A Quick Idea

 

I was printing out B1 and B2 (hopefully I can get someone to play, now that my dice are back). One thing that concerned me was the blue saturation on the maps. So, I came up with what I think is a good solution, and I wanted to pass it along. I opened the pdf in Okular and performed the following operations in GIMP, but I'm sure Photoshop would work, too.

1. Open the pdf and rectangular-select the entire map page. Copy to the clipboard.
2. Start GIMP, and select Edit -> Paste.
3. Using the Fuzzy Select tool, click anywhere in the mass of blue. If there are disconnected areas, you can add them to the selection set by holding down Shift and clicking those areas.
4. Once you have the blue masses selected, click Select -> Shrink. Shrink the selection by 3 pixels (my preference, you may want something heavier or lighter).
5. Click the Delete button on the keyboard.

Performing the above operations on the above map yielded this result:

It is still blue, but it won't chew up your ink cartridge to print all that unnecessary blue mass.

Oh, one more thing: pay attention to scale. Copying it into GIMP that way can make it wonky. I performed the following steps before I printed:

1. Click Select -> None
2. Click Image -> Scale Image
3. Set Resolution to the desired level (I used 200)
4. Change Image Size units to Inches (or whatever you're most comfortable with)
5. Change Width to 7.5", making sure Height remains proportionate

And there you have it. It only takes about 2 minutes, start to finish, and will save a lot of ink.

The Little Things

Psychology fascinates me. I'm not totally objective, but I have my moments where I can really step outside myself and observe certain influences on myself. I found a bunch of my dice a couple of days ago. It brought out some interesting feelings.

I live in Huntsville, AL. As many of you may know, Alabama was hit hard this past April with tornadoes. My family and I were fine, some past fairly close to us, but no one was hurt and our home was safe. Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to us, a nearby lightning strike had damaged the wiring in our house. Three weeks later our house burned. Although we lost almost everything, there were some areas of the house less damaged, and we managed to salvage some things from those areas. It was a hasty salvage job, and we are still finding things we didn't even realize we had saved. Enter my dice.

This blog has been great for me. Just being able to give form to my thoughts has really helped me. The comments, feedback, and general level of interest have been a real boon, more than I could have hoped for.

Here's the weird part, and I didn't even realize this until I found the dice: No matter how many posts, comments, or page views, I've been sort of detached. I was missing a vital accoutrement, that true badge of the gamer: Dice. Like the wizard's staff or the fighter's trusty sword, dice are an essential, defining, piece of gear. I wasn't even aware of the void until it was filled. Strange.

Many of you may have noticed my sometimes obsessive retooling of things to rely solely on the d6. That's because I didn't think there would be anyway, financially, to replace my dice horde. I was trying to be pragmatic about the whole thing. Sure, I could order a "pound of dice" but I felt guilty even thinking about something like that at this point in my family's life.

It's just weird. Maybe this post doesn't make much sense. Maybe it's just me needing to give form to thought, in order to better understand. All I know for sure is I have my dice back and I feel like a gamer again. I feel like the endless horizons of gaming are mine to explore again. If my imagination is the wind, my dice are my sails. My ship is whole, my course charted for the distant shores.