| Board Games, Video Games, Books |
[Sep. 3rd, 2008|06:09 pm] |
This is by no means all inclusive of anything, except what I remember as recently new to me.
Board Games
Agricola: I thoroughly enjoy this resource-management game. It's tough for me to categorize, which is good. The resource elements make me suspect that people who like Power Grid will like this, but I have trouble picking out exactly why. It's a bit solitarish, but not nearly so bad as many such games. There's also what seems to me to be a giant element of luck in the game with regards to determining the winner, but thus far that hasn't reduced my enjoyment of the game (and I'm certain there are variants online that ameliorate this). Don't bother playing the "basic" version.
In the Year of the Dragon: Another resource-management game, where some kind of DOOM will fall on your head. You merely get to influence how much of which kinds of doom will help destroy you. This is a game with surprisingly little luck throughout the whole game, but that hasn't bothered me! There's definitely some possibility of analysis-paralysis here, but things usually move quick enough. This game makes full use of the "each player frequently does a small thing" compared to the monolithic turns of some games of old.
Video Games
Team Fortress 2: I still play this competitively and a lot in general. If you want to find me in a game, friend up my Steam account. This is my default multi-player game of choice, for sure.
Civilization 4 (with two expansions): This continues to be able to eat up any time I care to feed to it. My ongoing single-player game of choice.
Beyond Good and Evil: I'd heard good things about this adventure game for some time, and it was on sale via Steam for $5. It was a very good game. It's light and entertaining, with reasonable variety of gameplay including lots of exploration, stealth, picture-taking (camera) simple fighting by hitting people with sticks, puzzle aspects, and a bunch of mini-games. I believe the normal Steam price for it is $10, and I can easily recommend it at that price. (Probably it's available other ways too.) I'm glad to hear there's a sequel underway as well.
X2: The Threat: I picked this up cheaply on Steam at some point because I was idly looking for something like Privateer: An exploration game with a story that I could play as I liked or not, and in a spaceship is a fine way to do that (though it wasn't the goal per se -- Mechwarrior: Mercenaries fills a similar space in my desire). But I've only played for about an hour before the interface was frustrating me enough to make me stop playing. This paragraph is awful as a review, but maybe someone can suggest something for me along these lines!
Books
Transmetropolitan: This is a comic written by Warren Ellis (and lots of other talented people contribute). I've never considered myself a comic book guy, though in the past couple of years I've been catching up when people tell me, "Hey, you should read this." This is well written, visually beautiful while also grotesque when it wants to be, and overall entertaining. I will say that the first dozen pages didn't immediately grab me, and I might not have finished the first volume of my own volition but that multiple people had recommended it strongly to me. I'm glad I kept at it (and it wasn't so long before I was hooked in).
Dianna Wynne Jones: While pillaging my upstair neighbors' fairly vast collection of fiction, Jones was recommended to me as "Like Harry Potter but better." I agree (and I do like me some Hogwarts). At this point I've probably read about a dozen books by her and enjoyed them all (some immensely, all worthwhile). I believe the canonical starting point for Jones is "Charmed Life", though "Deep Secret" grabbed me the most. If you like fantasy and it's OK that it's aimed at kids (i.e. Harry Potter), I highly recommend Dianna Wynne Jones.
His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire series, by Naomi Novik): I read the first two books of this series, very randomly having plucked it off my previously mentioned upstairs neighbors' shelf. These remind me greatly of any of Anne McCaffrey's Pern dragon books, or Mercedes Lackey's Companion series: In all cases there's a fantastic animal (here, dragons again) who bonds closely to a single human as essentially a life-long companion (or Companion). Perhaps the biggest differentiator between those books and the Temeraire series is that Temeraire is grounded in historical fiction: It's the Napoleonic era, focused on the British-centric wars and politics of the times, but throw dragons into the mix (and the resulting changes to technology as well). The short version is that if you liked McCaffrey's or Lackey's series, there's a good chance you'll like this as well. |
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| GenCon! |
[Aug. 8th, 2008|03:37 pm] |
As of five minutes ago, I'm going to GenCon next week.
I'll be helping a friend out at the Winning Moves Games booth, if you wanted to find me in the dealer's room. Or email me or whatever if you wanted to try to get together at some other point.
I haven't been to either GenCon or Origins for several years. I expect I'll probably still have a fun (and tiring) time. |
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| Fantastic Contraption |
[Aug. 7th, 2008|01:06 pm] |
The more people I show this to, the more people who get addicted to this flash based puzzle/building game.
Fantastic Contraption
Warning: I've had some people condemn me late at night that they needed a machine to put them to bed. |
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| There's a first time for everything |
[Aug. 3rd, 2008|03:59 pm] |
I received one of the nicest compliments on Saturday. I'd met her a couple hours before she told me:
"You're the most patient man I've ever met."
I'm pretty certain that's the first time anyone said that to me. Exaggeration or not, it was wonderful to hear it.
What's the nicest thing a (mostly) stranger ever said to you? |
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| Dr. Horrible |
[Jul. 19th, 2008|05:42 pm] |
I'm sure I'm late to the party, but watching drhorrible.com was a lot of fun.
Mandatory for comic geeks, I think (I am not one, really), but suitable for People In General. |
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| Dead Again |
[Jul. 18th, 2008|12:24 am] |
This is a funny song that's a lot like "We Didn't Start the Fire", except that it's all about games. Mostly video games, but a few other references are in there. You may want to click on the Lyrics link since it goes by quick!
http://www.thefump.com/fump.php?id=1071
Mildly related to that title, tomorrow is the last day of my temporary employment at Harmonix, so I'm back into the unemployment field. It still may lead to something eventually, but not right away.
I really enjoyed my time at Harmonix, and certainly would not mind working there again. |
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| Harmonix |
[Jun. 18th, 2008|12:43 pm] |
Tomorrow, I'm starting a "temporary full-time" position at Harmonix, as part of the department that runs playtests. These are the guys who came up with Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
The employment is only until sometime in late July (variable). But it could lead to something else.
I'm pretty excited. I haven't started any kind of new job since 2002! |
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| 1290 images for you |
[Apr. 6th, 2008|07:04 pm] |
I've put up 1290 pictures of my trip to NZ.
I'll probably write some narrative about stuff I did at some point. The pictures are nice (I hope!) but they definitely miss some action where I didn't take pictures for one reason or another.
Comments welcome. |
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| Quick Pics |
[Apr. 4th, 2008|06:36 pm] |
A quick dump of a few pictures here (to be added in a real gallery later!)
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/cataldoj/nz/
LINK UPDATED! (The other website went over bandwidth quota, which had never happened to me before.) |
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| So long, farewell! |
[Apr. 3rd, 2008|12:21 am] |
I fly out of NZ in about six hours. My hosts are already asleep and have said their goodbyes, as they won't be around during the ungodly hour I'm catching a shuttle to the airport.
It's been a great four weeks. More later. Now, I have to finalize the last bits of packing and sleep for a few hours. |
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| NZ, North Island: Well, I did a bunch of it. |
[Mar. 28th, 2008|11:05 pm] |
I spelunked, swam with dolphins, had some Maori hangi, swam in a hot river, heard some Germans playing Mozart sonatas. I drove a lot too.
A few more days around Wellington, then all too soon it comes to an end! |
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| Wellington & South Island: Teaser with pictures |
[Mar. 22nd, 2008|10:14 pm] |
This is a teaser of what I've done so far in New Zealand, here at roughly my halfway point. Full report comes later!
I've spent a week around Wellington, seeing the Wellington sights and spending a lot of time with Tom & his family. That was great fun and Wellington is a fine fine city.
Just tonight I got back from a week long trip with just Tom (his poor/kind family stayed behind to defend the fort). We spent a lot of time touring much (but far from all) of the South Island. A rental car took us all about, including Picton, Christchurch, Mt. Cook, Wanaka, Queenstown, Te Anau, Milford Sound, back up to Wanaka, Haast, Fox & Franz Joseph Glaciers, and around Arthur's Pass back to Christchurch. It was fantastic.
Some brief highlights (from memory, so place names may be misspelled):
- many short "nature walks" (anywhere from five minute to hour+ long treks to "somewhere pretty")
- Mountains, Lakes, etc.
- colony of Seals, off Kaikoura coast
- Tom's ancestral homestead where he first crashed a car
- 2+ hour climb of Mt. Cook to a lake with icebergs
- accidentally driving past the town of Twizel
- hunting for a place to sleep in Wanaka
- cruising through Milford Sound
- giving directions (correctly) in Haast to tourists
- Glaciers!
- the ocean attacking us
I'd be bereft in my teasing if I didn't link to a few pictures. But I'm saving some better ones for later! |
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| Hello over there! |
[Mar. 7th, 2008|06:47 pm] |
I'm (safely) in NZ!
It's gorgeous out. And bright and sunny at 7pm! |
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| So Long! |
[Mar. 5th, 2008|12:58 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  excited | ] |
I'm heading to NZ. See you in early April! |
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| NZ |
[Mar. 3rd, 2008|11:01 am] |
I'm excited!
If you'd like a postcard, send me your snail mail address!
(Unless you live with me, assume I've forgotten / lost it. Sorry, it's true, I did.)
I'm leaving in two days, but I expect I can get online in NZ so if it's after that don't worry, I should still be able to get it.
I've setup this post so comments are invisible to everyone but me, so you can post it here without anyone being able to see it. |
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| Cursor 10 |
[Feb. 19th, 2008|04:01 pm] |
This is an entertaining, simple-to-play flash puzzle game
Cursor 10
It took me two tries to get to the top. I didn't try hard to get a high score, I just wanted to progress.
But it's nice to see a neat and innovative game, even if the design space includes maybe 5-10 minutes of gameplay! (OK, that's probably an exaggeration.) |
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