The Sakura Dojo

My occasional collection of interesting and inspiring articles from various places on the web. For this time we have a wide ranging mix of subjects:

For SF gamers, a beautiful display of our Solar system and nearby stars from Exosolar and a more humous look at our place in the galaxy.

Interesting things from our modern world: The Essentials of the World's New Tallest Building, Burj Dubai. What a place for a superbattle.

From the new to the old, Opacity, charting urban ruins, abandoned places can provide a fascinating backdrop for many urban adventures.

An interesting look at some of Israel's women soldiers.

Back in the 19th Century, some Europeans kept 'Human Zoos'. Another creepy piece from our past.

A good resource for Modern Shamanism, Wildspeak including an impressive list of totem animals and their symbolism.

Cross-posted from my gaming journal

I had heard about this when it released, it was all over the Unknown Armies mailing list, but only recently saw it (thank you Netflix). Amazingly, The Lost Room is a SciFi original production and one of the best high weirdness pieces I have even seen.

( Minor spoilers ahead )

Again, as a supporter of the RPG Bloggers' Network time to share interesting things from other gaming sites (and a few other sites as well):

6d6 Fireball has a free adventure, The Sanctum of the Fiery Ladder for download (and hopefully community feedback). So if you are in need of a 3.x adventure, this one looks very promising.

Tales of the Rambling Bumblers expands on the Super Simple Combat Maneuver idea. Still pondering on how to adapt this best to my game.

A resource for odd, bizarre and unique places anicent and modern: Atlas Obscura. It even has an article on the Tree that Owns Itself here in my current hometown, Athens, GA.

Planetary Nebula, such distant beauty.



Oh dear, it seems like a goblin from a Gross of Goblins has found its way here, be careful or one might follow you home too.

(Crossposted from the Sea of Stars Design Journal)

Been a fairly quiet week but very hot, no day in the last week has failed to reach the 90s (30s for my centigrade using friends) and with high humidity too. Thank goodness for air conditioning.

The University of Edinburgh has recreated the Lituus, a horn last used in the 18th C.. Technology is doing such fun things with history these days. A video presentation where you can hear the lituus in action.

Crazy flesh eating robots! OK, not as exciting as that sounds, very primitive robots that are powered by capturing pests and digesting them for energy. Still, rather interesting.

From around the web!

PLAN B!, a tale of love, revenge and supervillany (warning: lots of cursing in the dialog).

Hypercities, a project by the MacArthur foundation that allows you to layer historical maps to see how cities developed. (Which I learned about from this article which show some of the thing you can do with it and discusses other similar projects.)

And in a similar theme, find out what lurks beneath the waters of NYC's harbor, quite fascinating.

Short but interesting Spiegel interview with Michael Palin (the former member of Monty Python). Best line: "Generally speaking, comedy thrives in times of despair."

Was visiting wikipedia, as one is wont to do, and found this article about the AIR-2 Genie, an air-to-air missile packing a 1.5 kiloton nuclear warhead. Designed to "break up" massed formations of Soviet bombers back in the early days of the Cold War. Fascinating

From the BBC: James May, from Top Gear, and an Ekranoplan! The Caspian Sea Monster! And May gets to drive one. More information on ekranoplans.

A new way to view flickr images: Tag Galaxy. Go and give it a try, Dragoncon is a great search seed.

Ancient yeast reborn in modern beer, says it all really.

The only physical remnants of Hitler's grand vision for a new Berlin as the capital of Europe are underneath the city.

The tattooed people of Rescue Ink help animals of all types.

Cosmic Motors from Another Galaxy!, amazing concept vehicles and designs.

Wind turbines small enough for household use, I would like to see more alt-energy projects like this. Now if we can only get them down in cost.

H.P. Lovecraft writes Chocolate Descriptions, such as "White Chocolate Truffle: What black arts could have stripped this chocolate of its natural hue? The horror of the unearthly, corpselike pallor of this truffle's complexion is only offset by its fiendish deliciousness."

"Second Brother on the Right", one of the guardians of the Olympic torch, becomes a sex symbol in China.

Gaming:
WereDragon Magazine, a new online gaming resource which I hope to be writing for. More information on that as I know.

Amagi Games, a great source for free support material, ideas and even entire RPGs!

One of the Holiday Adventure ideas I sent into Johnn Four's Roleplaying Tips got published.

While the other forms of punk seem to be fading (though there is an interesting history of cyberpunk here), steampunk with its Victorian look and clockwork mad science is becoming increasingly popular. Not that I object.

The Sound of Steampunk featuring a discussion of the Steampunk aesthetic in music with links to several groups including Abney Park, go and listen to their Airship Pirates track right now!

For the visual side of things, there is the Brass Goggles site with links to all sorts of steampunkish things.