2005-08-29 08:59 UTC Small Victories
Back in July Allan and I went to Shadowcon 10. I went to Shadowcon 9 with Eira last year, and the Buffy Sing-Along was the best thing there, and this year I basically went there only for the sing-along, which was just as fun. It helps that I've been listening to the Once More, With Feeling soundtrack so much recently that I know most of the words by heart, even when there are multiple overlapping lines...
I've also over the past few months been watching lots of Top Gear, the UK motoring show (which is hilarious even if, like me, you understand nothing of what they're saying). More recently I bought Gran Turismo 4, the racing simulator. This is all part of an effort to learn more about cars in general since many of my friends seem obsessed by them and it would be nice to at least have some clue what they're talking about. I haven't played GT4 much but so far I've done my National A and B licenses, with about two thirds bronze and one third silver. One day I should probably get a real license too.
On Saturday we went to see The Lord of the Rings performed by the Oslo Philharmonic and supported by various other groups. Tim has the scoop.
On Sunday, Allan, Wilhelm and I played Civilisation the Board Game. It's a strategy game. Much better than Risk, better than Attack; not as good as Twilight Imperium III. I'm not a huge fan of any of those games, because they basically boil down to fighting instead of cooperating. The only strategy game I've really liked is OpenTTD (the free Transport Tycoon clone), and that's not a board game.
I won, leading a completely peaceful strategy, not attacking a single time (well, I attacked once, but that was with the agreement of the target and was merely so we could swap cities so he could consolidate his forces; there was no violence involved). I was a little lucky in that Allan and Wilhelm decided to keep fighting each other instead of doing the same as me, peacefully living without conflict. Almost all my settlements ended up happy, with a few exceptions which would have been happy within a few rounds if the game hadn't been ended (Allan got the UN and declared the game over).
Earlier in the week we also played Fearsome Floors, which is an interesting game where the only randomness is player-neutral. I like that kind of game. It constrasts with games like Super Munchkin, the latest in the long series of Munchkin games (of which we have all but the Fu2 expansion, I think) which are all basically completely random. I remember joining a game of Munchkin a few weeks ago that had been going on for some hours — I managed to get to level 8 or 9 in short order, while the player next to me, who had been playing since the start, was mostly hovering around level 2 or 3. There is some skill involved but frankly it's mostly about what cards you happen to get. The skill usually involves confusing people with obscure rules.
Over the past few days the SVG and CDF working groups have sent feedback to the CSS working group on CSS2.1, and Björn and I have been fielding their requests on behalf of the CSS group. Most of their requests seem to have been misunderstandings, so we've managed to answer most of them already. IRC is a great tool for dealing with this kind of thing! A few of the issues were real issues, though, so we'll be discussing those at our telecons.