After a long time break, I am once again putting together new art for Icar, my free Sci Fi RPG http://www.icar.co.uk. I am working through the Equipment Index, increasing the render quality from 72DPI to 300DPI, to make for better print-outs. While doing so, I noticed that some of the 3D models are woefully bad and needed remaking. Other models were lost in a catastrophic Rob-deletes-hard-drive years ago. Gone, but not forgotten. It's a good thing, really. My skills have vastly improved since I made a lot of these models and I think it shows. All comments and critique are gladly accepted!

It's my pleasure to announce that I will be running two Icar games at GenCon UK 2008. The Lethal Rings of Obyrworld Join a risky expedition into the debris rings around Obyrworld to find fortune, lost friends and answers. Become part of a well weathered scavenger team as you try to make enough cash to get off this planet. Icar is a free Science Fiction tabletop RPG, a mix of familiar Sci Fi elements, space opera and very large guns. No experience expected or required! Thursday 28th August 2008 2pm Friday 29th August 2008 2pm Sign up at the Convention or online now As a result, I'll be doing loads of art to support it and getting it on

I attended a Microsoft Technology roadshow yesterday (as part of my job) that spoke about .NET 3.0 (was WinFX), Windows Vista and Atlas (their ASP.NET answer to Ajax). .NET 3.0 is an impressive technology, which allows you to write feature rich GUIs for Windows XP and Vista. For XP, the users will have to install the .NET 3.0 runtime but it comes as part of Vista. They herald it as a giant leap forward in GUI design for the windows. As the demonstrations continued, I thought "I could do that in Flash and DHTML" and I felt that by tying .NET 3.0 to the Windows platform for yet another generation was a mistake. It was starkly aparent that the