Filed under games …

Apr 18 2012
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comics, games, library, sports, vancouver

all these events – i feel so social and poor

Post-school life is starting to come together (though I kind of need a job). I mean, I have classes coming up again in May, but now that all my friends have graduated it kind of feels like I have too. I’ve also gotten to play a new game and go to a conference and be part of Jamie’s four-night trivia blitz.

For a research project I’m working on I got to interview a former National Librarian of Canada last week, and she was adamant that going to conferences without having a job to do is pointless. I think that makes sense. This Saturday I’m going to be doing some liveblogging for the North Shore Writers Festival, which should be fun. I’m going to be a convenor for the BC Library Conference in the middle of May and I’m volunteering at VanCAF. I mean, I had fun wandering around at Emerald City, but I do like having something to do.

Also, when Sean comes to town in June the Vancouver Canadians will be playing. It works out that we’ll be able to go to a baseball game in the afternoon and then the Bombers-Lions CFL season opener in the evening.

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Apr 02 2012
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books, comics, games, travel

clicked my ruby heels and here i am

I’m back from Seattle and Emerald City Comicon (ECCC). It was my first big mainstream comics convention and it was pretty fun. I saw Wil Wheaton do readings, indie gamers do their thing, met a bunch of webcomic people I’ve followed for years, bought some books, watched an amazing reading of the Star Wars radio play by a pile of voice actors, saw Marian Call sing and a pretty great night of improv. Good times.

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Mar 25 2012
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games, vancouver

cordyceps makes for good gaming

I had an excellent afternoon of RPGing today. Marek and Sam and I were playtesting a rules-light system of Marek’s creation and the story he cooked up for it was a set-in-Vancouver “what kind of apocalypse happened while we were stuck out on a Gulf island?” kind of deal. It played out really quite well.

Here’s a video about the fungus the scenario was inspired by:
In the game, there was a version of this fungus affecting humans, which made for some good terrible zombie movie gaming.

One character got infected by the fungus zombie plague and sort of sacrificed himself, another was decapitated in the final escape sequence, my character who likes to run drew fungus zombies off the rest of the group’s trail so they could get more ammunition (which proved kind of useless), and it all ended with a fireball and us saving the young girl and heading back to the island we never should have left in the first place.

Moral of the story (as it is for so many horror movies): Never leave home.

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Feb 17 2012
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food, games, vancouver

wrong and right cheeses

When I went grocery shopping the other day, I went to the Safeway that’s a bit longer walk from the apartment but has better prices than the Urban Fare that’s closer. I bought cheese and agonized over green peppers and generally did my usual grocery shopping shtick which involves dealing with being overwhelmed by choice. I bought a brick of cheddar cheese to go with my various things cheese can accompany (grains tomatoes and apples).

When I returned home and made food that used the cheese I discovered to my horror that it was *light* cheese. I don’t know why that is even a thing that exists. I mean, I know it exists because it can be exchanged for money which can be exchanged for the essentials and luxuries of life, but it is such a sad and terrible thing to have in my fridge, all doughy and bland. I will eat it without joy. Le sigh.

But the much better cheese anecdote of the week is that on Tuesday Jamie and Jessie and Trev and I participated in the Cheshire Cheese Inn’s Trivia night and we won. We won despite coming in second or third in each of the rounds, but they have a system where the higher you place, the more cheese shaped ballots you get to put in the draw for the prize at the end of the night (if you’ve played Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot it’s the same sort of endgame).

I was disappointed in our play in general. I took us down bad rabbit holes, second-guessing a number of things that would have been fine if we hadn’t overthought it. This one was a much more general knowledge kind of trivia night than the last one I participated in (which was almost entirely library school students and seemed much trickier). But I was on the winning team each time so I am obviously just lucky and skilled enough I should do this more often.

Before coming to Vancouver, my only knowledge of trivia nights was from that episode of The Office (UK). I had no idea they were a thing outside of Britain, but supposedly they’ve been popping up all over this town. I will be going to another, probably better, one next week.

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Jun 24 2011
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australia, games, library, travel, 中国

travel days ahead

I’m heading off to scenic Gippsland, Victoria tomorrow for some Koha training. I was talking to Sean the other day about how weird small businesses are. I mean, these librarians are paying for me to go out and teach them about this software I’ve only been using since April. I feel like at a lot of places I’d have needed more training than I have had (which is actually pretty extensive since I’m helping people with their Koha problems all day). Whatever works, I guess. And it means I get to see more of Oz while I’m here.

I’ve been pretty bad about going out to see stuff recently. A lot of hunkering down here in front of the internet. My friend Jamie is off to do his practicum in London (the real one) and got scolded by another of our classmates for solving internet puzzles while he’s supposed to be on vacation. But dude, I completely get that. I’ve been spending far too much time planning out Blood Bowl teams (speaking of which, I found an unofficial Blood Bowl client for playing online which almost works completely well apart from me not being able to simply stand up prone players – let me know if you’re interested in playing).

Of course, a week from today all of that will change since that’s when Holly arrives from China. I’ll engage in a tiny bit of understatement to say I’m looking forward to being in the same city as her, especially without an end-date.

Finally, if you miss my voice, you can now listen to me read Firing Squad, my Machine of Death story whenever you want. Though the magic of reading (and recording) it’s my voice without my innumerable hesitations, filler words and false starts that litter my real speech pattern, so it’s probably more pleasurable in every possible way. You can pump that story through your speakers and pity the poor shmucks who have to deal with me speaking without a script at them.

Like the librarians in Gippsdale next week.

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Jun 20 2011
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australia, games, sports, travel

i have (a few, weakly-held) opinions about sports

One of the things that I enjoy about living in different places is the difference in sports people play/watch. I guess it’s because sports are kind of like games (which I love) except they require more physical effort than I’m willing to engage in most of the time. I can take a bit of an interest in what people do to satisfy their practical day to day needs, but what I get excited about is the pointless shit people pour themselves into like inventing people and having them converse, or painting little pieces of plastic and using other pieces of plastic to determine whether awesome or terrible stuff happened to the first pieces of plastic, or whether one group of people can get an object to a place while another group of people tries to prevent that. That shit is gold.

Rugby is big here. So far I missed game one of the big NSW vs Queensland Rugby Union grudge match (State of Origin) through my own forgetfulness. NSW, where I live, lost, so maybe the next one will have even more riding on it? That’s Rugby Union, which is actually less popular. Rugby League has the big pro league. There are a tonne of teams just from Sydney it seems. Technically I think I live in Rabbitohs territory but a case could be made for me being a Wests [sic] Tigers supporter.

When I turn on my TV every once in a while the game I see most though is Aussie Rules Football, which is kind of awesome. I’d tried to learn a bit about rugby many years ago for Tri-Nations (that’s union), so I had a bit of a grasp of how the game worked. Aussie Rules is crazy awesome. They’re allowed forward passes but you can’t throw the ball, only kick or hit it with your fist. If you catch the ball cleanly in the air you get a free kick from the spot you caught it. The point is to get the ball between two narrow uprights for 6(?) points or two wider ones for 1. It’s on a round field and they’re just running all the time. It reminds me more of something like Ultimate than football or rugby, really.

And then there’s netball. This is like basketball except there’s no dribbling: when you catch the ball you have to stay there and throw it. There’re also no backboards to the nets (which are a bit lower than basketball I think) so you’ve basically got to be right under it to score. It’s always women playing it on TV, so I imagine it’s not deemed the most masculine of sports.

There is a baseball league but it’s a summer sport so I haven’t seen it yet. I’ll probably drag Holly to a game in November so I can come home with a Sydney Blue Sox hat.

Woo. Sport in Australia. I thought about doing this half-assed summary because Sean (who got me into blogging so many years ago) is doing some great work with his Bastard Bomber Fans blog. It’s about CFL football, and the Blue Bombers in particular, and is exactly the kind of thing Sean should be writing. Dude knows his football, and cares about it too. And reading his analyses after the fact means I don’t have to feel bad about asking dumb questions or stating obvious things to try and appear like I know what’s going on during the game. As in all games throughout history, everybody wins!

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May 01 2011
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australia, comics, games, library, travel

lazy sunday

Today I woke up to the snores of an Irishman. From across the room in the hostel, but still. Very loud. The Americans who woke up to the noise were vocal about their displeasure. I merely lay there waiting and figuring out how to spend my day.

See this is the thing about being in a country that isn’t cheap when you have no real money, you can’t just head off into the void and do whatever, confident in your ability to make it out financially unscathed. Relatively I mean. If you go ahead and crash a scooter even in a country where they’re as cheap as Armenians well yes you do have to pay a bit even then. You need to plan out your day so it’ll work.

Having not a tonne of money in Sydney means I’m spending a lot of time in parks and libraries. It seems a waste to just hang out here at the hostel reading, but too expensive to justify going to have afternoon beers by myself. It’s nice out, 20 degrees during the day, so it’s no great hardship to go sit in the sun. Today I found the local branch of the city public library (as opposed to the state library I was in yesterday) and read some comics.

Also, I got a SIM card and now have a phone number. Not that I use the phone part of my phone very often, especially when I don’t know anyone in this city, but it’s probably good for my future employer (assuming the visa comes through eventually) to have some way of contacting me.

Yesterday I found a really swank comic shop and a decent game store. I’m going to wait until I have an apartment before I start buying books/comics/games, but gamers are the only community I feel any confidence in dropping into. My first forays in Vancouver were to game stores too.

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is that I’m really looking forward to when Holly arrives in a couple of months.

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Feb 01 2011
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games

my urge to paint is rising

I played Blood Bowl on Saturday and it was more fun than I remember it being back a decade ago. The big difference for me was not playing Lizardmen, which I’ve since learned are a tough team to play well. There are so many interesting decisions to make in a Blood Bowl game, even if you don’t care about the score.

On Saturday I was using a Norse team (sans werewolves) against a team of dwarves. My players got pulped because they don’t wear armour, but I managed to shove a dwarf into my own end zone so he couldn’t keep running down the clock and mauling my players. Then I pulled off an amazingly lucky passing play to score and end the first half. The second half saw me score again, but just a bit too early so the dwarves had time to rumble down the field and tie it up in the last turn of the game. My opponent was really nice and didn’t show too much impatience with my figuring out which order to make blocks in so as to maximize my chances of not failing.

All in all it was pretty fun. I like playing fragile guys who have a chance at making plays. I don’t think I’ll continue with a Norse team though. The passing game has too much allure.

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Jan 16 2011
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games, vancouver

playing my sabbath away

Today has been such a nice day. I got my paper for my Instructional Role class finished last night, so today was a day of rest. And by rest I mean games. There’s a game store, Strategies, a walkable distance from my house here and on Friday when it was so beautiful in the afternoon I headed down there and picked up the new Space Hulk card game.

I love Space Hulk a healthy amount. The actual board/miniatures game is one of my favourite games ever, because of its incessant against-all-odds drama. The card game captures a good amount of that in a more abstract manner. You’re still controlling a squad of armoured marines in a derelict space ship filled with aliens that’ll claw you to pieces at a moment’s notice. But there’s no map, just areas you travel through, with terrain for genestealers to spawn in.

The main reason I picked it up was because it can be played with 1-6 people and it’s cooperative. When we play regular Space Hulk one person is the Genestealers and it’s always kind of a hard thing because you sort of instinctively root for the humans. In the card game all the humans are a team against the cruel cards of fate. It works pretty well. I’ve played solitaire twice now to get a handle on the rules and one game was very quick and deadly to me (100% mortality in the third room), but I achieved victory in the other one.

The other part of my day was spent painting Blood Bowl figures. Well, they’re actually a Celt warband, but I didn’t give them any weapons and posed them like football players. They were much cheaper than actual Blood Bowl figs. I’d put these guys together months ago when I was making Sean’s wedding present, but hadn’t gotten around to painting them. But Strategies is having a Blood Bowl tournament in a couple of weeks. If my homework stays on schedule I might be able to go play. It’s been years since I played Blood Bowl so I want to be ready.

Now I get to laze away my evening and count my weekend a success.

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Jan 10 2011
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australia, games, library, music, school, vancouver, 中国

little skinny dynamo

The new term has begun for real and I finished two assignments this weekend. One’s a little cataloguing thing that was actually pretty fun and useful, and the other is for my Community-Led Libraries class, which is only due in February. I discovered last term when I was prepping for my China trip that I like getting on top of things early and getting shit out of the way. This term I’m trying to organize things so that when Holly comes in February I have to do as little homework as possible while she’s here. At this point if all goes to schedule I think I’ll just have stuff to do for my online Info Policy class.

But on Friday I went to see the Oh Wells at the Biltmore. I really liked them when I saw them compete in Shindig back in November or whenever it was. I think they ended up winning it. And they were good on Friday. The other bands were okay, but the kinds of music I’d need to listen to the CDs a bunch of times before I’d like it. I usually need to parse the words in songs before I can really like something. Except if I accept beforehand that it’s in another language (see Sigur Ros) or practically nonsense (see Deerhoof).

On Saturday Kerry and Alex had a casino party which was fun. I lost all my fake money and didn’t win the prize, but I had an epically creepy run at Small Stakes Go Fish (every time you have to Go Fish you put $10 in the kitty, which was won by the person with the most pairs at the end). There were eight people playing and I asked the right people for the right cards at least seven times in a row before having to fish. And it was early in the round too, so it’s not like I was remembering what people had.

Yesterday I read and relaxed. Today I’ve been prepping for my job interview on Thursday and doing some research for a cool Co-Op opportunity in Australia. SQL queries are easier than I’d expected. I’m also working on a volunteer project that used to have a terrible name, but is now known as NetworkEd UBC, so that’s kind of fun. I’m trying to embrace my identity as a blogging-type library person, but I think this job I’m interviewing for is less about the actual blogging, and more coordinating, which would probably be good for me. We’ll see.

I’m also hoping to find some time in the next couple of weeks to paint up my Blood Bowl team because there’s a tournament at a local game store in a couple of weeks. It’s been too long since I’ve painted.

I’m also spending a lot of time on Skype, hanging out with Holly. I love that we can just turn on our computers and both go about our business (she has more business to go about since she can only get online at the bakery, where there are often customers demanding her attention) and chat when there’re spare moments. It’s not like it’s some big special thing, just life and a bit of connection. Long-distance sucks for relationships, but this is a pretty decent time in history to be doing it, all things considered.

So yes, that’s my recent activity log. A bit more than one thing a day.

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