E-Readers

A few months ago I picked up the Kobo e-reader from Borders. It's a small, light unit and can store a considerable amount of e-books on it. The battery life lasts quite a while, actually I've gone a few days without charge and I read a lot. The screen isn't great though and you can get a headache reading for too long a time. When I saw a coworker's Barnes and Noble Nook Color, I knew I had to get one. So now I've had it for two weeks and I love the picture on it. Reading magazines, especially those like Reader's Digest and Guitar World, which have lots of color pictures, couldn't any better. The online capability is easy to access when one is in a Wi-Fi spot (not so with the Kobo). It's easy to download books. The only flaw with the Nook color is the battery life, not nearly as long as the Kobo. Of course it has a lot more going on, it's almost like a tablet.

Role Playing Games

I was going through some of my old role playing games that remain in the basement of my parents' house and was reminded about how much fun they used to be to play and collect the accessories (modules, guidebooks). They bring me back to the mid-'80s and were a great tool to expand one's imagination.

I ended up collecting so many role playing games at the time that some of them I never played with anyone. They just looked nice or I was simply interested in comparing their game play to other games. The ones I played to some degree or other were:
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (of course)
Star Frontiers (probably the game I played the most)
Middle Earth Role Playing Game by ICE (probably the best designed system I've seen; their modules were works of art, especially with the mapping of the lands)
Indiana Jones (this one was a lot of fun)
Marvel Super Heroes (this was probably runner up to Star Frontiers in terms of how much I played it with my friends, we had a lot of fun with this, and since I was a big comic collector at the time, the modules and supplements made good references to events in the comics)
Paranoia (a game involving rebellion in a brain washed society)
James Bond (yes, there was an RPG based on the Bond films, it had very nicely done modules based on some of the movies)
Boot Hill (a trip to the old west)
Dr. Who (my favorite show at the time so it was an easy call to get this game)

Then there were the games I bought or acquired by trading with people that I never got to actually play with people but were in my collection:
Traveller (I always wanted to get more into this game, it looked like it had well developed universe to play in but it was more difficult to find supplements and modules than many of the other gaming systems)
Man, Myth And Magic (sort of Roman Empire meets King Arthur's Court)
DC Heroes (like with the Marvel game, this one had a lot of good supplements) Gamma World (the aftermath of a nuclear war)
Top Secret/Top Secret SI (spy stuff like the James Bond game)

I think that's pretty much it for what I had. By about 1987 the people I used to play RPG's with moved on and were more focused on video games. With no one to play with my interest waned as well but it's still fun to pull them out from time to time. Some of them I don't have anymore, they were lost over time but many I still do.