We are lucky and only lost electricity for an hour yesterday. But we have been without phone/internet/tv since last evening and are still in an outage zone. Unsecure networks by another provider in the neighbourhood for the win. Hope everyone else is safe!

Ken and I are having a Rain/Storm Day Off, together with everyone else at Ft. Monroe.
The backyard is one big puddle, but we'll be ok. The house has a raised foundation and we are close to the bay, but not too close.
As long as we don't lose electricity, I ain't complaining.
Called my mum just in case I won't be able to later tonight.

Some of you may remember this post, about how my daughter won't poop in the potty, and her excuse is because Danika poops in her panties.

So today I've been sick. Quite sick. Frequent trips to the toilet, sick. During one of those trips, I didn't quite make it in time. Guess who was there to witness that mishap?

"Mommy, oh no! You pooped in your panties!"

"Daddy, Mommy poops in her panties."

I want to cry. On so many levels.

Also, I'm behind in lj reading (due to illness). Not sure when I'll get caught up.

In my quest to write around 40,000 words of examples of play as a part of NaNoWriMo, I have inadvertently discovered a limit in Google Docs. Apparently docs can't be more than 512k!

So I've split up the current draft into two google docs here and here.

It'll be a little trickier adding up my word count each day, but no big deal otherwise. Just surprised that Google Docs has any kind of size limit in the first place.

Currently, the draft is around 71,300 words. About 20,000 of which are examples of play. With luck, I might actually break 100,000 words, which is pretty much ridonkulous.

edit: I didn't twitter this and as of now, my Loudtwitter is disabled

• 13:29 Thought you might want to check this out *edited out* #

Automatically beamed everyday at 23:00 by LoudTwitter

Those who have known me for a few years will recall the Luchacabra experiment I was doing for about a year or so. The goal of that experiment was to make a new game each week, usually two-player abstracts. These games would use as ubiquitous materials as possible so I can just post the rules and you can play at home with stuff around the house.

Now Megan's craftiness has given me some thoughts. See, she makes these vegetable trophies...



Every time we go to a craft or hardware store, I come across little wooden blocks and doo-dads.



Just BEGGING to be stained and arranged into a game-like configuration. Particularly if they can be mounted onto a cool-looking plaque.



So that idea's been in my head since the Girlie Show. Then I stumble upon this post on Purple Pawn describing a new two-player abstract called Push Fight, with rules similar to Oshii but in an oddly shaped board with barriers at the top and bottom.

Each player gets five pieces on an oddly-shaped board with 26 spaces. Each turn, you move up to two pieces as many spaces horizontally or vertically as you like, so long as the piece does not leave the board or jump another piece. You must then push one of your square pieces one space in any direction, pushing all other pieces along the same line. The piece with which you just pushed cannot, itself, be pushed on your opponent’s next turn. The object is to knock one of your opponent’s pieces off of the board.

So what the heck, maybe once Do is in Ryan's hands, I'll go to the opposite extreme of Luchacabra. Maybe I'll handmake boutique, one-of-a-kind two-player abstracts and sell them on Etsy, with stained wood pieces and stuff. Little items that would fit steampunk decor, but also be well-designed games.

Hmm... Embargo would be a good option for this treatment, certainly.



Hmmm.... Yes... Also, perhaps a game that uses those recessed toy wheels and spheres. You can move the wheels around as flat pawns, but they can also carry the spheres around in their recessed cavities. The game might involve shepherding the spheres around the board or something. Yess...

If you recall a few months ago, I was tinkering with a card game called Belle of the Ball that I really envisioned being illustrated with a menagerie of Kate Beaton's frou-frou Victorian characters. When the cards are all put together, they form a crowded ballroom of party-goers.

I put the game aside while working on Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple until the end of the year, but it's still been knocking around my skull here and there.

Well, lo and behold, Kate won't let us forget how awesome she is. She just posted this illustration which just convinces me even more how much I need to finish designing that game so I can pitch it to her.

Much quieter on Saturday than it was on Friday, but still a very nice day. A lot more kids running around staring at my hair.


Or was it the dancing?

Here are some of the hot selling items:

Fruit and vegetable Earrings!


A matching set of bread slice earrings and a toaster necklace!


But the most popular items were definitely the double-pom hats:


Overall it was a pretty successful first time at the show. It's definitely given me some experience for when I demo or sell games on the floor at GenCon. Megan's got a lot of interest in those hats and she's even got me thinking about my own board game-related craft projects. (More on that later.)

Megan is an accomplished crafter and maker of cool things™. She recently had her first big showing of her work at the Girlie Show, a kind of alt-hip female artist showcase. These are pics from the first night. There was a live DJ, lots of drinking, all the free food you could want from the local gourmet taco stands, sushi restaurants, cupcake bakeries, and so on.

Pics!









It reminded me a LOT of the chaos on the GenCon exhibition floor. Much better food, though. Fewer costumes, but there were still some!

We're told the atmo today will be much more serious. Less drinky, more shoppy, which is fine by us!

If I'm even going to try to be the cool Uncle, I need to know
what your girls are interested in. Books, activities, computer
games. Some sort of clues would be good. And to you think
Tasha and/or Thomas will be interested in "Solar Energy
projects for the Evil Genius" ? I got it from QPB with them
specifically in mind. Pretty good book, from my point of view
at least. Also got "Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar ..."
subtitled "Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes". I
may have to get a second or even third copy of that one.

I am going to be going on a scrapbooking retreat this weekend - 3 days of non-stop scrapbooking (except for the odd massage and nature walk).

This is good, because it will be dedicated time during which I can work on my kids' baby albums, and other albums I've started, yet not finished. This is bad, because I haven't printed any pictures in oh, approximately 3 years, and in that 3 years, I've accumulated approximately 8,000 pictures. Give or take a few thousand.

I took today and tomorrow off work, so I could specifically dedicate my time to sorting through my digital photos, selecting those I wish to print, getting them in to get printed, and then packing up all the supplies I'll need.

I also got the kids vaccinated today - that makes one fully vaccinated household.

Between the vac time, and the procrastinating time, I AM SO FREAKING BEHIND!

I'm started to get stressed about going on a retreat! This is not good!

I NEED to get this done... I NEED to get organized!

Darn it I wish this was something someone could help me with!

In a further attempt to make Ryan's job as hard as possible, I'm spending this month adding the long-delayed examples of play throughout the live doc of Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. I'm following a vaguely NaNoWriMo daily schedule of 1500 words a day. Without the examples, the doc is about 55,000 words. I plan to add about 40,000 to that, entirely focused on examples of play.

In all likelihood, with some final fleshing out in December, the doc could be around the 100k mark by the time it falls in Ryan's lap. Yeah, it's a lot, probably too much, but I'm following a 50 pounds of clay philosophy here: Quality emerges from quantity. Or, in other terms, if the final book has one good word, there's probably 100 words that got edited out in an earlier draft.

You can keep up to date with the word factory here.

Happy Birthday tww1fa ad nachmacherin!

This video (fanmade) has so. many. things. that I support/love/have strong opinions about in it. How did I just find it now? "Space Monkey" is in my top 3 Placebo songs and has a special significance for me the same way the movie "Lost in Translation" does.




Also I just love this song. I'm loading both "Battle for the Sun" and "Meds" albums onto the Crackberry in full - I had selected songs prior - to listen to while I clean.

its been a while





im in uni halls with white walls... i hate white walls

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