Even if Talk Like a Pirate Day (developer idea: implement tlapd, a proxy LDAP server that mangles replies to be more piratey or which intercepts http requests) passed quiety for me this year, I'm still partial to the (ahem) romantic ideals of the pirate. So when Something Positive pointed to a Steve Jackson floortop game Evil Stevie's Pirate Game which combines Pirates, Lego ships and large group gaming. Whee!

Recent kitchen projects have included a totally failed meringue pie and chocolate ice cream -- neither of which the kids liked, but which nonetheless disappeared so quickly no photos are available. And I think I'm getting the hang of white bread now, too. Need to work on getting the crust just right.

GUUG's Linux Kongress is on right now, if you're near Nuremberg. NLUUG's Fall Conference, with Security and Privacy as topics, is coming up at the beginning of November.

Lastly, I'm happy to hear tales of people (like Frederik) Joining the Game. Coincidence that he describes what KDE e.V. does the same day I write a rather dry item on the same topic? Mystery! At least he can spell "e.V." properly, which I couldn't.