Thoughts of Chairman Mike - General ramblings

Game of the year

12/24/2011 at 16:13 No comments

OK, let’s take a look at what I did play, and what were the highlights. And lowlights. I’ll split this into non-war-games and war-games, before I declare an overall winner, so let’s start with the former.

I didn’t get to play a great deal of non-war-games this year, as discussed in my review of purchases for the year, but here are the highlights:

18xx: played 1846, 1861, 1889, 1880, 1856, 1812, 1865, and Railroad Barons (which is similar enough that I’m going to include it in the 18xx category); still my current favorite non-war-game game/series; I wish I could get more of these to the table with my regular gaming buddies, but it’s a challenge to get the time
iDevices: games played on the iPad, either live or asynchronously; I can see there will be more of this coming in the future
Umm, that’s about it

OK, so what about the lowlights:

Card games: Race for the Galaxy, Dominion, Ascension, 7 Wonders; they’re all just meh; yet I’ve played the latter two a fair amount at the Dublin Pub while listening to Doug’s band as they’re mostly multi-player solitaire, so don’t require much in the way of verbal communication, and we know the rules and can just play; Ascension works well as an iOS game, however, as games last only 10-15 minutes, about right for the game play
Macau: I started out liking this one, but the more I played it the more I disliked it as you have to pick your strategy blind, and the winner is the one that guessed right for the dice they rolled and cards that came out
1856: attended the Portland 18xx Convention for the first time, and got sharked by someone who had played 1856 more than 100 times, about 10 times more than the other 3 players put together; after the first OR she declared she had won, and that we might as well stop now; that’s why my regular gaming group tends to play new titles when we do play, as it removes the possibility of the person most familiar with the game using their knowledge to run away with it; I doubt I will attend the PDX 18xx con again

And so to the war-games. Highlights:

OCS Reluctant Enemies: along with Eric, I put in quite a few hours play testing this new game in the OCS series; I really enjoyed being part of the process, and I look forward to getting a copy of the published game
OCS Baltic Gap: playing the full campaign game with Chuck; it’s great to see the whole campaign develop
Strike of the Eagle: a great meshing of block, order placement, and card-driven mechanisms
Liberty Roads: Chuck declaring that invading in the west was golden, from his solo plays, then kicking his butt when he tried for real; I guess I don’t play quite how his solo opponent plays :>
Normandy ’44: I’m not a great one for playing games solo, far preferring a live opponent; however, this one I played the whole scenario, it was such a good, fascinating game
Combat Commander: Resistance: an excellent addition to the series, and the game we played had only 1VP in it; tight

And the equivalent lowlights:

Fury in the East: some interesting mechanisms in this conversion from the original Japanese game; however, the new English version missed some critical rules, changed others (for the worse), and had the developer shooting from the hip in his attempts to fight all the rules queries, often retracting his rules adjudications after the inconsistencies were pointed out; that’s a shame, because it could be a decent small treatment of the WWII eastern front
1914: Twilight in the East: Probably the most accurate operational level treatment of the eastern area of operations in WWI; the pacing, manpower/effectiveness modeling just felt right; however, to achieve this the game just felt like work, and was little fun
Strike of the Eagle: yet another game marred by an atrocious development job; I’d barely got 2 pages into the rules before I found an example of play that contradicted the actual rule; that did not bode well for the rest of the rulebook, and so it turned out; here is a game that needed another 2-3 months of development and play-testing (especially blind play-testing) as the rules are full of holes and game situations that just aren’t covered, and the play aids contradict the rules; the designer and developer are doing their best to cover the questions on BGG, but this should not have been released in its current form; and next time hire an editor as well as getting people to proof your product before printing; I won’t buy another Academy Games product until it’s hit at least the second edition

And so, from all the above, what is my Game of the Year? Drum roll please…..

Strike of the Eagle, from Academy Games.

Yes, yes, I know the rules are atrocious, and that Academy needs to beaten with a stick for publishing it without adequate play-testing, development, or a good editor, but this is an excellent game. The melding of the block game with the placing of orders and the cards just creates such delicious fog of war and angst over what your opponent is up to that it overcomes the awfulness of the rules. It’s just the fine-tuning from further play-testing to ensure all the game situations that come up are covered in the rules, and the editing of the rules to ensure that those situations are explained correctly and that all terms are clear and unambiguous. You know, the tasks that are normally regarded as part of the development. The good thing is that, unlike Conflict of Heroes, where the base rules changed radically from the first game in the series to the second, the bones of this game are solid. I fully expect the next game in the Fog of War series (as Academy calls it), based in the WWII African desert, to be just a tightening of the existing mechanisms, perhaps with special rules for the theater, not a redo.

So, go play this game. Just don’t buy it until the second edition of the rules are out.

Games none

Games – purchases/sales in the year

12/24/2011 at 14:35 No comments

After Doug posted his review of the year’s acquisitions, I thought I’d perform the same exercise, just for my own amusement. Not too hard to achieve, as I keep detailed lists of what I buy and play. (Yes, rather sad, but it did teach me a lot about writing Excel formulas, so it did have a useful aspect, too.)

Non-wargames:

1812
1830
1860
1865
18Ardennes
First Train to Nuremberg
Key Market
Liberté
Poseidon
Railroad Barons

Of those, only 1812, 1865 and Railroad Barons have managed to find their way to the table, and the latter pair have both been played multiple times.

There were several expansions bought during the year:

Railways of the World: Western US
Railways of the World: Rails Through Time
Railways of the World, The Card Game: Card Expansion
Small World: Be Not Afraid
Steam: Expansion #1

None have been played, yet.

There were 4 sold during the year:

Game of Thrones
Lost Valley
War of the Ring
War of the Ring: Battles of the Third Age

As for war-games:

A Few Acres of Snow
Breakthrough Cambrai
Case Yellow
FAB: Sicily (OK, it’s technically not here yet, but it’s due soon, so I’m including it as I’ve paid for it – hey, it’s my list and I’ll make the rules )
Guderian’s Blitzkrieg II
Invasion: Sicily
Karellia ’44
King Philip’s War
No Retreat
None But Heroes
Raphia
Shenandoah
South Mountain
Streets of Stalingrad
Strike of the Eagle
Test of Fire
Where Eagles Dare
Wilderness War

Only four of those have achieved table time so far, A Few Acres of Snow, Case Yellow, No Retreat, and Strike of the Eagle.

There were only 2 expansion that I bought in the year:

Combat Commander: New Guinea
Combat Commander: Resistance

Neither of these have been used, yet.

For the war-games, 6 hit the sell pile:

1914: Twilight in the East
Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear
Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel
Operation Market Garden
Tide of Fortune
Where There Is Discord

That makes 10 new non-wargames (and half of them 18xx games!) and 18 new war-games, the fewest I’ve bought in a year for both categories over the last six years. I also sold 4 non-war-games and 6 war-games, so added a net 18 games over the year.

So, what, if any, conclusions can we draw from this?

First, I’m managing to cut down on my game purchases, as that is the fewest number of games I’ve bought in a single year for several years. This is partly due to the number of good games that I already have on my shelves, so I just don’t need to buy many new titles. This is also, probably mostly, due to me joining a band, and having to purchase guitar equipment, which has eaten into my gaming budget extensively.

Another thing that is apparent is that I sure do buy one caboose load of train games. It’s not that I am particularly enamored by trains, it’s just that the mechanisms and game styles I tend to prefer happen to have train themes applied to them. They could be about airplanes, or pipeline companies, and I’d still enjoy the mechanisms and the style. Then again, perhaps I’m a closet engine driver after all.

The next thing is that (depressingly) few of the new games are getting played. The biggest reason is back to the band again as I just have less time to play games. The bigger impact, however, is that band practice has led me to withdraw from the regular Tuesday hosting rota, as well as not attending, so I have less opportunity to get new purchases onto the table

Looking at my game playing hours by year, I’m noticeably down this year. Since I started keeping a record of gaming hours in 2007, I’ve been averaging ~510-540 hours/year. This year, however, I’m down to ~450. (That’s likely to go up by anywhere from 10-20 hours, as I’m off over the holiday period, and I’ve got a couple on the table.) In the last 3 years for war-games I’ve been very consistent, averaging ~100 sessions/year, for around ~300 hours. In the same time period my non-war-games sessions have fallen each year, from 170 sessions and 225 hours, down to 60 sessions and 120 hours this year. I knew that would be the case, but that was a conscious decision I had to make, as I had to compromise on one of my interests to be able to create the time for band practice, and I chose the non-war-games time.

Secondly, I’m spending more of my game time on war-games, which tend to be longer games than the non-war-games, so it takes possibly several sessions to play them and fewer get played, overall. So, instead of getting to 2-3 titles in 10 hours of gaming, I’m only getting 1 played.

For both the above, another factor is iPad time. In several cases we’ve been playing games on our iDevices rather than use the physical game. Ticket to Ride, Small World, Blokus, Carcassonne, Tichu, and Ascension have all been played over wifi in this way, mostly while lounging around in the same room or sitting in bars. (I’m not even counting the number of games played asynchronously.) I’m not sure how best to account for that time in the sessions/hours analysis above. For the moment, they’re excluded, but it could be the equivalent of as much as 20 sessions and 3-4 hours for the non-war-games. Of course, if GMT/MMP ever do get their games ported I may never get off my iPad. They are working on bringing some really tasty items to the magical device, Empire of the Sun and The Caucasus Campaign, so I expect this method of playing games to impact my stats further in the coming years.

Finally, I spent a large amount of time this year play-testing games. Whilst this has kept my game time up, it has meant that less time has been spent on playing the games I bought. However, I’m comfortable with this, as I’m happy that I’ve been able to contribute to the hobby in some way.

As for future acquisitions, I’m fully expecting that the current rate will probably continue. I’ll still get most of my war-games on pre-order direct from GMT and MMP (70% were pre-orders this year), and a few from their annual sales, which are generally ones I was on the fence about in the pre-order phase, but the sale prices were enough to push me over. Other companies will probably continue to feature infrequently in my war-game purchases, which isn’t to say that they don’t produce good games, but that GMT and MMP scratch my itch. So to speak.

For the non-war-games, the 18xx titles will certainly be a no-brainer, even though I don’t get to play them very often. The rest will likely just be as the whim takes me, and might be few and far between,but will almost certainly feature either trains or designer Martin Wallace. Or both.

I’d like to commit to getting more of them played (and my gaming friends have generally been very indulgent in allowing me to attack my burn-down list), but with the band front looking to take up a similar amount of time in the next year (possibly more), I think that may be a rash hope.

Games none

Great guitar sell off – part le deuxieme

10/03/2011 at 23:02 No comments

In the previous episode, we saw our intrepid hero (uhh, that’s me, in case you were in any doubt) in a quandary on which guitar equipment to also put on the selling block, both guitars and amplifiers. In the end there has been much action, so read on to get the full story…..

With a further review of what I want to play, where and when, it became clear that the Egnater was not what I wanted or needed, and it was the first to get moved over to the ‘sell’ pile. This was fairly quickly followed by the Fender Princeton Recording, as I decided that I just don’t like the sounds it makes, despite it having pretty much all the options I was looking for in a home amp. Both went up on Craigslist, at fairly optimistic prices, and both didn’t attract any interest. I reduced the prices and immediately got some definite interest on both amps, and someone arranged to come over to look at them.

I had everything all ready, and Sam (for that was his name), got down to evaluating. He started with the Egnater, and we found it was making rather a buzzing noise, which got worse the more you turned the gain up. He switched to the Fender, and found that it was doing the same. We tried turning off the florescent lights, using a different socket, but to no avail. Odd, I hadn’t noticed it making that sort of noise before.

He then switched back to the Egnater, and we found it was dead. No output at all. Bugger, an equipment failure on a demo. However, Sam decided that he liked the Fender, and that he’d accept it as it was, and we haggled on the price. He was also interested in the Egnater, and we agreed that I’d try to get it fixed, and he’d take it. He called me back the next day to say that the Fender was still buzzing harshly in his home, and we talked about me taking it back, and him getting it looked at. He called back the day after saying that he’d looked at it further and found one of the outputs in the back had a loose connector. After tightening it up, the buzzing went away. I guess that the move to the garage had been just enough to give a grounding issue, and that’s why I’d never had any problems before.

The Egnater was a different story. With help from Greg, another Skidmore dude, we replaced all the tubes, but still nothing, and it was looking like it might need some real surgery. I did more trawling on the interwebs and found a couple of references that seemed to match. In those cases there were a couple of diodes that had failed (or something electrically like that), and after having new ones installed, it was good as new. Sam and I agreed that he’d take it and try to get it into a shop, then we’d knock the cost of repairs off the price. And that’s where we are now, waiting to get time with the repair man, which is quite a challenge, as there aren’t that many decent repair places in town, and they are totally backed up. Ho hum.

On the guitar front, the Strat is the only one to see action. I decided that it was really not a guitar that I was going to use much at all, and it also went on Craigslist. Once again, no interest in the first week, but lowering the price bought everyone out of the woodwork, and it went to a buyer who came up from Eugene to get it. In the end I sold it for only $50 less than I paid for it, and that isn’t much to rent it for 4-5 years.

Of the others, I’m still thinking about selling the Breedlove acoustic, and I have seen a rather tasty Ibanez that might be suitable. I did take a trip down to the local GC to see what they had available, but didn’t come up with anything definite, and they didn’t have the Ibanez I fancied around to play with. So, no decision in that direction. However, it did prove that even my limited guitar-playing skills are pretty rusty, and I need to practice more. Just add it to the list of things I need to find time for.

Music Guitar, Music

Great guitar sell-off

04/14/2011 at 00:55 No comments

It’s been a long time a-coming, but finally it’s here, and I’ve started selling off some guitars. Over the years I’ve bought quite a few (that’s stereo-typical British understatement), and been the subject of some friendly ribbing amongst my friends, mostly as I’ve learned what I like and don’t like in a guitar. So, with 9 guitars in the house it was time to start on the reduction process.

First out the door were the easy choices. A Hohner acoustic that Graham got when he was learning. I’ve got the Breedlove as my main acoustic guitar, so the Hohner had no chance. Oddly enough, I gave it a quick strum to check it was vaguely in tune, and was surprised at how good it felt. A nice, easy action, good neck for me, and it sounded pretty decent. Still, it was the obvious first candidate, and it lasted all of 2 days on Craigslist before it was scooped up for the buyer’s daughter.

The next easy choice was the Fender American Standard P-Bass in sunburst/rosewood. This was the first ‘real’ bass I bought, after it was apparent that I had made it past the ‘Total suck’ level and was holding my own in the band. However, not long after I bought it, I saw the bass I wanted, another P-Bass in a butterscotch/black finish. Since that one arrived, the sunburst has sat in the case. Initially I thought that it would be good to have a backup bass, for just in case, but talking to other bass players the incidence of a Fender P-Bass failing is, like, never. So it was next on the Craigslist block. It survived all of 1 day, before it was tested and bought.

So, where does that leave me? I still have 5 guitars (excluding the butterscotch P-Bass, which is now safe):

Gibson Les Paul Standard Deluxe
Fender Hot Rod ’52 Telecaster
Fender 70′s reissue stratocaster
Washburn OE-30 semi-hollow body
Breedlove Electro-Acoustic

The Breedlove is safe as it’s the only acoustic I have (although I find it the hardest to play). The Washburn is safe as it was a birthday gift from my family. The Tele and the Les Paul are both awesome (and very different) guitars, as well as serious quality instruments, and they’re both keepers. That leaves the Strat as the one on the brink. It gets the least play time of all my guitars (although, since I started playing bass none of them get as much play time as the P-Bass, even put together), but it’s still an excellent guitar. A really sweet action, very comfortable to play, KC was very impressed with it when he played it. But, if it isn’t getting played……

So far I’m firmly on the fence about it, and could go either way.

Which bring us to amplifiers. The current list of equipment is:

Marshall stack
Egnater Rebel 20
Fender Princeton Recording
Marshall MD15

Although the stack would probably bring in the most $$$, and gets limited play time, it’s still a Marshall stack, dude! When I do get the chance to play at volume, which isn’t that often, admittedly, it’s the go-to amp. There’s nothing like the Marshal sound and the twin-cab setup just roars, and leaves a smile on the face.

The Fender sounded like a great idea at the time. Variable power output; XLR output for recording; headphones output. Just perfect for home use. Trouble is that I’m just not particularly fond of the Fender sound. Too clean, just not….. Marshall.

The Egnater was a possible solution for that. Adjustable main power; variable tube setting between the 6L6 (Fender style) and EL84 (Marshall) style. It sounds pretty good, but even at the lowest setting (~1w) it’s still too freakin’ loud for use in the house without dialing the volume down so far that it has no head room. So it sits out in the garage, but now it’s up against bigger competition, and, given the choice, the Marshall gets used over it, every time. So, it’s going to be the first to go, which is a shame, because it’s real sweet. Just a loud real sweet.

The other Marshall is one of their digital models, and was the first amp I got when I started playing. It rarely gets used (in fact it’s currently being used to stand a lamp on to get it higher), and it’s likely to go out the door, too.

Which leaves the Fender. I’m leaning towards getting rid of it too. These days I’m normally using headphones when inside, with the guitar going through the Boss ME-50 multi-effects board to the mini-mixer, where I also feed in the output from the Mac. This allows me to play along with our session recordings or other songs for practice or fun. The Fender doesn’t have inputs from the Mac, so it would still have to go through the mixer, but with the Boss, it’s superfluous.

That would leave me with no amp for indoor work, although I so rarely play guitar without headphones indoor that that may not be an issue. However, if I can find something that has external input from the Mac, headphones output, and a reasonable volume for inside use, I might be interested. The Blackstar HT-5 is one on my list.

Oh, and if any of the above equipment is of interest, feel free to drop me a line!

Music none

More music

03/11/2011 at 22:59 2 comments

Band practice continues apace, although with a large break as work bit hard. We’re tightening up the last few songs on the set, but just added another couple at the last practice. More to learn! We think we’ve found the location for the first event, but it’s still to be fully organized.

The work band played another team event recently, and I played a whole two songs this time. I wasn’t hit by nerves at all during the first song, and just focused on not screwing up, which I didn’t. It was only midway through the second song that the fingers began to shake a bit, but it was never much and didn’t impact my playing. I was just pleased to get through without totally wrecking things.

I added another piece of equipment recently. I added a pick holder, for all of $3, which is attached to the back of the headstock. Some songs I use a pick, and some I don’t, so I needed somewhere to put the pick when it wasn’t being used, where I wouldn’t lose it. It solves the problem nicely.

Music Bass, Guitar, Skidmore

Music update

12/28/2010 at 14:02 No comments

It’s been some time since I mused on guitars and music, the last being my joining a band and my first practice session with them. So, how have things gone on that front?

To be quite honest, about as well as I could have hoped for. After a couple of months I’m up to speed on all their own material (which tends to have simpler bass lines) and most of the covers. We’re also adding more to the set list each week, which makes it a fun challenge, as well as a very varied bunch of songs to play. I grow in confidence with each practice session, and all the extra practice I’ve been doing shows. It helps that everyone has been very supportive in building my confidence.

There still remain several challenges, however. One of the biggest is that the remaining tracks that I have to get nailed are all the ones with the more complex bass patterns, often having bass out front, with no guitars to hide any of my screw ups. At least I can see progress on those that I’ve tried so far, moving from having no idea what to play, to playing bits badly, to at least making it through the song, even if losing it a bit here and there. Having got to this point though, I’m (mostly) confident that this is just a function of practice and putting in the hours to get the patterns into my head and fingers. Already I see changes in my playing, as when I do get it wrong I don’t freeze or panic, but move to where I should be. Of course, I’d rather I didn’t get it wrong in the first place….

The other, more major, challenge is that of actually playing in front of a live audience, something I’ve never done before. On that front, too, there has been progress. The week before Christmas the Nike IT band were playing at a team event, and I played one song with them, my first ever musical performance in front of a live audience. Did I mention ever? Although I hadn’t rehearsed with the band at all, the drummer and guitarist are common to both bands, and it was a song that we have practiced frequently as part of our own set, so I was very comfortable playing it.

It was quite a nerve-wracking experience, and my fingers were shaking considerably, which made fretting anything a real challenge. However, I made it through the song without screwing up the major items; the changes from verses to choruses, etc., all went perfectly. The only thing that wasn’t quite right was the little bass fill in the pre-chorus, where I just couldn’t get my fingers in the right places the first couple of times, but had it OK by the last one. However, these are really in the background of the track, and no-one except the regular bass player even noticed. By the final chorus, I’d even started to relax a fair bit, and was even able to look up a bit and take it all in.

It went over very well, and several people commented that I did a good job, as well as surprise as I hadn’t told anyone about my debut beforehand. The other band members were happy, and I got props from the regular bass player, perhaps the one person who’s opinion I was most interested in.

I’m now looking forward to the next opportunity to play, and I’m sure that the adrenaline will still be pumping for the next event. In some ways it’s similar to refereeing soccer, in that you have to be able to do something skilled in front of a (sometimes very) critical audience. In that case my experience in playing and involvement in soccer over many years gave me the confidence to get through the first few games.

In this case, it’s practice, practice and more practice that will build the confidence, although I’m sure that the nerves will still be highly strung come gig-time. Having done it once, though, I know that I can do it again, and I will be practicing real hard to get the rest of the songs up to speed.

Finally, on the equipment front, the Ampeg BA115 bass combo is doing the job nicely. It’s normally plugged into the mixer, and so the PA system, so I just use it as a monitor. I do have to run it near the max volume setting, which is a slight concern, but it’s doing the job so far. I’m tempted to get a second for home use, so I don’t have to keep unplugging everything, but running the bass through my Boss ME-50 multi-effects unit to my Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer is a good solution for practice at home, as I’m able to mix in the feed from my Mac for the backing track. Add in a pair of headphones and I can rock on without keeping anyone awake.

Guitar wise, I upgraded the Fender Squier bass to a real Fender American Standard Precision Bass. My plan was always to upgrade the Squier if this all worked out, so it wouldn’t have cost me much if it didn’t. Bought on eBay, I used the new bass straight from the shipping box at practice and the difference was noticeable, even with the scummy set of strings it had. However, I then saw another, older, American Standard on eBay, in the butterscotch finish, which looks just drop-dead gorgeous. So, I now have main and backup basses, for just in case. Well, that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.

So there you have it. IT geek, professional soccer player, game player, and, now, rock star. What a guy.

Music Bass, Fender, Guitar, Skidmore

Sunriver in the fall – day 1, later

10/23/2010 at 07:53 No comments

One of the aims of the weekend was to try one of the new Winsome games, and it was time to get Texas & Pacific on the table. This is another in the Wabash Cannonball/Chicago Express/Preussische Ostbahn series, with a couple of wrinkles for ranches, which is a new action, and allows to take a ranch cube, which scores $1 on dividend payout. The other change is that a railroad can Go West, which gives a special dividend payout, but effectively removes it from further operations in the game.

Overall, it’s a decent entry in the series, but the ranches don’t add a great deal of variation. I expect this to come out again, but it might be only an infrequent visitor to the table.

After a break for some food, we played some quiz show on the PS3 with all 7 of us. As long as the questions weren’t too focused on arcane Americana I could do reasonably, but frequently I was forced into guesses, some of which even worked out. Still, I did well enough overall. For a cheerleader named Muffin.

A this point it was time for some card games, starting with Tichu. This is one of my favorite card games, but Rita and I just couldn’t get anything going. My hands mostly sucked, and the only time I had a semi-decent hand Matt had a bomb to break it up. Not a fun session.

Greg had finished his game and was at a loose end, so we put Tichu to one side and picked up Die Sieben Siegel, another of my favorite card games. This one was a lot kinder to me, and I received some decent, if rather unusual, hands. Of interest was that each of my last 3 (of 5) hands had 6 red cards, the last one being void in both blue and purple. With a 15 card hand, to be void in a suit is unusual, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a void in 2. I took 2 points in the first hand then took 0 points (a perfect score) in each of the other 4, to win handily. Still one of my favorites.

Games Sunriver

Sunriver in the fall – day 1

10/22/2010 at 02:48 3 comments

Once more we are at Sunriver, this time for our fall Euro games gathering, and a couple of days of PTO makes for a nice long weekend. Matt and I travelled out together, took a couple of wrong turns getting to I5, but still had a quick journey out, as the road was fairly quiet, and I wasn’t hanging around.

We arrived just on 10pm, to find Doug, Alex, KC, Rita and Greg finishing up Foppen. We then started on a 7-player game of Sticheln, and opened a bottle of wine. Then we opened another bottle of wine. Let’s just say that we had a fun time, and the game was almost secondary.

The next morning we had our traditional visit to Sintra for breakfast, and a game of Pickomino while we were waiting. On getting back to the house, Matt, Rita and I played Macau, which Matt won easily. Each time I play this one I like it less, as it seems to devolve to who guesses best on which dice combos are going to come up, and has the building to match. Here it was Matt, and he took no penalty markers all game. I had a real slow start, but came back a bit, and Rita had the hardest time of all in getting the dice to come out in favorable combos, coming well to the back in points. I still really like the wind rose/dice mechanism, but would like to see it used in a game that didn’t have you guessing on which cards to choose.

After that I joined Greg, Matt and Doug in a game of Container, my first time playing this one. It’s more my sort of game, and I kicked some serious butt, winning easily. I liked the mechanisms in this one, do this to do that to do the next thing, but the wrinkle of having the other players have to buy/ship your goods and the pricing choices make for some interesting decision points. About the only part that I’m not too fond of is the blind bidding, but the rest of the game is good enough to outweigh it.

Whilst Doug went off to the store, we played one hand of Keltis, the card game. Pretty much Lost Cities, with more cards, and a few extra card types. It’s good, but not great, I think I prefer the 2-player version.

Games Sunriver, Train game, Winsome

A new gig

09/05/2010 at 15:00 No comments

I’ve mentioned in the past that a few of the guys at work run a small band, mostly comprised of IT folks. They mainly stick to gigs inside Nike, but they have done one or two outside events. Apart from the usual drums and bass, they have a few guitars and a couple of saxophones, and, until recently, they did have another guitar/keyboards player, but he left Nike. I’ve always been on the fringes, helping out where possible, and I’ve recently been working on the sound board, just to try helping with the guitar/mics balance. There was a time that we did talk about me joining in, but the last thing they needed was another guitar player, especially a crappy one.

Anyway, due to scheduling differences, they’ve recently had to skip a few potential events, and it’s forced them to focus on a few critical positions, where they don’t have cover and an absence seriously impacts their sound. Essentially this is drums and bass, as they can make do without one of the guitars, or the female vocalist. So, I was approached to see if I’d be interested in learning some bass to provide cover for their regular bass player. Sure, I’d give it a shot.

I found a guy selling a Squier P-Bass copy, along with a practice amp and bass effects modeling pre-amp, on Craigslist, and I managed to squeeze him down to $150, which I’d decided was my budget. I’ve toodled around with it in the garage, but wasn’t getting too far with it. I find bass a lot harder to figure out, as you’re not really carrying a tune, like when playing guitar. Anyway, I know where the notes are, so that part wasn’t too much challenge. Anyway, nothing much has come of that so far, and there haven’t been any practices.

However, a few of the guys also have an offshoot of the Nike band. This is a more serious venture, and they’ve even been writing some of their own material, as well as playing covers. Recently their bass player has had to give up playing with them, due to some back issues I believe, and they asked if I’d be interested in joining them for a practice. Initially I was not inclined, due to a lack of, well, skill, but after chatting with my good friend who plays with them, and agreeing that the best way to learn was to jump in with both feet, I agreed to meet for a practice session.

Well, that was Wednesday. The first issue is that a 15w practice amp is, in no way, able to cut it next to a drum kit, and with two guitars cranking. No biggie, as they’ve got sufficient gear to hook me up with a small pre-amp, and feed it direct into their sound system. The next thing was that I had no preparation for what they were playing, so each new song was preceded by a quick lesson on the notes. This worked out relatively ok for the songs I’d heard before (some covers and couple of their own tracks), but I was totally lost on the ones that were totally new to me. They even had an impromptu jam around a riff that one of the guys had been working on, which was fun to go along with, as they tried to fit a lyric to it.

Overall it was a total blast, and I enjoyed the evening immensely. Even better, I came acceptably close enough to not sucking that I was asked to come back again. Even the simple stuff I was playing made a significant difference to overall sound, and both guitarist dudes were happy with my contribution. I’m now in a band!

Of course, that does mean that I need to get some serious equipment. Whilst I’m happy with a cheap bass guitar for the moment, a band-sized amp was the first requirement. Fortunately, Labor Day weekend sees a large sale at Guitar Center, where I had my eye on an Ampeg BA115 100w bass combo. I was pretty disappointed to see, however, on checking the small print, that Ampeg was one of the manufacturers not taking part in the sale. So I was resigned to paying the normal price (ok, it’s still discounted from the regular MSRP), and almost didn’t go down to check it out. I’m glad I did, though, as it had been marked down to $299 from $379, more than the sale event discount. Add in a new, wider strap (after a couple of hours of practice I was starting to feel the effects of the weight cutting into my shoulder with the piddly strap that came with the bass), and some strings, and I’m all set for the next practice.

Finally, a joke I was told by the regular bass player for the Nike IT band.

Little Jonny decides he wants to learn bass guitar, and after hooking him up with a guitar and amp, his parents send him off for his first lesson. He comes back later in the evening all excited, and tells his parents that he learned all the notes on the E-string. The next day, he goes off for his second lesson, and comes back to tell his parents that he learned all the notes on the A-string.

The following day he goes for his third lesson, but doesn’t come home at the expected time. His parents are frantic with worry, until he finally gets back home at 2 in the morning, smelling of cigarette smoke and beer. ‘Where the hell have you been?’, asks his father. ‘Dad, I had my first gig!’

Ba-boom-tsch

Music Band, Bass, Guitar

Apple Magic Trackpad

08/26/2010 at 21:36 No comments

One of the recent releases from Apple that I’ve been thinking about is the Magic Trackpad. I’ve been using the Magic Mouse for some time now, and I’ve got used (mostly) to the gestures available on it, so I thought I’d try the trackpad, and picked one up at the weekend.

Removing it from the box and the plastic wrapping, it looks pretty sleek, and has a good feel to the surface, but the first issue was how to switch it on. It has a rounded, long compartment for the two AA batteries along the width of the device, and this also serves to raise the back edge to give an angle to the surface. I could see that one end of the compartment is where you insert the batteries, but the on/off switch is hidden at the other end, as i discovered when I RTFM. Duh, should have expected something sleek like that.

When it was powered up (it comes with batteries and ready to go) it was quickly synced with the iMac Bluetooth, and I was pointing away. However, when I came to try browsing in Safari I found that multi-finger gestures weren’t working. Back to the manual again, where I found that I open the Trackpad item in System Preferences. Uh oh, there wasn’t one there. Even a restart didn’t make it appear.

So, off to the forums, where I found that I had to do a system update. Remember that plastic wrapping on the trackpad? There’s this little sticker holding it together, and some teeny tiny writing that tells you to visit the website for the instructions/driver. This writing is so small that I can’t read it, and even with my reading glasses on it was still hard to make out.

Anyway, once the trackpad is connected, checking for system updates shows the correct software to be available, and it’s just a matter of installing (which involves a restart). Hey presto! everything works perfectly. That could have been a lot smoother, Apple.

In use the trackpad is pretty simple, and anyone used to an iPhone, iPad, or more recent MacBook (Pro) or Magic Mouse will be familiar with the range of gestures. Multi-finger taps, pinching, all that sort of stuff. Some of them are harder to get used to, however. I’m so used to clicking on the browser ‘back’ button that getting used to the 3-finger swipe for the same function is going to take some time, but I’m remembering more and more often as I use it.

Clicks are handled by either clicking the whole pad, or you can set it up for a soft-click, just by tapping it. Selecting, with soft clicks, is a case of double tapping and holding, then dragging to select, and a quick tap to finish selecting. Takes a little getting used to, but I’m becoming more adept at it.

Oh, and it only works with Snow Leopard, so a good reason to upgrade your system.

Overall, a fairly typical Apple product. Flexible, well thought out, and a very minimalist design. But those set up instructions really need to be rethought.

Technology Apple, Mac, Magic Trackpad, trackpad

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