December 3 2003 RussCon Report

News

Bonus points for knowing why this RussCon Report includes the mural of the La Brea tar pits by C.R. Knight. (I'm sure many of you will know!)

Heads-up that for the first time in RussCon history, December 24 and 31 are Wednesdays, and so it is quite likely there will not (repeat not) be RussCon As Usual those 2 evenings, due to pesky familial obligations and traditional festivities. The RussCon Management regrets any inconvenience this may cause and will keep you apprised of further developments.

Game Results

Vampire	5	MarkH 4 Whendy 1 Ben 1 RussW -2 Clayton -4
Carcassonne	3	SteveB 2 RussW 0 Clayton -2
Alhambra	6	DaveB 5 Marty 3 RussW 1 JimG -1 Clayton -3 William -5
Babel	2	RussW 1 Clayton -1
Cloud9	3	MarkH 2 Ben 0 MarkY -2
Tichu	2	( Ben MarkH ) 1 ( JimG Whendy ) -1
TooManyCooks	5	JimG 4 DaveB 2 Marty 0 William -2 SteveB -4
Zero	3	William 2 JimG 0 DaveB -2
Transamerica	5	RussW 4 Whendy 2 Clayton 0 PJ -3 JP -3
Zero	3	William 2 DaveB 0 JimG -2
Scrabble	2	Ben 1 MarkY -1
Rummikub	4	RussW 3 Whendy 1 JP -1 MarkY -3
Rummikub	4	William 3 JP 1 PJ -1 MarkY -3

Yet another 6-player game of Alhambra! Oh the irony! Everyone thinks it's too chaotic with 6 players, but everyone wants to play it!

Nice to see Scrabble finally get some action again, after having only been played once before at RussCon.

Rummikub seems to be gaining in popularity. And JP was able to start playing tiles much sooner than when he was teamed with Tim last time, heh.

Ratings

Rank Ratings:         
 3.4012 MarkH
 3.2834 RussW
 1.6740 Ben
 1.3863 DaveB
 1.0986 William
 0.9163 Marty
 0.6931 Whendy
-0.4700 JimG
-0.5108 SteveB
-0.9163 JP
-1.3218 PJ
-4.3175 Clayton
-4.5643 MarkY

Win Ratings:
 3.4012 MarkH won 3 of 3
 3.1781 William won 3 of 5
 2.8779 RussW won 3 of 6
 0.8755 SteveB won 1 of 2
 0.7577 Ben won 2 of 4
 0.7577 DaveB won 1 of 4
-0.0770 JimG won 1 of 5
-0.4055 Marty won 0 of 2
-0.5108 PJ won 0 of 2
-0.7985 JP won 0 of 3
-1.4271 Whendy won 0 of 4
-1.6740 MarkY won 0 of 4
-1.7272 Clayton won 0 of 5

MarkH is the Devil! William and I are Co-Vice-Devils. Then Ben and SteveB, then DaveB, then Marty and JimG.

If you are confused how the ratings work, you could peruse the FAQ.

I used GraphViz to generate the graph image.

Meta Game

JP was the Meta Devil. Here is the Meta Game he mailed out:

The Mythical Meta Hour

Guess the number of man hours that will be put in at RussCon this week.

Rules:

Each person who attends RussCon and plays at least one game should "punch in" when they arrive and "punch out" when they leave. (which involves writing down aproximate time of arrival and departure (Round to the nearest 15 minutes.))

If Russ arrives before anyone else, he will "punch in" when the first non-Russ person arrives. He will "punch out" when the last non-Russ person leaves.

If someone doesn't punch in or out, Russ or I will guesstimate how long they were at Russ's house.

Anyone on the RussCon list may send a guess to the RussCon list before 6pm on Wed.

Guesses must be multiples of 15 minutes.

If more than one person sends in the same time, the email that Russ receives first will be counted. The other submitters may change their guess if they wish. Otherwise, it won't be counted.

The person who gets closest to the correct time is the winner. Ties broken in favor of the person who guessed under the actual value.

Here are the estimates emailed out by meta contestants:
00:00 JP
40:00 MarkH
42:15 MarkG
48:30 Marty
56:45 William
58:45 Whendy
60:00 RussW
60:15 Jeffles
168:00 Fina

The time data, entered and crunched by JP, follows:

Name	In	Out	Man Hours
RussW	6:45	12:45	6:00
Whendy	6:45	8:45	2:00
MarkH	6:45	9:15	2:30
Clayton	6:45	12:45	6:00
Ben	7:00	11:15	4:15
Jim	7:15	11:15	4:00
DaveB	7:30	11:15	3:45
SteveB	7:30	10:30	3:00
Marty	8:00	10:45	2:45
MarkY	7:30	12:15	4:45
William	8:15	12:45	4:30
Whendy	10:00	12:00	2:00
PJ	10:15	12:15	2:00
JP	10:15	12:15	2:00
			2:1:30

(MarkY forgot to punch in when he arrived, so I estimated 7:30 as he seemed to show up sometime around Dave and Steve... Also note Whendy left to watch a tv show, then returned.) Many of our guesses were too high because we were surprised by the relatively light turnout. The total Meta Man Hours was 49:30, so Marty's estimate of 48:30 is closest. Marty is the Meta Devil and will design next week's Meta Game!

Links

Greylisting is a neat new antispam technique. My cow-orker Greg has started experimenting with it and "The results have been astounding in their success."

Googlebombs article

Preview for Korean animated film Wonderful Days looks pretty cool

Anabuki TV commercial from Japan really has balls

And The Bride Wore...

If you have the need for speed, then RussCon meta-attendee Ed Rozmiarek's 2004 Formula Dé league starts January 4

The Set Of All Even Primes is a short fiction by long-lost RussCon attendee Jay Lake

Leapfrog is a corporate thriller novel (which I've not read) about drug discovery by a cow-orker of mine; all proceeds (i.e. profits - are proceeds the same as profits? the definition is murky! Thanks Whendy for pointing out the possible ambiguity or incorrectness of "proceeds") go to National Foundation for Cancer Research

terragalleria.com has quite pretty pictures of US national parks