Ron's Info-Closet Annex
The online extension of Ron's Info-Closet.
Book links are usually to my Powell's affiliate program; game links are usually to Funagain Games, and benefit the Games to the Rescue Project.
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Ron Hale-Evans
rwhe@ludism.org
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Hope all the USans had a happy Thanksgiving and that everyone worldwide is enjoying a happy Buy Nothing Day (tomorrow in the UK, but then it is tomorrow in the UK.)
Entered 22:40 [/personal/friday5] permalink
The folly of tactile psychoactive discrimination
It has come to my attention that by groping for a caffeine tablet (NoDoz, to be specific) without looking at it in the morning when I am half-asleep, I may in fact have been taking ibuprofen tablets (chemically close to aspirin) by mistake, since they both have about the same shape -- and that my feeling so sleepy lately may have as much to do with caffeine deprivation as with sleep deprivation.
I can't tell you how stupid I feel -- and how stupidly.
Entered 22:42 [/personal] permalink
OK, I've run a little over my allotted five here, but if the Top Five can do it, so can I. I guess I just had a good week.
Sick day: I called in sick and slept for something like 15 hours. I really caught up on my sleep deficit. My elementary school nurse told my class "You can never really catch up on your sleep -- that's just a myth", but that's exactly the opposite of what we now know to be true, as the cigarette-smoking doctor put it in Sleeper. Marty says my mood is very much improved...
Essay: However, my circadian clock seems to be bollocksed from getting up at 4 PM, so I leapt out of bed at 3:30 this morning, feeling somewhat manic, and wrote for about two hours. It's the outline of an essay on my personal philosophy that I hope to submit to The Games Journal, although it seems maybe more like the kind of thing the influential (but apparently defunct) The Life of Games would publish. You can see a few of the key concepts at the home page of the Center for Ludic Synergy; the idea is to remove the metaphysical baggage from the front page and let people know they don't have to subscribe to my ideas to join the umbrella organisation, while clarifying the core ideas for myself at least. (I've linked to an archived version of the page because it won't look that way much longer.)
EGG: A local game design group called EGG met at our apartment for the first time on Sunday. Although the emphasis is on playtesting rather than playing members' games, I had more fun than I usually do lately at our other game group, Seattle Cosmic. It was probably the smaller group size in part (Seattle Cosmic Game Night routinely runs to 20 people nowadays), but it was also fun to playtest the solitaire game Marty and I are submitting to the Solitary Confinement piecepack game design contest; it was fun to play our friend Steve Vallée's game, even though it was not quite ready for prime time; and it was especially fun to play our friend AlphaTim Schutz's game, which is quite definitely ready for prime time and could well (we all agreed) take first place in a major international game design competition such as Hippodice. (Also, it was fun to win the latter game by a wide margin.)
GIPF: Playing games in the GIPF Project with Marty. We played YINSH (the newest game) and DVONN on Wednesday night (Marty beat me at both). It was an especially geheimlich evening because we regard this series as "our" games; we selected them together to play together, and when a new one comes out, we buy it together. We also have fun making up new names for the games: FNORD, MINSK, PINSK, MENSCH... Ironically, I have now played every one of the published games in this series except GIPF, the game for which the project is named.
Gratis computers, libre software: I unexpectedly received two 450 MHz PCs as a gift on Saturday from my friend Karl Erickson, who was getting rid of them and didn't want to have to sell them. I offered one to Kisa Griffin (my friend, and my wife Marty's sister Meredith's boyfriend), who had been wanting to install Knoppix on his old PC for a while. He came over Sunday night and we had an impromptu installfest, swapping out hard drives and CD-ROM drives, diagnosing memory, and finally installing Knoppix on both machines. Gotta love commodity hardware and free software.
Limekiller: The book ¡Limekiller!, by Avram Davidson, arrived yesterday in the mail. I'll have more details later, but I'll just say this is a posthumous fantasy collection I have been awaiting for months, and I was able to get it a month before its putative publication date by ordering through Powell's.
First snow: We don't get much snow at lower elevations in the Pacific Northwest. I took the dogs out this morning and they reacted visibly. Tia was nonplussed; Gwenny, whom we suspect is part sled dog, started licking the ground happily.
Warm clothes: With winter coming on, sometimes it seems that I wake up cold and can't get warm the rest of the day. Well, Marty recently made a gift of some warm sweatclothes and slipper socks to wear around the house, so even if I have to be cold at work, I can come home and be warm. Thanks, sweetie!
Entered 22:06 [/personal/friday5] permalink
From the book Momo, by Michael Ende (1973):
'You're called Momo, aren't you?'
'Yes.'
'That's a pretty name, but I've never heard it before. Who gave it to you?'
'I did,' said Momo.
'You chose your own name?'
'Yes.'
'When were you born?'
Momo pondered this. 'As far as I can remember,' she said at length, 'I've always been around.'
(Chapter 1)
To paraphrase the Zen Master Bankei, "You were never born, so you will never die." Strangely, there does not seem to be much about Bankei on the English-speaking Web at the moment, but the best book about Bankei and his teachings I have ever read is Bankei Zen, translator Peter Haskel (1989).
Entered 12:44 [/sophia] permalink
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My latest Short Duration Personal Saviour is my friend Lion Kimbro. This blog owes its very existence to the excellent example set by Lion's own blog, Lion's Den. I've adopted many of the techniques in my current journalling/organisation scheme from his free online book How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought you Think. I've also started reading some of Lion's favourite novels, Momo and The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, an author I disdained before because of the mess of a movie made of the latter book. I'm even coming around to his ideas on the way wikis should be linked and organised, something I never thought I'd do. Ave, Leo! ("Hail, Lion!" I believe I got that right. My Latin is rusty, but the vocative is pretty simple.) For previous ShorDurPerSavs and more on the ShorDurPerSav concept, see Ron's ShorDurPerSavs. From now on, however, I'll be blogging them. |
Entered 11:32 [/personal/shordurpersavs] permalink
After I mentioned that my wife Marty now has a blog and urged readers "Hie thee thence!", I wondered whether I was using "thence" correctly. After all, if "whence" means "from where", shouldn't "thence" mean "from there"? Was I not in fact urging, "Hurry away from there?"
A quick consultation of dict confirmed my suspicions. "Thence" means "from there". Fortunately, it also means "thereafter" and "therefore". Thus, my statement was ambiguous. Not only was I potentially saying "hurry away from there!", but also "hurry from now on!" and "therefore, hurry!".
I would prefer that readers take my statement in the word's tertiary sense: my wife Marty now has a blog. Therefore, hurry!.
Entered 10:44 [/personal/friendly] permalink
Another five things that made my week:
Caffeine. I've been reading a book called The Caffeine Advantage by Bennett Weinberg (2002). It makes a pretty strong case that if you already drink coffee or tea, you should drop them in favour of caffeine tablets. Since doing so, I have experienced the following positive effects:
EGG. J.T. Thomas, who is the founder of the Eastside Game Group, a Seattle-area game design group I belong to, has stepped down and handed administration of the group to me, including monthly hosting duties, administration of the mailing list, creation of a web site, and so on. The members have agreed that the group should affiliate itself with the Center for Ludic Synergy as soon as I make it publicly clear they don't necessarily subscribe to the mystical ideology presently on the site's front page. That kind of clarification is something I have meant to do for a while anyway.
Organisation. I've been on a (partly caffeine-inspired) binge to organise my life. I have created a formal to do list, calendar, and "pointers" file in a big three-ring binder. Last night Marty and I spent about an hour in our local Office De(s)pot shopping for organisational hardware. I now feel I have many of the tools I need to get my life in order. If I don't do so, it's my own damned fault. (I'll blog some of the software related to my organization scheme later.)
Lion. My friend Lion Kimbro visited on Sunday. We spent about seven hours in intensely pleasurable conversation. I'm finding so many of his ideas useful that Marty says I should list him as one of my Short-Duration Personal Saviours. I'll get to that later...
Todd. My boss Todd invited me to lunch on Wednesday. We went to a pretty good nearby Japanese restaurant, and spoke about many things: Esperanto and the aesthetic of la bona lingvo, Japanese and Russian, low-tech game systems, and of course some shop talk. And it is certainly nice to have a boss who recognises the value of meditation in the workplace, even if it's not exactly corporate policy.
Entered 23:51 [/personal/friday5] permalink
I received the following mail from Lion Kimbro after I posted the first installment in this section:
Delivery-date: Wed, 05 Nov 2003 13:24:27 -0800
Subject: Fan Mail Part 1
From: Lion Kimbro <lion@speakeasy.org>
To: Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@apocalypse.org>
Re: "Too bad you don't":
The quote goes something like this:
"Behind every successful man, there's a woman rolling her eyes."
-- http://speakeasy.org/~lion/ LionKimbro@jabber.org Seattle, WA
I hadn't heard the proverb quoted in full before. Possibly the truth is too great for mankind [sic] to bear.
Marty has taken to snickering and misquoting Iain Cheyne as saying my article is "over 7000 pages of quality". Here's another proverb: A prophet is without honour in his own apartment complex.
Entered 23:07 [/personal/fan_mail] permalink
Today's Friday 5, in the order I thought of them:
Good reviews. I've been getting good reviews and responses on rec.games.board to Game Systems Part 4, as I mentioned earlier.
Socialising. I am momentarily less eremitic. This past Sunday my friend Karl Erickson came over. The usual high-falutin' bullshittin' session took place, then he played me and Marty at Tamsk and Focus. Focus is one of my favourite abstract strategy games, and although Karl won, the game was close for once. This was encouraging because I have always wanted to get good at Focus, and Marty, Karl, and I have a non-transitive relationship with respect to the game: I can beat Marty, Marty can beat Karl, and Karl can beat me.
Thursday I had my usual lunch with my friend Chad Urso McDaniel (high-falutin' bulshittin' again), and this coming Sunday my friend Lion Kimbro is coming over for more of the same. (Lion wants me to split the four wikis I manage into multiple sub-wikis. This is unlikely to happen, but Lion is pretty vehement about it, so I'm keeping an open mind.)
Data management. I am reading Lion's book about his notebook system. It's a bit too involved for me right now, but I am adopting some of his suggestions, such as using a multi-coloured ballpoint pen in my current series of notebooks. (Lion writes, "Your pen has four colors: Red, Green, Blue, and Black... Those four color pens- I think they're made in France or something.") Lion, I think the pen you are think of is the Bic #14540 "4 Color", which sells for about $5.00 per three-pack at Office De(s)pot, and does indeed read "MADE IN FRANCE" on the barrel. (By the way, red, green, blue, and black are the colours used in most editions of the piecepack.
I am also trying out the Remembrance Agent. I am using it as I write and am already pretty happy with it. Right now it is reminding me of a Seattle Cosmic newsletter entitled "The Night of Intense Focus", at which we played multiple games of Focus and Karl was soundly defeated by a novel strategy developed by my friend John, who is literally a past master at Chess. Lots of people with wearable computers keep the Remembrance Agent running all the time, which makes me think I might one day want to swap my Linux PDA for a wearable. Mmm, borglicious!
Night on the town. Monday night Marty and I decided we'd go out on the town. What did we do? We had dinner at a fast food restaurant and went to a bookstore. Doesn't sound like much, but the restaurant was a Kidd Valley, part of a small local chain that I had long wanted to try. All the food was great; calling it "fast food" doesn't do it justice, and indeed we had to wait something like 20 minutes for it. The garlic fries will send judders up your spine. Then we went to Half-Price Books, another mostly local chain of used bookstores. The highlight of the evening for me was being able to surprise Marty by replacing one of her beloved books that had gone missing with a like-new copy. It was a book about Japanese inventions that ought to be adopted in the US. Some of them have been adopted since the book was written -- such as karaoke, alas. The book is called 283 Useful Ideas from Japan, by Leonard Koren.
Friend in progress? I discovered my cow-orker Phil loves Greg Egan and Permutation City as much as I do. Now I'm going to try to turn him on to Forever for All.
Happy weekend to all, and to all a good Friday night.
Truth in blogging: most book links lead to my Powell's affiliate program.
Entered 19:11 [/personal/friday5] permalink
My wife Marty Hale-Evans now has a blog, Sounds Like Slog. Hie ye thence.
Entered 22:54 [/personal/friendly] permalink
People are saying nice things about "Game Systems, Part 4" over on rec.games.board:
"The whole of [The Games Journal] is good, but this series of articles are the jewel in the crown for me. This article was thought provoking, well researched and well written. Over 7000 words of quality."
--Iain Cheyne"Yes, that certainly is a meaty article. The Games Journal is always really great, but this one is really REALLY great."
--Justin Green (shumyum@yahoo.com)
Thanks, guys! I wasn't even sure that people would like an article that focused on game systems made from everyday objects, so the response is especially gratifying. It seems the part that has gotten the most response is the game of Remainders, which was almost (not quite) an afterthought. Since it's not always easy to tell what people will respond to most in an article, my theory is that you should throw it all in. I believe Penn & Teller refer to this as "the scattershot technique" in one of their books. Note that "scattershot" is not always a word used in praise.
Entered 13:08 [/games/game_systems] permalink
Marty just read and commented on my earlier post, and now I would like to make two facts glassy-clear:
In other news, I have a new entry in memepool. Unlike other weblogs, memepool does not permit links to individual entries, so look for the "Robotics" entry of 31 October 2003.
Entered 16:27 [/news] permalink
I've been meaning to start a couple of features on the blog: "Fan Mail" and "The Mail I Get".
Generally, considering the kind of stuff I publish on the Web, I get two kinds of email from strangers:
I will be blogging email of type #1 under "Fan Mail" for my personal aggrandisement. I will be blogging email of type #2 under "The Mail I Get" for general instruction and/or amusement. (I also get a third kind of email that either requests information from me (e.g. "Where can I buy the Codex Seraphinianus?", which I get about once a month) or points me toward some bit of information I might have missed. While I appreciate the latter and try to answer the former promptly, this mail is not of general interest.)
Today's bit of my inbox comes from a guy I would classify as a "URL" (Unknown in Real Life) -- that is, a net acquaintance I have never met face-to-face, but who would probably be a friend if I had a better opportunity to get to know him better.
Note that most email snippets I quote will have identifying information blotted out Victorian-style, as in "In the early hours of the 25th of the month of D-------, Mr. S---- C---- bellowed a great 'Ho ho ho!', laid a finger aside of his nose, and slipped down the chimney as quick as a w---." 2f4890bdc202d884fb04c428aaef9ca5
To which Marty, looking over my shoulder, merely snorted and said, "Too bad you don't."
Sniff.
Entered 13:30 [/personal/fan_mail] permalink
"Game Systems, Part 4" now available
My article "Game Systems, Part 4: Low-Tech Game Systems" is now available online at The Games Journal, as the "cover story" for the November issue.
I love what editor Greg Aleknevicus did with the graphics for my article. The pictures for the games Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard and Change Change are great. Greg adapted my US-centric description of the latter and replaced my ASCII diagram of US coins with photos of Canadian coins, including a loonie (dollar coin) instead of a quarter.
This issue was atypically a little late (Greg says Halloween is a big holiday for him), but from my perspective, it was worth the wait. I'm sure the rest of the articles will be a lot of fun too, as usual.
Entered 00:13 [/games/game_systems] permalink
Do you have to register Linux?
Answer: no, but I did anyway.
Entered 22:59 [/comp] permalink
Last night I was lazily refreshing the home page of The Games Journal in hopes of seeing when the new issue went up, so I could check how my new article looked. I got bored and wanted to go to bed, so I wrote a script that would download an arbitrary web page every minute or so and check for changes.
Usually editor Greg Aleknevicus posts the new edition around midnight of the first of the month. I started the script in the wee hours and went to bed, expecting to see a message in the morning that the new edition was posted around 3:00 AM or so. I got up at 8:00, however, and my script was still running! I apologise to Greg for artifically inflating his site statistics with hundreds of hits.
Apparently my friend Tycerium wrote a program like this for his master's thesis in computer science. I hope he did it in less than 13 lines of bash code.
Entered 08:32 [/comp] permalink
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