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The Magpie Developer
Jeff Atwood is one of the best programmer/writers around. I love reading his stuff, some I agree wholeheartedly with, other stuff we disagree, but this post is about a dead-on as they come. This idea has been floating in my head for a long time, but it is hard for me to conceptualize it in words, Atwood does a brilliant job at it. Must read for any developer. |
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Andy Olmsted's Last Blog Entry.
(Warning: Pretty rough) No matter how you feel politically about the war, this reminds you that each number people throw around as statistics is a human life. This is extremely well written, and pretty rough on your soul towards the end, but something everyone should read. Its a shitty situation all around, but there is always a human face behind the statistics and I want to make sure I never forget that. |
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Drinking stories that put yours to shame
Via Keith
To preserve his body during the voyage home, the second-in-command stored Nelson's body in the ship's vat of rum and halted all liquor rations to the crew. Not a bad idea, but when the ship reached port, officials went to retrieve Nelson's body and found the vat dry.
Disregarding good taste (in every sense), the crew had been secretly drinking from it the entire way home. After that, naval rum was referred to as Nelson's Blood. |
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making vodka pills in 24 hours
Recently, Chef Fabian was experimenting further with the Adria/Torreblanca technique of making 'vodka pills.' I use this word to describe the process of making liquid-filled candies by pouring flavored alcohol syrups into cornstarch and letting it set until a hard outer shell forms. |
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Strategy Letter VI - joelonsoftware.com
As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.
Entire Article is Dead On. A must read for anyone in the software biz. |
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(Thursday, June 28)
Carcassonne Strategy
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Over the past few months there really has only been 3 games that gotten game time on our 360; MLB 2007, Tetris Evolution and Catan. MLB 2k7, just because it is a beautiful game and we are in the midst of baseball season right now, Tetris Evolution because the wife and I battle it out and talk so much trash to each other as we play that I have debated covering up her belly with towels so the unborn doesn't pick up her mother's sailor mouth, and Catan, which is quite possibly the best Xbox Live Arcade Title I have ever played.
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I do still love shooters, I have played Gears, Lost Planet and Shadowrun a decent amount during that time, but I cannot tell you how much I enjoy sitting down and logging into a "virtual kitchen table" and playing what was really designed as a board game with a bunch of people from all over the world. As anyone with Xbox Live will tell you, when you get into a multiplayer shooter match it is almost easier just to turn off your mic/headset sound because all the "little kids" screaming into the mic. Yeah, I was just mentioning Tetris trash talking, but with 12 and 13 year olds it is different, nothing makes sense, and every snark is followed by the laughter of the person who said it (which generally is more humorous than than the actual remark). Regardless, Catan (and Backgammon and Uno to a point) are a breath of fresh air in the world of Xbox Live. Don't get me wrong, the occasional asshole pops up on these titles, but you can generally tell that the person is just a bona fide asshole anyway and not necessarily putting on a show, which I don't mind; I encounter assholes all the time in real life. So Catan has had me occupied for at least the last 3 or 4 weeks during some of my gaming time because of the fact that a.) it is an extremely fun game, and b.) the culture of online players is a lot more mature and welcoming.
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So I was excited to hear that Sierra Online was coming out with a similar board/strategy game called Carcassonne. Just like Catan I had never heard of this game before, although I am pretty sure that I have probably seen it being played at some comiccon or something at one time in my life, I just never knew what it was. Basically the premise of the game is that there is a finite set of tiles (70 total?) and 2-5 players. Each Tile is square with 4 sides that can be a multitude of classifications; Bldg, Grass, Road, Water, etc. Each player goes in sequence and draws a tile and has to place it on the board with one of that tile's edge against a corresponding edge already in play (think dominoes). Each player takes their turn and the board grows larger and edges (and options) become more prevalent. The strategy in the game is that each person also controls 7 little people, as you lay down tiles you have an option of also placing a person on the tile you set down in whichever land type you want on your tiles you set down This part is a little hard to explain so here are some tile examples below:
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A.) 
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Tile A is the original tiles handed to me in some round.
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B.) 
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Tile B shows the 4 side of the tile I have to work with: Both the Left and Right Side (Blue) have to match up with a corresponding roadway piece, the top part of the tile (in this orientation) would need to be placed against a building, and the bottom (purple) would need to be against a field of grass. The Tile can be rotated in any orientation and also all sides touching other tiles upon placement need to be placed correctly with their corresponding pieces, so if there are 9 tiles in a grid like your phone (123/456/789) without a tile 5 (8 tiles in play), for you to lay down tile 5 in the middle you would need all 4 of its sides to match up (you can begin to see how placement gets tough once the game gets going).
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C.) 
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After you find a place for your tile (C.), you are then allowed to place a person if you have any left (you only get 7 a game). You are allowed to place one on any of the "areas" on your tile (road, grass, bldg, etc). This is kinda confusing for a new player (it was for me last night), but technically a tile like the one above has 4 places to place a person (both grasses are separate areas because of the road).
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The way to win the game is to score more points with your peasants both during the game, and in the point count up at the end. If I were to place my peasant in the road on the tile above, he would become a thief and binded to that road. Once both ends of the road are completed I would get 1 point for each of the tiles that make up the road AND I would get my thief back. But since there can be multiple tiles in the road, someone else could put their peasant/thief down on the road also and in essence we would battle for it or push. If we both have X peasants on the road then it is a push and we both get points (in a 2 player game, it is just a negating effect), if someone has X+1 peasants while the other person has X then the player with the most wins the points for that road. Points can come from grass fields, castles, roads and other misc tiles (churches etc). See below for a few other tile examples:
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The strategy for this game is pretty overwhelming, at least for me as a new player. There are so many avenues to go down (not to mention the randomness of the tiles) that it makes for a game that I believe will take a decently long time to master. If you have a 360 check it out, and feel free to add me to your friends list and if I am on I don't mind at all walking through the tutorial again with anyone (I still need to get a better understanding about some of the scoring). All in all this is a pretty sweet game, and extremely intricate for people who love strategy and games that can involve up to 5 people at once.
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As a side note also, this game already has xbox 360 vision enabled. For those that don't know what this is it is a camera that attaches to your 360 and while you play the camera focuses on you and gives more of that "around the table gaming" feel which is pretty cool. If you are a people watcher like my wife this thing is golden, 90% of the people will be the normal person in the room playing vids, but every now and then you will get a someone odd. There was one time I was playing Backgammon against this Russian guy who had at least 40 different cats in his living room (on camera) it was the weirdest thing, he was totally up to his eyeballs in cats (seriously it looks like a sea of moving multi-colored fur and this guys head popping out) and the weirdest thing was that he was smoking cigarettes the entire game (it was a long game too) and you would just see all this fur and tails and this dudes head and his arm with a cigarette and every now and then he would flick his cig and drop ashes on a cat and then all the cats would run away for about 5 seconds (for fear of getting burned by ash) then like clockwork less than 20 seconds later they were all back in the seething sea of fur. Was extremely weird/cool.
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Further Reading:
A Brief Carcassonne Strategy Guide
Anatomy of a Game: Carcassonne
Strategy & Tactics (Carcassonne & Catan)
Carcassonne X360 Review (TeamXbox)
Carcassonne X360 Review (Gamespot)
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Labels: 360, Games, Strategy
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Travis - The Boy With No Name
Travis is back. I wouldn't say I hated 12 memories, it was meant to be very political, I just thought it went a little overboard and was somewhat preachy. Then when the greatest hits CD came out to be honest I was really hoping it didn't mean the end to one of my favorite brit bands. Boy With No Name is everything they were capable of. Supurb CD all the way through. Every song is brilliant. Big Chair is probably my favorite song and the opening to the CD on 3 Times is as good as it gets in music imho. |
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Pop! Why Bubbles are Great For The Economys (Gross)
One of the better economic books I have read in while, where the author gets their premise across in a well written, clear and concise manner. Basically Gross believes that the infrastructure left over after economic bubbles, provides companies with the ability to move forward (maybe more than the original bubble did). Not a hard read, I would definitely suggest it for a day and the beach/lake. |
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Feist - The Reminder
I CANNOT GET "I feel it all" OUT OF MY HEAD. Period. Great album, angelic voice. |
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Catan - Xbox Live Arcade
I am hopelessly addicted to this board-turned-video game on the xbox360. I had never played the board game but had seen it being played in some comic shops growing up. Click the Pick and play the demo, it isn't the 360 interface, but same game. |
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Arctic Monkeys - Favorite Worse Nightmare
No Sophomore slump here. Just as good (if not better) than Whatever they Say. |
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Beautiful Evidence (Tufte)
Tufte reads like a text book, most people would say bleh, but the information about "information" that he can deliver is top notch. My first Tufte book was "A Visual Display To Quantitative Information" and it was extremely well done, albeit confusing at time. I think beautiful Evidence is a little easier of a read (I am still only half way through it) and a little easier for myself to understand the ideas he is presenting.. |
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Fountains of Wayne - Traffic and Weather
Fountains of Wayne are the Gods of pop music. If Welcome Interstate Managers was a collection of short stories in song form, then Traffic and Weather is an even better collection with more humor. I already feel like CNN has the hottest female anchors, imagining them throwing their lust around like the Title track to the CD makes it even better. |
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Game of Thrones (Martin)
I started this book assuming it was going to be a high fantasy novel. Elfs, Dragons, Magic and the like. It isn't. It IS fantasy but more surrounding the politics and cunning of a few high ranking families. Incest, Murder, Intrigue, unscrupulous midgets. It has it all and more. |
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.
© Copyright 2003-2007, Eric Thompson |
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