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Bryan Hermsen

Swords of Freeport

FreePort. A city of thieves, cutthroats, mercenaries, and worse still - capitalists. The only free hold in the lands, without a king or queen to rule over it - the perfect place to make your fortune... or get your throat cut trying.

One Night of the Werewolf

We recently played both One Night of the Werewolf and Story Cubes with some friends and it was the most fun I've had playing games in ages. I was thinking about why games like those can be so much more memorable than more intricate, more traditional board games.

If Books Could Kill

Recently, mostly at random, I heard a recommendation for the If Books Could Kill podcast and it's excellent, and eye-opening. The basic premise is that they review books that were hugely successful but had some sort of toxic or misinformed idea that they introduced into mainstream consciousness. I

Looking back

In the chapter of Citizens' Climate that I'm a part of one of our group leaders and original founders is stepping down to be a regular volunteer. As part of recognizing the over 10 years of work she's put into the chapter I was going

Software experiments and dumpster fires

I still haven't fully delved into your previous post about social media, but I wanted to highlight an article I ran across recently talking about how software experiments may factor into how platforms have tended to slowly morph into the shit-shows they are today. The post, Experiments Aren&

Strange state of mid-career training

I recently started looking into a potential training opportunity called PDM. This is put on by the folks who run the PyBites coding platform. I've followed these two since they set up the 100 days of code training for Talk Python and they're quite good. What

Another take on the "sordid undertow"

That David Brooks Op-Ed was incredible, and timely. I really enjoy when someone takes a seemingly very contemporary and "unique" phenomenon and put in into a historical perspective. That, as well as your wonderful description of doomscrolling as a "sordid underdow" immediately reminded me of an

Not totally dark

I was thinking about your reservations about blogging. You know–wanting there to be an audience, or a theme, or just generally, a point. I take your meaning. I think that same notion is often enough to stop me when I think about throwing up a post about something. And

The Height of Gaming

I've been a gamer for almost as long as I can remember. I'm old enough that I remember playing Pong, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Asteroids at a friend's house. It's when I got a Nintendo though, that things really changed, and gaming

NaBloPoMo

It's National Blog Posting Month and you know what that means! No? Me either until a few weeks back, which is the first time I'd heard of it. Maybe you have heard of NaNoWriMo though, or National Novel Writing Month, which is fairly well known. I&