Tag: gaming

Late Friday post on Saturday morning

Friday was busy and I neglected to make my daily post, so I’m dong it on Saturday morning.

I began Friday with writing a last few Irregular Webcomic! scripts over breakfast. Then it was off to the supermarket for the weekly grocery shopping. It was a smaller load this week, with not much running out since last week. I got some fresh fruit and vegetables and a few bits and pieces like a bag of lentils and a block of cheese – and some toothpaste since it was on sale for $2 off. There are some products I only ever buy when they are on sale, and just keep enough of a stockpile so that I can wait until next time they are on sale. Ice cream I never buy at full price either, although it often runs out before the next sale and I have to make do with no ice cream for a week or two!

Back home I got stuck into photographing Lego and miniatures sets for the batch of comics that I’d just finished writing. I started at 10:00, after unpacking the groceries, and finished after midday, just in time for lunch.

In the afternoon I took a bit of a break from comicking and processed and posted some old photos from a trip to Thailand back in 2005. Then I got stuck into assembling the comics from the photos taken in the morning, and finished off half a dozen or so before my wife came home from work with Scully. We all went out for dinner, to a nice French creperie. Since it was very cold and we had to sit outside with Scully, I had some mulled cider to wash down my galettes and crepes. Mmmm.

Back home, my friends began an impromptu games night, interstitial to our scheduled fortnightly games nights. We’ve been working on a custom word list for skribbl.io (an online implementation of a Pictionary-like drawing game), since the default word list skews very American. We got everyone to submit a few hundred words and came up with a list of over 1300 custom words to draw. We have things like “lamington”, “echidna”, “Mister Squiggle”, “Circular Quay”, and so on, as well as more generic things. It was loads of fun, and actually a bit more challenging as some of the words we listed were quite difficult to draw.

New content today:

Sports and games

This morning dawned bright and clear and I took the opportunity to go play a round of golf at my local course. It’s only 9 holes, but since I was by myself I hit two separate balls on each hole and kept the scores independently. It was interesting how often the two balls ended up near each other. Hole 4 is a par 3, in which the tee off is over a creek gully dense with trees. It’s the most intimidating hole on the course for a beginner, but I’ve managed to reach a level where I can hit confidently over the creek and land near the green. Here’s where my two tee shots landed today (highlighted with arrows, because the balls are a little tricky to see, with Apple’s image processing rendering them very un-ball-like):

Hole 3 tee shots

I managed to get one ball in with just two more strokes for a par, but the other took 5. The next hole, number 5, is a par 4, and one tee shot was good, but the other skewed badly into the rough among some trees. By the time I recovered, I’d hit one ball twice and the other 4 times, and they ended up almost on top of one another:

Hole 5 twin balls

Each ball had some good holes and some bad ones. They ended up with totals of 64 and 59, both within my best-worst range of 66-55. By the end of it, my shoes and socks were thoroughly soaked, since the course was very muddy after the recent rain, and I’ve learnt from experience that it’s not a good draining course by any measure.

After golf, I had to go do the weekly grocery shopping, and it was a big one this week, with a lot of things having run out during the week that needed to be replaced. And then after shopping I had to go up to the post office. By this time most of the day had gone. For dinner my wife and I went out to our favourite local pizza place, which was really nice – I felt like some of their pizza tonight.

And tonight is virtual fortnightly games night with my friends. I’ve already played some 7 Wonders, and 6 Nimmt, and now we’re into skribbl.io, which is always hilarious.

New content today:

Trip into the city

I needed to go into the city today to buy some hard acrylic storage boxes for Magic: the Gathering cards. Not for storing cards, but for packing them up for shipping by post. I’m selling off part of my collection of cards, dating back to 1995, both to raise a bit of money while I’m unable to sell my photography prints at markets due to COVID closures, and to free up some storage space at home.

It was the first time I’ve taken the train into the city centre for months – probably since March or February – although I did walk across the Harbour Bridge into the city on one occasion for a brief bit of exercise and to take some photos. The trains were eerily empty for a weekday, and the city was too. There were a few people around, but maybe around 10% of the normal number I’d expect. I went to the game shop to buy the boxes, and I saw they also had copies of Mythic Odysseys of Theros, the new D&D sourcebook. The alternative cover is amazingly beautiful, so I got that version. I’m looking forward to reading this one.

For lunch I stopped in a Japanese restaurant in the city and had a tempura prawn don bowl. It’s so nice being able to do something relatively normal like have lunch out in the city.

Back home I worked on some Darths & Droids writing and comic assembly, as well as packing those cards for posting tomorrow. Dinner was a fridge/pantry clean-up, eating the last of the fresh food and vegetables, before a big grocery shop tomorrow. Vegetarian sausages and baked potatoes.

New content today:

Train to Busan

Last night my wife went to read in bed early and left me with the TV, so I picked a movie from Netflix. I’d heard good things about Train to Busan. It’s a Korean horror movie, in which a guy and his young daughter are riding a train to escape… well, I won’t say any more. But yeah, I really enjoyed it, and recommend it. There’s one scene in particular which is just amazing and freaky. If you enjoy horror films, then you should like this one.

This morning I had my weekly Ethics class. We were finishing up the topic on animal rights, after four weeks. That’s too long for a topic, in my opinion… talking with the kids about the same topic for that long gets a bit repetitive. I wish all the topics were a maximum of three weeks long. The kids were a lot better behaved than last week – I guess the teacher had a chat with the worst offenders after my report last week. Most of the class went pretty well, although it descended into a bit of chatter towards the end, but still it was much better than last week.

On the way home I walked past the hardware store and picked up a big pack of microfibre cloths for cleaning various things, as well as some strong spring clamps, which I’m going to use to clamp one of my shoes when I glue the sole that is starting to lift on one side.

Back home, my friend who organises our fortnightly games nights posted an invitation to this Friday’s virtual online event. Actually, to set it up, I should show you the image he posted two weeks ago:

Games night invitation 1

It was an invitation in a very 1980s style. Well, today he went a little bit further back into the past:

Games night invitation 2

He said now he was going to look for more historical periods to use for future invitations, which prompted me to make this:

Aztec gaming meme

Looking forward to the games on Friday night! 😄

New content today:

New best time

I worked on some secret projects today, so don’t have too much to report.

I did go for another 5k run, now that the rain has finally stopped. And set a new best time.

5k run times

Previous best was 27:01, so I was keen to get under 27 minutes. And I managed 26:32 today, so that was a lot of time taken off! I’m definitely feeling that it’s a bit easier to maintain a slightly higher pace, now that I’m getting more used to it. Although when running laps of the oval there are often other people running around and overtaking me – there were maybe 5 or 6 of them today.

Oh, I got a Kickstarter package in the mail today – an old one that I backed some time ago, for some fantasy adventures for the Dungeon Crawl Classics roleplaying game. I still have a handful of Kickstarters that I backed as long ago as 2015 that are yet to deliver their rewards. I haven’t backed any recently, since I’m watching my expenditure a bit more carefully these days.

New content today:

Late Games Night post

It’s Saturday morning already and this is a catch-up post for last night, when it was our fortnightly board games night. Again we played virtually, using Board Game Arena to begin with. I played games of Kingdomino, Downforce, 7 Wonders (several games), and 6 Nimmt, before we moved on to skribbl.io, which is essentially an online version of Pictionary. I didn’t win any of the games – which is pretty usual for me as some of my friends are much more competitive and thus motivated to be a lot more careful with their strategy. I did come second in one game of 7 Wonders, which I’m happy with.

On Friday morning I had a Zoom meeting with Standards Australia for the follow-up to the ISO Photography meeting I had back in June. This is to brief the Australian photography experts on what happened during the (virtual) New York meeting, as well as to deal with some local Australian photography standards business (such as officially adopting recent ISO amendments, etc).

After that I took Scully for a walk to the fish & chips shop, to get myself some fish & chips for lunch. Then I spent the afternoon cleaning the car after last weekend’s road trip. Since it rained heavily, and we had Scully in and out of the car, it was pretty dirty, with mud in various places inside the car, as well as on the exterior. For the first time I actually removed the floor mats and washed them with detergent and hosed them off.

And in other news, a COVID alert was issued for my local supermarket, for anyone who shopped there between 10:30 and 11am on Monday. I shopped there on Monday morning, and I was there around 10:30, although I can’t remember if I’d left before 10:30 or was there for a few minutes afterwards. So it’s possible I was there at the same time as someone who has since tested positive. Official advice is that the risk of transmission is low, and to monitor for symptoms, but not to self-isolate and test immediately. Still, it’s too close to home, and a bit scary.

New content today:

Games and Proof

Tonight is fortnightly games night. I’ve just finished my first game of the evening, a 6-player game of 7 Wonders. Normally I don’t do very well in games against my friends, but I won this one, so that’s a good start to the evening!

Today I finished writing the new Proof that the Earth is a Globe that I started yesterday, and posted it. So that was a good job completed.

New content today:

Long weekend Monday

It always feels like a Sunday again when Monday is a public holiday. Sleep in a bit, got out for a bit, get nothing done.

I recently got a new expansion set for the board game Carcassonne, The Tower, and my wife and I wanted to try it out. We played a game yesterday, and I offered her a bit of tactical advice with the new tiles and rules, and she beat me 102 points to 99.

Today I didn’t help her so much, and she beat me 138-98! Here’s the game in progress:

Carcassonne + The Tower

And at the end, after we’d removed all our final scoring pieces:

Carcassonne + The Tower

Next time we play I’m not offering her any assistance at all!!

New content today:

Handy hand day

My bandaged hand gave me grief during the night, with some pain that kept me awake a bit. The thumb had become bruised looking and tender, and there were areas that felt a bit numb. It was a little bit concerning, and the fact that it’s my hand meant that I really didn’t want to risk not seeking medical attention if there was any possibility of something serious happening. And given that it was Friday and this coming weekend is a long weekend with a public holiday on Monday, I didn’t want to have to end up in emergency on the weekend rather than the hand clinic (which keeps more normal hours).

So I phoned the hand clinic and described what was happening, and asked if this was normal and nothing to worry about, or if it was potentially a problem. The doctor there asked me to come into the hospital so they could have a look. I went in, and after a short wait (maybe 20 minutes), a doctor examined my hand, removing the bandage and inspecting the stitches and the bruising around the hand. He said it looked to be healing normally and the hand looked fine, with no infections. He said the bruising was to be expected, and prodded various parts of my thumb to check the numbness. He said it was localised to an area that was not concerning, and may have been caused by the tightness of the bandage pressing on a nerve, which matches my experience with the bandage pressing a little painfully on the inside of the base of the thumb.

A nurse then cleaned and rebandaged my hand, with a lighter dressing that isn’t quite as tight, so I now have a bit more movement. It feels much better than the old one. So all seems good! I still have my appointment on Tuesday to have the stitches removed.

This evening I’m playing my fortnightly board games night with my friends, in our current COVID-safe online mode. We’ve played some games of Dice Forge, Seven Wonders, and now Kingdomino.

New content today: