From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V8 #189 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Tuesday, November 18 2003 Volume 08 : Number 189 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Alloy: BBC Radio 2 show this week [Paul Baily ] Alloy: gear hounds [esoul ] Alloy: OT: Funky Books ["Crackers" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 18:40:58 +1000 From: Paul Baily Subject: Re: Alloy: BBC Radio 2 show this week On 24/10/2003, at 7:58 am, Andrea Allen wrote: > the broadcast is now located at: > > http://www.trilia.net/music/Jammin_2003_10_23.mp3 Finally had a chance to listen to this - Andrea, thank you for putting this up, it's a wee ripper! Thomas you were a champ! 'specially liked the Bob Dylan techno thing - nice effort. And that guy getting frenetic ala Madness' One Step Beyond (or Alexei Sayle style) was a crack-up! This clip will have me in fits o' giggles for a long while. Paul. This message powered by a change in the air. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 07:08:15 -0800 From: esoul Subject: Alloy: gear hounds Hi folks, thanks Crackers for the gear research, and I'd only add a word of caution about the M1R, which I assume is the stand-alone module for the M1? Get that and all of your sounds are going to just spank of 1986. Forever you will be an anachronism (like me!). Also, there aren't that many sounds in it, either. The Thomas Dolby cache is a factor, of course, but for nearly the same money I bet you could pick up a tone module with fresher sounds and more of them. Something like a Roland JV-1010 perhaps, or a Korg Wavestation SR, or . . .? this way you forever sound like 1995 or 1989 . . . I have been interested in these auctions, and I hope Crackers gets his synth. That and working with Neil Young's sister is too much to hope for in one lifetime. Hubris alert! And Mr. Dolby, I have a variety of gear, may I ship it to you, have you list it as "yours," coattail on your cache, and split the extra profit? Clearly my alesis SR-16 drum box needs the star treatment! Cheers, - -Tom <><><><><><><><><><><><> Original music Waaaay too long for radio: http://www.emeraldsoul.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 12:43:39 -0500 From: "Crackers" Subject: Alloy: OT: Funky Books I seem to recall that someone here on Alloy is a professional book restorer. I think it was Robin, but I don't remember for sure. Anyways, I got an old book from the 70s recently. It's a hard covered book and it's got a slight case of "basement funk" about it. No visable mould or mildew damage but it just has that "spent the last couple of decades in someone's basment" smell to it. I can't say it wasn't unexpected when I got the book of ebay given the age and likely hood of basement storage for the book (an old 1st edition ADnD Player's Handbook). It's not that strong a funk but I was just wondering if there's an easy and effective way to get rid of that smell off an old book, or if I just have to wait for it to fade away on its own as I bring the book into the light of day. My son turned 11 recently and I figured I'd teach him how to play Dungeons and Dragons. Luckily all my first edition books with the exception of my 1st edition Player's Handbook survived the years. My first edition PHB was lost in a flood in my basment which claimed about 100 books. Got a replacement off ebay and I'm good to go. Had to track down an old 1st edition book because to my surprise the current 3.5 Edition rules are completely incompatable with 1st edition. Since I already have a perfectly good 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manuals I & II it was much cheaper just to replace the handbook with one of Ebay than buy all new books. ESPECIALLY since the new books cost 45-FREAKING-DOLLARS EACH! Holy crap! This game is so much more expensive now adays than it was when I was a kid. The minatures are much more expensive too but I found out it's because they no longer make them out of lead due to parent's concerns that they might cause lead poisoning. Now they're all made out of pewter. Obviously $6.50 for one book off ebay is much cheaper than replacing 3 books with the current edition for a total of $135. Yeesh! Besides, First edition rules were good enough for me as a kid, they're good enough for mine too. Dag-nabbit! It was great fun teaching them. We had such a hoot. Played their first game this weekend. Figured it would be best to start them off with the original Basic DnD game before moving on to AD&D. I was able to get basic rules and the "Keep on the Borderland", and "Search for the Unknown" modules off the internet as PDFs. This was the basic box set I first learned with as a kid. Printed them all out. Put 'em in binders and away we went. My son is 11 and my daughter is 6. I didn't plan to teach her but she wanted to play (of course). So we make them up some characters (and my son's friend who wanted to play too). I had forgotten how tedious a proceedure it was to make characters. So my daughter was a fighter, my son an elf fighter/magic user and his friend was a cleric (and it took some time before I finally got them to stop calling him a "clerk"). Since they were so inexperienced I had 3 NPC join up with them in the tavern for an even share of the treasure (3rd level dwarf fighter, 3rd level elf fighter, 5th level human fighter). That evened the odds a bit. They also ran into the cleric NPC in the Keep who was oh so eager to join them on their mission to The Caves Of Chaos. Learned a valuable lesson about trusting the clergy I think (the cleric was a spy for an order of evil Clerics in the cave and betrayed them the first chance he got). They didn't quite clue in from the way the Cleric was always holding back when the party was attacked by monsters on the way to the cave. Once inside the first cave they learned the valuable lesson of the usefulness of a 10' pole. My son fell into a trap with 4 HP and took 6HP damage so he was laying unconscious at the bottom of the pit. This left his little sister in charge of the party (my son's friend's character was with the party at this time). Finally she came up with the idea of lowering the Elf down on rope to rescue my son's character. The evil Cleric took advantage of the elf and my son being in stuck in the bottom of a pit and attacked the remaining party (and the cleric had plate +1 armour while the rest only had leather). They barely managed to get out of that little situation. Luckily the first cave the entered (there's about a dozen or so caves in this module) was the Lair of the Kobolds. They're only 1d4 HP and the civilians are only 2 HP and unarmed. The best part of the entire campaign came after the killed the Kobold chief. They figured that was it for the cave but then they discovered the common room full of angry looking kobols wondering why the party was covered with the blood of their chief. My daughter's character was the only one who spoke Kobold so my son told her to tell them. "Tell them that we just went to talk to their chief and didn't mean to do any harm when he accidentally ran into our swords and before we could do anything about it he was dead." My daughter just gave him this look that was priceless and said "I am NOT going to tell themTHAT!" and instead she told them they came across their chief being attacked by a party of goblins and they leapt to his defence but alas, though he fought valiantly he was slain and the goblins escaped. The kobolds didn't buy it, of course, but you got to admit it was a much better story than "he accidentally ran into our swords". Much fighting ensued, but since the kobolds were all unarmed civilians they were pretty easily slaughtered. This resulted in the entire cave the the kobolds being emptied (it was a very small cave to begin with) so they have a nice little place to hide out and recover from their wounds (plus it has a full food storage room in it) which is what they did. It was very amusing watching them play and they really got into it. I was suprised my daughter liked it so much (of course all the tedious paper work was being done for her by her brother). So valuable lessons were learned. Check for traps as you walk through a dungeon. Rat bites can make you sick. Priests can be evil. And Kobolds have lousy taste in wine. It certainly brought back memories of my youth. Last time I played a game of D&D was about 20 years ago. And to bring this story on topic, it was at my highschool girlfriend's house, played with her, her brothers, and some of our friends. and the albums we listened to while we played were a Blondie album, a Gary Nueman Album, a Talking Head's album (Speaking in Tongues) and two Thomas Dolby albums (The Golden Age of Wireless and The Flat Earth). Good times.... good times... Anyways... any tips on de-funkifying a book would be great. I've been playing it Paul Anka albums all day and nothing seems to have changed. It's still as funky as a Dolby/Clinton collaboration. Crackers Ghastly's Ghastly Comic http://ghastlycomic.com ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V8 #189 ***************************