Value Village Glassware

Value Village is a chain of second hand stores in North America. I am a big fan of second hand shopping, for clothes and homewares. Part of it is that things are cheaper there, but I happily spend money on other new things. The bigger part is that it is just more interesting. If you go to a "regular" clothing store, you just see a bunch of the same things that represent the fashion of the season. Chez VV you find a much wider variety. The prices do mean I am much more willing to take a chance on something, because if it ends up being a terrible fit it doesn't matter much.

My latest purchase there was some glassware. I have become interested in cocktail making, and have built up an odd assortment of fancy glasses for it, like the ones in the back of the picture below. The small ones in the front I got for tequila shots at the last class of the continuing education Spanish class I am taking.

More Minecraft: Resonant Rise 3 modpack

Minecraft is a game I keep coming back to. Part of it is that (modded) Minecraft changes quite quickly, so there is always new, user generated, content to explore. The other is that there is such a strong design component to the game. I describe it as an architecture simulator, with zombies. In addition to architecture, there is some fun putting together automated systems that work efficiently, using the technology and magic mods. I am currently trying out the Resonant Rise 3 modpack offered by the ATLauncher. My current iteration of base design is pictured below:

Computational Melee

If you are the right vintage and geek persuasion, you will remember the microgame, Melee, by Steve Jackson that later became part of the role playing system, "The Fantasy Trip," which later evolved into GURPS. Melee was a fun game and I remember playing for hours with my friends in my high school days. I have a long time project, always on the back burner, to make a similar game with new features that does not have the flaws of TFT (I am sure it will have new flaws!). I thought it would be a good exercise to check out the old game for some key playability aspects that I would like to retain in "my" game. You can find the rules to the Melee game online here.

I wrote a simulator in MATLAB for Melee. It leaves out a number of things: ranged combat, hand to hand combat, broken and dropped weapons, pole weapons, temporary DX losses due to damage, and initiative rolls (in the simulator, highest DX always goes first). There 42 possible stat and armour combinations, so the complete Melee game under these restrictions could be represented by a 42 by 42 grid. That seemed like too much data, so I went with one choice versus 42. I started with what I remember as my default character: ST 12/ DX 12(9) with broadsword, leather armour and large shield (4 armour total). I then took the character out of 42 that beat this one most often,  and repeated:

1. 12/12(9)/4: win 30%, average game 4.3 turns against the next entry...
2. 14/10/0: 41% (2.8)
3. 13/11/1: 44% (3.1) 
4. 12/12/1: 45% (6.9)
5. 11/13(9)/5: 36% (5.2) 
6. 15/9/0 

Since I did not do the whole grid, I can't say for sure, but at least from these results it seems plausible that the game has the "metagame" property, that is there is no best character that wins against all others, it is all about dynamically picking the best character against the strategy currently prevalent. I remember the game had an exciting feel, which means that around 5 turns is a good length for a game. The closest to "best" character was #3 above, the 13/11 character with no armour, morning star and light shield: it was only beaten by #4 of all the 42 possible melee character options. However, unarmoured characters would suffer when missile weapons are considered. 

I did 10,000 trials to get the numbers reported above, so they are accurate to 1% with 95% confidence. I am not a statistician, so had to remind myself how these estimates go at the Wikipedia page here. 

Two terrible TV shows I felt compelled to watch last year

I watched both of these while I was on a longer research trip to Barcelona last Fall. I had a lot of free time on my hands, or at least that is my excuse for watching such terrible shows.

The first one I'll describe is the most terrible. It is "The Arrow". The acting is terrible, the writing is terrible and the characters are not likeable. While two of them are talking and the first is telling the other about some deep, emotional issue, the second will break off to answer a text. Didn't their mothers teach them any manners? The answer is no: in fact the mother of two of the characters behaved in exactly that way, too (until she died). Although it is a standard trope in the super hero genre to have characters make things worse by keeping secrets, these idiots just take things too far. Come on, just tell your father that your sister is dead rather than dress up in her hero costume and fight crime, without the assassin training she had. And yet, after all this, I felt compelled to watch it to the end of what was available on Netflix (to the end of season 3). I hope I can resist the temptation to watch season 4, which I see from web site has already begun.

The second terrible show is "Once Upon a Time".  I had watched the first three seasons previously, and the fourth while in Spain. The writing and acting are uneven and the characters also behave badly, but I actually quite like this show and will watch the next season (also already begun) on Netflix when it comes on. It has a certain charm. At its best, it reminds me of the book series, the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, by Patricia C Wrede (now that would make a good TV miniseries). At worst, Once Upon a Time reminds me of The Arrow.

The Mixed Tape

It is easy now to make a compilation of music to your own taste, making a playlist of digital tracks. This can be just a random jumble of songs you like, played back in a random order, or a set of music with a certain mood or theme. At its best it is a kind of art-form, a way to create a set of music that is greater than the sum of its parts, like the albums that you never want to play on shuffle or delete songs from.

In the early days, this was done with cassette tapes. There was a somewhat laborious process of recording songs from the radio, or vinyl, or other tapes in the right order on a blank cassette tape. I did not do much of this mixed tape construction, although I did enjoy the compilations I got from friends. I started getting in to it when digital music technology made it easy. 

Some of the fun in the old format was working with the limits of the tape size. I have two formats now that I build playlists in. With my iTunes library, I build playlists that fill a CD, so I can burn them for friends or for our car, which is just old enough to have a CD player but not a USB input. On Google Music, which I am still really enjoying, I use a different format - the "dozen track" format. I have a couple of recent ones I can link to, for those of you reading who are using that streaming service.

Brian's Google Dozen #3 [Psychedelic]

Brian's Google Dozen #4 [Classical Geek]

Brian's Christmas 2015 CD [CD format] 

These are fun to put together, I hope you enjoy them, too!

Recommendation: Burning Wheel

I was a gamer (role playing games and wargames, the hexagon map kind) as a kid. In terms of role playing games, I played Tunnels and Trolls, Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller (never did see how those rules could be playable), and GURPS. As an adult, I had many years playing Champions, a extension of the Hero system for the superhero genre. I have toyed on and off over the years developing my own system, with a combat component that can independently be for technical duels like the old Melee game, the precursor to GURPS. Cards are used to represent the characters and equipment, because I like the idea of the art and flavour text of cards from Magic the Gathering (which I still play regularly). Maybe someday I will "finish" that and it will be my ticket to fame and fortune.

In terms of games that motivated me to think about how to encourage good role-playing (collaborative story-telling in the framework of the game), I was really impressed by Burning Wheel. This is a fantasy system, but there is a sci-fi version called Burning Empires as well, in a universe similar to the one in the Firefly TV series. There is a free pdf download for Burning Wheel at the site link above, called "Hub and Spokes" if you want to check it out. If I were ever to game again (and I just need the time and the right group) I would try out this system.

Brian's Movie Pick from 2015: Ex_Machina

I am not a regular movie goer, but I see a few actually in theatres now because of the fancy theatre in East Lansing, where I visit every year for a month and have free time on my hands. That is where I saw Ex_Machina. I would have dismissed it as uninteresting, "male fantasy sex robots", but I had been told that is was more than that. There is a aspect of that in the movie, but put in suitable (squicky) context. It was a compelling movie and had an ending I had not expected.

Of course, it is also possible to see some first run movies soon after they end in theatres through purchase or rental on iTunes and other paid streaming services (or unpaid with some extra effort). Some appear quickly on monthly streaming services like Netflix. My #2 choice for 2105 was "The Man from UNCLE" that I saw that way, at my daughter's recommendation. That was a really enjoyable, witty film that has re-watchability.

The fancy East Lansing theatre is actually in nearby Okemos, Studio C!. I say it is fancy because you can pay extra to get reserved seating in large, reclining leather seats with meal and bar service. I have been in East Lansing every year for the past five years for a month working with a close colleague at Michigan State University. I am scheduled to go back there this year.