Entries from October 2005 ↓

Wow! After playing my first game of Puerto Rico the other night, I must say that I’m impressed with this game. i can certainly see why it’s so highly rated on BoardGameGeek. There sure is quite a bit to digest in Puerto Rico as a newcomer, but if you just get down to and play you start to get a sense of some of the different strategies and options available to each player.

After a quick, five-minute rule explanation while the game was being set up, we jumped right in to the deep end. I was paying with four experienced players, and they were all extremely helpful whenever I had questions. The first three or four turns went by with ease, and I felt like I was sort of holding my own. As soon as we started to hit the mid- to later game I realized how some of my earlier choices were starting to come back to bite me in the ass.

All of the other players had either purchased the wharf, or at least one of the larger buildings by this point in the game, and I was the only one stuck without either. I would’ve had a chance to buy one of these had a passed on a non-essential Large Warehouse purchase. As everyone else was receiving loads of victory points towards the end, my early success quickly disappeared.

After the final round wrapped up, we all started counting up our scores. I brought up the rear with 34 VPs, fourth place scored 40, third had 41, second had 43 (I think) and the first place finisher racked up 47 VPs. Even though I lost pretty badly, I did thoroughly enjoy this game.

I was able to see a few different strategies during this game which allowed me to get an idea of what you need to do to win. The winner went for a more balanced, production and building technique. He used his factory to produce lots of gold which enabled him to build some helpful large buildings during the end game. in contrast, the third place finisher went for a more shipping only technique. This allowed him to get ahead earlier in the game, but he never had the money to get one of the larger buildings to assist at the end of the game.

I guess it’s a good sign that I want to play this again. I feel like this is the type of game that you get much better at after multiple sessions. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to play again soon.

Technorati Tags: Board Games, Puerto Rico

Like most board game fanatics, I’ve been trying to read as many of the Essen ‘05 reports I can find. In doing so, I’ve come across quite a few games which seem very interesting to me. The main one’s I’m interested in are Aloha, Aqua Romana, Big Kini, Hacienda, and Mesopotamia. These games seemed to have the most buzz since they were featured in almost all of the reports I read.

There were also two other games that caught my attention in a few different reports. Those were Fettnapf and Wordwild. Both of those seem like fun, light games that my wife and I would enjoy. I’m sure she’d wipe the floor with me in Wordwild once she got the hang of it. She’s a sucker for word games.

Other than that, I’m sure there will be more games that start to share some of the spotlight soon. The atmosphere at a convention like Spiel doesn’t really suit some games. I’m sure we’ll hear some good things once people get some of the less hyped games home and put them through a good play session with their normal game group. I’m looking forward to hearing the updates.

On a related gaming note, I’m going to be introducing my in-laws to Ticket to Ride this evening. I hope it goes over well. They like to play board games, but they don’t really branch out past the typical American staples. I’m hoping this will give them a taste of what’s out there besides Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly. If all goes well, I plan to convert them to full fledged “Geeks” by Thanksgiving.

Technorati Tags: Board Games, Essen

Titans Dominate Hapless Texans
Wow, just when I thought the Titans were scraping the bottom of the barrel, along come the Texans. They are really awful. I feel sorry for David Carr. It has to suck to be the NFL’s tackling dummy. Defensive lineman have to licking their chops when they are scheduled to play the Texans.

As for the Titans, they looked very good on the opening drive, and then the Offense shut down again for the rest of the first half. After half-time, there was a bit of renewed energy, but you have to take that success with a grain of salt. It was the Texans who they were playing.

It was also nice to see a positive overall performance by Pacman Jones this week. He played strong defensively all afternoon, and his nice kickoff return sure helped to seal the Texans fate. After his initial growing pains, I think he’ll be a solid player. The fans here in Tennessee will just take awhile to warm up to him.

Astros Win Games 4 and 5 All in the Same Day
I can’t believe the Astros and Braves game went 18 innings. I’m sure the Bravos are just sick after losing that one. They all but had the game locked up when Tim Hudson was taken out. The bullpen proceeded to go to all kinds hell and let the Astros back in the ball game. At least Braves fans got to see two games worth of play on Sunday. They shouldn’t be disappointed in that sense.

Fantasy Football Sadness Report
Well, this week sure was a doozy. My WR corps took some big hits this week due to injury. Darrell Jackson (Sea) is out for four weeks with a knee injury. Joe Horn (NO) sat out again this week with a hamstring strain. I promoted Kevin Curtis (StL) to the starting WR mix for the week in place of Jackson, but I didn’t know Horn wasn’t going to play. I also picked up Andre Johnson (Hou) off of waivers to fill in my WR/TE slot. Both of those decisions probably ruined my chance at winning this week.

I also had to start Aaron Brooks (NO) this week in pace of Kerry Collins (Oak) who was on a bye. Needless to say Brooks single handedly screwed my team at the most inopportune time. All I wanted out of him was at least 200 yards and a TD, but he played like absolute dog shit. It was pitiful.

I have to see if there is some sort of trade I can work out to get my WR situation under control. In retrospect, I probably should’ve held on to Larry Fitzgerald (Ari) instead of trading him a couple of weeks ago. I figured his production would drop since Kurt Warner (Ari) is out with an injury. I still have a strong RB group, Shaun Alexander (Sea), Domanick Davis (Hou) and Thomas Jones (Chi), and I’ll also get my regular QB back this week. Those things should help me right the ship.

Technorati Tags: MLB, NFL, Fantasy Football, Titans

In a previous entry, I talked about the frustration I had to put up with as I tried to modify a couple of Linksys WRT54G routers in order to get my two ReplayTV’s talking to each other wirelessly. I’m happy to say that all is well here in ReplayTV land. I took back both of the Linksys routers, and I purchased two Buffalo WHR-HP-G54s to take their place.

These Buffalo routers support WDS bridging right out of the box. Set up was a snap. I was up an running in less than 2 hours. I also didn’t have to deal with any command line Linux. That was too much for me. I’ll stick with the little bit I know how to do in Terminal here on Mac OS X.

If you’re looking for a way to wirelessly connect two or more ReplayTVs, then these Buffalo routers are your best bet. I purchased mine at Buy.com for $49.95 a piece (right now they’re $77 each). They are easy to set up, have tons of features and the Buffalo support team is top notch. You can’t go wrong with these.

Technorati Tags: Buffalo Technology, Linksys, ReplayTV

So, I had a little downtime this afternoon at work waiting for some responses about a project. I figured now would be a good time to try and see if there are any other Applescripts out there for NetNewsWire that would allow me to email an article to someone. The only one I could find that seemed to work was Feed Mailer by LittleAppleScripts. This is a great little Applescript, but it only works with Mail.app. I use Entourage at work, so I wanted something that would work with it. I’m assuming that it’s impossible to implement via Applescript because you would think someone would’ve done so by now.

While I was browsing the Ranchero NNW Scripts page, I found a new listing for a del.icio.us and Cocoalicious tagging script. I’ve been using the older Post to del.icio.us script since I started reading my feeds in NNW and I thought it was OK in it’s functionality. Reading about this new script turned me on to Cocoalicious which is an excellent piece of software all Mac owners should have if they use del.icio.us.

This new script allows you to post tagged items to del.icio.us by going through the Cocoalicious interface instead of popping up a browser window. It saves a few seconds this way, and it also allows you to keep your focus on reading your feeds. Now I can see something I think will be handy, post it del.icio.us and keep going through all of my feeds. This script will even post straight out the News Items list. Those are two huge time savers over the previous script.

I love finding more options within a piece of software I use everyday. This makes my investment in NNW worth so much more. Now, as long as this program keeps up it’s stellar track record, I won’t have to worry too much about this rumor currently making it’s way around the Mac Internets. News Gator better not screw this one up. There will be many Mac Zealots who will be royally pissed off if that happens.

Technorati Tags: Applescript, del.icio.us, NetNewsWire, Ranchero, RSS