A ghost of done...

"If you have an idea and publish it on the Internet, that counts as a ghost of done."

Here's an idea:

Modern browsers support PNG transparency and absolute positioning. With that in mind, there is no reason that one could not write a hex-map based coordinate system with the renderer completely in pure javascript, without using Canvas.

Using cometd/bayeux, there's no reason you couldn't have a (approximately) real-time communications channel between two players in a purely browser-based environment.

Therefore, it would be possible, and a simple matter of programming, to implement a two-player version of something like Ogre/GEV or Full Metal Planet (which are turn-based) or even Warcraft II (which is real-time) in a pure javascript solution. The player with the faster CPU (determined by some javascripted bogomippery) would hosting the game machinery itself, and the server between them does nothing but maintain a very simple, low-bandwith channel between the two. It could also be used to schedule and arrange meet-ups and games as well as keep scores. This distributes the CPU heavy lifting away from the server and onto the clients, creates community almost automagically, and enables people to play older games.

I had this idea when, while cleaning out some supplies in the basement, I came across an old box with the map, and only the map, for the old Ogre/GEV parody Rivets and wondered what I could do with that in a modern setting. Gameplay would be slow to handle comm channel latency, but it would be fun to do this as a proof of concept.

There's something about cooking over wood...

Biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham has proposed that cooking was a necessary step in human evolution, because cooking breaks down fibers and improves the bioavailability of many nutrients we don't normally extract from raw foods.

But more than that, we cooked over woodfire. And I would not be surprised at all to learn that cooking over a woodfire is engrained into our genes in a way that, say, cooking with gas or electricity is not. As we camped, we were always cooking with wood, and damn if it didn't make everything we ate taste better. Even pancakes and scrambled eggs. There was something to the smoke that was utterly wonderful.