NewsOne other coworker (Jason who came to his first RussCon as well) submitted something for the triangle classification problem, and I think that is probably the end of the submissions, so watch for a writeup on that sometime soon. It is possible that I will pose another similar challenge before posting full info on the first one, just so people can try another such problem without having seen all the results and lessons of the first one. (No, this is not just a cheap ploy to procrastinate on writing the results -- I have all the results and am starting to write up a report now. I just think it would be interesting to get a second sampling of test suites for another problem before people get to see the good, the bad, and the ugly from the first one.) Meanwhile some more people snuck in entries just under the wire on that Kuro5hin contest I mentioned a couple weeks ago, so my probability of winning decreased significantly... but Thad hasn't announced a winner yet. Note there will be no RussCon on Wednesday August 7 since I'll be at the Go Congress (which, as everyone knows, is The Best Week Of The Year). I have heard rumors Marty might host a Sans-RussCon, and he has confirmed these rumors. |
| PuertoRico | 5 | Marty 4 MarkH 2 Clay 0 Daniel -2 Dan -4 |
| Transamerica | 4 | Marty 3 Dan 1 MarkH -1 Daniel -3 |
| Munchkin | 5 | RussW 4 William 2 Dudley -1 Fred -1 Steve -4 |
| Vampire | 4 | Steve 3 RussW 1 Clayton -1 Fred -3 |
| Zero | 5 | MarkH 4 Marty 1 Daniel 1 Dan -2 RussD -4 |
| 6Nimmt | 6 | Whindy 5 Dan 3 Marty 1 Daniel -1 MarkH -3 JP -5 |
| Cosmic | 4 | RussD 3 William -1 Dudley -1 JonathanC -1 |
| TitanArena | 3 | RussW 2 Steve 0 Fred -2 |
| PuertoRico | 3 | Whindy 2 Daniel 0 JP -2 |
| Carcassonne | 3 | Steve 2 RussW 0 Jason -2 |
| WizWar | 4 | Dudley 3 JonathanC 1 William -2 RussD -2 |
| Vampire | 4 | JP 2 Jason 2 RussW -1 Steve -3 |
I was already looking forward to playing Munchkin (even before Daniel posted his meta game), and I indeed enjoyed it, but there are 2 complaints. It took 2.5 hours to play with 5 of us, and this problem is because there are a lot of "screw your neighbor" cards. For about the first hour or more, no one got higher than level 3 (you need to reach level 10 to win). It was kind of silly. I suspect it would play faster with fewer people, but since it purports to be for 3 to 6 players, it ought to work better with 5 and 6 players than it does. The other gripe, even more serious for me, is the crappy rules writing/editing and poor ergonomics (info that should be on cards but you have to look up in the book, inconsistencies e.g. between Half-Breed and Super-Munchkin cards, etc.) -- all sorts of pointless ambiguities and holes which should have been easily ironed out, since it's essentially a simple game and could easily have clean elegant rules. This especially disappointed me since SJ has written such genuine gems of clarity as Ogre, original Illuminati, Melee, etc. They seem to be using an excuse of "this is a silly game and arguing about it is part of the fun", but I don't buy it. Rules arguments aren't as fun as playing the game.
Fun to play Titan the Arena again, even if only 5 monsters die in a game of it; it had been a while.
New guy Jason is curiously my first UD coworker to actually come to RussCon. We played Carcassonne with the classic set, partly since he'd not played before and partly just because we've been playing with the expansion so much lately.
Meta GameDaniel was again the Meta Devil. Here is the Meta Game he mailed out:Slay monsters and beasts!Here are the games which earned people meta points:
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Cradle of Filth, Cruelty and the Beast
Dinosaur Jr, Without a Sound
Philip Glass, La Belle et la Bete
Kittywinder, Livre des Monstres
Monster Magnet, Dopes to Infinity
It's another of those pesky meta soundtracks!
New Multiplicative Rank Ratings: 3.5711 35.5556 Marty (4) 2.8904 18.0000 Whindy (2) 2.7081 15.0000 RussW (5) 0.9808 2.6667 MarkH (4) 0.8109 2.2500 Dudley (3) 0.1178 1.1250 JonathanC (2) 0.0000 1.0000 Clay (1) -0.2877 0.7500 William (3) -0.4055 0.6667 Jason (2) -0.4055 0.6667 Clayton (1) -0.5108 0.6000 Steve (5) -0.9163 0.4000 RussD (3) -0.9808 0.3750 Dan (4) -2.0794 0.1250 Daniel (5) -2.1972 0.1111 JP (3) -2.7726 0.0625 Fred (3) |
New Multiplicative Win Ratings: 2.8904 18.0000 Whindy won 2 of 2 2.5903 13.3333 Marty won 2 of 4 1.3218 3.7500 RussW won 2 of 5 1.1632 3.2000 Steve won 2 of 5 0.9163 2.5000 MarkH won 1 of 4 0.8755 2.4000 Dudley won 1 of 3 0.8755 2.4000 RussD won 1 of 3 0.2877 1.3333 Jason won 1 of 2 0.1054 1.1111 JP won 1 of 3 -0.2231 0.8000 Clay won 0 of 1 -0.2877 0.7500 Clayton won 0 of 1 -0.5754 0.5625 JonathanC won 0 of 2 -0.7985 0.4500 William won 0 of 3 -0.9163 0.4000 Dan won 0 of 4 -0.9163 0.4000 Fred won 0 of 3 -1.3218 0.2667 Daniel won 0 of 5 |
Marty is the Devil and Whindy is Vice-Devil! I am Vice-Vice-Devil. Then Steve, then MarkH.
No more JPEGs - ISO to withdraw image standard thanks to stupid Austin company claiming they own patent to JPEG
A coworker is on the recently released Negative Step "Conquering Punk" 10" release with the bad cover so I made that my wallpaper at work! You should too!
Toilet Paper Algorithms and other writings of Don Norman
Review of Big If, an odd-sounding novel set in the computer game biz
you should know better than to pick up a duck in a dungeon
Check out my webcomics.