files in Table Slayer. You can still add effects on top or recolor them with color grading.

Burned my thumb pretty bad last night. Enough to scar my thumb. Interesting that my Utec locks no longer work, but my pixel does.

Also Table Slayer related. I'm in the works building a prototype large form touchscreen display. We'll see how it goes, but it would be very cool to just draw away fog, or make a measurement without needing a laptop or separate device.

Hey folks. I just built a little promo system for Table Slayer to give away free lifetime accounts. This URL will work for TWO copies. You can either attach to an existing party, or create an account and it'll automatically be upgraded. If you claim one, let me know! tableslayer.com/promo/bluesky

The Silksong excitement made me open up Hollow Knight, which I'd barely played. Got about a half hour in and then remembered... oh yeah... Metroidvania's are sort of one of the few genres I dislike. I just don't like backtracking and repetition. This is the same trouble I have with Soulslikes.

Who needs a masthead when you have a dog? Nice jaunt on the Chesapeake this afternoon.

Our Marvel Champions set up has gotten pretty cool. Found some nice display / holders on Etsy. We use d10s to manage threats and health.

Let's go O's.

Doing some cursory checks on what it would take to build large form, touch screen displays for Table Slayer. They could either sit on top of a table, or be embedded. Would this be interesting to folks? What would you pay? Also, if anyone has expertise in this sort of hardware I'd love to talk.

This is now live. Enjoy.

The ability to take measurements will be landing soon in Table Slayer. Not that everything correctly aligns regardless of the rotation of the editor. This will make my players happy when they say... "Is that guy within 60 ft?".

8 days later I finally feel like I'm recovering from this pneumonia bout. That was pretty rough. Maybe I'll even walk outside today!

Pretty exciting O's game going on tonight. 🤞

“Walking pneumonia” is such a funny phrase. Anyways, I'm walking, and apparently have a mild form of pneumonia (as does my son). We're OK and on meds. Not a fun way to return from a big trip.

My dog Dean loves to sing along when I tune. Today, I tuned my 2nd A string to his howl, checked my tuner, and discovered he was only a cent or two off. Here he is singing along with a very rusty Ragtime Annie when he was about 5 months old (he's 13.5 now). www.youtube.com/watch?v=byqU...

"You're so strong-ish". Adventureland still holds up well.

Arrived home from my trip yesterday. Happy that I'm already coding today. It's always validating to remember how much you enjoy your primary profession.

Last week of my camping trip. Gonna miss drinking coffee in a hammock with my book nearby. Still, it'll be nice to get back to coding. Have some fun new stuff to jam on when I get back.

Finished The Magistrar trilogy after enjoying CS Friedman's Coldfire series years ago. I didn't enjoy these as much. Next up will be The Lions of Al-Rassan. I've heard a lot about Kay's prose and the Internet tells me Lions is a good place to start.

A set of walkie talkies should be in every family's camp bag. Pretty awesome to let your kids wander and have a fun way to keep in touch and call them back to camp.

A disappointing season for the Orioles became even more sad. Bummed to see Cedric leave Baltimore.

My bestie and I atop Cadillac Mountain.

The most fearsome enemy of all. A drooly dog over your cards.

I haven't seen the stars But I have touched the tall trees Where's my Nintendo An original haiku by my ten year old son Duke whilst camping.

Got myself a lemon whoopie pie in Maine thinking I was being a contrarian. Turns out I picked up a Twinkie sandwich.

Banjo and I exploring the trails in Maine.

Last night we drove through some white out rain to make it to Freeport, Maine. This morning the weather is perfect for reading fantasy novels with the dogs from a hammock.

Catching up now that we have Internet again. Grey Fox was fun. Easily the largest Bluegrass Festival we've been too. Here's some pics. My son and I are still finding time for Marvel Champions in the trailer.

We're making our way to Maine from Annapolis. First was a night in Fahnestock State Park. Next stop Grey Fox Bluegrass festival.

Not obsessed at all.

Table Slayer markers will now auto-rotate to the viewport even if the scene is rotated (as it is in this screenshot). This should make them a little more legible for DMs who sit at the end of the table (fairly typical). Also, erasing fog and drawing should be much snappier without lag now.

There is no greater joy than a project you enjoy working on daily for a long period of time. Table Slayer is a weird one. The times I get to actually use it are few (getting friends together for DnD is hard!), but I hack on it almost every day. Sometimes the fun is in the building.

My son and I had Marvel Champions sitting around not being played for a whole year. This Summer, we've played at least one game a day and scooped up a lot of the expansions. It's a really fun game with so much variety.