The city in the desert

Serendipity allowed me to stumble across Welcome to Night Vale (or was it?!) and I find it to be terribly entertaining. You need to check this one out K. It's a semi-monthly podcast that is basically a news show for an odd little town in the desert where very strange things happen. (Dogs are not welcome in the dog park) Each episode tends to be fairly short and there's just enough out of the ordinariness that you want to find out what's going to happen next. (The Sheriff's secret police are watching you. And have some friendly advice) Definitely recommended. I would play a game set in this town.

Card Hunter and Knights of Pen and Paper have really made me want to get back into some sort of RPG... I just want to create a character of some sort and roll some dice and have an adventure. I might have to look into getting the Baron Munchausen story game and play it at Drucon or something.

Castle season 5 continues to be enjoyable. Although I wasn't too impressed with the series premiere the other night.

Need to play Formula D again. And possibly Dungeon Fighter...

Checked out Neil Gaiman's latest book, Fortunately the Milk and it was a good amount of fun. I read it to G and used all the fun voices. You have to read this one that way. It's a moral imperative. Anyway, if you're looking for a delightful little tale to read to your kids, give this one a go. It has wumpires. And not the cute misunderstood kind.

Card Hunter is my newest addiction. It's a little free to play online game (really hoping for an ios client) that takes a Dungeons and Dragons theme, throws in card driven combat mixed with strategic character placement and uses them all to great effect. It's got a great sense of humor and is pretty thoroughly wonderful.

For something that's sort of similar on ios, check out Knights of Pen and Paper. It also uses a Dungeons and Dragons setting and mixes in old school console RPG combat. You can set the difficulty yourself as it allows you to determine (for the most part) the number and type of enemies you face off against. Also a lot of fun to play.

Littlest sis managed to get Haven season 3 for her birthday but then it went and showed up on Netflix so we're enjoying it as well. Mwa ha ha ha. Although we're going to have to start watching Castle season 5 as it's on hold at the Library. Hmm. Too many shows. (And I don't even want to go into how many books I'm reading at the moment...)

Went ahead and updated to ios 7. It's very different. There are certainly things I like about it, but it's a little odd too.

How on Earth is September mostly gone?

Hmm

I have no idea what to put on here any more. The random commentary on movies/books/games is wearing old and I think I'd like to look at different ways to share it anyway. I've started playing around with Tumblr some. Well, very little really. I follow a few feeds that I find interesting and I sent a post to the As Seen on Tabletop feed about how I tricked out our copy of Love Letter.

So yeah, I've seen stuff, and yeah we've played stuff and there have been some books, but I'm not convinced this is the format for that stuff any more. We shall see. So posting here will probably go completely random until I figure out what I want to put where and how I want to put it.

Inconceivable

I have finally watched an action movie that had too much action. GI Joe: Retaliation (or whatever it was called) left me slightly motion sick and numb. The fight scenes were badly shot and horribly edited and comprised the bulk of the film. I didn't think such a thing was possible. Well, I know Hollywood is prone to bad action shooting/editing.

Which is a little funny as Hansel and Gretel could have used a little more action. The best bits were certainly the fighting the witch bits...

Other than that, I'm not sure I can come up with anything else to rant about.

I finished The Last Policeman. It was an interesting pre-apocalypse tale following a detective that wants to continue to solve a murder investigation while the world dissolves around him due to an impending asteroid impact. Pretty fascinating and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

String or Nothing

Here we are playing String Railway. I managed a pretty stunning victory in this one. But fun was had anyway. Except possibly by lovely wife, who thought we were all ganging up on her. She did lose a few points to us, but that's because she gained a lot early on. And I cleverly tried to misdirect how I was doing. I feel I should point out that if you do not let M place the mountain (the gray loop in the middle) she will wall you off with the river in retaliation. (See McK's corner in the lower right to see this in action.) You lose points for crossing the river. She does seem a little vicious...

Lovely wife and I also played Takenoko this afternoon. That's a pretty fun game too. I managed the title of master gardener in that one as well. It was a good boardgaming day for me.

Mental Disarray

I am finding it hard to focus on anything at the moment as my brain is occupied by far too many things to keep track of. So things are working as designed you might say...

I read Doubt v.1 recently. A horror graphic novel in which some teenagers are abducted and forced to play out a real life version of an online game called Rabbit Doubt - where one member of a group is secretly a wolf in rabbit's clothing slowly killing off the rabbits unless they can figure out who it is. This first volume was pretty good. I look forward to reading more.

Season 2 of VGHS is still lots of fun. Yay.

I received my kickstarter copy of Dungeon Roll. It's a pretty fun little push your luck dice game. Roll up your party of heroes and slowly chip away at them as you descend the levels of the dungeon. Lots of different characters to play as that give you special abilities as you make your way through the dungeon. Good times.

Kids are back in school. That summer went pretty quick. They seem pretty excited for the most part. I think McK is a little unsure about math, but that's about it. Lovely wife seems a little confused as to what to do with her time. I suspect she'll sort it out pretty quickly.

I'm sure there's other stuff, but I'm tired and can't think straight so go find something interesting to look at...

Cadet training

Managed to get in most of a game of Space Cadets over the weekend. I had forgotten several of the rules so play did not run very smoothly. Lovely wife and kids were only sort of tolerant of this fact. I find the game to be pretty fun, but there is no denying that it boasts one mean learning curve. And if you don't re-familiarize yourself with the rules prior to playing, it won't go especially well. So I'll just have to tattoo most of the important ones on my forearms or something. Or find a dedicated group of sci fi fans that want to get together regularly enough that we manage to get things right.

Watched what turned out to be the first season of a webseries called Video Game High School. It was silly and predictable and a lot of fun. I suspect I shall start watching season 2 on Youtube.

Finished reading Blackout by Mira Grant, the third book in the Feed/Newsflesh series or whatever it's called. It was decent. There's something about those books that's just compelling. They're not the greatest books, but they're fun to read. Or something.

I did not finish Cinnamon and Gunpowder. Mostly because I had like 5 books out at once and so I just turned a couple back in and may try to read them later. It still sounds fascinating and I liked what I did read, so there's that. I'm currently reading The Last Policeman because apocalypse story about the last cop that takes his job seriously.

We saw the new Percy Jackson movie. Mostly because M wanted to for her birthday. If you liked the first one, you'll like this one I suspect. I find it hard to say whether it's better or not. In a lot of ways, it's the same. Dunno.

And while the subject is sort of up, happy birthday to M. Not convinced she's allowed to get another year older... But we love her anyway. She seems to think we need to play Summoner Wars tonight. And really, who can argue with that?

Still addicted to FTL. Just sayin.

We call him Mr. Bullets

Here he is, direct from Aperture Science via Thinkgeek. Such a friendly homicidal sentry.

Captain's Log

Star date 2013.08.xx

The maiden voyage of the Kestral class starship the Hunk o' Junk launched under an ill fated star. The journey started well enough with the crew working together to overcome Federation ships as well as some scurvy pirates. But then disaster struck and we took several direct hits that led to fires breaking out. The Captain, moron that he is, tried to vent the affected cabins by opening a path to the airlocks. But the doors wouldn't open. Too late he realized that the chamber most affected by fire and damage was the door control cabin. By the time he deployed crew to try and contain the fire it was too late. It had spread too much and started to affect other nearby systems. The fires consumed the crew and left the Hunk o' Junk drifting dead in space, possibly to be discovered by others.

FTL reminds me a lot of Dark Souls in that it's easy to build up a narrative in your head while you watch your little ship get pummeled to death. I am very addicted, I picked it up for $2.50 during the recent Steam sale and am very glad I did. So worth it. I can't stop playing it. I have heard rumors that they might develop an iOS version. Oh I hope so. Although if they do I will never see my family again...

Playing FTL has made me want a fun space exploration/light combat board game. I will have to investigate to see if such a thing exists.

Watched Kick Ass the other day. I liked it. Some good humor and certainly an interesting twist on the average Joe tries to be a superhero conceit. Seems like I also watched some random goofiness on Netflix, but I forget what now. The Bay was one I think. It was ok for yet another found footage style horror flick. Certainly some creepy culprits for the horror/gore.

Oh, we watched Tai Chi Hero, the sequel to the brilliant Tai Chi Zero. It was ok. Second half was pretty great, but the first half was on the slow side. I liked it, but the first movie was better. Sad.

Roll and Movies

Pacific Rim was everything I wanted out of a giant robots vs giant monsters movie. The scale was awesome, the fights were epic and the story was serviceable. What more do you really want? Good job del Toro. Good job. I had a decent amount of faith that he'd pull it off, but it really was a thing of beauty. Might have to see this one again in the theater.

Red 2 was thoroughly silly. Which, really, was to be expected I guess. It was funny and the action was pretty good, so I guess I can't really hold the silliness against it. If you liked the first one, it's probably safe to say you'll like this one.

Managed another couple games of Formula D. We played the Singapore track and the road track on the flip side of the Monaco track (I forget the name). I really like that game. We're still playing the easy rules, so we should probably start to look into some of the advanced rules, but it's nice to know there's plenty of room to grow with this game.

Joyland, by Stephen King was really enjoyable. It's billed as a crime novel, and while there is a murder mystery at the center of it, it's very much a coming of age novel. I liked the amusement park locale and the characters and pretty much everything about this story. Certainly worth reading if you get the chance.

Absentia was an interesting little indie horror flick. I don't really want to say too much about it as that would ruin some of the surprises, but it's good. Give it a watch.

Had a nice visit with Dad. Ate some yummy steak and watched some movies and played some games. Definitely a good visit. They're always over too soon. He did have some funny stories about bears.

Random Geekery

So I ordered a few things from Thinkgeek. They have arrived. I am now the proud owner of a Bag of Holding and a plush Portal 2 turret that talks and senses movement. (I see you!) The bag is fairly nifty. I really like the material and several of the pouches. It could really use a few more pockets and the existing phone pockets need to take into account newer smartphone sizes. But other than that no real complaints. The turret is amusing and fun. The kids like it. I'll have to take a photo and post it up. I also snagged a birthday gift for lovely wife and another for the letter 'r'.

I am on the verge of having 5 different books checked out. I just recently finished Drive, by James Sallis. It was a pretty interesting book. You can see the elements that got turned into the film, but they are somewhat different experiences. I'll have to check out the sequel. But not until I've done something about this ridiculous logjam I've found myself in. 5 Books. Eesh.

Watched The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. It was relatively fine. I think they spent a touch too long on how much of a jerk he was before moving on to the redemption bit, but that's about it. Carrey was pretty amusing as the Criss Angel/David Blaine character.

Other than that, things are sort of a blur. Dad is in town, so that's nice. Had to get the van fixed. Kids have had various camps and treks and whatnot. They all had good experiences. I'm pretty amazed that the girls were so excited for Trek. I'd have not been at all excited about that at their age. Glad they went and had a good (if hard) time though, sounds like parts of it were pretty neat.

Waving around

So I finished Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave. I gave it three stars, but that's a little misleading. It was a decent book, but I'm not really the target audience for it. It was certainly a little more female friendly than I expected it to be. I don't know I'd go so far as to call it chick-lit, but it's close. It did get a little better as the story progressed, but I dunno... It was ok. I don't mind female protagonists, and I don't suppose I really mind love triangle stuff (not that this story had much of a love triangle) but it was just a little too meandering or something. Which is weird given that Yancey is known for the Monstrumologist series.

Anyway, it might be worth checking out if you like alien apocalypse type stories, just know that it's a little wander-y. Or something. I'd be interested to see someone compare it to The Host...

We got to see little sis and her family last night. That was fun. Too bad we couldn't get a game of something in. Oh well, next time. Littlest K makes me laugh. He's a goofball in the best sense of the word.

We've been watching The 50 Greatest Magic Tricks on YouTube over the last couple days. I really like magic... Did I mention we saw Now You See Me? It was really good. I'm not completely convinced the ending holds up, but the show itself is a lot of fun.

And now to enjoy a rather long weekend.

Oh check out #YABooksWithALetterMissing on twitter. It's pretty funny.

Let's see...

Books to be mentioned/commented upon:

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman's latest novel has a quiet, haunting quality to it. It focuses on events that happened during the childhood of the narrator and features Gaiman's usual blending of mythology and reality into an enchanting dream-like musing on the events that shape us and the choices we make in life. It's relatively short, but I think that just means it's easy to read again. Which I can see myself doing as I think there is indeed more depth to be found. Much like Lettie's titular pond/ocean.

5 Centimeters per Second by Makoto Shinkai. I first ran across Shinkai when he did the film, Voices of a Distant Star, which was both beautiful and heart breaking. This is a graphic novel version of his newest film. It is also beautiful and heart breaking. I really like Shinkai's work, but dude needs a donut. And a happy thought.

The Diaries of Adam and Eve, by Mark Twain was a lot of fun to read. Definitely worth tracking down. It's a wry look at the first couple and how they came to know and love each other.

Vader and Son was the first of this series I believe. It's more cute comics about Darth Vader, this time raising Luke. Worth flipping through.

Not books:

Mama was pretty good. I didn't find it to be very scary, but it's definitely got some creepy moments and was a really nicely told tale. I especially liked the montage during the title sequence where they illustrate the girls' first few years through a series of childish drawings.

The Imagine Dragons CD is downstairs waiting for me. I am looking forward to listening to it. I just might have to play Radioactive very loudly on my way home...

I really need to get Space Cadets back to the table...

Formula D and Wallflowers

Got in a game of Formula D tonight. Let's see if I can get this link to work so you can see the pictures.

It was a pretty fun game. I managed a pretty steady lead thanks to some smart gear shifting and some decent rolls, but there was a lot of position jockeying for the rest of the spots.

In more depressing news, we watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower last night. Reminded me a lot of high school. Minus the abuse and institutionalization. Most of my friends my freshman year were juniors so I didn't have to deal with the bulk of people leaving, but a lot of those experiences were pretty similar. It was kind of rough to watch even if it was relatively happy at the end.

Enjoying the silence

The house has been pretty empty these last couple days. The girls are off at camp and G has been in and out with friends. Ah blessed silence. Lovely wife has managed to tidy up G's room to some extent. Who knew he had a floor in his room?!

We've watched a couple B grade action movies these last couple days. The Numbers Station with John Cusack and The Double with Richard Gere. They were serviceable action/thriller movies. Not great, but not horrible.

I finished reading You by Austin Grossman. It was a lot of fun. Similar in some ways to Ready Player One and different in others. It tends to cover the history of video games as opposed to the future, but they both deal with people that let their lives revolve around them or the industry. Pretty fascinating. I've read some negative reviews by people that had issues with the point of view changes and so on. I think they're idiots. It's not that confusing. Admittedly 2nd person does take a little getting used to if you've never read something like that before, but it makes perfect sense in this context as Grossman is discussing a medium that is all about player interaction.

Apparently G is scared by Betrayal at the House on the Hill. This could have had something to do with the fact that he ended up getting selected as the traitor, or it could be that he just finds the game spooky. Not sure. The girls still love it though.

Random things we've noticed recently: chocolate chips make pretty much all breakfast foods better, home made ice cream is still really good, grilling on a serious bbq grill is pretty awesome, serious bbq grills still have problems with odd hot and cold spots.

I should also mention that I rode a zip line.

Vroom Vroom

Formula D is pretty great. G and I played a quick game once we got back from the camp out just to give it a go. We then played a big game Sunday with Lovely Wife's Mom and the whole family. We had a pretty good time. Although G started to lose a little interest about 2/3 through the course. I think selecting gears and optimizing your lane selection might be a touch above him. Although not much. It's definitely a better game with more cars on the track as you really do get to jostle for position and fight for corners and so on. Definitely a fun game and I highly recommend you give it a go. (And there are more tracks you can pick up and beginner's rules and advanced rules and...)

Managed to survive another year of Fathers and Sons camping. The hike wasn't too bad (although the short way down in near dark was not the best of ideas). Breakfast was good. There was absolutely no sleep. I need either a cot or one of those self inflating/deflating pad things. Something...

If you're following E3 at all you're aware of the new consoles coming out and how Sony stomped all over Microsoft in their press conference when it came to privacy rights and consumer rights and a few other things. It'll be interesting to see how things play out once Fall comes and people actually buy the things. And if you haven't seen it, this is hilarious.

McK has started volunteering up at Timp Caves. That's a little fascinating to me. M has had Day Camp for Girl Scouts this week. And G has Day Camp for Cub Scouts this weekend. I think lovely wife thought that Summer would be less busy. She was wrong.

Father's Day this weekend. Too bad Dad is far away. Will have to get him to actually use his iPad and video chat. And maybe play some Ticket to Ride.

Our love is like a golf course

If you substituted holes for years. Or something like that. (This is just a ridiculous way to say we hit 18 years this past week on our anniversary) In a lot of ways it doesn't seem that long, but then McK decided to go to the DMV and get her learner's permit (in spite of the DMV guy telling her she had to be at least 5 feet tall). And yeah, that and two other kids and other assorted parts of life chimed in and it's actually not that hard to realize that it has indeed been that long. But they have (for the most part) been great years and lovely wife is as lovely as ever, so there you go.

She even bought me a game for our anniversary. In spite of all the other games we've gotten recently. True love folks. I got Formula D the racing game and I can't wait to try it out. Little cars and lots of dice and fun race tracks and... Heh.

We've been having a pretty good visit with lovely wife's Mom while she's in town. So that's been fun. She had a birthday and my Dad had a birthday. It's kind of an event filled week.

Alas there is camping waiting at the end of it. I guess it goes to show that nothing is perfect.

A little of this, a little of that

I finished up Nos4a2 by Joe Hill. It was pretty darn good. It's the most Stephen King-like book he's written (in my opinion) but that's not a bad thing. I liked all the little nods to his previous books. I always find it interesting when authors build their own world over the course of their books and put little nods here and there. I also found this one to be pretty spooky and certainly horrifying in lots of places. Definitely some characters you wouldn't want to run into. So if you like horror/fantasy stories, give this one a go.

Waiting in the Summer was a sweet little anime series. And that's really all I have to say about it. It almost had the most depressing ending ever, but fortunately they fixed that.

We've been watching more Hemlock Grove. I think it's growing on me some. It's not bad, I'm just not convinced it's good either. Of course, I'm pretty sure I had that same impression of the book.

We had a pretty good holiday weekend. Games were played, managed a nap here and there, other games were played. It was nice.

G managed to place third in the Writer's Olympics with a story featuring a squid and unicorn doing battle to see who would win and who would be lunch. I ... actually have very little to say about this as well.

M decided to use her head as a mitt the other day during the teacher/6th grader softball game. She claims to be fine.

Is summer over yet? What do you mean it just started?! Ugh...

Playing around

Mostly wanting to try out a blogging tool I ran into. Technically this is attempt 2, but the first was lost due to my own ineptitude. Alas.

As an addendum to the previous post, I should point out that teenage girls are very loud. You wouldn't necessarily think that five teenage girls would be that noisy, but you'd be wrong. They are very noisy. And only some of it was game related. This is really just an observation, but if you find yourself in the midst of a rampaging group of teenage girls, hope,that you have some earplugs. 

Went and saw the new Star Trek today. It was fine. Lovely wife liked it a touch more than me, but I suspect that's due to the Cumberbatch factor. It's interesting to see how they are creating this new reboot universe. Little twists and so on. I wonder what people that have never seen the originals think.

Urge to play games rising. Very glad of the three day weekend.

The dice, they mock me

Finished the 4th Reacher book. Enjoying that series quite a bit. But I am taking a break while I have lots of other things to read. I'm getting close to the end of NOS4A2 and You by Austin Grossman is pretty interesting too. So many books... (There's a new Hex Hall spinoff that's out as well!)

Watched the Persona 4 anime series. Mostly as I knew I'd never get around to playing the game (I'm still lost somewhere in the midst of 3) and wanted to know a little about the story. It was actually a lot of fun to watch. And I felt it said some really nice things about the ties we have with those around us.

McK had her birthday party and unleashed some board games on her friends. Escape: the Curse of the Temple was enjoyed by all, although I believe it did stress several of them out. We later tried out Dungeon Fighter - a dexterity game where you have to throw dice at a target on the table in order to fight the monsters found in the dungeon. The trick is the dice have to bounce at least once before it hits the target and occasionally you have to throw them in strange ways as you encounter certain types of monsters or equip certain types of weapons and so on. So basically it's an excuse to look silly in front of your friends while having a good time and losing badly. I rather enjoyed it. But the dice in both of those games are quite merciless.

Lovely wife will probably tell you that she's very glad school is out next week. Mostly as I think she needs a break. It will be interesting to see what mischief the kids get up to this year. Sadly far too much of it will probably involve a car...