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November 06 Iron PuzzlerThis last weekend, I participated in a puzzle event at Microsoft called Iron Puzzler, ala the Iron Chef of Food Network renown. Or at least, that was the cover story... basically it was a puzzle potluck weekend where we spent the first half of the weekend creating one paper and one non-paper puzzle and the second half of the weekend solving them. The folks running the event provided 4 secret ingredients at the start of the weekend which you get points for making use of in your puzzle designs (like Iron Chef). These ingredients were:
The ingredients were provided at 9am on Saturday and we had until midnight that night to complete our designs. At midnight, the solving portion began, and went straight through till 4pm on Sunday. Now if any of you are considering participating in an event like this, the best advice I can give you is to get more than 4 hours of sleep on Friday night (unlike me). As a result of both fatigue and generally being unable to come up with puzzles on the spot like this, I was greatly surprised to find that I was the principal constructor of our paper puzzle, a crossword based on spoonerisms (swapping of two initial sounds in a phrase, as in a "tip of the slung" for "slip of the tongue"). I'm happy to say that I am much better at creating crosswords than I used to be, and easily whipped out a 19x19 crossword in about 4 hours after initial brainstorming with the team. While I engaged in my cruciverbalism, the rest of the team brainstormed a crazy spoon windmill structure with sequencing and encoding. Most of the time was spent building this structure, but even this was built by 8pm, which was great because it meant 3 hours of sleep for me. Huzzah! Overall, we had a great time with the event, and best of all, we came in third place in a come-from-behind finish! October 31 Scrabble Records SetIn a club game in Lexington, Massachusetts, three different records were set for sanctioned Scrabble in North America:
Check out the full article on Slate. The best part is that these players weren't particularly good as far as ranked Scrabble players go, but if you ask me, any attempts to best these records will be their own form of quixotry. October 08 CMU Puzzle QuestI participated in the playtest of the CMU Puzzle Quest yesterday, and it was a blast! They did an awesome job of creating a text adventure game and using that as a framework for unlocking puzzles and submitting answers. It was really well put together and had very few issues. I've been inspired to try to accomplish something similar as a standalone work for the Top Secret puzzle event that Stephen Beeman and I put together for a company morale trip to Phoenix. Hopefully, I'll be able to pull something together quickly and get a link posted on here.
Overall, it was an awesome event! September 24 Eight years... amazingI never really considered that I'd ever work somewhere for 8 years (over 9 if you count contract time), and yet I've been at Microsoft that long as of September 14th. Time goes by quickly when you're not paying attention... Formidable FoesRio Grande has announced the release date for Friedemann's new game, Formidable Foes, as October. Of course, they said Gloria Mundi would be available back in June, too...
The reason this is noteworthy is that John, Jesse, and I all playtested a beta version of this at the Gathering earlier this year and gave Friedemann a bunch of feedback. It may even include a game rule that I suggested to him. :) New MusicI recently discovered some new music (for me at least) that I'm particularly enjoying:
Anyway, thought I'd pass them on since I think they're worth checking out. M&M Dark Movie GameSomeone sent me a link to this online puzzle game, which is pretty cool. I don't really think of them all as movies - some remind me more of TV series. Also, there's at least one homophone play on words, so watch out. Only thing I wish is that if you selected something, it would highlight it so you know which one you were selecting; fortunately, once you've filled in the answer, you can't re-select it which helps narrow down a few.
Overall, took me about one and a quarter hours, but was pretty fun. July 03 Board Game News/Reviews FeedsIn an effort to help keep the content of this site fresh, I've added a few RSS feeds for various news and reviews sites. Am I lazy or what? June 29 Rainbow Sky MelodiesI had a strange thought occur to me tonight - there are lots of songs about colors and skies. Here is my work in progress toward identifying the full spectrum. If I ever finish, I'll post the final results.
Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Indigo
Violet
The later part of the spectrum seems to be getting stiffed by the music community. :) What happened?So here it is the end of June 2006 - what happened during that year-long absence? Well, lots of things, but mainly UNO for Xbox Live Arcade. This was my latest project at work that we released during E3 (May 13, 2006). The game is doing *extremely* well, which I'm very happy about (naturally). I told my boss several weeks before the release that of all the projects I've worked on during my almost 8 years at Microsoft, this is the one I'm most proud of - it looks like the market agrees with me!
On a personal note, Emily turned 14 months old 2 days ago and I'm more in love with her than ever. There's nothing like this small trusting soul that calls out "Da!" whenever she needs something (like a boost onto a chair, a comforting hug, or a movie loaded into the DVD player). I hope she will always be able to turn to me when she needs anything in her life.
Jenny and I have been working on reorganizing, cleaning, and remodeling my townhouse in preparation for her and the girls (Abby & Emmy) to move in with me this summer. There seems to be no end in sight, but progress is definitely being made. They likely won't move over here until after Abby has her surgery to have her adenoids removed on July 17 (or is it July 19? I might be mis-remembering because that's the day Pirates of the Caribbean 2 comes out).
Over the last week, I moved my office down the hall (closer to the games room here in Willows!), but it was a huge pain in the ass. On the plus side, I was able to re-organize all my games, get the right publishers together, etc. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through labeling all my games with which shelf they belong on, so soon other people will be able to tell where to return games to!
I'm going to try to add more periodic blurbs on here, but we'll see how it goes. April 09 Seven months?Has it really been 7 months since last I updated this?? Dang... time does indeed go by.
Emmy is 17 days away from turning 1 year old, so I thought I'd upload a few new pictures to the family album. She isn't walking yet (on her own), but she is extremely close -- both her mom and dad are getting tired of walking with her and climbing stairs hunched over while she holds onto her fingers. I think this is going to be a case of "careful what you wish for"... I think Emily plans to skip over walking and go straight to running!
I'm wrapping up a few things at work before flying off to Columbus for Gathering of Friends (which I had to miss last year due to Emmy's impending birth).
See you all later! September 20 I'm Officially SevenI forgot to blog it earlier, but I turned 7 on September 14... Hard to believe I've been a Microsoft full-time employee for 7 years. September 19 Good at Games? You Might Be a Psychopath!Okay, so maybe I'm extending this article a bit, but what is financial trading but a type of game?
Besides it fits my theory that some of the people that I play games with are psychopaths...
International Talk Like a Pirate DayAhoy there, me hearties! For those of you that missed it, today was the International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrr!
Want to know my official pirate name (according to some random site on the internet)? Well, here it is:
Dirty Roger Rackham
You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr! August 16 How Time Goes By...Obviously, I'm not very good at keeping this blog current. Oh well, my priorities have been on spending lots of time with Emily, making puzzles for various puzzle events, and working... probably roughly in that order.
To all of you people that have been complaining about not recent enough pictures of Emily, I've uploaded a bunch of photos from the last couple months to the Family photo album. June 18 Been a while...It's been a while since I had time to update my blog. Here's a quick rundown on a few events at the top of my mind right now... I went to Dave and Sharry's wedding on May 28 - congratulations to both of you! I wish you both the very best and a long and happy life together. :) I finally have some pictures from the wedding, so I'll try to get those uploaded here at some point. I have a couple new games - Shadows Over Camelot (which is excellent) and King Solomon's Mines. I wrote a blog entry about King Solomon's Mines a couple months back, but I'll try to write up my thoughts on Camelot at some point. I just finished a translation of the rules for King Solomon's Mines and uploaded it to the 'Geek. They think they may have located a new (old?) da Vinci fresco. Very cool. Work is kind of crazy busy right now, as evidenced by the fact that I'm at work at 11pm on a Saturday... Speaking of which, I should get back to work. Until next time... May 26 New Game ArrivalsI’ve added a few new games to my collection – everyone is welcome to try them out tomorrow (Friday) night. Spiel des Jahres 2005 Nominees
I’m in the process of trying to get a copy of all the Spiel des Jahres 2005 nominees, but I’m still looking for Himalaya and Verflixt!. I’ll let everyone know when I get these. Other New Arrivals
May 16 Illegal for Condemned Man to Die by Organ DonationI read an article in the Seattle Times today about a man who is on death row and wants to donate his liver to his sister, who needs the liver transplant... the trick is that the lethal injection may damage the liver. Okay, so when you're ready to kill him, just take out his liver, and then inject him with potassium chloride - it's not like he's going to live long enough to die of infection (or missing a liver), but get this: apparently killing him by means of anything OTHER than lethal injection is illegal. Uh, hello? Who cares! He'll be dead shortly anyway, and the potassium chloride will surely be the end of him, not the missing liver.
May 15 Game JournalsWhile surfing some Seattle area websites, I ran across a link to some game journals from Genimuse. The outside covers leave something to be desired, but the interiors look interesting, so I ordered one to see if I like it. I have a terrible time remembering at the end of an evening what I've played, so hopefully this will help me. We'll see. I should have it by Wednesday, so people can take a look at it then to see if they'd be interested in somthing like that. May 14 SimplyFun ConsultancyOn Friday, I faxed in my paperwork to officially become a consultant. What does that mean for the Redmond Parlor Gamers? It means you'll now be able to get any of the SimplyFun games directly from me (well, I'll be picking up the starter kit on this coming Wednesday). If anyone is interested in what's involved in being a consultant for SimplyFun, I'll have the consultant's starter kit with me at Wednesday Game Night, next week. For a lis of what products SimplyFun has, check out the Products Page on the SimplyFun site. |
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