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Little Miss Sunshine %}
A loser's manual:
Nine steps to win by losing.
Lots of examples!
The
25 Most Important Questions in the History of the Universe
"My most interesting discovery has been around forever,
I've just always avoided it. Self-described hippie game company
Looney Labs has produced a set of game pieces called Icehouse
for 20 years. They're just little stackable plastic pyramids
in different colors. I've seen them forever taking up little
back-wall booths at conventions, inevitably staffed by freaky
looking hippies in lab coats. I never once felt the urge to go
talk to them. The games being played with these little pyramids
always seemed so abstract and complex as to not be fun, and frankly,
the whole thing reeked of 'hey I made this in my basement.' This
year, however, they changed how they marketed the game. They
boiled down the product into a single, 9 dollar stack of pyramids
and one very simple game (Treehouse). It's extremely easy to
teach and demos wonderfully. I actually stopped to play this
year, and half an hour later, after a great series of demos and
some intelligent conversation with Kristin Looney, I bought one
of every single thing they had on offer. 6 tubes of different
colored pyramids, some special dice, some cards, a 5x5 handmade
plastic board, and a book of a dozen really, really good games
you can play with it all. I encourage anyone with even a passing
interest in games to at least spend 20 minutes on their website."
-- Julian Murdoch, in his Gen
Con Wrapup at GamersWithJobs.com
   
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Hello, Shiro! |
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 Well,
we're back from GenCon, and we had a fabulous time. (See my report
for assorted details.) After GenCon, we decided to take a little
time off for ourselves, to catch up on life and stuff (hence
no updates these last 2 weeks), and hey, guess what? We got a
new cat!
We're really been needing a new cat... it's hard to believe,
but it's been two years since we lost our beloved gray cat Aslan,
which was also just a few months after losing our wonderful white
cat Marley.
So we've been surviving on nothing but the feline energy of the
adorable little black cat we call LittleCat,
which of course just isn't enough for 3 people who were used
to having 3 cats
around. But we decided to be patient... we figured someone new
would drop into our lives sooner or later, and this weekend,
she finally did!
This lovable little fur-ball is estimated to be about 5 months
old, and was a stray in need of a home until she was picked up
by a woman named Pat, who found this kitten in need of rescue
and took her to the vet to be checked out. There, Robin's
husband Mike saw her, and when Pat said she was looking to find
a home for this wonderful little kitten, Mike knew exactly who
to recommend.
So the next thing you know, we had another little cat in our
house! Obviously this is awesome, but it's also kind of odd since
the new cat looks almost exactly like LittleCat, except for being
the totally opposite color. So now we've got these two matching
black and white cats, and since they haven't learned to become
friends yet, they usually try to kill each other at every opportunity,
making the whole situation rather like an episode of Spy
vs. Spy. Given this, we've been keeping the 2 spy-cats separated,
each in an isolated section of the house, until they learn to
get along. (So that neither can become too territorial, the spies
are moved back and forth frequently.)
As for what to call her, we've been brainstorming, debating,
and trying out different names all week. Finally last night we
settled on calling her Shiro (pronounced sheero), which means
white in Japanese. (Thanks for the suggestion, Rash!)
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 Thanks
for reading, and have a great week! |
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This week we finally finished up the revisions for Are
You a Werewolf? 3rd Edition. The changes are mostly very
minor and are driven by efficiency issues... instead of including
a separate rules insert, the instructions will now appear on
a series of 4 extra cards. The game itself is not changing, but
the new edition will include some added recommendations, like
playing only with odd numbers, limiting villages to 15 people,
and using options like Timed-Days and No First-Night Kills. Also
included is a section called Types of Hunters, describing the
differences between Detectives and Avengers, to help players
understand their preferred hunting-styles. AYAW? 3rd Edition
should be available in a month or so, and the price will still
be just $4. |
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I love how YouTube has become a venue for releasing and promoting
short films that otherwise would have trouble finding an audience.
For example, this week I got emails pointing me to a pair of
excellent short films just released by a couple of the best Drug Peace
organizations at work today, the Drug
Policy Alliance and Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition. Please go watch both of
these films, then point them out to people you know! (On a lighter
note, I also really enjoyed these
two
comedy bits by Patton Oswalt.) |
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I was fascinated by this article on How
to Persuade Your Neighbors to Quiet their Barking Dogs. The
author, Craig Mixon, has spent a lot of time dealing with this
issue, and has concluded that over 45% of the people with noisy
dogs are either malicious or recalcitrant and thus are just impossible
to deal with: "When you encounter an intractably obstinate
person keeping a chronically barking dog, you are dealing with
a diagnosable personality disorder, (usually a Borderline, or
a Narcissistic, or a Paranoid, or an anti-social Personality
Disorder) who is incapable of participating in mutually respectful
relationships." |
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