Wednesday 8 October 2008

Dem Bones, Dem bones*, Dice and wonderful Geekcakes

Dice.

Any table top RPG geek will always have a healthy collection of all shapes and sizes of dice.

The oldest known recorded reference to dice, is Sophocles the Greek writer. Sopocles lived between 496-406 BC, and being Greek, he claimed that the Greek invented dice, but there is no way to verify his claim. I'm not saying they didn't invent them, just that the Ancient Romans and Greeks do want to seem to take the creadit for inventing almost *everything*.

Apparently, before standard cubical dice became common, ancient peoples would use fruit stones, sets of flat sticks, sea shells, nut shells or even marked pebbles to get random results for games. Hmm. Fruit and Nut. Which leads me neatly to my favourite subject - of cake.

The cake pictured below is fashioned after the ever plentiful D20 - the twenty sided die. Every table top gamer I have ever met owns at least ten of these babies.

Used in numerous systems from original D&D to Warhammer, to World of Darkness to GURPS, dice are the universal RPG signature accessory.


rpgdigest_dice_geekcake_top

Doesn't it look magnificently delicious?

rpgdigest_dice_geekcake_side
I love the fact that the cake looks HUGE!

Original images, can be found at: RPGdigest, the blog of Bob Younce - a hobbiest gamer since 1979!

Thanks for reading.

See you all again on Friday!

[*At various points in history, small animal bones were used as dice. Playing with dice is still sometimes known as "rolling the bones".]

Monday 6 October 2008

Academic Geekcake: The wonders of Chemistry

Lori over at the Clever Cake Studio blog, loves to experiment with the art of cake making:

"Since March 2008, I've been doing a cake almost every week to practice, learn, cry, recover, learn more, and make local supply shops rich. Here you'll find the results of each week's cake project as my little portfolio builds. Share in my relief and amazement each time a cake works out, and witness just how damn clever I have to force myself to be if things don't quite go as planned. "

Chemistry_geekcake_by_Lori


Lori goes into detail on the cake creation:


"The book is supposed to be reminiscent of the CRC Handbook for Chem and Physics (87th Edition). It is for the birthday of an awesome chemical engineer at Nintendo.It’s made with white cake and chocolate filling. The red Erlenmeyer flash is raspberry with some raspberry liquor in the cake and preserves between the layers. The yellow acid bottle is, naturally, lemon cake with lemon curd filling. They are all covered in buttercream and fondant, and yes, the stopper in the acid bottle is a separate piece and can be lifted out."

Be sure to check out Lori's full gallery here, for plenty more fantastic (though not necessarily geeky) cakes.

I wish more cakes referenced textbook editions as inspiration. A true academia geekcake. Sounds delicious too.

See you Wednesday.