2005-05-18 RussCon Report

News

11 of us played 8 games! Low turnout lately. End of school and summer vacation?

RussD and Pauline have returned from their Greek Odyssey which they enjoyed. RussCon got the postcard shown above. And thanks for the fridge magnet art (from the island Santorini) which is quite pretty! (A bigger photo can be seen here.)

DIY Marathon (skating): An announcement appeared in the AustinSk8 yahoogroup about a Do It Yourself Marathon on Saturday May 21 at 9am at the Veloway:

DIY Marathon is an event to encourage all skaters to add some miles to their skating without the pressure of how fast. Come out and enjoy some distance skating at your own pace b/c the only rule is that everyone starts together. Do all 8 1/2 laps or as many as you want. Start, stop, rest, fast, slow; however you go all are welcome. Use this event to test your personal best or just have fun skating with others. Get the idea? Good, now skate.

I am going, as is fool and perhaps William, Jeffles, Chad... anyone interested in carpooling with me and/or fool, let me know... or I'll see you there! (To get to the Veloway, go south down Mopac, down past William Cannon, past Slaughter, next signal is Lacrosse - go left (east) onto Lacrosse, and after a couple blocks you'll see the Veloway parking lot easily.) I doubt I'll actually do 8 laps; I think 4 is the most I've done in one session before.

Furthermore, I have found that the street Norwegian Wood (a block from my house) is a nice smoothly paved reasonably long (somewhat over 0.12 mile according to mapquest) street with almost no cars (and the occasional friendly neighbor), great for doing a little skating exercise. If anyone wants to come to RussCon early to skate it with me and chat before RussCon sometime (I have been doing 10 or 12 laps almost every day lately), let me know.

Spanish: The RussCon Spanish study group of the past couple months was a total bust (only twice did anyone else ever show up, and only one of those involved actual studying/practice), so I'm officially declaring it dead (unless someone seriously wants to start doing it!)

Game Results

Boggle	5	RussW 4 Ben 2 Clayton 0 Jeffles -2 KevinY -4
KillDog	4	KevinY 3 RussW 1 TimG -2 Clayton -2
Oceania	2	Pauline 1 RussD -1
Acquire	4	TimG 3 RussW 1 KevinY -1 Clayton -3
Bluff	7	KevinY 6 RussD 4 RussW 2 Clayton 0 TimG -2 Pauline -4 Chad -6
Barbarossa	4	Jeffles 3 William 1 SarahM -1 Ben -3
Exxtra	3	Ben 2 Clayton 0 William -2
EinfachGenial	4	Chad 3 RussW 1 KevinY -1 Jeffles -3

I had another good game of Boggle, yay. It should be noted that Jeffles and Kevin joined midway through so their scores were lower.

Kill Dog got played for the second week in a row and was enjoyed. Best moment = Loot is huge (like $75K) and KevinY, TimG, and I are all aiming at Clayton - who refuses to believe that any of us might actually shoot him! In fact all three of us shot him, so he died in one round. After last week when we played that you could only get one wound per round, we decided to play that each hit wounds you. That turned out to make the game more bloody and fun indeed, as this was the first game someone actually died, and in fact Tim also died, thus leaving Kevin and me as the survivors. (We also decided for rating purposes, all dead people are equally dead, no tie breakers.) I recommend trying this game - it's quick to learn, quick to play, and interesting fun!

Ratings

Rank Ratings:       
 3.3367 RussW
 0.9118 KevinY
 0.4055 Ben
 0.4055 RussD
 0.1823 TimG
-0.4054 Pauline
-0.4054 SarahM
-0.5597 Chad
-0.6931 Jeffles
-0.6931 William
-2.0794 Clayton

Win Ratings:
 2.5337 KevinY won 2 of 5
 1.2322 Chad won 1 of 2
 0.9445 TimG won 1 of 3
 0.8755 Jeffles won 1 of 3
 0.5922 RussW won 1 of 5
 0.5878 Ben won 1 of 3
 0.5390 Pauline won 1 of 2
-0.2877 SarahM won 0 of 1
-0.6931 William won 0 of 2
-0.8472 RussD won 0 of 2
-1.3583 Clayton won 0 of 5

KevinY and I are Co-Devils! Then Ben, TimG and Chad. Clayton is again the Generous Angel.

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

I used GraphViz to generate the graph image.

Meta Game

SarahM was the Meta Devil and mailed out the following Meta Game:

I am going to bring three pizzas to share at russcon this week in gratitude of all the pizza people have shared with me. (Let me know any topping preferences or aversions.) The meta game will be to guess which toppings I get on each pizza and where I order from.

One point for each topping guessed correctly on each pizza, and minus one point for each incorrect topping guess per pizza. 3 point for guessing correctly from where I order. Cheese counts as its own topping.

Guesses due by 7:30, either by email to me or written on paper at russcon. If you email, please add "guess" to the subject line. Winner need not be present. I will arrive with pizza between 7:30 and 8. Ties won by the person with the fewest negative points. If still tied, then I will pick randomly.

-Sarah

Sample Guess

Pizza 1
-------
Cheese
Pepperoni

Pizza 2
-------
Cheese

Pizza 3
-------
No Cheese
Mushroom
Bell Pepper
Onion

Thanks to Sarah for the 3 pizzas, which were all consumed! One was a no-cheese pizza, which was thus vegan, yay! (It turns out that most soy cheese are not actually vegan since they often contain some milk product.)

More info for those interested in the vegan/cheese issue: A few days ago I emailed Austin's Pizza (where Tim ordered from recently, and where Sarah ordered from tonight) and got a prompt courteous response, and the representative acknowledged that their soy cheese is not vegan and said their brand "is called "Galaxy" and it does contain Casein. I understand that it is a necessary evil. We have been unable to secure a casein-free soy cheese. We actually haven't run across any with a reasonable shelf life. If you know of any please let us know. We get that question quite a bit and would love to offer a vegan cheese." I'd be interested if any of y'all have experience with vegan cheeses.

Anyway, I digress... SarahM reports the following results for the Meta Game:

The people who guessed were:

William +5
Jeff Shaevel +3
Russ Williams -1
Jeffles -4

And the pizzas were:

Pizza 1
-------
Pepperoni
Sausage
Cheese

Pizza 2
-------
Pepperoni
Black Olives
Cheese

Pizza 3
-------
No Cheese
Spinach
Mushrooms

And I ordered from Austin Pizza.

So William is the Meta Devil and will design next week's Meta Game!

Links

Don't just sit there! Comparisons of women-peeing-up products

Which literature classic are you? It told me: "Oscar Wilde: The Portrait of Dorian Gray. You are a horror novel from the world of dandies, rich pretty boys, art and aesthetics, and intellectual debates between ethical people and decadent pleasure-seekers. You value beauty and pleasure but realize their dangers, as well."

Google Sightseeing Why bother seeing the world for real?

SmartKlamp the fine art of male circumcision

Cool photos of abandoned amusement park in Japanese

Star Wars Gangsta Rap Flash animation

A9 Yellow Pages show millions of photos of certain cities' streets, and you can walk along the sidewalk. E.g. here's the Stinking Rose in San Francisco!

Internet T-Shirt with various memes. I was particularly amused at the iconic tubgirl reference. It is one of many shirts at Threadless, an ongoing tee shirt design competition.

Su Doku Japanese puzzles catch on in England