Hello from Encoded Designs.  There has not been too much activity on the site lately, and I apologize for that.  The holidays turned out to be much busier than I thought, and I had far less time to write, than I thought I would.  Things have been quite busy around here, but all in a good way, as I have had the time at home to get a number of things done, that I have wanted to do.

One of the biggest projects, this vacation, has been the reorganization of my gaming room (aka the Basement).  I planned out the new layout a month ago, and this past week, was able to start working on it.  The results have been dramatic.  The area is totally transformed, and the usability has increased dramatically.  I have spent the past few nights tinkering with parts of the room, doing some final cleanup and organization.  I am showing it off to members of my gaming group tonight, and I am quite proud of it.  I will post some pictures of it later.

As for articles this week, I am getting back on my feet, and will plan to put my Wednesday GTD, and Friday Gaming articles out.  For Wednesday, I will do the final of my Simple GTD articles, covering the Weekly Review.  For Friday, I will post a follow-up to the article two weeks ago: If I Gamed Now Like I Did Then; where I will talk about some of the good things I learned early on in gaming, and how I should remember to do them today.  I also have a few smaller articles in draft, that I did work on during the vacation, and will roll them out over the next few days.  So the site will be buzzing with updates very soon.

I hope you all had a good Christmas, and are looking forward to a New Years.

Merry Christmas to all of you online today.  There is no post today, but I will be back on Friday with some new content.  In the meantime, relax, enjoy your families, stack your presents into towers and marvel at them, and enjoy the day off.

Once again the rigors of the week, prevented me from getting the article I wanted done.  Rather than missing another post, I present to you my reading list for 2008…
I am a pretty avid reader….of sorts. It may be more accurate to say that I like to read frequently, but am picky on what I read. I always have a book that I am in the middle of reading, be it a novel or the rules to a game. Reading is a big deal at my house, we have a family reading time just before 8pm, where the whole family, including my 3 year old son, sit and read (though mostly he just flips pages, but its a good start), I read every night before bed (and often fall asleep in my book), and I often steal time to read while in the bathroom (its one of the only truly quiet places in the house). In any case, I typically just drift from book to book, without any serious thought of what I wish to read, so I decided this year that I would organize a reading list to ensure that before 2008 ended, I had gotten some good reading done.

So here is my list….

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The post for today, was suppose to be my 5th installment on Stepping Into GTD, but as Christmas approaches, things have gotten very hectic at Encoded Designs, and I was unable to get the article, for today, written.  Hanging my head in shame, I ask that you hang on until next week for the 5th Installment.  In the meantime, as way of review here are the previous four articles:

• Stepping Into GTD: Part 1- Getting Control Of Inputs

• Stepping Into GTD: Part 2- Processing

• Stepping Into GTD: Part 3- File This!

• Stepping Into GTD- Part 4: What Should I Be Doing?

Part 5 will cover the Weekly Review, one of the most misunderstood, and most critical steps in the GTD system.  If you thought getting everything onto a to do list was powerful, the you are in for a true productivity treat.

Until next week….

Having spent much of the weekend digging out from the awesome snow storm, there is little to report from Encoded Designs.  My gaming group is still on hiatus, until January, so there was no gaming, though I did some work making a new character class for Sargon’s upcoming Cyberpunk 2020 game; the Hacker.  He’s kind of like the Netrunner, but also can sneak on site to make a local hack, for those special servers that are not connected to the Net.  The details for that look to be wrapped up, and some further discussion on a more modern treatment of the Net was discussed online with Sargon, via GChat.

I also had a great moment of brainstorming for my Iron Heroes  campaign, during church (not the first time that has happened).  I think I now have what the end of my campaign will look like.  I think the ending is 1-2 years away, depending on the interest of the player.  But I this round of brainstorming has answered a critical question for me, which is:  Who is the Ebon Man, and how did he come to be buried beneath the earth?   I would love to tell you the answer, but that will have to be revealed at a later date.

As for this week, on Wednesday, I am wrapping up my GTD Series with a discussion of the Weekly Review.   On Friday, I will turn the tables from last weeks article, and discuss If I GMed Now Like I Did Then.   So make sure you come around this week and enjoy the articles.

I have been a GM for over 20 years. I started the same way many GMs did: picked by my friends to run the game for them. I don’t know if I was a good GM or bad GM, but my friends always said nice things about the games I ran, and I know that we had a lot of fun. Over the years though, my skill as a GM has certainly improved as I have learned from other GMs, the Internet, and other sources.

So I got to thinking, what if I could pass information to my past self, about how to GM better, just what would I tell myself….

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