2005-06-01 RussCon Report

News

12 of us played 13 games! Welcome my ex-cow-orker and Flipside Camp J cohort Justin aka cowquat (not to be confused with another Justin who came to RussCon in 2003).

Post-Flipside, "I seem to have fallen out of time" (and not just from confusingly writing the last couple RussCon Reports way later than usual)... my brain is now being sucked dry lately due to the immense labor for the Esperanto Congress which officially starts on Friday June 10 this week, and which I am a main organizer of. These final days are insanely surreal and hectic. I have never organized anything like this before.

On Saturday afternoon there will be FREE Esperanto classes by 5 different instructors (including one from China!) all afternoon, starting at 1pm. Anyone interested in checking out Esperanto is welcome. The Congress will take place mainly in the Peter Center of Concordia University; the free classes will be running in Kramer 108. You can park in Harms Hall parking lot (northwest corner of I-35 and 32nd Street) for free during the Congress. http://kongreso.hewgill.com is the official Congress webpage.

Game Results

RicochetRobot	3	Tim 2 Ben -1 RussW -1
Boggle	6	Tim 4 RussW 4 Ben 1 Matt -1 Marty -3 JP -5
DragonDelta	5	Tim 4 JP -1 Matt -1 Clayton -1 William -1
Pickomino	5	JP 4 Marty 2 Clayton 0 Matt -2 Tim -4
Pickomino	2	Jeffles 1 SarahM -1
WhatsThatOnMyHead	4	Ben 3 Jeffles 1 MarkY -2 SarahM -2
CarcassonneCastle	2	Jeffles 1 Clayton -1
Tichu	2	( Jeffles Ben ) 1 ( William SarahM ) -1
Bluff	6	Matt 5 Tim 3 MarkY 1 Justin -1 JP -3 Clayton -5
KillDog	6	Clayton 5 Justin 3 Tim 1 William -1 Matt -3 JP -5
Boggle	2	MarkY 1 Ben -1
Attika	4	Matt 3 JP -1 Clayton -1 William -1
RicochetRobot	4	Ben 2 RussW 2 MarkY -2 SarahM -2

That first Ricochet Robot game was tantalizingly close... Tim, Ben, and I all had 5 chits in a 3-way tie when we drew the 16th chit (the final chit by our recent convention of not using the 17th chit).

Pickomino is a new game Marty brought which seemed cool. Unfortunately I got dropped out of the game I was in due to a 1.5 hour phone call with a Polish Esperantist. Sorry for the interruption, folks. Congress business...

Kill Dog continues to be a popular simple short game. Recommended.

Ratings

Rank Ratings:       
 3.4012 Tim
 2.4849 Jeffles
 1.9617 Ben
 1.3863 RussW
 1.0578 Matt
 0.6286 Justin
-0.2231 Marty
-0.4054 MarkY
-1.2040 Clayton
-1.4917 William
-2.7726 SarahM
-3.4022 JP

Win Ratings:
 3.2189 Tim won 3 of 6
 2.1440 Matt won 2 of 6
 1.7918 Jeffles won 3 of 4
 1.3863 RussW won 2 of 3
 1.2685 Ben won 3 of 6
 0.3285 JP won 1 of 6
 0.1823 Clayton won 1 of 6
-0.3647 Justin won 0 of 2
-0.4700 MarkY won 1 of 4
-0.6287 Marty won 0 of 2
-1.3863 William won 0 of 4
-2.3666 SarahM won 0 of 4

Tim is the Devil! Jeffles and Matt are Co-Vice-Devils.

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

I used GraphViz to generate the graph image.

Meta Game

Ben was the Meta Devil and created the following Meta Game:

GUESS THE NUMBER OF PENNIES

Write down your guess and give it to Ben by 10:00. The closest guess wins the metagame and the pennies.

1 guess per person.

Ties broken randomly.

No, you don't have to take the pennies.

(He brought in a container full of pennies, about the size of a typical drinking glass.)

I had a seemingly good method of estimating based on imagining rolls of pennies, but I brainfarted and thought a penny roll had 100 instead of 50 pennies, so my guess 1024 was too large by a factor of 2... The actual answer was 500-something, and Jeffles came closest (with 555 if I recall) (and I think I heard Clayton was second-closest) so Jeffles is the Meta Devil and will design next week's Meta Game!

Links

GameKultur

A Creationist's View of DINOSAURS and the Theory Of Evolution

Cosmic Encounter Online

Unusual Cards - collage art by Francesca Berrini

Go Picture Problems by Takayuki Tanaka

Art by Hector Hernandez (whom I know from Literacy Austin)

Interview with Leanne Franson who draws the comic Liliane, Bi-Dyke. A recent comic of hers I particularly liked is Schoolyard Slurs.

Monkey Steals The Peach Ninja Mind Control!

Welcome Peace Duke! - apparently it's a Russian pun, and "peace duke" sounds like "cunt" in Russian...

Accuracy of Commercial Data Brokers: 100% of the eleven participants in the study discovered errors in background check reports provided by ChoicePoint. The majority of participants found errors in even the most basic biographical information: name, social security number, address and phone number (in 67% of Acxiom reports, 73% of ChoicePoint reports).... The most shocking error was that two people out of eleven were listed as corporate directors of companies that they had never heard of. This can't possibly be statistically meaningful, but it is certainly scary.

Plug Pulled On Watchmen Movie again...? Surely this is just as well... I can't imagine a Watchmen movie measuring up to original book.