June 2006 Archives

The usual Friday afternoon of disc golf was held along with Adam. When I got there, I admit that I was worried. For as far along the course that I could see, there was plastic orange barracade fencing up. I was initially worried that there would be construction going on here. But later on I decided that all of this fencing is for crowd control during the 4th of July celebrations. Here you can see fencing cutting across the course of hole 17 and running along the river. It also interferes with hole 2.

We had to deal with fencing across holes 3 and 4. We started throwing for hole 5 and when we got close enough, we noticed that the basket for hole 5 was missing! Not a good sign!

There were workers doing something in the trees next to hole 6. And, of course, there was orange fencing and rope fencing.

Hole 11 was a little tricky to throw past the trees and the fence, but we made it.

Oh look, the Alamo Drafthouse truck!

The fence at hole 12 was more immediate! I threw past it with no problems. Adam bypassed it and John hit a tree and did a do-over when we found a new temporary tee.

This time the fencing runs along the embankment. We kept to the left of it.

Sadly, Adam looses his yellow disc in the lake and was not able to feel it. This wate is just too damned murkey!

Ahh game night, it turns out that there were hidden problems with the camera. Last week, I was playing around with photographing Tichu hands. It worked well. Since I was in the experimenting mood, I decided to mess around with the white balance as well. I put on an Expo Disc on the camera and took a white balance picture. Which I then applied to the default white balance. It worked well and I forgot about it. Fast forward until tonight. I take some pictures, Ed takes some pictures, I take some more pictures. And then I realize that there were three problems with the camera. The first was that the color balance was off! Doh! The second was that I had forced only one auto-focus point to be active. The third was that the camera was recording small jpegs instead of large jpegs plus raw pictures. Sigh. The camera remains a persnickity beast...

Bluff

While we were waiting for Peter and Francesca, we played a game of Bluff. And the dice were in my favor. I kept most of my dice during the game and ended up victorious.

Crystal Faire

Mike had brought along the new Hangman game called Crystal Faire. It continues to have the same production values of the other games that they have made. That is to say, not good at all. Adequate enough to be functional. And in one case, you have problems telling the difference between a light grey circle and a white circle.

On to the mechanics. This is a set collecting game by trading. There are six types of "crystals" with differing amounts of availability. You start with nine hidden behind a flimsy screen (which kept getting blown down by the air conditioning). A start player is chosen and a trading round occurs. That person draws five more hidden crystals and then chooses two of three sets (a set of four with one hidden, a set of five with three hidden, or a set of six with five hidden). The other players only choose one of their three sets. Every one places the crystals out on the displays. The start player then chooses someone's display and then that person will choose one of the two displays of the start player. They then secretly exchange the crystals (adding the hidden ones). The start player changes and trades continue until everyone has traded. After the trade, we draw three crystals (since there were three players in the game) and move each of the crystals that were drawn down on the status display. Players then will have the opportunity to either take 0, 1, or 2 of those crystals and move a number of crystals up or down on the display depending on how many crystals remain for other people to potentially take. Now players have the opportunity to try and score their crystals. For each crystal, players can pass or place crystals out to match or exceed what is currently out there. The person with the most crystals out (where ties are good) will score victory points (which is money). They then have to discard a number of crystals. The victory points are the following as crystals move down the status display: 1 (-1), 2 (-2), 3 (-2), 4 (-2), 6 (-3), 9 (-3), 12 (-4), 16 (-4), 25 (-5), 36 (-6). The numbers in parenthesis are how many crystals the winners are required to discard.

There is a lot of keeping up with what everyone else does in this game. No one used their 6 crystal set in trades. People would offer their 4 and 5s and the others would offer their 4s. Which means that the trader will loose a crystal in the deal since their 5 would be chosen against the offered 4. In scoring crystals, people would usually go after the 3 or 4 victory points and loose two crystals. Rather than waiting and trying to score 6 or more. So I kept up with the Joneses. Then the purple crystal starting to make a run for higher victory points. I had majority in it and Mike was a close second (so two people were rooting for it and only one was opposed to it). I decided to let Mike continue scoring with me equally since we both lost the same number of purple crystals and I still had a slight majority. However, on the last round, Mike was able to grab one purple crystal and tie me to score 36 points. I was able to score more in other crystals for the win.

Sushi Express

We ended the night with this game. A light game supposedly about delivering sushi but really about trying to make laps around a loop. When you pass the sushi express tile, you can get a customer card or tip card. The first of a customer scores 3 and additional customers of that color score 1. The fewest tips score minus points. There are some special action cards that you can play during the game. But it is a short and simple dice rolling game. The only problem was the flushing of the customer cards. This tended to speed up the game a lot quicker than it should of been. But I won, so why was I complaining?

Other games that were played:
An obviously off color Hacienda board...

and Geschenkt...

Sadly, one one game of Tichu at work this week. One where we had 5 people willing to play even. Mike loves to sit on my left. He likes to make random wishes and knows I am not a big fan of them. This time, he was able to make two random wishes. The first was for a 5 during my first Tichu call. I didn't have a 5. Or any low cards for that matter. Ed had the Dog and he jumped into a singles trick by playing a King. Everyone passed and he was forced to play a 5 and not Dog me.

When Adam had called Grand Tichu, Mike's passed me a green 4 for the bomb and then wished for it. I bombed, led a 5-card Queen high straight and then played a pair of fives. I now have two cards left. Ed took up race now and starts playing strong cards. Unfortunately, he was trying to lead low pairs to me but I only had a Jack and a Nine left. Mike was now forced to play high in order to stop me from going out. I knew he would eventually run out of cards to do that with when Adam kept leading singles. Surprisingly enough, Adam lead trips and Ed played trip Kings to go out first. I could tell he had the Phoenix but was hamstrung with the Dragon still out there. I was able to play my 9 for the 1/2 and the win!

The beginnings of Perl were directly inspired by running into a problem I couldn't solve with the tools I had. Or rather, that I couldn't easily solve. As the Apostle Paul so succinctly put it, ``All things are possible, but not all things are expedient.'' I could have solved my problem with awk and shell eventually, but I possess a fortuitous surplus of the three chief virtues of a programmer: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris. I was too lazy to do it in awk because it would have been hard to get awk to jump through the hoops I was wanting it to jump through. I was too impatient to wait for awk to finish because it was so slow. And finally, I had the hubris to think I could do better.
  -- Larry Wall

I wrote my second Python script for Tichu game data this weekend. My first script was recording a game's score and any GrandTichu or Tichu calls made. It would take that data and generate an HTML table. Which I would then paste into my game reports. It works well enough for me. So I stopped improving on it. Although certain others would disagree and argue that the data is not presentented effectively.

However, I still have an urge for more data shown about a game. So I wrote a program that would take this and output this. Last Thursday, Adam and I tried to enter hand data during our game of Tichu. And I have learned that it is slow, takes thought power away from playing the game, and other people are not so understanding about this process. So, I am going to set up a camera to take a picture during evey hand played. Hopefully, this will finally allow me to finally record every hand played during the game. Of course, data entry will be a bitch!

And what do I intend to do with this data? Who knows... if you build it, they will come! Perhaps a cute flash app to present the game. Perhaps a data-mining application. Or perhaps an ugly HTML table that others can complain about.

My favourite interview question: Sketch out a software design to referee the game Monopoly link via

The FOOTBALL WORLD CUP '06 - LIVE in ASCII link via

How to Hunt Wisconsin Whitetail Deer with a 12 pound Mountain Howitzer Cannon link via

Your first job can hose you for life link via

Worlds largest pinhole camera link via

Settlers dice link via

Building and flying a jet from the anime movie Nausicaa link via

Drawing a picture by hand with photoshop link via

Break into a company's computer system by leaving trojaned USB drives around outside link via

A lake has been transformed from freshwater to 30 per cent vodka after a leak from a nearby distillery link via

Pizza cone link via

Nutrition facts for the homeless link via

Carbon fiber toilet link via

Software wars link via

Virtual replay of all of the goals of FIFA's World Cup link1 link2 via

Well it rained again this morning. What is going on with the weather? It is supposed to be hot and dry by now with a month of no rain. But instead it is raining and messing up our plans. Once again I wasn't gonna the weather rain on my parade, or at least my day out side. Previous die hard Jon joined my along with new die hard John.

I found this disc right out in the open. When I flipped it over, I found this. Apparently someone was playing a game of disc golf at night. The disc landed on the other side and the light was covered. Seems like a flawed design with a 50% chance of working.

The rain had stopped by the time we got out to the course. The only thing that we had to deal with was a flooded plain. This stream ran pretty much along the entire open area. It was too wide to cross without getting my feet wet, so I just gave up and sloshed away. Fortunately, I had a set of dry socks and sneakers in the truck. Along with a towel.

The usual day of disc golf at Old Settler's Park. Except Adam shows up! We even start to look for a disc on hole two. Our mighty powers of prediction fails us and we have to search for the disc.

On hole 10, John comes this close to an ace or hole in one. Needless to say, he birdies it. And look where Adam is? He sinks his putt from there for 3!

Can you find the bug in this picture? Adam did after it bit him on the leg when he was teeing off...

Adam wedged his disc into a tree on hole 13. That was thrown pretty hard to wind up in an almost vertical position.

During the drive home, I noticed some small, really dark clouds along with grey and white clouds. At least, the perspective made it seem that way that they were all together. But wouldn't they all have the same amount of moisture in them and therefore be the same color?

Tsuro

Ed brought another new game called Tsuro. It is like Metro in that you build paths and each tile contains 4 points that are connected to four other points that form 4 roads. Instead of placing the tile anywhere on the board, you are required to place it in front of your piece (this prevents other people from directly hosing you). Your piece and any other pieces then start moving and stop when they come to the end of the road. If a piece moves to the end of the board, it falls of and the game is over for that person. So, there is some screwage of other people in this game but only if your piece ends up next to a square that someone else must play on.

Since you only have three tiles in your hand, you must hope that the other person must be forced to move their piece the best that they can and your piece will still be able to move. And that was the position that I was in a couple of times. I knew my placement would put me next to someone, and I hoped that they could do nothing about it. Ed seemed to be in a good position in this game. He was off alone in a big empty section. But that didn't last long. Surprisingly, I won the game. It came down to having (or drawing) exactly the tile I needed to get myself out of the situation that I was in.

Vegas Showdown

I finally got to play John's game, Vegas Showdown. I have seen it being played on the other tables a lot recently, so it must be good. It is basically a bidding game. In your casino, there is a number of people that come into it and an amount of money that they spend. Your income during the game is the minimum of these two. And at the end of the game, there are extra points for majorities in either of these two. With your money, there are three types of tiles that you fight over. Yellow tiles mostly generate income (and some times give you people or victory points). These are the slot machines. Blue tiles mostly generate people (and some times give you income or victory points). These are the restaurants. And green tiles give you victory points (and some times give you people).

There is a area each for one of a set of basic tiles (one yellow, green and blue) and four areas where more advanced tiles can appear. Each of these areas has a line of numbers that represent possible bids. The advanced tiles start off at a large bid (like 44 for example) and get reduced each turn that they remain on the board. When you bid for a tile, you place your marker on one of the bids. If you are out bid, you get to place again. This continues until everyone has placed.

You then pay for your tile and place it on the board. There are doors which allow people to travel in from one of two sides. Yellow tiles are placed so that they can be reached by a path to one side of the board. Blues from the other side. And greens can connect to a yellow or blue. You also get points if you fill up your yellow or blue areas. And can get points if you can travel from one end of the board to the other.

And that was basically it. A simple game. With simple and drab artwork. And cheap materials. But it works alright. Not on the thematic level of Volle Hutte though.

Tichu

Two games of Tichu tonight. Both extremely one sided. The second game started with a Grand Tichu call because Mike thought he was still playing the first game (the 1000 point delta had already been obtained). Mike only had the Phoenix and the Dog when he made the call. When an Ace was wished for, our team had them all! And he still made it! The other extreme was when Adam called Grand Tichu. I passed him an Ace. Mike made the Ace wish. Adam bombed with Aces. And consequently lost the call. Sigh.

An interesting hand of mine. What bomb potential... What would you pass and why? I went for the four bomb and was passed a 4! Which was good enough to set Jon's Grand Tichu call.

I have been itching to record more detail on our Tichu games. Right now, I have an XML file of our game scores along with the Tichu/GrandTichu calls. The next step that I want to record is the actual cards played during the game. So, tonight, I tried to record that information on the ThinkPad during the game. Adam was also helpful and recorded as well. This does slow the game down a bit (and take a bit of my concentration away from the game). Mike and Jon were impatient with this. So I gave up after three hands.

So for the next game night, I am going to set up this contraption. A tripod positioned over the table with a remote controller attached. I played around later with the settings. With the kitchen fluorescent light, the fan's fluorescent light, and the big halogen light half on, I can get a 1/60" 2.8 picture. But the entire table is not in focus with that wide aperature. Stepping down to a 16, the shutter speed moves to 1/2". And with the halogen light on full, I can get a 4/10" 22 picture. Which is good enough.

To give this picture which is 850K. The cards are readable. And the ISO was only 400. I could double it and halve the shutter speed if necessary. I think this should work...

Mike is usually late coming to these games. Even though we remind him constantly to show up earlier. So, when 12pm rolled around, J.P. joined in his place.

J.P. has played other trick taking games before as well as bridge. And he has watched us play, so it didn't take much for him to get up to speed. However, he did make some beginner mistakes. For Ed's first Tichu call, Ed was down to one card and J.P. took the lead with a single King. He then has two cards left (K2). Unfortunately, he led the 2 (since he knew it was a looser). He should have led the King instead because everyone else had passed on the single King before. I was in no position to stop Ed with a A32.

The other mistake that he made was playing a Phoenix on Ed's Queen when Ed called Tichu for the second time. Yes, it is worth -25 points. But, it is a powerful card that should not have been thrown away so quickly and needlessly.

And once again we lost by one Tichu call and 230 points.

For the first hand of the game, Mike started out with his reckless behavior by wishing for an Ace. When I played low, Ed was forced to play his Ace. Later on in the hand, Adam came in and called and made Tichu.

This turned out to be a game of points. And a one-sided one at that. The GrandTichu and Tichu calls evened out. The opposing team just scored 350 more points than we did.

John is a temporary bachelor. So he invited us over for gaming. I arrived a little late because I gave myself the luxory of a shower after disc golf. John's house is pretty close to mine. Which is nice. He did warn me about his new dirty neighbor, another barn swallow in a mud nest. Complete with bird poop.

Age of Steam

I brought some meaty games to play: Indonesia, Byzantium, Zepter of Zavandor, and Lexio. We ended up playing Age of Steam... with Adam... who is a very strong player in this game. However, Adam was really nice and consentented to give us some advice during this game. I also took some pictures of the board (although I did miss some turns in the game). In fact, I should have brought my tripod with me to set up and automate taking pictures. Sigh. I did take pictures with my new lens though. I pushed the aperature as narrow as I could (a little too much... the shutter speed was 1/15" and the aperature 4.0... which resulted in a little bit of shaking. I miss the image stabilization of this 2.8 lens. It is interesting how dark our gaming environments are and how little light there is when you want a full depth of field).

Anyways, back to gaming. Adam was generous in giving helpful advice. Which was a little detrimental in his maintaining of the game's state (he is usually very good at that). Mike initially jumped out in the lead. He was shipping some good intermediate length routes. I tried to concentrate on the east side of the board. Building routes that would eventually allow me to ship length 6 goods. Adam concentrated on engineering his locomotive. He also heavily borrowed money. Much to his detriment later on in the game. I was able to locate some stealthy yellow goods and deliver them along 6 cities. Adam tried breaking into my eastern territories (Mike only built two routes over there and never used them) but was too late. I was able to jump into the lead and stay there.

It was a good educational game. I hope Adam writes some good tutorials about this game. He needs some competition. Jeff has left and Mike Ashley-Rollman is leaving. Oh yeah, Marty is leaving too.

We were planning on playing disc golf at Cat Hollow today. But when I woke up it was raining (and fortunately turned off the sprinklers). As is was still raining at 9am, I started making calls. John was no where to be found, but Jon answered and was still game to play. We switched to Old Settlers Park because it still playable when wet.

And boy was it wet out! The tiny river was swollen and the lake had overflown its banks. Fortunately, hole one was playable. The rain had also churned up the water and turned it into a murky mess. If we threw a disc in the water, it would be likely that it would be lost. So I aimed away from the water.

It didn't seem to me that it rained all that much at my house to account for all the water here. It rained heavily for an hour and lightly after that. In fact, it cleared up as we were playing. 2 inches of rain at most. And yet the pedestrian bridge is under water. The water was up to the pole for hole 16. And hole 17 was under water.

We played that any new water was not a hazzard. Which was lucky for us. Jon threw his disc into one of the many temporary streams. And mine skipped into the murky lake at hole 4. Fortunately, Jon saw it go in and was able to rescue it.

Ahh, game night. Time to experiment with recipies and get unsuspecting people to sample them. Tonight, I tried a recipie from Cook's Illustrated: The Best Key Lime Bars. And they were pretty good...

Mermaid Rain

Marty suggested that we play Mermaid Rain and I was happy. I have been wanting to play this game. Ever since I bought it during my trip to Japan. Which has been a while... Sigh.

Anyways, this game has a number of elements from different games:

• Elfenland: where you play cards to walk around the board and visit locations
• Havoc: the Hundred Years War: where you play cards that form a poker hand. Two down initially and you may add one card or pass.
• and set-collecting majority of treasures

It was an interesting game and one that I want to play again...

Flea Circus

We convinced Marty to stay for one more short game. And Flea Circus it was. And boy did the fleas hate me. Ed, Marty, and John were drawing 6s and 7s. I was stuck with 0s-4s. I played one set down. And, later, when I had two more sets that I wanted to play, I tried just drawing one more card for some points. And, out of the one card that was displayed on the table, it would always match. Which would end my turn. I didn't get a third chance because Marty ended it with a gala of 6s/7s...

Mykerinos

On Memorial Day, Mike Chapel brought a new game for us to play. He took one for the team and bought it on spec (Ystari has made good games in the past). Mike read the rules to us and we played it. Well, tonight Ed and Susan wanted to try it out. So I explained the rules as we learned them. And what a mistake that was! Apparently, there are two schools of thought on this. The first is fast and furious. Break open the game, puzzle out the rules, and play the game. The second is to spend a couple of days reading over the rules, play test the game with a gamer significant other, visit forums to answer any questions that come up, patiently teach the rules while people interrupt you with their random thoughts, and then play the game for real. It seems like some people prefer the latter. Sigh.

On going over the rules, I noticed one picture that demonstrated expanding pieces from an existing one. It pointed out a broader aspect of adjacency that we missed the first time. It changed the strategy of how you would play the game. But it was no biggie. We moved on. I won by keeping with my previous usage of Mr Brown and getting a high multiplier for his cards.

And then the chit hit the fan, so to speak. Accusations started flying, mistakes were pointed out, recalls were demanded...

Tichu

Ahh, Mike and Adam stayed for a late night game of Tichu. All three players were mentally tired after their longer than usual game of Antiquity. And you could tell from the play. Adam called Grand Tichu at the start on a rather weak hand. But he persevered and made it. Adam also did the dreaded random wish and this time it was for an Ace. When Mike passed and I had to play an Ace, I was happy that everyone passed and that Ace took the trick. Jon later calls Tichu. Fortunately, we were able to stop him.

After we were up by over 400 points and the end of the game was drawing near, the other team started calling desperation Grand Tichu calls. And desperate they were. For the second Grand Tichu call, I went over Mike's straight and with DrAAQQJ left, I over-called Tichu. And made it. But I would have been mocked if I did not make that call.

When went through the game data I noticed something interesting. If the other team had not made the loosing GrandTichu or Tichu calls, then we would have been tied at 1000 vs 1000. They grabbed 100 more points than we did which we made up with our extra Tichu call!

Adam's first GrandTichu call was apparently close. Mike had played a King on one of Adam's singles. And apparently if it had been lower, Adam would have made it. Oh well.

Ed's Tichu call was amusing. He leads a length 7 straight (with no wish) and calls Tichu. Adam then plays his length 7 straight. Mike then plays his length 7 straight. I felt like Mike had the Dog here. I look at my hand. It is a Ace-high, length thirteen straight. After checking the played cards for bomb potentials, I split my straight into two and called Tichu. Apparently, Ed should have led his straight last (which is what Mike did in another hand).

For our one-two, I did not call Tichu like I normally would. I was so burned by my string of bad luck recently, that I didn't want to take a remote chance of being set.

In Mike's first GrandTichu call, he was set by Adam. Who's highest card in his hand was a 10.

5,255,452:

Method and means for creating anti-gravity illusion

Abstract

A system for allowing a shoe wearer to lean forwardly beyond his center of gravity by virtue of wearing a specially designed pair of shoes which will engage with a hitch member movably projectable through a stage surface. The shoes have a specially designed heel slot which can be detachably engaged with the hitch member by simply sliding the shoe wearer's foot forward, thereby engaging with the hitch member.

I claim:

1. A system for engaging shoes with a hitch mans to permit a person standing on a stage surface to lean forwardly beyond his or her center of gravity, comprising:

at least one shoe having a heel with a first engagement means, said first engagement means comprising a recess formed in a heel of said shoe covered with a heel slot plane located at a bottom region of said heel, said heel slot plate having a slot formed therein with a relatively wide opening at a leading edge of said heel and a narrower terminal end rearward of said leading edge, said recess being larger in size above said terminal end of said slot than is said terminal end of said slot; and

a second engagement means, detachably engageable with said first engagement means, comprising a hitch member having an enlarged head portion connected by a narrower shank portion to a means for raising and lowering said head of said hitch member above and substantially level with or below said stage surface, said head portion being larger in size than said terminal end of said slot and said shank portion being narrower than said terminal end of said slot, wherein said hitch member can be moved through apertures in said stage surface between a projecting position raised above said stage surface and a retracted position at or below the stage surface, and when said head portion of said hitch member is raised above said stage surface, said first engagement means can be detachably engaged with said projecting hitch member, thereby allowing a person wearing the shoes to lean forwardly with his or her normal center of gravity beyond a front region of said shoes, and maintain said forward lean.

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Ugh. More smacking down. What was amusing was what happened after we finished early. We then played a couple of more hands. On the first one, I Grand-Tichued and made it and on the second one, we set Ed's Tichu call. Sure, when the game doesn't count, I have great luck...

Mike invited us over for a Deadwood night. It would include a high definition Deadwood showing and board games. One would think the board game selection would be themed like the similiar Rome night. But you would be wrong.

Oh, and do something about that bird's nest with the poop on the door mat!

Buccaneer

In keeping with the wild west theme, John brought out Buccaneer. This is a pirate game of robbing ships. On your turn, you have two choices. You can either take one of your pirates that is in front of you and place it on top of a pile of one or more pirates that is in front of someone else. Or, if you have a stack of pirates that meets the minimum height requirements for boarding a ship, then you can grab some booty. There will be an item chip that you can collect (if there are two, you choose fist and the person underneath you can have the other one). These item chips are worth many victory points if you have majority. Otherwise, they are worth one point apiece. There is also money that you receive. However, you have to pay off everyone else in the stack that boarded the ship with you. And sometimes this can end up costing you more than you made. Such is the life of the pirate it seems.

This game played rather dull. You have to wait until the begininning of your turn in order to plan a move. And other people's choices of moves can be surprising. Or at least they can be unexpected.

I had the thought of perhaps keeping a number of enemy pieces out of action by taking a stack that is 1 away from maximum size, capping it with my piece, and then never using it. But usually those stacks already have a couple of your pieces on them so they weren't candidates for my hosage. Also, a couple of times during the game, it would be possible that the next person had to pass because they were out of pirate tokens. But the previous person would instead board a ship and release some tokens to that player. All in all, rather boring. And People were not livening it up with pirate speak either...

Hacienda

Mike really wanted to play Hacienda. Which kept with the Deadwood theme... not! As is usual with this game, I was the start player. And aparently, John had never been the last player in this game. So he took every opportunity to cause scorings and end the game. Which worked well for him since he was in first. I was just too money starved during this game. Sigh. Can't score too many points if you can't afford water holes and haciendas.

Ed held another game day. This time without the grilled Brautwurst... boo! I made a bread pudding. Actually, more like an egg custard. It was quite rich. The recipe called for Croissants instead of bread, 3 cups of heavy cream, 3 1/2 cups of whole milk, 9 large eggs, and 9 large egg yolks. I was able to successfully guilt some people in taking some home since I told them that I would just throw most of it away.

It was good. A little runny perhaps. Next time double the amount of croissants and perhaps add some corn starch to thicken it up a bit.

Bluff

The main point of this game day for me was the playing of Roads and Boats. But since one of our players was running late, we started a game of Bluff as a filler. I spent the whole game getting smacked down by the dice and their non-averageness. Everytime I didn't believe a statement, the dice proved otherwise and I quickly was out of the game.

Roads and Boats

So we finally started Roads and Boats. We picked an interesting four player map where there was a main mountainous island surround by a ring of land. Three of us chose to start on our sections of the ring where Traci instead started on the island. I chose to try a rock factory instead of the rock pit. It takes a little longer to set up but produces more rock once it is going. I didn't like it that much. I also realize that I should breed some donkeys as well.

The notorious Goose Thief Susan was one of my neighbors. And I was a little worried about her. But she proved benign. Instead, Adam took up that crown in this game. He stole many resources from the newbie Traci. Not just once...

But twice! She was out of the running of the game at that point. And since it was a learning game for her, she tried her hand at Goose thiefing... against me! Gah! She was able to wall of my newly created mine... So I focused my efforts at expelling her. She also dropped off a wagon in my land. However, I was able to take my revenge and wall off her rescue attempt. And she gave up on it after that. This put me out of the running as well.

You just can't take your focus off of the goal. So I tried to see if I could force the game to end early by helping to build the wonder. Traci was building bricks in the wonder as well. But I learned that you really can't quicken the game that much. And certinally not before others can build stock certificates...

Another aspect to this game is trying to make the components fit back inside of the box. And after much struggling and reconfiguring, we succeeded!

Tichu

Adam, Mike, and his sister had to leave soon. So they roped me into a game of Tichu. After explaining to rules to Catlyn, we were off. My first two hands were great. I called and made Tichu. However, I didn't get very many points for my efforts. Mike called and made Grand-Tichu. Both teams scored one one-two. So we were even in Tichus but behind in points. After Mike made another Tichu call, our team needed to call Grand-Tichu. Adam forced me to call it. But Mike had all of the winners and was able to stop me for the win.

I left early to finish setting up my desk. But before I drove off, I took a picture of Ed and Susan's new house...

I am finally getting rid of my old computer desk! I had that thing ever since I bought my first computer. Way, way back in college. In order to get rid of the old desk, I performed the time-honored technique of placing it out on my curb. And within a couple of hours, it had dissapeared... It works quite well for getting rid of old lawn-mowers and bbq grills too.

I went looking for some office furniture and finally found one I liked. So I bought it. And they delivered it today. Now I have a real desk! Who needs to save money when you spend it all on a desk...

Another hot Friday afternoon disc golf game. On hole 4, there is a small river along the left of the hole. And when I throw on that hole I try to aim my disc to the right hand side in order to avoid the water hazzard. Of course my disc never cooperates. And it landed on a small island surrounded by water. At least it didn't fall in it and dissapear. It was a tough throw out into the open but I made it.

On hole 6, John pulled a Gravitt and threw his approach shot way off course. It flew behind the trees and out of site. So we crossed the fence into the abandoned pasture and went looking for it. Fortunately we found it.

On hole 8 I had my best approach shot of the day. It landed very close to the hole. You can see where John's next shot landed. I putted it to gain the hole.

Well they finally mowed that painfull field of thorns that makes up hole 10. There are two types of thorns that can easily penetrate your sneakers and socks. So walking down that hill is always a challenge. When you get to the bottom and finish that hole, you have to take some time out and try to remove them.

Cities and Guilds

Ed and Susan are back after a long hiatus of not gaming at my house. And they brought a new game with them called Cities and Guilds. This is a tile-laying majority game. There are two kinds of majorities that you are fighting over, the most influence in one of four guilds and the most controlled buildings in a block. Tiles are placed on the board orthagonally adjacent to another tile. However, you can cross a street and still satisfy the adjacency condition. There are three types of tiles that you can place: buildings that you can place a pawn on along with bumping influence in the corresponding guild (or skip the influence and place two pawns), markets where you place no pawn but get two influence points (they also contribute to scoring), and pubs which only contribute to scoring.

Scoring is overly complex and fiddly in this game. And I pretty much ignored it and concentrated on gaining majorities. I concentrated in two guilds and three blocks. Susan surprised me with the adjacent placing and jumped into one of my initial blocks and also placed two pawns to grab the lead. Ties in the number of controlled buildings are broken by number of pawns. And you must exceed the current number of buildings in order to win back the first place ranking. So, I responded by battling back controll with Susan. Fortunately for me, Susan momentarily focused elsewhere which allowed me to finally gain first place again. Ed missed completing a block so I took advantage of that by closing it my self. This allows you to place a special building anywhere you like. So I placed it in one of my blocks.

When I placed the last of those buildings (there are only four) later on in the game, I noticed a problem. I placed it in one of my controlled blocks but it now only had two spots left. Susan noticed that she could place a building there with two of her pawns on it. This would tie in number of buildings and the number of pawns would break the tie in her favor. She had quite a maniacal and evil laugh at that point! I was hoping that she wouldn't notice that move... Ed of course closed out the block to score a couple of points.

This was an interesting game and one I would play again.

Stephenson's Rocket

Adam brought out this old Knizia title. It was one that I have not played in a long while. There are just too many new games coming out... And early on it was clear that Adam was in the lead and Ed and I were fighting for second. So when we both tied it was amusing.

Fjords

While Adam waited for his ride home to arrive we played this two player game. It has some aspects of Carcassonne and some aspects of Go to it. I like playing it. The first game was a tie. In the second game, we both had placed all of our farm houses on the board. So we were deperately trying to grow areas that we controlled. And I was able to end up with a bigger final area than Adam for the win.

Adam did have one amusing quote during the game: "This tile is more landy". I am sure that it is a technical term...

There seems to be a lot of pretzel snacks left for everyone. Too bad I don't like pretzels...

Sigh... The luck has not been with me... I can only hold up against so much smacking down...

For Adam's first Tichu call, there was slight hiccup. During the deal, Adam accidently deals me a card face up. He quickly puts it back into the cards remaining to be dealt at some position. I noticed that it was the Dragon and jokingly asked to keep it as long as everyone knew I had it. Then Adam called Tichu. And during his play I noticed that he had the Dragon! Interesting coincidence...

For the opposing team's first one/two, Ed had the ability to go on top of Adams 2-pair-sequential run. It would have killed his hand though. If Ed had done so and led a single card to me (knowing that he passed the Dragon to me and I still had not played it), I could have gone out second and stopped the 1/2.

Dan created a Monk-E-Mail just for you. Now what did you do to deserve that?

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For my second Tich call, I had good cards. However, Mike won a trick and then dogged Ed, who had a 13 card straight. Mike also had a bomb and was able to go out second. Sigh.

For Adam's first Grand-Tichu call, Ed opend up with the Mahjong and made the standard Ace wish. However, what surprised me was that Adam played a 3 and Mike played the Ace! I was passed the Dog by Adam but I never got a chance to take the lead and he was set.

This is what happens when Mike does not sleep to well and decides to do something creative:

Cool! A blast from the past...

I realize that the camera in my phone sucks. But it is just so convienient. I carry my phone around with me so therefore I also have a camera around. I have been looking at small pocket cameras though and thinking. I like the new Sony DSC-T30. It seems like it would be a good camera. The going price for it is around $400. But it would be another thing to carry around and keep charged. Also, it would require a different memory card than the CF cards I have. Why do manufacturers have to keep creating new memory card formats? Gah! A 4GB Ultra II Memory Stick Pro Duo would cost $190.

Thats $600. The other side of the equation is would be to buy some good glass for my Canon EOS 20D. I would get general Canon compatible lenses and not ones specifically designed for to 20D (those would limit my options to a few cameras). I am currently considering:

• Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM Standard Zoom Lens
• Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens

Those lenses would replace the EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens that I have. They would give me a couple more F/stops for better lower light handling. It is a shame that there is not a 16-24mm f/2.8L lens. And I would loose Image Stabilization on the 24-70.

Decisions, decisions... Oh, and I will eventually replace my camera phone with a N-80 or a N-93.

I've been reading a couple of interesting books lately:

Stephen Baxter's Manifold Time

This story is about Reid Malenfant who is an astronaut. Mankind is turning inward but Reid wants to colonize space. He learns about the Carter catastrophy. Put simply, it is a probalistic experiment where, given a small sampling, you determine how many things exist. Say for instance that there is a box that dispenses balls, one at a time, at random, at a push of a lever. You are told that only one ball has your name on it. And you are also told that either this box contains ten balls or it contains a thousand balls. So you push the lever and a blank ball pops out. You push it again with the same result. However, on the third attempt, a ball comes out with your name on it. You then deduce with a 66% percent chance of success that the box contained ten balls.

Baxter uses this thought experiment as motivation for Reid that Humanity will destroy itself within 240 years. So he uses a cheap existing rocket to launch an intelligent squid out to a near-Earth asteroid called Cruithne. When production is up and running, he visits the asteroid and finds a portal that transports himself into alternate universes where different conditions created much different formations of the galaxies.

The book is fast paced and contains a lot of scientific speculation. I liked it. And was the Carter catastrophy real? You will just have to read it to find out!

Stephen Baxter's Manifold Space

The second book in the series. It too contains a Reid Malenfant but this story is different. Humanity goes to the Moon but not much further. When an alien speices called the Gaijin appear and begin to mine the asteroid field, Humanity doesn't respond. Only Reid and a couple other characters have the drive to find out what is happening. In this story, life is everywhere! On the moon, on all the planets, in all of the solar systems out there. However, something is destroying that life, for many cycles. And another cycle is coming...

This book is as fast paced as the other. Some of the old characters are in this book. But their lives are different now. More scientific speculation: baking oxygen and water out of moon rocks, and digging deep within the moon to extract trapped water and other resources. This story was a little more scattered than the first and not as cohesive. I liked it but it was a little bit worse than the first.

Small-Batch Baking by Debby Maugans Nakos

Just glanced through this one. It has an interesting concept: making desert for just a couple of people! For example, the recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies makes 6 cookies. The Apple Crumble Pie recipie makes 2 pies in 4-inch tart pans or jumbo muffin cups.

I hate the waste that occurs when you make a batch of 42 cookies. You each a bunch of them and then you throw out the rest when you are disgusted with yourself. Making just a couple of items at a time is the perfect concept! And one that I am surprised that hasn't been done before. You have to get used to the concept of using only a part of an egg for a recipie. So there will be some waste. But better throwing away 1/2 of an egg than 20 cookies.

I am definately trying some of these!

Another day of disc golf. Marty said he wanted to play. But he did not want to go to Georgetown. So him and Adam played at the Lutheran Church. We had played that site last week. And, unfortunately, it is not that interesting of a course (having only nine holes doesn't help either). John, Jon, and myself felt like a more challenging course was needed. So we stuck with our plans. It seems there is friction between the people who live in North Austin and the people who live in North Round Rock. Sigh...

I rode my bike today another 15 miles at 7 am when the temperature is a little bit cooler. Which is necessary since it was quite hot and muggy out. We were sweating like pigs and panting like dogs out there. I don't mind that at all. It is just that I wouldn't be in a mood to ride my bike after disc golf.

There still isn't any signage at the course. But we remember where the holes are enough to play here. The next time that I come here, I am going to take my Canon with me and try and document the new layout. I will also try and draw a map as well.

I need to work on my approach shots. John and Jon seem to be able to consistently throw a disc. I seem to be much more random. I only had two decent approaches today.

On hole three we tee off at a medium sized opening. As you walk down the hill and avoid the cactus, you pass some tall trees. You then walk back up the next hill into an open area which forms a tunnel. At the end of the area and hidden from view is the goal. The tall trees that I mentioned earlier really block a straight throw from one hill to another. How we currently handle this hole is that we throw a high 45 degree arcing shot that goes up and to the right. If you throw it right, it will apex over the trees and fall back down to the ground at a 45 degree slope that is down and to the left. It will land in the open part of the next field. Unfortunately, my shot was not far enough to the right. It arced in the middle of the field and came down into unknown territory. But we were able to eventually find it. Fortunately, it was in a clearing. I was able to throw my putter in the same type of throw. John was calling out where the clearing and goal was. So I knew the general direction to throw. My shot was able to clear all of the trees and land back in play! In fact I was able to sink it for a total of four throws. Not bad for a wild beginning...

On hole 4, John stumbled and fell into a cactus plant! Ouch!! Fortunately, I carry tweasers with me. He spent some time picking them off his leg. We call this hole cactus-couch now... ;)

We had another adventure when we crossed under the bridge and played out in the open. I picked a disc that would fade right (my lightweight Valkrye). But I didn't throw it far enought. So it crashed off into the brush before it got to the opening where the hole is. John threw his multicolored Orc but it went into the high grass on the slope of the hill. I spent some time looking for my disc but was unable to locate it. Jon eventually found it for me on the other side of the brush! It had punched through! I was able to throw my putter by sticking my leg into the brush was the disc was lying.

John also had lost his dic. So the three of us formed a search party line and walked back and forth on the hill. We eventually found that one too!

Jon was having a difficult in the forrested part of the course. He hit quite a lot of trees during this peroid. Here he is shaking his disc out of a tree.

On hole 17, someone stuck some dead twigs in the goal. It looks like Wilson!

Wwwwwiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllsssssssssssoooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jon left after we finished. So myself and John went back to Dos Salsas for lunch. I like that place. The brisket Chiles Rellenos were excellent! Only in Texas...

After lunch we decided to stop by and play the San Gabriel Park. This is a short course consisting of only nine holes. And its missing signs for the tees for its holes! What with Georgetown and Williamson county? Why don't they spend some money and keep the courses in good shape?!

Time for the usual Friday afternoon disc golf. And boy the weather is getting hotter and hotter. My poor garaged truck was whining, indeed. But after cooling off in the open air and calibrating itself, it reported temperatures in the high 80s.

John had to audacity of working today and told me he would show up late. So I waited until 4:45 and started playing. Unfortunately, on hole two, there were two fishermen using a big tree as shade to escape the heat. They were sitting right infront of the tee off box for hole 2! It seems that they are as unaware of their environment as the Boy Scouts were. So I threw on the other side of the tree.

John showed up in time for hole 5. I kept up a quick pace since I wanted to be on time for Pilates. Everytime I play with other people, the time it takes to finish this course grows exponentially. But today we were actually able to finish early! Imagine that. So we stopped by to the Mexian Ice Cream place. I bought a large Melon flavored water. I really like these. They aren't that sweet and they have bits of fruit in them.

The weather seemed to cool down a bit as we played. Perhaps evaporation from the humidity in the air? There was no wind either. So it turned out to be pleasant to play.

Jenseits von Theben

Marty brought Jenseits tonight after seeing us play it at Tim's. This time we used a harder table when digging for artefacts. And harder it was. After the game was over, we learned that quite a number of artefacts had been removed from the decks during the preparation for the game.

In this game, I was a little inefficient. I got one shovel (useless). Another one didn't show up until the game was almost over. At that point, everyone had done all of the digging that they were going to do. Which meant that the cards were useless and were left taking up space on the board. Also, not many exihibitions came up because the card display was stagnated.

Jon was impressively well balanced in knowledge in the different sites. So I was out of contention for the seven point bonus at the end. What was painfull though was I was trying to boost my most knowledge in two of the sites where I was in the lead. But the cards for those sites didn't come up on my turn. So when I took a different card and the replacement was the card that I was looking for, I was bummed. Jon was able to take it on his turn and pip me for most knowledge in one of my two sites (giving him four more points). Sigh. Still fun to play though.

Tichu

Marty finally played Tichu with me. Our team started off strong but lost in the end to two Grand-Tichu one-twos in a row! Argh!

The Princes of Florence

Adam brought this game out to the table. It has been quite some time since I played it. Wait... let me look that info up at Dan's site... Sheesh! I have played it on two other times: 2001-06-02 and 2002-03-14! Quite some time indeed.

After a quick rules refresher, We jumped into it. Adam did his usual strategy of building a lot of works. Which was enough to give him the win.