Monthly Archives: April 2025

Charm City – 4

For those not wanting to leave the Inner Harbor area, there are a pair of Places To Visit right on the Harbor.

The Maryland Science Museum is located at the southwest corner of the harbor. Like almost every science museum these days, it’s got the dinosaur exhibit that shows the geological history of the area, interactive displays illustrating various principles of physics (which kids play with and on without stopping to wonder about the various principles involved), a demonstration theater / lecture hall for showing off visually exciting things in chemistry and physics, and a fairly large exhibit sponsored by one of the area’s major corporations / research centers.

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Charm City – 3

Of course, the real reason I went to Baltimore was to take in a few baseball games. I deliberately picked a week where the Orioles would be in town, and bought tickets to two games – conveniently with different visiting teams.

Now I have to admit that Oriole Park at Camden Yards (to use the full, official name) is a lovely place to watch a ball game. Clean sight lines, a nice backdrop, and easy to get to. Worth noting is that it doesn’t have any deliberate quirks that one finds in many of the newer stadia. No giant wall with a home run train on it, no corner of a building serving as a foul pole, no weird walls or angles “just because”…. OK, the left field wall drops back really quickly from 333 feet at the pole to 371 feet, and there is that building behind Eutaw Street in right field. But those things aren’t forced; they feel perfectly natural.

But there is one thing that really irks me; and it’s an absence rather than a presence.

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Charm City – 1

Time for another “Spring Break”! Have to use up those vacation days…..

I didn’t feel like traveling a great distance (air travel doesn’t seem particularly safe or reliable these days) – where could I easily drive in one day, and with a baseball team that’s at home so I could take in a few games?

Baltimore fit the bill. Even though I’ve been there already – but it’s been about a decade since my last (and only other) trip there. Time to make plans!

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Book Review: Cascade Failure

Cascade Failure
L.M. Sagas
Tor Publishing Group
Copyright 2024 by Morgan Stanfield

It’s almost like these Sci-Fi stories are coming from a Plot Generator:

1. A disgraced former officer
2. A down-on-their-luck small business owner
3. A ragtag crew on an equally ragtag ship

Stumbles on

1. A conspiracy to hide a mass killing
2. An alien race threatening to wipe out humanity (or at least a large portion of it in an interstellar war)
3. Some massive corruption scheme to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

Can they overcome incredible odds to defeat the baddie and save the day? And perhaps

1. Make a nice profit
2. Find love
3. Resolve whatever problems were keeping them “on the outs” in the first place

along the way?

There’s actually nothing wrong with using such a Plot Generator Device; it’s been fairly common in creative writing workshops. The trick is making a good story out of the proposed plot.

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What to Drink While Playing Diplomacy

Back in my college days, when I had joined the campus gaming club, I came to love the game Diplomacy. The chief problem with setting up a session was that you need at least five players (seven is normal, but there are rule variants that allow for less). And getting that many people together at once for what could take a full day of gaming…..

During the COVID shutdown, I found to my delight that there are a couple of websites where you can play the game online. Diplomacy seems perfect for it – time periods where the players discuss alliances and plan moves over a simple chat app, then once all moves have been submitted, a fairly simple program calculates and delivers the results. I signed up on one, and have always had a couple of games active.

To cut a long digression short, I began to wonder what beverages (alcoholic if possible) would it be appropriate to sip while representing each nation in Diplomacy…

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