jl8e
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Julian Lighton" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:31 pm
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Very silly ideas
A children's bedtime story book about particle physics: Goodnight Muon
Current Mood:  silly
Tags: prattle
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07:42 pm
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Dominion: Seaside
So, it came out on Monday, my copy arrived Friday, and I played it some Friday and a lot today. I haven't seen all the cards in action yet, but I can give an opinion.
It's very good, better than Intrigue so far.
The primary new mechanic is "Action - Duration": an action card that sticks around and does something for you at the start of your next turn as well. They're not as immediately strong as a one-off Action card, but they give your deck consistency. It adds some bookkeeping load, but not much once you get used to it.
The overall theme of the set has been described as setting up your next turn, and it does that fairly well. In addition to the Duration cards, there's quite a few cards to manipulate the top of the deck.
None of the cards looks useless or overly specialized. (I'm sure there's another Thief in the set, but I don't see any Coppersmiths.) Treasury sticks out as likely overpowered, but it may actually be that Market is underpowered. Still, it feels like I'd be willing to pay six for it.
It plays very well. The games felt closer to plain Dominion than to Dominion plus Intrigue -- more straightforward constructive play, less screwing the other players. (Although there was still plenty of that, especially in the game with Throne Room, Cutpurse, and Sea Hag.) Things seemed to move faster, and I'd say the set is more friendly to new players than Intrigue -- there are fewer effects that are complex or require decisions once played.
It also make Intrigue better, just by diluting it. (Don't get me wrong; I like Intrigue, but it's better in smaller doses.)
The production values remain high: the art is better overall than Intrigue, though perhaps not as consistent as the original set. The tokens and play mats provided for some of the card effects are solid, and the mats are small enough to pack in my card boxes with no trouble.
My biggest complaint about the game is that it's getting heavy. I've condensed the sets down from their huge (but nicely-designed) boxes into 400-count trading-card boxes. (Three sleeved sets plus four players' worth of money and VP takes four boxes.)
Current Mood:  tired
Current Music: Garbage, "#1 Crush"
Tags: gaming, review
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05:24 pm
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Dominion Variants
I've been playing a lot of Dominion lately. (Shocking, I know.)
We've been playing locally with a variant where, when the game ends, you still finish the round, so everybody gets the same number of turns. This reduces the advantage of going first.
Another idea to make things fairer is to mandate the 3-4 money split in the first two rounds. The 5-2 is usually way stronger, and it's pure luck.
(It would also be a handicapping method -- give the stronger players 3-4s, and the weaker 5-2s.)
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) drcpunk figuring out her turn in Dominion
Tags: gaming, geekery, variants
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03:48 pm
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Mulling Smartphones
So, after the massive clusterfuck that was the Sidekick over the past two weeks, I'm going to be switching to a new phone.
Currently, I'm looking at either an iPhone or an Android with a keyboard.
I don't want to change phones -- for most purposes, my ideal phone is a Sidekick. The big purposes it's not ideal for are "trusting it to work" and "trusting T-Mobile not to discontinue it".
The tradeoff is pretty much keyboard vs. better software. Current Android phones are kind of underpowered, but that'll hopefully be corrected in the next generation, which are hitting the market around now. Sprint and Verizon have phones coming at the end of the month that look good, but I'd want a hands-on first. (I'd also prefer to stick with a GSM carrier -- I like the ability to swap SIM cards around.)
iPhones are more expensive than T-M Android phones, and both are more expensive than the Sidekick plan. I haven't checked Verizon or Sprint's pricing yet.
Current Music: Tom Waits, "Singapore"
Tags: danger sucks, phones
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11:50 pm
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A new meaning of the word "friendly" with which I was previously unfamiliar
Chase now has "DepositFriendly" ATMs, which do not require envelopes in order to deposit -- you just insert checks or cash staight into the appropriate slots.
...or you would, if they had a "make a deposit" menu item.
Current Mood:  irritated
Current Music: Savatage, "The Wake of Magellan"
Tags: hate
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04:08 pm
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Origins 2009
Been a while since I posted here. I blame Facebook. It's so much easier to toss out a quick status update than to write something that feels worth posting to LJ.
( Anyway, Origins )
All in all, a good con, with no significant low points other than my inability to operate the Board Room. I spent more time in the Looney Labs room this year, and played no Shadowfist. (The only event I was willing to play and had a deck for clashed with Icehouse.)
Current Music: a playlist of various Katamari songs
Tags: gaming, geekery, origins
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02:17 am
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A Windows security question
I have a windows XP partition on my Mac, and I want to start using it to play networked games on occasion. (Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 at the moment.)
Currently, it only gets to speak to the internet when running in VMWare, but it'll need to run solo to play FPSes.
If I'm never running anything else (like IE), I keep up with security patches, the Windows firewall is on, and it's sitting behind a wireless router doing NAT (an Airport Extreme -- I am still a Mac geek, after all), how secure is it in practice? What other security tools will I need?
It feels to me like it ought to be secure enough as-is, but I don't trust Windows not to find new and exciting ways to screw up.
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02:03 am
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Things I am none too fond of
- The bus driver driving aggresively and likely illegally. (That's not what the shoulder is for. Especially when you're as wide as a bus.)
- The fact that if he weren't, we'd be barely moving at all.
Current Location: going nowhere slowly
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Boston, "Foreplay/Longtime"
Tags: prattle
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04:33 pm
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I'm going to be eaten by zombies
A 24-hour free trial period today, and a 40% discount for the weekend on Left 4 Dead, and Valve has successfully sold me a copy of the game.
Anybody already playing?
Current Mood: doomed
Tags: video games
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03:49 pm
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Oddly appropriate
My bookmarks list is full of lots of clutter, some of which is organized into folders, so I don't see exactly how much crap I've bookmarked over the years.
I was bookmarking a web site that has patches for some of the old Ultima games so they can actually work on fast machines. (Also improving the graphics and music.)
When the Add Bookmark dialog came up, it was defaulting to the last folder I added a bookmark to, which was "Avatar builders".
Current Mood: amused
Tags: geekery, obscure, video games
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11:40 pm
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The all-time vaporware award
Reminded by a conversation with ladymondegreen the other day, I thought to get around to checking on the status of Cliff Johnson's The Fool and His Money.
It was announced in the closing credits of The Fool's Errand, released in 1987. The website says it's in final beta testing.
Having enjoyed both the original and 3 in Three, I'm probably going to get it when it comes out.
Current Mood: cheerful
Tags: geekery
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02:09 am
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Post-LARP
The game ran. There were some bumps, it could have used at least another week to write it.
But it was good. Not as good as Ghost Fu, but good. We had good players and a solid foundation. We know a lot of what we did wrong, and it's fixable.
Current Mood: fried
Tags: gaming, larp, presque vue
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12:13 pm
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Can I panic yet?
We'll be at Intercon in a week, where we're running two LARPs.
One of them isn't yet written. Yeah; it's mostly written, but I don't think it's as finished as Ghost Fu was at this point last year, and that one was finished at close to the last minute. (Though, to be fair, Ghost Fu had a lot more components to generate.)
Current Mood: worried
Current Music: The Beatles, "Help!"
Tags: gaming, geekery
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01:29 am
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An exercise in will
It's late. I'm tired. I've been away from most of the internet since Thursday evening. I don't need to screw my sleep cycle up again.
When I get home, I am not going to check my shiny new Facebbok account. Really.
Current Mood: tired but happy
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02:10 pm
[Link] | I'm in a six-player RPG. We have a Julian, a Julia, and a Julie.
This could get confusing.
Current Location: Dreamation
Current Mood: tired
Tags: prattle
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06:24 pm
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facebook
After a few incidents in a row that suggested I might want to be on Facebbok, I took advantage of my wasted afternoon and sat down to play with it.
Last I looked, I had five friends, had made requests of a bunch more, including several people I'd lost touch with, and had one friend request from somebody I sort-of knew in high school, who appears to have detected me by magic.
I'm still figuring out the interface, but it's not completely horrid.
I also still need to add a picture to my profile, to help differentiate me from the other Julian Lighton out there.
And I just realized I can make a dedicated email address on jl8e.org for all the notification emails.
Current Mood: pissed off
Current Music: Jonathan Coulton, "Skullcrusher Mountain"
Tags: mindless trend-following, prattle
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01:20 am
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One of these things is not like the other...
From visiting a few Circuit Cities today, I ended up with five new CDs:
Disturbed
Nine Inch Nails
Disturbed
Still more Disturbed
and...
Paramore
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: None, believe it or not
Tags: music, prattle
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03:32 pm
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Maybe nostalgia is what it used to be
Even though I live in the town I grew up in, I very rarely run into people from my school days here. (Maybe one every couple of years, not counting the one reunion.)
This year, I've had three so far, and the two where I know who I ran into are with people I liked. (The other one was too brief , and since he told me to say hi to my brother, I assume he was a couple of years above me.)
I may actually do something about looking people up. It helps that it seems like the first step is to get a Facebook account, since I'm getting the impression that everybody's on Facebook these days.
Current Music: Liaison, "Can You Hear Me Now?" (internal)
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05:27 pm
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Not the definition of "fun"
Being on a bus heading toward the Lincoln Tunnel, sitting right above the squealing brakes, which are being used every 5-10 feet.
Ow.
Current Location: 163
Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Disturbed, "Land of Confusion"
Tags: prattle
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12:11 am
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Coraline
No spoilers here, but I make no promises about any comment thread.
It's very good, whimsical and creepy. The 3-D is well-used. When it goes out of its way to draw attention to itself, it's used to good effect.
The writing is well done, the animation as well.
There were quite a lot of kids in the theater with us, and they were pretty quiet -- it didn't seem like they were either bored or traumatized.
Well worth seeing, probably the best movie I've seen in theaters recently, which is, admittedly, not that many. I don't think it's as good as the first half of WALL-E, but better than the entire movie.
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Souxie & the Banshees, "Face to Face"
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