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My friend Larry would sometimes bring this to the home bridge game I play in, and it was always incredibly popular. (One of the regulars loves it so much that Larry would bring a second pan just for him to take home.)

At some point, I asked Larry for the recipe and he sent me a link to the original source. I could dig the link up if I wanted to, but I’m not going to; as far as I’m concerned, it’s Larry’s cake recipe.

( Read more... )

Larry passed away suddenly this past Wednesday, right before I was going to see him at Dexcon.

I'm currently importing my LJ.

I'll be adding the DW accounts that I can find, but if you've changed from your LJ account name, let me know.

So, I currently seem to be using this LJ as a place to put recipes when asked for them.

( Here there be muffins… )

Here are the card sets from this year's Dominion tournament at Dexcon. (Which I won.) I'm interested in how other people would have played them. (I didn't record the kingdom in the qualifying round, but could probably recall most of it if anybody cares; it was all-Intrigue. (Great Hall?, Masquerade, Shanty Town, Wishing Well, Bridge, Coppersmith, Duke, Torturer, Tribute, Harem.))

They were not fully random; the organizers at least filtered them for interestingness, and I believe the finals set was actually constructed, or at least adjusted from a random set.

Card texts behind a cut, because some of you don't care.

All games are four players.

I'll explain how I played and why in the comments, if anybody wants me to.

( The semifinals were Intrigue and Seaside )
( The finals potentially drew from everything, or possibly everything not used in previous rounds )

Here's the setup for the finals of the Dexcon tournament.

How would you plan to play them with a 3-4 money split?

(And yes, there's inevitably some things you do to react to your opponents and your actual draws. I'm just looking for general plans.)
( card texts hidden to spare those of you who don't care... )
Bonus points if you can guess which one of these ten cards was never bought by anybody at the table.

I'm selling off my Magic cards next week, (I have about 10,000 cards by my rough estimates), and the process of sorting all my cards left me feeling somewhat nostalgic.

I played for about ten years, from Beta in 1993 to Scourge in 2003. For the last couple of years, I was only playing in prerelease tournaments, due to the combination of the decline of the regular Sunday tournament at my local store and the fact that I wasn't buying many cards any more made it hard to stay competitive. I was also working on Shadowfist at the time, which required the same sort of mental energy that Magic does.

I don't regret the time or money I spent. (It's even possible I'll make a profit selling my cards, but I doubt it, and can't really tell anyway.) I had fun. I was good, but not great. The fact that I was never spending that much money on cards and refused to buy singles made me an eccentric deckbuilder, never playing the standard archetypes of the time. I like to think that if I'd gotten serious about it, I could've competed at high levels. That might've happened if I'd stayed in Pittsburgh, where I was friends with somebody who later became a regular on the pro tour. Then again, it might not have; I wasn't that active a player back then, and didn't play Magic with Erik much.

Most importantly, if I hadn't played Magic, I'd likely never have played Shadowfist, and that would have been a huge change. Through Fist, I met mnemex, and through him, directly or indirectly, I met most of the people on my friends list here.
( more reminiscence behind the cut... )

And here we are at the end of my Shadowfist fiction, about 47,000 words total, 17,000 of which are the CS story. I don't plan to write any more of it, or at least that's what I'm telling myself. (The fact that I left a seed for the Empire of Evil story should be ignored.)

I'm posting this now because it's short -- it could've been left in the last full chapter, but I think it works better as an epilogue.

( Critical Shift: Aftermath )

In which some things finally get explained.

This is the shortest of the final three chapters, and the first section with Rei and Song is the one that I wanted in chapter four, but just couldn't fit it into the chapter's structure.

( Critical Shift: Revelations )

In a conversation with my sister that was spawned by the fact that On Stranger Tides is being sold in grocery stores, I came up with the idea of other movie franchises deciding to "adapt" Tim Powers novels.

• Ocean's 11+n: Last Call
  
• Twilight: The Stress of Her Regard
  

(That last one is my sister's fault.)

The Critical Shift story is done in primary writing, and mostly done in revision. I'm not posting it all now to keep from overflowing people's friend lists, but expect a chapter every twoish days until it's done. (There may be delays due to internet problems at home.)

I didn't mean to wait so long between posting the first chapter and the second, but I was shorter on time than usual this past week.

( Critical Shift: Rebirth )