Rød stue vil bruge deres tegnekridt og lave en stor ring omkring københavn, det skal så koste penge at krydse den, 25 kr. hver gang – dog max 75 om dagen (jf debat igår). Altså endnu en afgift på bilisterne – sikke en overraskelse. I teorien 11.000 for den gennemsnitlige pendler. Herudover er der jo stadig parkeringsafgiften (bortset fra de ganske få der har gratis parkering i københavn) og så taler vi ikke om registreringsafgiften.
Vi går hellere ikke ind på at nogle familier har brug for at køre i 2 biler for at få hverdagen til at gå op og at man muligvis også vil køre i en weekend nu og da.

Men hvis man kører uden for tidsrummet 5-9 og 15-18 så er det halv pris.

Ja, men hvem kan det? Møde 4 timer tidligere, selvom kunderne ikke gør det – tvivler på at det kan lade sig gøre. Møde 1 time senere og så hente ungerne kl. 18 i institutionen.. nah…

Tag det offentlige og undgå afgiften – så sparer du også for at sidde i kø og kan bruge den tid med familien istedet. 

Tja..  selv med at vente i kø så er det stadig ofte hurtigere i bil end med det offentlige. Så mange ender med at bruge ekstra tid på transport ved at skulle A-B-C-D istedet for A-D. Ergo MINDRE tid med familien. Og lur mig om ikke mange familier vil få endnu sværere ved at få indkøb/hentning af børn osv til at hænge sammen.

Jeg tror de fleste ender med at realisere at deres hverdag ikke kan hænge sammen med det offentlige og så må betale for at køre ind – dvs. det er bare endnu en afgift/skat på dem der bor/arbejder i kbh, som det jo nok er tænkt fra starten.

Jeg synes det er uambitiøst at tænke på en betalingsring som den eneste mulighed – men som sædvanlig kan politikerne kun tænke på at kradse penge ind.

Hvad vi har brug for er mulighed for biler at komme “under” København istedet for gennem, for en stor del af trafikken skal slet ikke til København men passerer bare. Herudover har den massive nedlæggelse af parkeringspladser ikke gavnet. Når man kører rundt en ekstra halv time for at finde en parkeringsplads så fylder man jo så længe. Flere parkeringshuse og siloer så folk kan finde en plads på få minutter – det vil hjælpe meget på trafikken.

I have just finished a commission of a World map for an upcoming Role Playing Game. It is set in a huge flat world, which you might guess from the many country borders on the map. This map is copyrighted and may not be used without express permissions.

The World of Nameless

Within the last month Ifinally got around to reading Audrey Niffenegger’s much acclaimed book “TimeTravellers Wife”, I was immediately sucked into the time criss-crossingstory of Henry and Claire who’s love spans the years in an intricate web ofyoung and old. I read through it quickly and am not afraid to admit that itbrought forth a tear or two. It is definitely a great work and I’ll recommendit to everybody. Even though it is “sciencefiction” it still is a basic love story at heart and thus can be enjoyedeven though you don’t like the more fantastic writing.

After reading the book Ithought I’d better watch the movie as well. I wondered how they would cope withthe shifting ages of the characters and make us follow the complex storyline.All in all I believe they did rather well. There were a lot of things that wereleft out but they kept the more important things – the backbone of the story.There were a few things I think was better explained and motivated in the bookand it was a little harder identifying the age/time the characters were in asit was only done with make up as they reached adulthood. Some of the storylinesthat we’re left out of the movie would have been a good to see the but they ofcourse have a limit to how much they can show in so little time.

I’ll recommend both readingthe book and seeing the movie if possible. If you have to make a choice I’d definitelygo with the book.

I received a mail from Wizards inviting me to take a look at their new Virtual Tabletop which is now in open beta. As it is in Beta, there will probably be changes to the final product.
A quick note for people who don’t know what it is: Dungeons & Dragons virtual tabletop is a way to play traditional “pen&paper;” roleplaying games with your friends (or random people from the web) online. Basically you get a system to run a game on your computer and your players log on to it. 
The short testing I’ve done is alone – so I have not tried to actually play on the VT yet, only looked around in the DM section playing with maps and settings. 

It includes:
A bunch of map tiles, character tokens and monster tokens
Import function for characters from DDI Character Builder
Import function for DDI Monster Builder
Online storage for all your adventures
Integrated Vivox voice chat, including voice fonts.


You start out by naming a campaign/session and marking it as open or closed (ie. only for people you invite), after opening it you get a grid and some menus. You can choose what version of D&D; you’re running all the way back to 1st. You can also choose between D&D; Core world, Forgotten Realms etc. – nice :)
You can choose to import an adventure or you can throw on a background and then drag and drop tiles onto it. 
The tiles are sorted in wilderness, dungeon and city and if you’ve loaded an adventure the tiles from that appear here too. 
Unfortunately you can’t import your own map yet (I’m guessing you will be able to later on). 
I imported my 14th level Swordmage without problems, and all his powers and skills are there, however, the portrait I’ve uploaded for his character sheet don’t make it into D&DVT; – annoying.
There is a dice roller where you can easily click on how many of the different dice you want to throw and then it calculates the result for you – it works but is a little bit disappointing concidering the beautiful dice roller you get with Fantasy Grounds (where the dice actually roll across the screen for all players to see). 
When you are in combat you choose a target, the relevant attack power and roll, then you roll for damage – I think the option for auto-damage would be nice here. Also the system only recognizes the chances to hit and damage, it is not aware of range, bursts etc. So when I use Greenflame blade which damages all the enemies around the enemy I hit it can’t handle that. Also when I use Sword Burst I still have to manually choose each enemy I attack in burst 1 around me. (all hexes around me). – thats a do-over Wizards. 
But the options of importing characters and monsters – or even make them right in the game is good. The initiative tracker is easy to use, there is a journal for notes and it supports hiding part of the maps for the players. You can also draw simple lines and boxes on the map for illustration purposes and areas of effect and such. There is a line-of-sight function as well. But there is still a lot to do for them to catch up to the other products out there I think. They have the money to be BETTER, so cough up Wizards, spend what it needs to get there… 

Verdict:
At the moment I think MapTools still is a better option, especially since its free. Fantasy Grounds is pretty much on level with D&DVT; I think. What Wizards have going for them is the connection with their other stuff online (char builder, monster builder) and they have a much nicer layout than for instance Map Tools. Originally they wanted to do all this in 3D, but that obviously got to difficult (read expensive) for them to make which is too bad for that would have put them on top of the list. Now, they are a struggling number 2 and really need to up the ante to get ahead. Wizards, if you want people to pay for something – you have to make it worth the money.

En sjov lille grafik som en kommentar til betalingsringen som jo er en ekstra skat pakket ind i tidsrøverpapir med et fint CO2 bånd omkring. De færreste jeg kender kan rent faktisk SPARE tid på at tage det offentlige, tværtimod får de nok svært ved at få dagen til at hænge sammen med indkøb og børnehentninger.

Brug den gerne

Made for the Mountain challenge on Cartographers Guild I decided to turn the world upside down and let the mountains float in the air over the ground. Throw in a city across the mountains and some blimps for transportation and you have a finished map.

Just finished the second book of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Once again he manages to create a totally new world, new forms of magic and interesting societies. I read a comment on his facebook profile once where a young inspiring author told him that she had managed to create a magic system that Brandon hadn’t all ready created
I first got interested in Brandon Sanderson as I hear that he should finish The Wheel of Time multi-ology after the too early death of Robert Jordan. I bought his Mistborn books to see what kind of writer he is and wasn’t disappointed. His writing is very action filled and that hasn’t changed in The Way of Kings. I read the first chapter as a teaser at the end of Warbreaker and liked it immediatly. He threw his new magic of Lashings, where you can change the direction gravity works, at us at once and once again we get cinematic combat sequences with Szeth-son-son-Vallano running on walls and ceilings and throwing furniture through the air with lashings right and left. I’m left once again with the need to see this on the big screen
It doesn’t take long before you follow the stories of Kaladin (spearman), Dalinar (Military leader), and Shallan (scholar in spe) and their fight for succes and just plain survival in a world ravaged by huge deadly storms and even deadlier politics. These books are well worth the read, the only bad thing is that I now have to wait for the next to be published. Great work Brandon

North Rock School of Wizardry is a school for wizards. Situated on North Rock it has great focus on elementalists although it teaches all kinds of magic. The school has produced some of the greatest wizards of our time.


The map is made with Photoshop CS3 and a bamboo tablet. 

My latest map features a Post Apocalyptic map of New York set in the 1950s. New York has been invaded by aliens and my map is a map used by the resistance to fight the aliens. My map was amongst the ones choosen to be featured in SOHO Gallery of Digital Art along with other maps all from Cartographers Guild. For those of you in New York I suggest visiting the exibition that runs to march.

This months lite challenge is to map a house from last months lite challenge. Since I began on mapping a town overtaken by the blight and overrun by trollocs last month (but never finished) I thought I’d stick to that. So I chose to map the ruin of a house in the blight.
For those of you who doesn’t know anything about the blight, I can tell you its from the “Wheel of Time” series by Robert Jordan. Robert Jordan passed away last year and Brandon Sanderson has taken over finishing his lifework. Which makes me grateful, both because I get an ending to the series, but also because Brandon is a fantastic writer. The blight is a dark and “evil” place where the dark ones influence is strong, its grows every year slowly eating away at civilized countries. So all in all – not a nice place to be

This is how far I have gotten for now