Glut*nous

Random late-night discovery: glutinous and glutenous are both words. The former means "like glue", the latter means "full of gluten". I'm guessing this means someone who is allergic to gluten would have no problem with glutinous rice. (Or glutinous rice chicken.)

Essen Spiel 2006

Check out Rick Thornquist's reports from the 2006 Spiel convention in Essen, Germany. This is a humongous trade show where all the game companies show off their upcoming releases. I don't know if it's mostly board games or it's just that I only read board-game-centric reports from it; I know they do have rooms for RPGs and CCGs too, but it's certainly the largest gathering of board game companies in the world. Anyway, start with the last setup day, with lots and lots of pictures of games all set up and waiting to be demonstrated. I was really impressed by this collection of pictures—the games look very pretty and interesting, and it's fun to imagine what kind of game mechanisms might be involved. I almost didn't want to read the reviews; most of them are probably more fun to daydream about than to actually play.