gaming – Page 13 – dangermouse.net

Ark Nova

Today was games night, at a friend’s place. A few people couldn’t make it, so we only had four – which was perfect for a game of Ark Nova. I’ve played this once before, about six months ago, and wanted to give it another go. It’s a long game, and we began about 7pm, and didn’t finish until around 10:30. I came third, but had fun playing, so that was good.

The reasons I’m still up tonight writing this afterwards is that I made a loaf of sourdough this morning and set it aside to prove during the day, intending to bake it around 4pm before I went out for games. But my wife got home from work just before 6pm and said, “When were you going to bake this bread?”

If I let it prove overnight and try to bake it in the morning it’s going to be a mushy mess, so I had to bake it when I got home from game – now. Which means I need to stay up for an hour after I got home, rather than fall straight into bed.

Earlier today I started marking the final project reports for the university image processing course. I haven’t had time up to now, but I need to get them done over the weekend, as the professor has set a deadline for the marking to be completed. So guess what I’ll be doing all weekend?

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And another quick late night post

I think I still need to catch up a little on sleep after that ISO meeting a few days ago where I was waking up before 4am each morning. But I’m getting there.

This morning I had my weekly face to face ethics class at the local school with my Year 6 group. Half of them were away today, doing an orientation day at a nearby high school, since they’ll all be moving on to high school next year, after the Christmas holidays. (This is different in some countries, but here in Australia primary school is Years K-6 and high school is years 7-12.) Anyway, the remaining kids suggested that because half the class were away we should do something different and just have a general conversation about some topic of their choice. Not wanting half the class to miss the conclusion of the Determinism topic, I indulged them, and we actually talked about high school for most of the lesson. I made sure to steer the discussion to thought-provoking questions, like asking the kids if they thought they’d keep contact with friends who were not going to the same high school, or if they thought that expectations of behaviour and maturity would be different there, and so on. It was actually really interesting.

I asked the kids what they wanted to do after school as a career. One girl wanted to be a lawyer. Another girl said, “Three things. Number one: an artist.” Now, before the kids arrive, I get their early and set up the classroom by moving desks and making a circle of chairs so we can sit around it and talk with no distractions. I often have a few minutes to wait for them, and I’ve looked at the artwork they have pinned up all around the classroom, and I had noticed that this particular girl’s work is good, possibly the best artwork in the class. So I mentioned that I’d seen her artwork on the walls and thought it was good.

She continued, “Number two: A YouTuber.” So then we had a discussion about the realities of being a YouTuber, and how likely it was that you’d actually make any money out of it. Most of the kids were fairly realistic about it, saying you have to be really lucky to get subscribers and then the pay rate is pretty low per view, so you need millions of views. They actually seemed to know more about the details than I do! And then one of the boys said that he is currently making about $300 a month doing Twitch streaming of games! Wow.

Anyway, after this diversion I asked the girl what her third career choice was, expecting something else along similar lines, and she said, “Number three: a neuroscientist.”

After getting home from the class, I took a train into town to pick up a game I’d ordered: Azul: Queen’s Garden. My wife and I enjoy the first three Azul games, so I wanted to get this fourth one in the series. I browsed around a bit looking for any other suitable games to buy for the fortnightly games nights with my friends, but didn’t find anything that struck my fancy.

I got home just before midday and then went for a long walk with my wife and Scully, over to the Italian bakery at Cammeray (this is different to the other, closer bakery at Naremburn that we go to more frequently), where I had a slice of pizza and a small pastry with custard and raisins in it. This place makes the best pastry.

This afternoon I tuned into the live NASA feed of the Artemis 1 launch. I was a little worried that the countdown delay would push the launch into my online ethics classes for the evening, but they managed to launch it just before 6pm my time, so I got to see it take off just before beginning my classes.

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Games night and housecleaning

Friday was games night with my friends, and this week I hosted at my place. A few of the guys couldn’t make it, so we only had four of us, but that was good because we got stuck into a nice four-player game of Viticulture (Essential Edition).

This is a board game in which each player operates a vineyard and competes to fulfil wine orders in order to gain victory points. To fulfil an order—which are given on cards that you draw from a deck—you have to have the correct wines of the required quality. To make wine, you have to have grapes. To get grapes, you need to harvest from fields that have grape vines planted. And so you need to plant grape vines in your fields as the first step. Turn sequences go in years – you plant grapes in summer, and harvest and make wine in winter. You also have access to decks of cards that provide special people who give you the ability to do extra things or combine actions in useful ways. Other things you can do include training extra workers, or building various structures to help your vineyard become more efficient in various different ways. So there are lots of options.

İt’s fairly intricate, but straightforward to learn and understand. We all had fun playing it, and it was a moderately tight finish, although I think I concentrated on the wrong thing early on and ended up coming last.

After this we played a game of Welcome to the Moon. This has multiple different boards, but we actually played the same tower building one I’ve played before. These two games pretty much filled the evening.

Today I got stuck into housecleaning work. I cleaned the shower and bathroom, vacuumed the house, washed the kitchen floor, changed the damp absorbers in the closets and storage chests, cleaned all the spider webs off the balcony, and swept and cleaned the balcony of leaves and dust.

This morning I did the grocery shopping, and saw that fresh basil was o special, so I got some and for dinner tonight made pesto from scratch for pasta.

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Games night, and a very special lunch

Friday was online board games night with my friends, so I didn’t have time to write a blog entry. I took Scully for the usual couple of walks, had two ethics classes, and completed another week of Irregular Webcomic! strips assembled from the photos I took a couple of weeks ago.

For games we played Fruit Picking, Can’t Stop Express, Point Salad, CuBirds, Kingdomino, Just One, Stella: Dixit Universe, 7 Wonders. I managed to win the games of Fruit Picking and Kingdomino. Which is better than I usually do!

Today we dropped off Scully at doggie daycare and my wife and I went into the city for a super special lunch, to celebrate a major wedding anniversary. We went to Nel, a very fancy restaurant. It’s a fixed degustation menu – you just show up and they serve you – there’s no choice of different dishes, though they do cater to dietary requirements, so we forewarned them that my wife is vegetarian, and I don’t eat anything with coffee or tea in it.

The current menu is “A Night on Broadway”, inspired by Broadway musicals. Each dish was named after a song or feature from a stage musical. Here’s what we had:

The Book of Jesus Christ. A sweet potato tuille wth smoked eel cream. (My wife had a vegetarian cream.)

Is This Your Wand? Cheese and onion eclair with mushroom tapenade.

Frosty’s Diner. Beef brisket croquette with burger sauce, tomato water and basil oil shots. (Wife had a cheese croquette.) This was really good. The croquette was tender and juicy, and chasing it down with the tomato/basil shot was amazing – very flavourful.

Hakuna Matata. Pineapple glazed brioche with beef fat butter. (Wife had plain butter.)

Masquerade. Kingfish tartare with native plum jam, macadamia cream, apple and cucumber sauce, freeze dried rose petals. (Wife had smoked tofu tartare with the same toppings.)

French Revolution. Cheese soufflé with cauliflower soup.

Please Sir, Can I Have Some More? Pan fried salmon on tomato pearl barley porridge, pecorino, chives, black onion. This was really good. (Wife had marinated eggplant replacing the fish.)

Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina. Seared Murray cod, charred onion, mushroom, beef au jus, coriander parsley mojo verde. Reading the menu, I assumed this course would be beef, as it came in the right place, and that’s what Argentine is famous for, so I was surprised to get fish again. It was delicious. When I got home, I saw on the restaurant’s Instagram that this dish is indeed supposed to be beef, but it is cooked with coffee – so my dietary requirement kicked in and they replaced the beef with fish. (Wife had confit carrot instead of the beef/fish.)

Wicked Witch’s Hat. Pistachio daquoise, lime sorbet, passionfruit mousse, apple tuille. This was a really amazing dessert. It looks just like a witch’s hat! lots of good flavours and different textures.

Milk and Kibble. Toasted barley gelato, milk and dark chocolate pearls, sugar crisp, warm chocolate milk.

L’Amour: Petit-fours of chocolate, raspberry sauce, vanilla cream.

It was an amazing lunch. We spent 2.5 hours there, and had a really lovely time. On the way home we popped into a few shops to look at some things we wanted to check out. I bought the 6th and final volume of Peter Ackroyd’s History of England, finishing of this history series that I started reading several years ago.

Back home, I spent the rest of the afternoon working hard at housecleaning. I vacuumed, and then I did a task I’ve been putting off for months – sweeping and washing the balcony. It still had autumn leaves on it! And lots of spider webs and dust. I swept it all up and then washed the tiles down with soapy water before rinsing it off. Much better now. I really should clean it every week, but it gets nasty during winter.

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It’s not the rain, it’s the humidity

We had another 25 mm of rain today. But the worst thing is that the humidity hasn’t dropped below 90% all day (since 7pm last night), and was hovering around 99-100% for much of it. It’s not particularly warm (only 20°C maximum), but it feels stifling.

Before heading into the university for tonight’s tutorial session, I walked with Scully up to my wife’s work to drop Scully there, and by the time I arrived I was dripping with sweat, all my clothes clinging to my skin.

The tutorial session was a little short, as not many students showed up, and after answering a few questions from some of them, they drifted off early. So I could head home before it was too late. Earlier in the day I was mostly handling the morning ethics classes, the final ones on the Greed topic. Tomorrow I need to write the new lesson plan for Monsters!

In entertainment news, I’ve been watching the Fear Street trilogy on Netflix. It’s been in my “to watch” list for ages, and I finally decided I was in the mood for a slasher flick, so I watched the first one last week. There are a few slightly corny things (to be expected from a slasher film), but mostly I’m finding it to be fairly smart and well made. I’ve finished the second film in the trilogy and plan to start the final one tonight.

And I recently spoiled myself by getting the special 40th anniversary Call of Cthulhu Classic 2″ Deluxe Boxed Set (available here, scroll down). This is a reprint of the original boxed set rules from 1981, with five of the original adventures. A classic piece of roleplaying history – I couldn’t go past it. I’m looking forward to reading through all of this!

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Games night Friday, and humid Saturday

Last night was board games night with friends, so I didn’t have time to write a blog entry. Most of the guys happened to have other things on, so only three of us attended. But this gave us a chance to play a long game, without worrying about people showing up late or leaving early.

We played Arkham Horror. Three turned out to be a good number for this cooperative game, where we’re pitted together against the Cthulhoid forces of darkness.

I took an investigator role, while the others played the muscle, and the mystical. My main task was moving around the map board and working to ward off Doom as it slowly accumulated in various places, while the muscle guy intercepted the various Cthulhu mythos monsters that kept spawning and trying to hunt us down. The mystic was searching for clues and artefacts to help us. The scenario we played was protecting Innsmouth from an incursion of Deep Ones, manipulated by Dagon and Hydra behind the scenes. We had to uncover enough clues to work out how to summon the malign entities and then trust that we could defeat them with a combination of muscle and occult knowledge.

After 3.5 hours of play which became increasingly tense, we confronted the main horrors and beat them, only to discover that we couldn’t figure out what the winning condition of the game was. The owner of the game later told us that he’d missed a single card in the setup stages of the scenario – and that card happened to be the one informing us of the winning condition! But we’d satisfied its requirements and won the game, even if we were confused about it at the time. It was a tight-run thing – there were several decisions that could have led us to disaster along the way, so it felt like a sweet, hard-earned victory.

Besides the usual online classes, I spent time yesterday and today doing Darths & Droids writing and comic making. Oh, and I did some major housecleaning today, doing a long overdue thorough dusting of everything in the living room, polishing up the wooden furniture, and vacuuming floors.

The other main thing to talk about is, of course, the weather. We’ve had more intermittent rain, and the humidity this week has shot through the roof, hovering around 80-100% at different times of the day. Sydney has had 170 rainy days so far this year, today being the 295th day of the year. The annual mean is 99 rainy days. Since we broke the annual rainfall record back on 6 October, we’ve had more than 200 mm more rain. The forecast is for rain every day for at least the next week, with some really heavy rain tomorrow. There continue to be severe floods in rural areas.

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Free(?) car care(?)

Today I went to the tyre place where I had new tyres fitted for our car a few months ago. They gave me a complimentary 3-month check-up to check the pressure, wheel balance and alignment, and rotate the tyres. So I booked it in. When I dropped the car off, I told the woman that I’d noticed the key fob battery needs changing – it’s been intermittent the past couple of days, and for the mechanic to just be aware of that and they may need to open the door manually with the key.

The woman said, “Oh, we might have a spare battery lying around. We can change it for you.”

I was like, “Oh okay.” And went off to grab some lunch (with Scully) while they did the stuff. I walked over to a Japanese place I knew nearby and had a teriyaki salmon lunch set, with rice, salad, and miso soup.

When I came back to pick up the car, there was a different guy there. He said, “The service is complimentary, so that’ll just be $10 for the battery.” I was genuinely under the impression that the battery change, if they did it, would be complimentary. I told the guy so, and he said, “Well, we can take it back out and put the old one back in for you.”

I gave him a speechless look, and explained I never asked for the battery to be changed, because I actually have a spare at home and am capable of doing it myself, and I’d assumed the offer was complimentary.

To which he said, “Well, next time you’re in the area you can drop us off the other new battery.” I must have been dumbfounded for a few seconds, because at that point he sighed and said I could have the battery for free.

I don’t begrudge them charging, but the woman never told me it would cost $10, and if she had I would have definitely told them not to change it. Anyway, I ended up with a free battery change. But now I got home and looked at my key fob, and they’ve cracked it prying it open…

Tonight I’m playing online board games with friends. I came second in my first ever game of Point Salad.

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A big losing games night

Friday: Grocery shopping pickup, more work on my photography engineering lecture presentation, lunch with my wife while Scully was getting a haircut/groom, and then online games night with my friends tonight.

We played games of Boomerang Australia, Boomerang Europe, Codenames, Ticket to Ride (a new release of this classic game on Board Game Arena), Gartic Phone, 7 Wonders (twice), 6 Nimmt. I don’t think I won a single game, but that’s okay – we have fun chatting while playing.

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Random Sunday events

I did a longer run today. I am in a small online group where we share running updates. The group purpose is described as: “For those who enjoy running. And for those who don’t enjoy it but do it anyway.” I’m definitely in the latter set!

Anyway, someone yesterday posted that they’d completed their 5k for September. Which reminded me that I’ve been thinking of doing another 5k for a while, and getting one done before the end of the month seemed like a good goal, so I got out and did it today. That’s twice my normal distance. I don’t particularly enjoy it, but I at least feel familiar and somewhat comfortable running 2.5k, but 5k feels like a serious effort. I managed it in 27:00 flat, which is my third best time over the distance. And Strava also told me that my 2-mile split was my fastest 2 miles, at 16:49. So I’m feeling pretty good about that.

So good that I probably ruined the health gains by having two sweets at lunch. My wife and I walked with Scully to the Italian bakery (which is nearly 3km away, so almost 6km return walking trip). I got a chicken and leek pie, but (1) they didn’t have my favourite banoffee croissant, (2) the pies there are on the smallish side, (3) a pie and a banoffee croissant are filling enough, but the croissant is quite large, (4) I was tempted instead by a chocolate/pistachio scroll, (5) which is notably smaller in size, (6) I was really hungry after my run, (7) they had a tray full of bomboloni, which I’ve wanted to try before but they’ve always been sold out when I’ve looked for them. So I got the chocolate/pistachio scroll and a Nutella bombolone.

At last I asked for a Nutella one. The woman behind the counter confirmed, “A custard one?” I repeated, No, a Nutella one.” She gave me a box, and I walked out with my other purchases to find a seat to sit on with My wife and eat our lunches. After eating the pie, I opened the box. It was a custard bombolone. My wife took the hint that I was mildly incensed and took it back to the bakery for me and exchanged it for a Nutella one.

It was pretty nice, although I missed my favourite banoffee croissant.

This afternoon I tried to estimate my ELO chess rating. One of my friends is into chess, and has been relaying to our group news about the current feud between Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann (yes, it has its own Wikipedia article), which we’re all metaphorically munching popcorn over it as new developments occur. We saw the report of the tweet by Grandmaster Maurice Ashley:

This is shocking and disturbing. No one can be happy that this is happening in the chess world. Unbelievable!

One of my friends pointed out that we’re all currently much more excited and happy about chess news than normal.

Anyway, I’ve never played chess seriously in any sense, but I was curious if there was some quick online test I could do to estimate my rating. I Googled and found a few quizzes, but they involved analysing some 80 boards and submitting moves, and they said don’t spend more than 5 minutes on each board… And there’s no way I was going to invest that much time into this. But I managed to find a ten board quiz, and spent a total of maybe 5 minutes with it. It estimated my rating at 1335, which I originally thought sounded ridiculously high, given my amateurish experience with the game. But a bit of research shows this is the realm of the “hobby player”, one step below the level of anyone who plays in a local chess club. Which sounds more reasonable than what I thought it meant. A few of my friends tried the same quiz and got 1400, 1435, and 1590.

Okay, so remind me never to play chess with them. 😀

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Welcome to the Moon

Friday night was board games night at a friend’s place. A few of the regulars couldn’t make it, so it was the four of us. We had a barbecue for dinner, with sausage sandwiches, with plenty of onions of course.

First game off the rank was Welcome to the Moon, a sequel/variant of Welcome to…, which we’ve played a lot both in person and online during our virtual games nights. In this new version, it’s themed along establishing a moon colony in the retro-future of the 1970s (compared to the original game, which was building a 1950s style housing estate). There are actually 8 separate boards to play, which are effectively 8 different games. In all of these games, you flip up a set of 3 communal cards, and each player selects one of the three to score – writing it down in various different scoring zones on their personal board. It diverges very quickly, as each person chooses different things and ends up with their scoring board filling up in different ways, which begins to add constraints on further scoring.

We played the first Moon board, which is a rocket blasting off, and then skipped a few and played one about building residential towers under a dome on the moon. They were very different and indeed like two different games. I lost the first one, but scored an equal victory in the second one.

After this we played Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate. All players start out as fantasy adventurers, exploring a part of the city, until events lead to one of the players being revealed to be a traitor/monster. At that point, the traitor gets a special rules scenario to read, while the other players get the matching hero scenario to read. These establish different winning goals for each side. In the game we played, I ended up being the traitor, and my goal was to kill at least 2 of the other three players before they could escape. Unfortunately this proved far too difficult, and the heroes escaped from my evil clutches. So they all won and I lost.

To round out the night we played several rounds of Apples to Apples. This is a good light game to end the night on as we were starting to get tired and thinking about heading home.

Other things on Friday: grocery shopping, and a couple of ethics classes.

Saturday: I spent much of the day struggling with writer’s block, trying to complete one new Darths & Droids strip. And avoiding going outside during the rain. Except for attempting to take Scully for a walk during a dry period, and ending up getting rained on halfway.

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