gaming – Page 2 – dangermouse.net

Games night and sketching day

Friday was online board games night. We played some Jump Drive, then Space Base, and Just One.

We finished early and then I watched KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix. Some of the kids in my critical thinking classes have been talking about it and said it’s good, so I decided I should give it a go. It was pretty good, an interesting blend of modern K-pop songs and traditional Korean demon folklore. I describe it as the sort of thing you’d like if you liked Frozen but thought it could use more K-pop and demons.

Today I did a 5k run. I started thinking I could do another 7.5k, but decided to cut it short towards the end as I’d had enough. I cleaned the bathroom and shower thoroughly. Worked on some Darths & Droids comics.

After lunch my wife and I took Scully for a drive over to Balmoral Beach and we sat and did some sketching. Here’s the rotunda:

I kind of ran out of room at the top of the page so I couldn’t fit in the top of the roof! And here’s a view towards the water.

While we were there we popped into the Bather’s Pavilion to make a dinner booking for our wedding anniversary later in the year, to make sure we can get a table. This is our favourite fancy restaurant and we’ve had several other anniversary dinners here.

Back at home, my wife took Scully out for a toilet before dinner… and got stuck in the lift! In all the time we’ve lived here, we’ve never got stuck int the lift before. She used the emergency phone inside the lift, but they said it would take about an hour for someone to come. She called me on her mobile phone and I found a member of the complex’s executive committee, and fortunately she had a key to get into the lift motor room in the garage and knew how to put it into an emergency mode that made it descend to the basement and open.

She was stuck in there with one of our new neighbours, and a new new neighbour, living in the same apartment. She was moving in today as a flatmate in the other bedroom. So they got a good introduction while stuck in the lift together.

For dinner I made a chick pea korma. I adapted this recipe for chicken korma, replacing the chicken with chick peas, and I served it with some broccoli on the side for greenness. It turned out pretty well, but next time I think I’ll blitz the cashews and onions with the Bamix stick blender instead of the food processor, because as soon as I turned it on the whole sauce smeared onto the sides of the processor and the blades didn’t have much chance to turn it into a smooth paste. So it was a little lumpy, but still tasted good.

Rainy running and Pathfinder session 3

Friday night was games night, and although this week was scheduled as face-to-face in the fortnightly rotation, we played Pathfinder online as it was a good day for all of the players to attend. This is the campaign my friend began running back in March, with the second session in May. In this third session we continued exploring the underground complex we’d been led to by a map last time.

We entered a chamber with an ominous skull-shaped platform above surrounding water, with an ominous statue looking down at it. Here manifested what we learnt to be a projection of a demon-like figure, with horns and wings. He was talkative and tried to cajole us into signing contracts for power in an ominous-looking floating book. In exchange for this power, we were to spend eternity in his servitude after our deaths. We spent enough time looking at the book to notice that Nana Slimebristle seemed to have signed such a contract, although with many crossed out parts and emendations added in. This was the Nana whose grave we’d found in session one, empty, with the dirt pushed aside as though something within had climbed out.

With this puzzle piece falling into place, and the demon thing starting to threaten us to sign the book or else prepare to die, we noped out of there quick smart, basically turning tail and running. We managed to get away without being caught, so that seemed a sensible course of action. While deciding what to do, we felt a force drawing us north, where we found a cave and decided to camp for the night.

Orcs attacked during the night and we had to fight them off. Partway through the battle an old, haggard, kinda undead looking woman appeared and helped us. Yup… it turned out to be Nana Slimebristle. We talked and she seemed teed off at the demon Vrasted, so we offered to help her. She suggested we travel north to the mountains to retrieve a magical thingy of hers that she’d lost there or something. And there we ended for the night.

Earlier in the day I’d done the usual grocery pickup and critical thinking classes. After completing my morning batch of classes, I drove with my wife and Scully over to Mix Deli, the new outlet for Lil’ Mix bakery, where we got some lunch: cream cheese filled Jerusalem bagel and a mushroom pie, and some blueberry banana bread for sweets. It was incredibly busy, I think because we were there at the lunch rush, which we might not have been before.

It rained heavily overnight and showered on and off all day today. I tried to pick a dry period to go for a run, but failed dramatically. It began raining almost as soon as I left the house and was heavy for most of the run. Nevertheless, I exerted myself and did 7.5k today instead of my normal 5k. It felt longish, but I didn’t feel too bad afterwards, and completed the distance in just over 43 minutes.

This evening I did a sketching challenge with my wife. We both started on a drawing at the same time of this old photo I took at Bronte Beach:

I just used a 2B pencil and here’s my effort:

My wife is still working on adding watercolour to hers.

Catching up with old neighbours

Friday I did my usual routine: pick up groceries, teach a bunch of ethics classes, then in the evening it was board games night. This week was online, but only three of us could make it. We played a game of Parks, which is a longish game, so that took up some time. I came a close second, though I thought I was in with a good chance of winning before the bonus pints were calculated. We cut the night short after that as one player wanted an early night and the two of us who remained decided not to continue with just two people.

Both Friday and today were cold and rainy as we continue to be hit by this southerly weather. I was woken in the middle of the night by several long rolls of thunder, and there has been intermittent dry spells and thundery showers today.

Today I cleaned up the house and I also went to the liquor store to stock up on wines because tonight we had guests over. Our old neighbours who had to move out of the apartment next door when the owner sold it (they were renting). This is what’s resulted in us getting the new neighbours recently (the new owners). We were friendly with the old neighbours, and they’d minded Scully a few times for us. So we invited them over for some pre-dinner drinks and snacks to catch up. They were keen to hear about our trip to Europe and they had various news about their doings as well.

I didn’t go for a run, though I kind of wanted to. But the weather is so cold and miserable, I didn’t want to end up in a rain shower and freeze. I don’t mind running in the rain if it’s warmer, and I don’t mind going out in coldish weather if it’s dry, but the combination is nasty. And it’s been very cold. Thursday was the coldest July day recorded in Sydney for three years, and some suburbs recorded their coldest July day in 35 years. Around 12°C maximum, which really is about as cold as it ever gets here. (It may not sound so bad for people used to colder climates, but for subtropical people like me this is unbearable.)

Neighbours moving in

Friday I did the usual: Pick up groceries in the morning, teaching a bunch of critical thinking/ethics classes online, then Friday evening board games night. It was a fairly small grocery shop this week, after last week’s big one. I ordered online, except for fresh fruit and vegetables, as I normally do, and selected those myself before picking up the order. For some reason the supermarket included a dozen eggs in my order, even though I didn’t order any. Well, given the scarcity and price of eggs these days I’m not going to complain about getting a dozen free. So for dinner I decided to make quiche and use up most of the previous dozen.

Games night was meant to be in person this fortnight, but one guy was away skiing and two others recused themselves due to sniffles and not wanting to spread potential cold or flu viruses. With very small numbers for in-person, we converted it to online, and ended up with five participants, including the guy who was down at the snow, so that worked out pretty well.

We played Marrakech to start, then a long game of Castles of Burgundy. I didn’t win either. Then we moved to Just One, which is really optimal at 5 players. We got off to a bad start, missing the first two words, but recovered to score a mediocre 11 from 15.

Today I slept in a bit, still catching up on sleep after getting over the jetlag. I think I’m good now though. Scully had her annual checkup and vaccinations today, and my wife took her in to the vet for those. I went for a 5k run. The weather was cooler today and I ran my best time since getting back from Europe. I’m also getting back into the groove there after three weeks break.

And our new neighbours moved in today. We didn’t see much of them, but heard the movers bringing in furniture. Presumably we’ll bump into them in the next few days and have a proper introduction.

This afternoon I did a task I needed to get done for Standards Australia. We decided to revise our document outlining the case for international participation in the standardisation of photography technology, and I get to go over and update the text. I rewrote parts to reflect various changes in applications of photographic technology over the past 5 years or so since we last did this. I had to look up Government policy on things like self-driving cars to update statements about them and the role of cameras in safety monitoring. At the last update, the text said that officially released policy was that self-driving cars would be on Australian roads by 2026, but the latest update now says between 2026 and 2031. So it seems they’re pushing the date out as they realise the technology isn’t mature enough yet.

Tonight for dinner we took a long walk to the pizza place at Naremburn. We tried to get a table at our favourite pizza place, but they had a large booking in the outdoor section, so we couldn’t get in. So we decided to go further to this other one. It’s a bit more old school – they only have the traditional sort of pizza toppings that places had 30 or 40 years ago, and none of the new “gourmet” variations that many pizza places have now with ingredients like satay chicken or figs and gorgonzola.

Games milestones and sketching back home

Friday was busy with ethics classes. I added a new class to Friday at 11:00, so I had even less time in between than previously. I did pick up groceries in the morning before my first class though.

In the evening was online board games night. There were only three of us participating this time (normally we can have 4–6). We played Jump Drive, Knarr, Splendor, Luxor, Cat in the Box, and Nova Luna, all on Board Game Arena. I won the game of Splendor, which is unusual—I’m normally very bad at this game. But I was surprised when Board Game Arena popped up a triumphant dialogue informing me that it was my first win ever at Splendor. I didn’t realise I’d been that bad at it!

And then later when I won another game—I forget exactly which game it was after—BGA informed me that I’d just won my 50th all-time game on the platform. Which I also found a little surprising, given how much we use BGA and how many games I’ve played overall. Honestly if you’d asked me how many games of just Jump Drive I thought I’d won, I would have estimated about 50. Clearly my estimations of my own competence are too high!

Today was a combination of trying to be lazy and staying at home, and actually going out for long walks with my wife and Scully. Before lunch we walked out to the kitchen shop because I wanted to buy a steel steamer tray for our pots, not necessarily to steam anything, but rather to use as a spätzle maker. I’ve been inspired by our trip to Europe to make spätzle at home, and I needed something with holes in it to push the dough through into the boiling water. I found a steamer with multiple stepped sizes on the bottom that could fit either our smaller or larger cooking pot. I also bought a silicone bowl scraper to use to push the dough through.

This afternoon we went on another walk, over to the Flat Rock Brew Cafe, where we sat and both did some sketching. I had a beer while doing mine, and my wife got a coffee. Here’s the outdoor seating area where we sat:

For this one I used the new coloured brush pens that I bought in Vienna, for the first time. So it’s a bit of an experiment. I wanted to colour the faces of the people, but the pens are too dark and I realised I should have left them blank instead. Oh well, live and learn!

And here’s the front of the establishment:

Tonight I used the new steamer to make spätzle, and we had it with vegetarian sausages, fried mushrooms, and sauerkraut. A real central European dish! And the spätzle turned out really well, so I’m very pleased with my purchase.

Fixing broadband… and glasses. And some nice food

Friday was online games night with my friends. After a busy day of ethics classes, and going for a 5k run in between.

In one of my classes, since we were talking about the topic of Science Fiction, the idea of AI came up, and what sort of things it might do in the future. One kid said:

Whenever I talk to ChatGPT, I use “please” and “thank you”, to make sure it doesn’t turn against me in the future.

My 5k run was very fast. The day was cold, only 14°C when I did my run around 11am. It meant I didn’t get hot and sweaty, and I managed my second best time ever for the distance, with 26:18. I was very pleased with that.

After lunch I went to pick up my new prescription glasses for use when working at the computer. I mentioned on Tuesday that they’d put the wrong prescription in, making them for close reading instead, and had to change them. I tested them out at the optometrist and they felt better, being good for reading something held with my arm fully outstretched. But when I got home I discovered that they were still focused too close. I had to lean forward uncomfortably in my chair from my regular posture to see the screen clearly. I used a tape measure to measure the distance from the screen to my eyes. The optometrist had said that screen-reading glasses are set for focus at 60cm. Which I discovered to be roughly true, in fact it was closer to 55cm where I felt my vision was clearest. But then I sat in my normal computer posture and measured the distance from the screen to my eyes, and it was 70cm. By the time I figured this out, it was after 5pm and the optometrist had closed for the day.

We stayed in for dinner and I made frittata with mushroom and tomato. After that I played online games. We played Knarr, Welcome to the Moon, Jump Drive, FLip 7, CodeChains (a game one friend invented and implemented on a Discord bot; it involves linking pairs of words into chains and then everyone trying to guess the same word that is being clued by both words on either side of every link), Just One, and Word Traveller. A lot of short games for variety.

First thing this morning I phoned the optometrist about my glasses and explained the problem. I said I didn’t want the second pair that I’d left there yesterday made with the same prescription – I needed it balanced to focus an extra 10-15cm away. They asked me to come in so they could check my eyes with the proposed correction to ensure right distance.

So after my wife returned from the gym with the car, I drove over to the optometrist. They remeasured my eyes to make sure and got the same refractive error, then wrote a prescription for new lenses to set a focal distance at 70cm as I requested. They said they’d get my second pair made with the new prescription and when they are ready I can swap the first pair back for new lenses. Fortunately this is under warranty so it won’t cost me any extra!

On the way home I stopped off at the Italian cake shop to pick up a cake to take to my mother’s place this afternoon. I got a chocolate and hazelnut torte. And then after my wife got home with Scully from her dog grooming appointment, we bundled into the car for the long drive to my mother’s place.

We arrived just before 3pm. My mission was to configure their broadband Internet and VOIP phone, which had stopped working when we deactivated their previous ISP account, as I mentioned on Thursday. I prepared by printing out a bunch of configuration info from the new ISP.

When we got there, I checked the ports of the modem/router. The phone was plugged into the only VOIP socket. The broadband was plugged into the second of 4 LAN ports. I moved it to the first LAN port, and bingo, the Internet came on! I could browse websites and access my mother’s email. That was easy.

But the VOIP phone still wasn’t working. I had some configuration information to enter into the modem, changing the old ISP server and proxy settings and entering a new VOIP password. I tried this, but it didn’t seem to work. I fiddled around a bit with it, but after a few minutes decided to contact the ISP phone tech support. I chose the new ISP for my mother because I’ve been very happy with their support on my own account, and they were brilliant again.

I got a very helpful guy who did some remote diagnosis stuff and then asked what router I was using. I said it was one supplied by the previous ISP. He said it’s possible that the VOIP was locked to that ISP and I’d need to get a new router, but he’d try a few things first. After changing some settings fruitlessly, he put me on hold while he contacted a co-worker with more experience, and together they did more diagnostic stuff and we explored the modem/router’s advanced settings. Eventually he tried turning off the firewall and lo! The phone started working! Aha! The other guy said the router’s default firewall settings were extremely restrictive, and it wasn’t letting the VOIP port through. They asked if I was okay leaving the firewall off, and I sort of hemmed and hawed and said I’d feel better if it was on. So they went back into the configurations and set up a firewall pass-through for the VOIP port, turned the firewall back on, rebooted the modem, and voilà!

We tested the phone, dialling out (to my wife’s mobile), and in (from my wife’s mobile) and it worked with no further problem. Phew! The tech support was really good. They had two of them on my call for over an hour, and they were determined to find a way to get it working without me having to go buy a new router. So kudos to Aussie Broadband – highly recommended if you’re after an Australian ISP.

We left my mother’s place later than we’d expected, and got hungry on the way home. We decided to stop at a place soon after we got off the freeway and back into Sydney’s outer suburbs (still half an hour drive from home). We went to Kipling’s Garage Bar at Turramurra, a place we’ve been to a couple of times before. We had a few tapas-style dishes to share, including arancini balls, and pulled duck with sesame chips:

And roasted cauliflower tacos:

Also some backed haloumi and for dessert a sticky date pudding. All really good. Then it was a drive back home for the evening.

Incognito Art

Friday I had my regular ethics classes, and in the evening board games night with my friends. We assembled at one guy’s place, and the five attendees played games such as Knarr, Faraway, Landmarks. Knarr was new to me, and really enjoyable. But we only played once as it’s only up to four players and our fifth arrived partway through the first game. We played Landmarks I think four times, since we were all keen to give a go at being the clue giver in the game. It’s a frustrating role, but in a socially fun way.

Today I did my 5k run and I managed to record my third best time! 26:26. My second best is 26:24, just two seconds faster. The best is a strangely anomalous 25:59, which I set on a much flatter route that I’ve only ever tried once. And to be honest I’m wondering if the tracker GPS got the distance right. Perhaps I should try that route again some time.

This afternoon my wife and I took Scully for a ride on the ferry.

We headed into the city. The day was cool and cloudy.

From the ferry terminal at Circular Quay we walked up past the State Library, through The Domain (a park) to the Art Gallery. Nearby is a gate into the Royal Botanic Gardens, where there was an art exhibition on at the Garden Gallery: the Incognito Art Show (which I mentioned previously). My wife had submitted three pieces for the show and wanted to see what else was available, and if any of hers might be on display at the moment. They weren’t, but they probably will be at some point over the next month or so that the artworks are on sale.

We stopped afterwards at the nearby restaurant in the Domain to have a drink and a snack before heading home. We walked back and had a quick look around The Rocks while waiting for our ferry. Then we hopped on the ferry and headed home.

The sun had come out and was just setting as we travelled back.

A nice day out, but after that run in the morning and all the walking, I’m pretty exhausted!

Gaming night and SEO “DMCA” link trolling

Friday was games night with my friends. We’d planned to swap online games for real life gathering this week, due to next week co-opting the regular real life event for our online Pathfinder game. But one guy had a cold so couldn’t come, and the rest of us were a bit lukewarm, so we converted it back to online.

We played Space Base, Just One, and Harmonies. I was happy to get a second game of the last one, since I enjoyed my first game of it. And this time I managed to win with three players, so that was good!

Today we drove up to Gosford for a pre-Mother’s Day lunch with my mother and brother. The traffic was truly awful. It normally takes an hour door to door. We left 15 minutes early, thinking we’d be nice and early…. but we ended up 45 minutes late! The trip took a full two hours. The traffic in Sydney getting up to the freeway was atrocious; in the first twenty minutes we barely got walking distance from home. The freeway was fine, moving nicely. But when we got off at the other end the traffic was just as bad as in Sydney.

Anyway, we had a nice pizza lunch and caught up with various things. We gave my mother the gifts we’d got in Japan and New Zealand. We headed home after wards and the drive back was much easier, taking basically an hour.

When I checked my email at home, I found an ominous looking message, which I reproduce here in full, with one redaction:

Dear owner of https://www.dangermouse.net/travel/tanzania2018/day07.html,

I represent the Intellectual Property division for Big Cat Cheetah. We have identified an image belonging to our client on your website.

Image Details: https://i.imgur.com/KDsoHSP.jpeg
Location of Usage: https://www.dangermouse.net/travel/tanzania2018/day07.html

We require that you credit Big Cat Cheetah for this image. Please add a direct and clickable hyperlink to
[link to website removed]
either beneath the image or in the footer of the page. The anchor text should be “Big Cat Cheetah”. This must be completed within the next five business days.

Please understand the seriousness of this request. Simply removing the image will not suffice. If you do not comply within the given timeframe, we will have to start legal proceedings under case No. 72134, following the DMCA Section 512(c) guidelines.

For historical image usage, you can check the Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org.

This is an official notice. We value your prompt response and cooperation. Please correspond in English.

Regards
James Harris
Trademark Attorney

Citi Legal Services
1 Beacon St 12th floor
Boston, MA 02108

james@clexperts.org
www.clexperts.org

I immediately recognised this as ludicrous because—although, yes—there are photos of cheetahs on that web page of mine, they are photos that I took.

I own these photos. I am the copyright holder. If someone is really trying to get me to remove them from my website or demand credit for them, then screw them. I did a quick web search and found that Citi Legal Services does (at first glance) appear to be a real law firm at that address in Boston, as stated on (what appears to be) their web site. But all is not as it seems.

Firstly, if you click the imgur link (it’s safe), you’ll notice that the image they’re claiming I “stole” isn’t even the same as either of my cheetah images.

I dug further and searched for whether this is a legitimate law firm, and found this blog post by someone else who had received an almost identical email, with the details appropriate to their website swapped in. I also found a thread on reddit with the identical template, and advice from several people that this is a search engine optimisation (SEO) scam.

In short, no, Citi Legal Services is not a real law firm. Their website is utterly fake, and as pointed out by the above-linked blog, mostly AI-generated. The address they claim to have is an abandoned building. The “lawyers” don’t actually exist.

This email is a scam intended to scare people into linking to the target website in order to drive up their search engine ranking. Hopefully by reproducing it here I’ll also help any future people who get a similar email and go searching online for advice.

With that done, I’m marking it as junk email and happily ignoring it.

D&D and Election Day!

Friday I had my usual ethics classes, and prepared for a night of Dungeons & Dragons with my friends. I had five of them over to my place and we played from 6pm to about 10:30.

In the last session they’d started to deal with the curse placed on them by the God of Swords: kill 9 people in 9 days with 9 different swords, or die! Now they had a lead from an old sage who wanted them to recover some magical artefacts from an ancient vault hidden in the hills a half day’s ride from the town they were in. He said there were rumours that the place was now overrun with snake people – suitable targets for despatching with swords if they got the chance.

They reached the hidden vault and found their way in via a ruined lookout tower, and discovered a large chamber almost filled with what looked like a black rectangular block of absolute darkness. They figured out it was solid and highly magical… and there was a giant horned skull resting on top of it. Needless to say there were plenty of shenanigans and some fighting against snake people and some cool magical things, and we all had a great time!

This morning I got up and collected the groceries from the supermarket. Normally I do this on Friday but for the third week in a row something was happening so I had to postpone to Saturday. I went for a 5k run, and I pushed myself and recorded a time of 27:02, which I’m very pleased with. I ran past a polling place, because…

Today is the federal election. We’d already voted back on Wednesday, so didn’t have to head out to a polling place today, which was nice. I read a story that for this election 47% of the electorate had already voted prior to today’s official election day. This is a record number of pre-poll votes. It’s good that we make it so easy for people to vote.

It’s now 2 and a bit hours after the close of polls in eastern Australia and in early counting it looks like our left-leaning Labor government is going to win with an increased majority. There’s a big swing away from the conservative Liberal Party, and it seems certain that their leader Peter Dutton will lose his own seat in Parliament. This is a big change from before Trump was sworn in as US President in January, when the conservatives were leading all the polls. Our swing back away from the conservatives hasn’t been as stark as in Canada at their election last week, but Trump definitely had an effect, causing Australians to react by also rejecting our own conservative party.

We shall see the full results in the coming days.

Games night, games day

Friday I had my usual four ethics classes, continuing the Antarctica discussion. I found this topic a bit tricky to keep the kids engaged, so I rejigged some of the questions to prompt more detailed logical thinking and get their brains working more. Like thinking about what possibilities might happen when the Antarctic Treaty comes up for renegotiation in 2048, which I point out is within their lifetimes so they will get to see what actually happens in real life.

Friday was also Anzac Day, so my wife was home for the public holiday, and all the shops were closed. This pushed my usual Friday morning grocery pickup to today (Saturday). After doing that I did my 5k run.

Last night was online board games night, though a few people were away, so we only had four people. We played a new game, Easy Peasy, which is a fairly simple card game. After one game we characterised it as Uno with more complexity and more luck. It felt like a very random shoot-out. There was an extremely obvious strategy (get rid of your high cards as fast as possible), tempered by random chance deciding if you could manage to do that or not. Needless to say we didn’t bother playing it again. I can’t even recommend it for a kids’ game, as it’s significantly more difficult to learn and understand the scoring than Uno, for no more fun.

After this we played some of the usual suspects: A couple of games of Jump Drive, Just One, It’s a Wonderful World (which I won!).

Today I played a game of Root with my wife. She played the Marquise de Cat, I played the Eyrie, and we used a clockwork bot Alliance, with no Vagabond. We also tried the winter map for the first time ever. It was a super close game. I won, but my wife could have won on her turn before mine if she’d only had a bird card in and, and if I hadn’t won, the bot Alliance would have won next turn.

For dinner I made okonomiyaki, which we haven’t had for a while. Yum!