Highmoon's Ponderings

I’ll put this very simple: IT ROCKED!!!
I thought the movie was great, even if it was a little under the quality of the first two. I liked that the storytelling was gutsy (even if it did suffer from too-much-in-too-little-time sindrome at parts) and that actions had consequences, no apologies. The movie was more comic book-y than the parts 1 and 2, but it wasn’t cartoonish, and I thoroughly enjoyed the various nods to fans of the comic. It wasn’t flawless, and there were a few things I could have done without or with more of, but overall I left the theatre pleased and psyched, as did my non-geek wife.

I’ll come back later with a spoilers-included full review.

X-Men: The Last Stand – 4 out of 5 stars.

I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a couple of changes I have done to this blog and things that will be coming along.

First of all, I changed the layout to one that mirrored my personal webpage. Along with that, I have made this blog my personal site as well; going to www.dmperez.com now brings you here. Little by little I’m going to transfer the pages I had on my old site to backdated blog posts that I can then link here. I have started to use tags (linking to del.icio.us) as well, but I forget to use them all the time, so they aren’t as comprehensive as they should be yet. Eventually I want to move this blog to be hosted at my own server where I can then keep a copy of it for posterity.

Second, for about two weeks now I have been linking two other of my blogs to this one, the Miami Daily Photo blog, and the Destination: Earth Travel blog.

The Miami Daily Photo blog chronicles my city one picture a day and is part of the City Daily Photo network, covering cities all around the world. I have lots of fun with this project, and I’ve actually learned a lot about my city through it. Instead of redirecting the daily posts here, however, I will post a weekly summary of the previous week’s daily photos, probably on Sundays or Mondays. That way I showcase my work on that blog without overwhelming this one.

The Destination: Earth Travel blog serves as a news blog for my travel company, where I post interesting travel news bits and updates about our company’s services. These two blogs are specialized and expanded expressions of things I would normally cover here anyway, which is why I decided to link them up.

Third, I have now started a new project that combines my passion for gaming and travel, a podcast called The Gamer Traveler. This mini podcast will play as a feature inside the Dragon’s Landing Podcast every two weeks, more or less, and will feature me talking about some site around the world, giving it the travel show treatment, then talking about ways to incorporate it into your games. I am very excited about the podcast, and thank Chuck and Lonnie at the Dragon’s Landing Podcast for the opportunity. The show notes for the introductory episode are now available at The Gamer Traveler blog and future show notes will appear here automatically once posted there.

I’ll most likely take the Highmoon Media Productions site to a blog format as well, though that will probably happen later in the summer, as June is going to be a very busy month: there’s regular work, the Jewish holy day of Shavuot, finishing Targum Magazine #1, finishing the layout for Lonnie Ezell’s Daughter of the Sun, overseeing the launching of the new joint project between Highmoon Media and Reality Deviants, overseeing the Montdargent line being developed by JC Alvarez, doing at least one podcast, and leaving for my summer vacation, two weeks in Holland and Belgium (aka. The Hellhoot Adventure, see the ticker on the front page).

Off I go. Have a great Memorial Day Weekend!

Completed in 1999 to replace the venerable Miami Arena, the American Airlines Arena (AAA) has taken over as Miami’s main venue for pretty much any show in town, as well as the home for our local NBA team, the Miami Heat. Right now it is hosting the Heat’s playoff games, thus the gigantic banner on the front. 

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Posted by Daniel M. Perez to Miami Daily Photo at 5/27/2006 11:05:00 PM

 

Completed in 1925 as the headquarters of the Miami News & Metropolis Newspaper, the Freedom Tower became in the 1950′s the Ellis Island of the Cuban exile community as they arrived in Miami fleeing from Castro’s revolution. Located in Downtown Miami, the building was sold in the 70s and left abandoned until it became a center dedicated to the preservation of the history of the Cuban American community. The tower was slated for demolition to give way to new condos, but it was eventually donated to the Miami-Dade College and will soon reopen as a full-fledged museum. The Freedom Tower is another example of a Giralda tower (I’ve already shown you the Biltmore tower).  

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Posted by Daniel M. Perez to Miami Daily Photo at 5/26/2006 01:27:00 PM

Berin Kinsman, at UncleBear.com, has posted a Wish List of stuff he’d like to see on a possible (or rather, upcoming and innevitable) 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I think his list is excellent and right on the money on the kind of changes I’d like to see to the game, too, and we’ve been commenting back and forth about it. Go take a look and add your thoughts as well. Even if WotC/Hasbro (see what Berin has to say about this) doesn’t use these suggestions, they might influence a better version of an OGL d20-derivative core system (and for the record, I think True20 comes pretty close already).

 

Royal Caribbean’s new Freedom of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world and ever made, pulled into port here in Miami early this morning. The ship was christened last week in New York and has now sailed into its home port, from where it will carry 4375 passengers every time it sails out. Let me tell you, the thing is absolutely massive. 

Confession: I did not take this pic, I took it from our local NBC affiliate. I did, however, see the ship this morning as I drove to work, but it was raining so I didn’t chance taking one of my trademarked pics while driving. 

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Posted by Daniel M. Perez to Miami Daily Photo at 5/25/2006 11:13:00 PM