On Saturday it was Martin’s birthday. That’s great and all but the party was on Monday. We first played Rock Band and we each had a go on each instrument. I was so bad at the singing that everybody said not to sing again, they tried to be polite about it (except for Sam of course but he’s just rude) but I’m well aware that I cannot sing in tune, tempo, key or rhythm. I was unable to play the drums properly as I have a cast on but I wasn’t too bad at the guitars!
Then we played rabid rabbits on the wii. This was hilarious (mostly because the other 6 people were all couples and had to share, I shared only with myself), the game consists of many small minigames. The best of which was a toboggan thing, you had to sit on a wii fit board and lean back to go faster. Gwen and Ceri seemed to forget you could go faster while Charlotte leant back a little bit. If you lean back too much a big warning sign comes up to remind you that you could hit your head on the floor. It was a slalom course and not only did I miss 90% of the gates but I managed to have the warning on the screen for almost the entire time, I also won that round.
In the evening we went to Nandos, it’s a chicken restaurant and really tasty, I recommend it.
This is intended to be a status update on Rob 2 for those that are eagerly awaiting news of when it’ll be complete.
GUI
The first function of Rob is as a database and to be a way for me to interact with that database. Thus there is a GUI (I’ll make a screencast of it one day) and that part is currently 80% complete. I still need to add in the Wars GUI which has become a lot more complex since the new army system was thought of.
Orders
The second function of Rob is to download then execute orders. This is still very much not complete. It’s much harder this time around because I’m abstracting database from rules (so I can run a game other than WoA using Rob 2). So far Construction and Research are complete and the others will soon follow as I get more used to the new way of doing things and can copy+paste more code each time.
Processes
This covers things such as making the Map and TO. Rob can make the Map but not the TO. He can make most of a TI but not all of it.
I still have no solid ETA for Rob 2 but I suspect it’s a month or two away from completion (all depends on how my days go). If anybody has any specific requests for me to include something in the screencast then leave them in the comments.
It’s sad but true, many people feel that playing a game such as Dungeons and Dragons makes you a hopeless dork. Sure there are bad things about the game; it is very complex, you can’t simply sit down for a quick game of it as you can with say draughts or a game of rugby. But these geeky tabletop games, they have many more good things about them than they do bad.
Maths
Chess doesn’t teach you to count especially well. Sure logic is a big part of chess but teaching logic does not teach maths. Geeky games tend to have numbers strewn throughout them as if a drunk chimpanzee with a bucket of numbers had been involved in the design of the game. I have seen firsthand how people have improved their mathematical abilities through playing such games, younger players frequently find themselves moving up several grades in maths after playing World of Arl. Here in Dawn of War 2 each unit has different properties, each unit costs so many points and does so much damage against different opponents. The winner is the one that can hold that in their head and that is mathematics.
Communication skills
The cliche of a shut-in geek with no social skills is just that, a cliche. While geeks may not be comfortable talking about football they are comfortable talking about weather they should multi-class their wizard or not. Every game of Warhammer that I played involve much talking to my opponent and anybody that’s played Risk will know just how important it is to leverage the advantage of diplomacy. Since when has anything but short and terse communication been of importance in rounders? Do you really think you could be a pro team at Starcraft without great communication skills?
Creativity
Tennis is many things, inspirer of the creative is not one of them. Sure there are tactics but they’re pretty limited, skill and physical ability are the two deciding factors for the most part and that’s a good thing, I love tennis. Creativity flourishes in a game such as Dungeons and Dragons, how many times have you used a creative solution to solve what seemed to be an unsolvable problem? What about Spore where creativity is everywhere in the game?
Community
If I walk down to my local tennis courts I can easily start chatting to the people there, the same applies to nearly anything that involves other people. Thus the same is true of geeky games, communities spring up around them and often the community is richer than the game itself. I’ve heard often that the World of Arl community is far more reason to play than the game itself. Just take a look at this video and the community effort it must have taken to create it.
Escape
Bad things happen in our lives, we get laid off or we don’t get the grades we wanted. Playing a geeky game often allows you to escape from that without switching your brain off. Don’t get me wrong, too much escapism is a bad thing but in moderation it’s a healthy reliever of stress and it’s good for you. Unlike much of TV however it’s very thought provoking escape and will stimulate your mind. Don’t you wish you could do this?
So there are 5 simple and general reasons to play geekier games. I’m sure there are some that I’ve missed out and I’m sure there are some points you’ll disagree on. If you do disagree then I’d love to hear why and on what point in the comments.
I recently attended New word alive and really enjoyed it. This post will be a long one but split into several sections:
• The rough guide track
• The wooing
• The main talks
• The pegs attatched
• The culture track
• The lessons learned
The rough guide
Each morning I attended a session track on the rough guide to the Bible, it focused mostly on the old testament and looked at how the whole Bible fits together and points towards Jesus. It was really helpful to me as I’ve always struggled to understand the old testament and haven’t the patience to read the bits that appear boring. The talk was given by Mark, I’d give a surname but I can’t remember it and NWA do their best to not give out information 
Wooing
After “not caring” didn’t stop the comments of “sharking” from my “friends” I decided to one-up them, I constantly went on that I was sharking and hunting for women that might go out with me. I also said that if they could get a picture of me sharking that I’d use it for my facebook profile picture for a month. My facebook picture has not changed and I came back with no phone numbers nor names because as you guessed, I wasn’t actually sharking. I have also stopped using the term “ladies” as according to most of the women talked to about this, “women” is a far better term to use.
Main talks
These were given by Liam Goligher and followed the book of Jonah. I was unimpressed with the first talk and the second wasn’t great so I passed on the third but the fourth I attended and it was very good. I found particularly interesting the point that when things are going brilliantly we assume it must be God’s will because they are going well, with Jonah things went remarkably well when he was doing the exact opposite of what God had told him to do. I was however particularly challenged by how self-righteous Jonah is when he clearly has no reason to be, I wonder how much I am just like Jonah in that regard.
Pegs
Many will be aware of my hobby of attaching clothes pegs to friends and sometimes strangers. New Word Alive was no exception and I think I used up nearly all of my pegs. That however isn’t that awesome in and of itself, what was awesome is that Emyr managed to peg the organiser of the event, Huw Palmer. We all assumed that somebody would tell Huw before he went on stage but no, 2-3 thousand people saw it and laughed loudly. It was hilarious and Huw thought it was funny too!
Cultured Christianity
I attended the talks on cultured Christians, it was given by Tony Watkins and Fiona Stewart. It centered on culture (mostly film and tv) and newer developments (Facebook and Twitter mostly) and though the film half was not so relevant to me specifically I did find it good. The internet side very useful to me as I spend most of my time using it. Strangely though I think that the biggest thing I learnt from the talks was that I need to keep in mind that while I sit at the cutting edge of all stuff new, most people don’t.
Lessons learnt
One main lesson really and it wasn’t from any of the seminars. The subject of being in a relationship or not is something that’s been on my mind for many years and still tries to break into my life on a regular basis. This week I’ve been in very close proximity to several married couples of a more similar age to myself and at various stages in their relationships. All of them are happily married and some are expecting children.
So the lesson? I know that they had to work at it and that I need to be patient in my life, if I simply rush into a relationship or go hunting for one everywhere I go then I will not be happy in it because I did not think it through. To cut a long and boring paragraph short, I’ve learned or realised that I need to be patient.
Well I’m finally back online from my “holiday”. I will be posting up what I did soon, included will be:
- The seminars I attended
- The pegs attached
- The women wooed
- The great time had with friends
So today I had a long trip to Carmarthenshire today to be told that I may need an operation on my Scaphoid. I will need to look into the pros and cons of it, will it cause complications and will not having it cause long term problems? Thanks all for the well wishes, they’re appreciated.
Today I went over to Jon and Becca’s house for dinner with Martin and Ceri. It was really nice and really enjoyable, then a bit later Sam and Charlotte arrived and they mentioned the sharking stuff from Cheltnam. Jon had already told me that he’d be mocking me about sharking so I’m going to go with it and just 1-up them.
You may recall that about 6 months ago I fell off my bike and got a pretty bad sprain. Well it still hasn’t healed up so I went to the GP and asked if there was anything obviously wrong with it. He said it was probably all fine but to get an x-ray just incase. Turns out that 6 months ago I broke my scaphoid bone in two, it’s a bone that connects the thumb to the wrist (roughly) and mine is broke pretty bad.
The funny part is that I’ve been lifting stuff, cycling and doing pullups just fine on my damaged wrist without any pain (though it tended to ache more and didn’t flex well). Tomorrow (today by the time you read this) I have to go to hospital for somebody to have a better look at it and see just how bad it is. I will try to procure a copy of the x-ray, even if it’s by phone camera.
I’ve sort of reversed my previous decision to limit voting on rules. I did this some time ago but forgot to update the blog with it. See this topic for all the information.
I passed my Driving test today. I got only 3 minors too which I was happy about. The first minor I got from straightening up in a bay parking (not sure how that’s a minor but there we go), one for indicating and changing gear for pulling away in the wrong order and then one for swerving slightly coming off a roundabout.
Ever since the first world there have been a slew of creative ideas. The first would be the giant metal robot called the Decimator, it was followed by floating cities, guns the size of skyscrapers and fortress ships to name just a few. These “crazy” ideas started to dry up around World 7, possibly even before that. Here in World 9 we’ve had a few metal suits but nothing brilliant.
I chatted to Zorg about this and he said that automation was preventing it. This threw me somewhat and my first response was going to be “you moron, it doesn’t stop it at all”. Then I remembered to look at things from his perspective and it occurred to me that the problem was that people think that automation prevents creativity. I can see why such a thought exists and in their place may well have my mind set on it myself.
The thing is, automation doesn’t stop creativity (though I fully agree it can curb it a little sometimes), it for the most part doesn’t affect it at all because it doesn’t deal with it. Things like the Amarrian submarines and Zeroth Order metal suits fit nicely into the system because it was specifically designed to be flexible in that way.
It would of course be wrong of me to sit here and say that it’s the fault of players for not being creative. I have not created a 2nd Jaegis riddle and keep banging on about automation which I can only assume is like saying “you cannot be creative”. Thus I’ve now added a page to the site that explains how to go about starting crazy projects, I hope that it will increase the number of crazy things created.