A Little Ludwig Goes A Long Way » Games

No time to blog, so here’s a link roundup

john — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:34:00 +0000

Cutting the Cord on Cable. Wish I could get there but live HD sports still keeps me stuck to cable/satellite provider. I’ve tried the streaming options and they are weak — poor selection of games/sources (I need ESPN/ABC channels + BTN + Fox Sports channels + upcoming Pac12 network), lots of stutter, not HD content. I will probably be one of the last cable subscribers in the country.
Men with deep voices lack sperm. I was a tenor in choir.
Do programming puzzles in interviews work?. I don’t think I’ve ever asked these kinds of questions, or at least not in 20 years.
Gamification sucks. Respect your users.
The Verge and The Wirecutter — good tech sites.
If you are busy, you are doing something wrong.
10 new-ish programming languages. WOuld like to learn more about Chapel, haXe, X10, OPA.
DSLRs are a dying breed. Not another “camera phones are going to win” article, but a smarter take on the mirrorless trend.

Survive: Escape from Atlantis is our board game of the season

john — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:46:18 +0000

We always pick up a new board game at the holidays, in the past Settlers of Cataan and Ticket to Ride have been huge winners. This year it is Survive which is a great game — super easy to learn, quick to play, and a great level of conflict. It has the Settlers attribute of a new board layout each game which keeps it fresh. If you like board games, recommended. If you were raised in the USA and think board games == Monopoly (barf), give one of these a try.

COD 1st day sales exceed $400M

john — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:23:08 +0000

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare sets first day sales record. What stunning numbers. I don’t think Skyrim will do the same but a huge week for online entertainment. There is clearly huge demand for great entertainment content, pretty much insatiable demand. And why not, these games give hours and hours of entertainment, the per-hour price is super low.

It’s not too early to start thinking about Father’s Day

john — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 16:15:18 +0000

I don’t need or want any of this stuff actually but am drawn to all of it…

Car map light. Ok who looks at maps anymore, but this is nicely designed!
Multimeter Clock. Love the reuse of old tech here. Wish I had the skill/vision to create things like this.
Carol Kipling Plates. Love the platter but $2800 is steep…
14 wheel skateboard so I can suck at skateboarding 3.5 times as much.
Tourbillon vase — awesome organic-looking glass.
Urban Balance Wave Hammock — can this possibly be stable? But cool.
Designer Scrabble I love board games and I love nicely crafted items. I have a great cribbage board, would love to buy great boards for other games — Catan, TIcket to Ride, etc.
LaserPegs. Lasers make everything better, including construction blocks.
Freesia Book Stands — these look awesome, seems like a great item to have.
Chemically Accurate Crayons. OK these are just labels you stick on crayons you buy, so kind of dorky, but I love the idea. “Could you please pass me the Yttrium Oxide crayon”?

Board game reviews — BoardGameGeek

john — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 18:13:41 +0000

GameBrowser – Sorted By Rank | BoardGameGeek. Rich asked me where I get board game ideas, I default to BoardGameGeek. The page referenced has games by average rating, as well as a hot games list.

Christmas Board Games

john — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 05:27:02 +0000

We always buy some board games for the Christmas period and play them in the evening. Started the practice years ago with Settlers of Catan which remains the gold standard.Â This year we tried:

Hanging Gardens, The | BoardGameGeek. OK it seems like this could be a fun game and we started to enjoy it, but the game exploded into a major argument about the rules. The rulebook is not the strongest.
Tzaar — fun and quick, but only two player. It is part of some series of games called Project GIPF that interrelate in some fashion, need to learn more about
Wasabi! — some liked, some did not. The winner liked, shockingly. I thought it was fun tho I pissed everyone off by playing the Wasabi! card late in the which really put the brakes on the action.Â Late in the game, gameplay really slows down as the board gets cluttered which is a problem.

Settlers is still the best but these were all entertaining

Rogue for iPhone: nerdgasm

john — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:16:58 +0000

CrunchGear Â» Archive Â» Rogue for iPhone: nerdgasm. Installed.

Late 1982, I am killing myself chasing two degrees at CMU. In the mornings I was at the business school, classmates all wearing power suits and reading the WSJ and the Financial Times during breaks. Afternoons spent in the EE department with classic geeks.

After midnight in some lab deep in the bowels of the EE department, debugging some realtime ASM code for speech processing, and this lank-haired guy next to me asks “Hey, do you know how to kill a 12th-level necromancer?”

That was my intro to Rogue.

All over the place — Distilleries of Scotland, DC, Bullets, Games, Doghouses, Golf, Currency, and more

john — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:45:10 +0000

Brett on Stuff Â» Distilleries of Scotland. A reason to hike Scotland
WOW — stronger authentication than your bank. What does that say about the world.
Running DC thru the house. An idea whose time has come again?
Indie games DB. Often way better than mainstream games
Guided Bullets. Why not.
Thingiverse. Kind of an open source design site.
Denhaus — awesome pet furniture
Nitrogen-infused golf clubs. Golfers will buy anything.
Dutch 5 Euro coin. Awesome, wish I could order. Not the first time I have been blocked from ordering a euro product, wish I could sign up for a forwarding PO box in Europe.
Mini Magnetosphere. Maybe we all need one of these

The eyeballing game

john — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:29:32 +0000

The eyeballing game. Angle bisecting and right angling are apparently my special skills.Â I pretty much suck at finding circle centers and making parallelograms tho.

Spore is awesome

john — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 05:24:53 +0000

Quite addictive. And the exchange of creatures online adds a great element. Recommended. Yeah the amazon reviewers are all going apeshit over the drm on the title, but it is fun.