Penumbra

I'm a bit stunned; I've just read that Gary Gygax passed away this morning at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.  He is survived by his wife Gail, and six children. He was 69 years old.


As the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons along with Dave Arneson, and one of the founders of the gaming legend TSR, he is quite rightly acknowledged as the Father of Roleplaying Games. His ideas sparked the imaginations and touched the lives of millions, inspiring the birth of a global hobby that has persisted for the last 34 years; D&D grew from "just a game" into a subculture phenomenon.  Every games designer from 1974 to now has followed in his footsteps, myself included; that's not to mention the massive influence that D&D has had on the computer games industry as it developed.

It's hard to adequately describe the impact his work has had on myself and my friends over the years. It's equally as hard to comprehend a world without Gary Gygax in it.

And the guys over at Penny Arcade have come up with a memorial that, if applied to anyone else on the planet might be in bad taste, but for Mr Gygax, fits perfectly.


Safe travels, Mr Gygax.  See you at journey's end.

You can finally point your browsers towards chriscotgrove.com!

My domain is live!

Penumbra is also in the process of getting reworked, and will eventually end up with its own domain as well.

Right now, I'm adding artist and author spotlights, reviews of bookstores and games stores, as well as links to art and writing resources across the web.

And you might notice that I've changed my userpic. Here's the full size version of my mugshot, apologies in advance to mirrors nearby:

"Enemies lurk within and without. Humanity's purity is endangered, and all must stand together to root out the subversives and malcontents that threaten our survival.  For the good of the many, the few must die."

Hundreds of years in the future, humanity teeters on the edge of destruction; environmental collapse, war, disease and famine has swept across the Earth in the aftermath of an unknown disaster of incredible proportions.

Out of the ashes rises the Humanitarian Political Party; co-ordinating relief to millions of survivors, it is the single organisation that gives food, clothing and security to the masses. As humanity's last hope, it enacts steps to form itself into a State, and the Polity is born.

Little does anyone realise the horrors to come.

Coming soon, 'Cthulhu Adventus' is a dark, dystopian setting that will be released as a monograph imprint for Chaosium Inc's role-playing game 'Call of Cthulhu'. 'Call of Cthulhu' is a registered trademark of Chaosium, Inc.

Find out more at: http://cthulhuadventus.blogspot.com/

Announcing Penumbra, a forum founded with the ideal of providing a place where creative individuals can meet, discuss, talk shop and network amongst their fellows in an atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration. 

No matter what your creative obsession, you are welcome here.

The forums are located here:

http://ghostwriting.silverhawktechnologies.com/forums

Drop by, register, and enjoy.

This is an absolutely shameless plug for my writing site, located here:

http://ghostwriting.silverhawktechnologies.com/

This is the basic revamped version of the page, with more changes to come over the coming months.

As the site says, I provide a full range of literary services to authors, companies and individuals, including but not limited to:

• Ghostwriting
• Creative writing
• Proofreading and Critique
• Copy editing
• Web content creation
  
• Blog writing
• Research for writing projects
• Writing ad copy and other marketing material
• Project management of writing or technical projects
• News articles
• Press releases
• Speeches for business, politics and private individuals

I have been writing, consulting and researching on a professional basis since 2001, for projects ranging from company technical policies to fiction and roleplaying games.

I am reliable and deadline-oriented, producing work according to a high quality standard, and will put my excellent communication and research skills to work for you according to your needs.

I am available to write on any subject - you give me the subject, I'll do all the research, and produce material for you accordingly.

Check out the site, and if you have any further questions, please contact me at ccotgrove@gmail.com.

Shameless plug over - and we now return you to your regular blog-based viewing.

Just a quick update here before I get some shut-eye. 

I have finally got back to updating Integration 20, and issued an open call for submissions over at the Team8 forums. 

Basically, if you have any SLA Industries related material that you want to have displayed on the web and archived (hopefully) for all eternity, please send me a URL to the material, or a Word document containing same. For artwork, just email me and we'll work something out.  I'll try to keep to a 24 hour turnaround on all submissions from now on, but of course, that greatly depends on my workload and deadlines.  All submissions should go to: submissions@integration-20.com.

I am also in the process of moving my literary services site over to a new domain, revamping the content and layout. Once all the updates are done, I'll make a much more formal announcement here and over at Myspace. Watch these pixels!

Now I'm off to hit the hay, so thank you - and goodnight.

This is basically a mirror of my Myspace blog over at http://www.myspace.com/thenthdoctor, with of course a few small changes. 

For a start, it's using the "Oh Contrast!" theme for the Nebula layout as those experienced in LJ-fu have already guessed. It's a quick cheap and cheerful solution indeed, until I can set some time aside to work out how to modify LJ layout properly - at that point it will most likely change to match The Nth Doctor. 

For those curious individuals out there, I chose the name for this blog from my very old handle of "Eclipse"...a penumbra is the space of partial illumination between perfect shadow and full light.

Whether I choose to use this particular blog as a full mirror of the one at Myspace still remains to be seen, or use it for different purposes (say, posting fiction or RPG material) - either way, you can keep in touch with me here if you choose not to use Myspace for any reason :)