spoilers cut, as usual
Mar. 3rd, 2005 12:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
progI like this guy. His attitude with his "How Much Is Inside?" project is remarkably similar to the one I want to apply to the show, along several axes.
Show? Show? Well... I think I have been (since approx 2 a.m. Monday) past the nights-n-weekends part of that nasty work project (after two months of it... ugh). The drop-dead date is in less than a week but only detail work remains; no panicking necessary. So, starting this week I have been letting myself do other things guilt-free, hooray. Tuesday I played games with friends! Last night I went to a bar with friend, and then read an SF novel for several hours! Tonight I will see a movie with friends! It is crazy.
Unless I forget (always a danger with your pigeon-headed friend jmac) or they have changed their schedule since I last checked (month ago... er, I should check again) I am going this this Saturday to an orientation at the local community access TV station and we'll see where that-all leads.
The games where Basari, a favorite of mine, and which I almost won but died on a very unlucky die roll (that it came to a die roll shows how close this game was among the four of us; it tends to be more about interplayer bluffing and trading than luck, but sometimes, rolling a 1 is rolling a 1).
Self-observation: I really like games with a mechanic of players choosing their move simultaneously but secretly from a limited pool of options. Optimal play involves guessing what the other players will choose, as well as guessing what the other players think you will guess, and likely picking something else as a result. (And then figuring your opponents will try the same thing, requiring you to guess which action they will actually choose...) And then everyone reveals their choices at once and all hell breaks loose.
This set includes Basari and Citadels, and RAMBots, all of which I enjoy a great deal, and (not unrelatedly) am pretty good at playing. (Well, Citadels doesn't reveal everything at once, but that's just to accentuate all the murdering and burglarizing that the treacherous players commit before the productive ones can do anything, thus raising the spite level of everyone, and of course I can only approve of this.)
The novel was Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky which promises to be as yummy as A Fire upon the Deep which I liked an awful lot. I was hesitant about reading a prequel, especially since humanity is due to get socked in the face with the destruction of several homeworlds when the events of Fire unfold. Even though it's clear that's not even close to a death knell for the species or anything (this is so bloody far into the future that everybody has more or less colonized every available place throughout the whole galaxy, and the galaxy is goshdurn big), I can't help feeling that it's still a cloud hanging over the heads of the people in this book, though it's not something that'll happen for several millenia (if I have my chronology right). But of course the story is promising to be so good that I'm not thinking about that while I'm reading it.
It's also the first paperback I've checked out of a library since... high school? Maybe. But they didn't have any at Harvard Bookstore, so I appreciate that the ol' Cambridge Library had this copy, even though it's really skanky; its condition suggests a history of being someone's bathtime favorite. Oh well. Eight bucks saved, anyway, and hopefully not filled with waterborne death-mites or whatever.
Show? Show? Well... I think I have been (since approx 2 a.m. Monday) past the nights-n-weekends part of that nasty work project (after two months of it... ugh). The drop-dead date is in less than a week but only detail work remains; no panicking necessary. So, starting this week I have been letting myself do other things guilt-free, hooray. Tuesday I played games with friends! Last night I went to a bar with friend, and then read an SF novel for several hours! Tonight I will see a movie with friends! It is crazy.
Unless I forget (always a danger with your pigeon-headed friend jmac) or they have changed their schedule since I last checked (month ago... er, I should check again) I am going this this Saturday to an orientation at the local community access TV station and we'll see where that-all leads.
The games where Basari, a favorite of mine, and which I almost won but died on a very unlucky die roll (that it came to a die roll shows how close this game was among the four of us; it tends to be more about interplayer bluffing and trading than luck, but sometimes, rolling a 1 is rolling a 1).
Self-observation: I really like games with a mechanic of players choosing their move simultaneously but secretly from a limited pool of options. Optimal play involves guessing what the other players will choose, as well as guessing what the other players think you will guess, and likely picking something else as a result. (And then figuring your opponents will try the same thing, requiring you to guess which action they will actually choose...) And then everyone reveals their choices at once and all hell breaks loose.
This set includes Basari and Citadels, and RAMBots, all of which I enjoy a great deal, and (not unrelatedly) am pretty good at playing. (Well, Citadels doesn't reveal everything at once, but that's just to accentuate all the murdering and burglarizing that the treacherous players commit before the productive ones can do anything, thus raising the spite level of everyone, and of course I can only approve of this.)
The novel was Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky which promises to be as yummy as A Fire upon the Deep which I liked an awful lot. I was hesitant about reading a prequel, especially since humanity is due to get socked in the face with the destruction of several homeworlds when the events of Fire unfold. Even though it's clear that's not even close to a death knell for the species or anything (this is so bloody far into the future that everybody has more or less colonized every available place throughout the whole galaxy, and the galaxy is goshdurn big), I can't help feeling that it's still a cloud hanging over the heads of the people in this book, though it's not something that'll happen for several millenia (if I have my chronology right). But of course the story is promising to be so good that I'm not thinking about that while I'm reading it.
It's also the first paperback I've checked out of a library since... high school? Maybe. But they didn't have any at Harvard Bookstore, so I appreciate that the ol' Cambridge Library had this copy, even though it's really skanky; its condition suggests a history of being someone's bathtime favorite. Oh well. Eight bucks saved, anyway, and hopefully not filled with waterborne death-mites or whatever.
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 06:55 pm (UTC)First librarian instinct: Gah! Horrors! Intense disappointment!
Second librarian instinct: genuine curiosity. Why not? Do you use libraries for other things? (I assume so, since you said "paperback" and not "book.") What do you do with your books after you buy them - keep them, or give them away? (Feel free to ignore any and all nosy librarian questions.)
no subject
Date: 2005-03-03 08:43 pm (UTC)