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Peer Reviews; Game Construction; Bad TV
Aug. 21st, 2004 11:08 pmPeer Reviews
Finished up my last peer review for the MMPGems book today (whew). The last piece was very long, but also well written and well organized, which was a relief.
On the downside, it had some somewhat dishonest rhetoric that drove me crazy. In order to argue a point (that might well be valid), the author used some bad analogies, some straw men, and some uncontestably stated opinions. There was also some bad use of stats which I'll just chalk up as over-enthusiasm.
I marked everything up. The comments may or may not be taken into account. I really don't care, but it annoys me when someone uses such strong rhetoric in a paper claiming to be a scientific discourse.
Game Construction
It's ironic that I ended my last entry by saying that I was having![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
christophera_ pick me up a expansion to Puerto Rico so that I wouldn't have to make it myself from the 'net files because kimberly_a and I spent some fair portion of the last day and a half making a game expansion from 'net files.
The expansion was a "Lyon" map (and set of tickets) for the excellent Ticket to Ride board game. The difference between this and that Puerto Rico expansion is that this one is fan-made and thus only available on the 'net.
Kimberly & I had talked about making it for a while, and I was given an additional push last week when Christopher mentioned how easy it had been to make some color prints that I'd created for him at the local Kinko's.
Because I had no gaming this week, Kimberly very kindly suggested that perhaps we could make Lyon up for play, to give me a new game to try out this weekend. (We'd been discussing this possibility for at least a couple of weeks, because Kimberly really likes Ticket to Ride, and would like to play it all the time, while I have limits as to how often I can play the same game; a new board seemed like a new compromise. We just hadn't proceeded because I, at least, knew what a tremendous amount of work it would be to do this all right.)
So, last night we set out to Kinkos to print off color copies of the new board (in 12 pieces) and the new cards (36, on 4 sheets). Kinko's has a great system nowadays where you just plug your credit card into a machine and it automatically bills you for all time and all copies. And, unlike last time we used their computers (4 years ago), the computers were set up right, talked to the printer right, etc. It was overall a very happy experience, and we had our 16 color pages printed within 15 minutes for a total cost of $20.
Since then we've finished producing the cards. We cut them, then laminated them, then cut them again. The result is very pleasing. (With another cost of $10 for the lamination.)
We haven't yet had the guts/oomph to make the board, which will require very carefully aligning of those 12 sheets of paper and pasting them to the perfectly sized foam moun we got (which the folks at our local framing store cut for us, which very much endears me to them, pretty cool since this was just a $5 item). We'll also then need to seal it. Fortunately, Kimberly has good glue for the mounting and the sealing from when she was last doing collage work.
We have, however, played the new game twice, just by laying out the board pieces. We had a lot of fun playing on the new map, and I think it was well worth the trouble (though Kimberly did most of the work, actually, since she's better with details; I just provided some overall structure for how we should do everything, some moral support, and a back rub).
$35 total on the one hand seems silly to make a home-made game, but on the other hand I'm sure we'll get more use out of it all, in hours of enjoyment, then most things that we could have spent that money on.
Kimberly creamed me in one game, while I won the other by 3 or 4 points.
Bad TV
Our local CBS affiliate, KPIX, has once again annoyed me. They again preempted Big Brother for other television. Now, really, I know Big Brother isn't very good TV, but I expect someone who wants my business to show me the common courtesy of sticking to their schedule, and telling me if they really can't.
But, once again, KPIX preempted with no advance notice and without bothering to schow a scroll of when the show will actually be on. We may get to see it later, or it might just be lost to us. (Last time I learned that KPIX sometimes shows their lost shows at 12.30 or 1.30 on the night they preempted it; we'll see.)
KPIX has done this enough, with enough disregard for their customers, that I pretty actively try and avoid new shows on CBS now. I'd imagine that really isn't what they're going for.
Finished up my last peer review for the MMPGems book today (whew). The last piece was very long, but also well written and well organized, which was a relief.
On the downside, it had some somewhat dishonest rhetoric that drove me crazy. In order to argue a point (that might well be valid), the author used some bad analogies, some straw men, and some uncontestably stated opinions. There was also some bad use of stats which I'll just chalk up as over-enthusiasm.
I marked everything up. The comments may or may not be taken into account. I really don't care, but it annoys me when someone uses such strong rhetoric in a paper claiming to be a scientific discourse.
Game Construction
It's ironic that I ended my last entry by saying that I was having
christophera_ pick me up a expansion to Puerto Rico so that I wouldn't have to make it myself from the 'net files because kimberly_a and I spent some fair portion of the last day and a half making a game expansion from 'net files.The expansion was a "Lyon" map (and set of tickets) for the excellent Ticket to Ride board game. The difference between this and that Puerto Rico expansion is that this one is fan-made and thus only available on the 'net.
Kimberly & I had talked about making it for a while, and I was given an additional push last week when Christopher mentioned how easy it had been to make some color prints that I'd created for him at the local Kinko's.
Because I had no gaming this week, Kimberly very kindly suggested that perhaps we could make Lyon up for play, to give me a new game to try out this weekend. (We'd been discussing this possibility for at least a couple of weeks, because Kimberly really likes Ticket to Ride, and would like to play it all the time, while I have limits as to how often I can play the same game; a new board seemed like a new compromise. We just hadn't proceeded because I, at least, knew what a tremendous amount of work it would be to do this all right.)
So, last night we set out to Kinkos to print off color copies of the new board (in 12 pieces) and the new cards (36, on 4 sheets). Kinko's has a great system nowadays where you just plug your credit card into a machine and it automatically bills you for all time and all copies. And, unlike last time we used their computers (4 years ago), the computers were set up right, talked to the printer right, etc. It was overall a very happy experience, and we had our 16 color pages printed within 15 minutes for a total cost of $20.
Since then we've finished producing the cards. We cut them, then laminated them, then cut them again. The result is very pleasing. (With another cost of $10 for the lamination.)
We haven't yet had the guts/oomph to make the board, which will require very carefully aligning of those 12 sheets of paper and pasting them to the perfectly sized foam moun we got (which the folks at our local framing store cut for us, which very much endears me to them, pretty cool since this was just a $5 item). We'll also then need to seal it. Fortunately, Kimberly has good glue for the mounting and the sealing from when she was last doing collage work.
We have, however, played the new game twice, just by laying out the board pieces. We had a lot of fun playing on the new map, and I think it was well worth the trouble (though Kimberly did most of the work, actually, since she's better with details; I just provided some overall structure for how we should do everything, some moral support, and a back rub).
$35 total on the one hand seems silly to make a home-made game, but on the other hand I'm sure we'll get more use out of it all, in hours of enjoyment, then most things that we could have spent that money on.
Kimberly creamed me in one game, while I won the other by 3 or 4 points.
Bad TV
Our local CBS affiliate, KPIX, has once again annoyed me. They again preempted Big Brother for other television. Now, really, I know Big Brother isn't very good TV, but I expect someone who wants my business to show me the common courtesy of sticking to their schedule, and telling me if they really can't.
But, once again, KPIX preempted with no advance notice and without bothering to schow a scroll of when the show will actually be on. We may get to see it later, or it might just be lost to us. (Last time I learned that KPIX sometimes shows their lost shows at 12.30 or 1.30 on the night they preempted it; we'll see.)
KPIX has done this enough, with enough disregard for their customers, that I pretty actively try and avoid new shows on CBS now. I'd imagine that really isn't what they're going for.
