For the second week running it’s just Tony, Fee and me. Last week we were able to play Princes of Florence. It’s not at it’s best with three, but seeing as I hadn’t played it for over a year I wasn’t going to say no!
Tony won Princes by a couple of points: he bought mostly Jesters and Recruitments at auction, and bought several extra profession cards. I bought mostly Builders and Prestige cards. In the end Tony’s late game large works gave him a 2 point victory over me. My 19 points of prestige cards (least empty spaces, most buildings, two large buildings) weren’t quite enough.
I wasted a couple of early actions I think, so much so that I only actually completed two works. Early on I should have just concentrated on scoring the works I had, rather than buying stuff to try and make them better. I had forgotten how hard it is to hit the late game work requirements when you don’t have any jesters.
Fee was competing with Tony for the Jesters and Recruitments, but unlike Tony she was playing her works early (indeed after the fourth turn she had no profession cards in hand). This wins her a few early best work bonuses, but generally you don’t get as many points playing that way. At least by competing with Tony she was making their money management tricky, thus boosting my chances.
As neither of them had much interest in competing with me for Builders or Prestige cards my money management was relatively simple. I think both my works were for points (maybe with an odd hundred florins), and I still had a little left at the end.
Princes of Florence is a great game. I must try to play it more this year.
This week both Tony and I have brought Tigris and Euphrates, another classic game that we don’t play anywhere near enough.
Still Tony doesn’t want to jump straight into such a hard game (probably a wise move) so we start with a quick hand of San Juan. Tony and I are pretty strongly violet (he is convinced it is the best plan), whilst Fiona is building many production buildings. She gets a Guild Hall and a Palace, but it’s not enough to beat my City Hall plus Palace.
The main difference being that I had a Quarry whilst she didn’t have a Smithy, and I was able to get down a couple of one cost violets for ‘free’ (I know they’re not literally free unless you have Carpenter as well). The Guild Hall players should really be looking to close the game out with 12 builds, but Fiona’s income wasn’t as good ( a function of being the only player heavily invested in production), so she only finished with 10 builds.
After this game Tony starts explaining how the violet plan is so much better than Guild Halls, and that the game is therefore slightly broken. I try to convince him otherwise, but despite the fact that I have played the game about ten times more than him, he apparently knows more than I do. That’s annoys me.
After San Juan we unpack T&E, and Tony reminds Fee of the rules whilst I take a loo break. He does his usual effective job. I get back just in time to repeat some of his gibberish regarding the scoring of external conflicts into actual English.
The game gets underway with me giving Fee a few basic strategy tips (Green and Black leaders are the most obvious to play early, remember to support your leaders with Temples etc). I have a glut of opening Green tiles so I start my own kingdom in the bottom right of the board. The plan was to make a monument, but it turned out to not be necessary.
I also have my Black leader in this kingdom, and join with the lower central treasure. At this point this kingdom is quite close to an external confict with Fee’s central kingdom, and I still have a glut of Green and Black tiles in hand. So I deliberately keep my kingdom a little weaker than hers, until she attacks, and I have enough for the tie in black to win that conflict. That ends the external conflict and breaks up her kingdom, so that soon my Green leader boots hers off as well.
That basically gives me enough Green and Black points for the game. I pick up some Blue and Red points throughout the game, and as my Green leader never gets displaced I get 5 of the 8 treasures collected for quite a confortable win (my score is 8/9/9/12)
Fee got most her leaders booted off midway throughout the game, but just re-entered her black leader in the empty bottom left corner and spent several turns getting a couple of cubes per turn in the colours she was weakest. And she also picked up a treasure relatively simply in the top right hand corner to end the game (I wanted the game to end, so I was helping).
Tony has a couple of strong colours, but is very weak in black and another colour (green?) and finishes last. He complains that he got dreadful draws (which might be true, he did change a load of tiles a couple of times), but I think he overstates his bad luck. In particular I think he got loads of reds but didn’t make the best use of them. He may have forgotten that you can remove leaders from the board (at one stage he had a four temple leader in red – I think he could have removed it, tried to kick off my green or black leader with an internal conflict then completed a B/G temple).
After T&E there’s time for one more quick game, something a bit longer than filler, but not too long. Whilst some groups can play Puerto Rico in 45 minutes we’re not one of them, so it’s San Juan again.
I want to try and win with a Guild Hall strategy this time, but after building an early Prefecture my counselling attempts aren’t helpful (though I do build Silver), and quickly Tony, and then Fiona have Prefectures as well.
This game is a little odd. Everybody builds a mixture of violet and production and eventually Tony and Fiona find the Guild Halls. But because they aren’t huge Halls the scores aren’t that high, and I’m keeping pace just with a couple of Monuments (I also have Library & Silver). I close with a Triumphal Arch, but lose by one card on the tiebreaker to Tony.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Sunday 04/02/2007: Pub Quiz, Super Bowl XLI
As it was the first Sunday of the month, it was the pub quiz at The Prince of Wales. We had a larger team than usual: Fee, Marleena & Luke, Jim, Colin, and me.
Normally in quizzes the bigger the team the better, and you want people to know about different stuff, so as to have a chance on all the questions. Colin, in his first pub quiz appearance, definitely added some new areas of knowledge to the team (for example Dr Who’s home planet is Gallifrey).
The first round is fairly easy, and we get 17 (each round is 20 questions).
The second round is slightly harder and we get 13, leaving us in fifth place on 30 points (there are nine teams)
After a strong third round (16), we had moved up to fourth on 46 points. First place is on 51 – they’ve been in the lead ever since the first round when they got 19.
Each month there is also a bonus round that is handed out at the beginning. This month it is a sheet of thirty ‘thumbnail’ size pictures of famous people (mostly actors, a few music and sport).
To me this kind of thing is very simple. 28 (!) of them are obvious, there’s just two that I spent most of the evening thinking about.
No 29 is a woman wearing pink with untidy mousey blonde hair. She’s singing. Eventually I realise that it’s Suzi Quattro.
No 21 is a young looking woman wearing a yellow rain mac. I have a couple of unlikely ideas (who seem too obscure, based on the other people), and then I decide it’s a young Jane Fonda. Colin isn’t so sure.
Reading out the answers, I have all the first 20 correct. No big surprise. No 21… is Jane Fonda. Yes! Numbers 22 through 28 are correct, and I’m pretty confident Suzi Quattro is correct. It is! Now I think I’ve got all thirty in the bag, but can’t avoid the nagging feeling that maybe I’ve made a hideous mistake somewhere…. No, I got 30!
This gets me a big cheer from everyone on the team, and many congratulations are sent my way.
The final scores are announced in reverse order. With the 30 points from the bonus round we have 76, and when fourth place is reached with a score of under 70 points it is apparent most teams didn’t do quite as well on the bonus round as we did…
Sure enough, the team that had been leading throughout finish second with 74, and we have won. This is only the second time ever (the first was a couple of years back, before I was on the team).
After the quiz, it’s home to watch the Super Bowl. Historically I’ve always been an AFC fan (I first become a fan of American Football during the NFC’s winning streak in the 80s), and Tony Dungy deserves a Super Bowl, so I’m supporting the Colts.
After the opening kickoff is returned for a Chicago TD, the first quarter is strewn with errors. In the pouring rain that’s not completely surprising.
As well as the many turnovers during the first half the Chicago secondary completely blows the coverage for a 55yd touchdown. Still, by this stage the Bears had already scored a second touchdown, from a decent drive that included a 50+ yard run, and it looks like they might make a game of it.
Sadly it’s not to be. The Indy offence is totally dominating the Chicago defense with a short passing game, and having established the pass, they are also able to run with some success. The only thing that keeps the game close is the Colts inability to convert all of their yardage into points. Several times they get into good positions but have to settle for field goal attempts. Vinatieri misses a 36 yarder (!), another is fumbled by the holder, so they enter half time only 16-14 ahead.
At half time I cook Burgers for Lucy and me, so I’ve no idea if Prince was any good.
During a third quarter in which they again dominate possession they extend the lead to 22-17. By this stage they have completely dominated in terms of both possession time and yardage, but it’s still only a one score game!
The thing is the Bears don’t look like scoring even once. In the fourth quarter Grossman has a long pass intercepted, it’s returned for a Touchdown, and that’s basically game.
Eli Manning gets MVP, which was always a dead cert. I was really impressed by Rhodes and Addai, the two Colt running backs, who both had over 100 total yards. And so that's it for another postseason (I don't have Sky Sports so I only watch Football during January).
Normally in quizzes the bigger the team the better, and you want people to know about different stuff, so as to have a chance on all the questions. Colin, in his first pub quiz appearance, definitely added some new areas of knowledge to the team (for example Dr Who’s home planet is Gallifrey).
The first round is fairly easy, and we get 17 (each round is 20 questions).
The second round is slightly harder and we get 13, leaving us in fifth place on 30 points (there are nine teams)
After a strong third round (16), we had moved up to fourth on 46 points. First place is on 51 – they’ve been in the lead ever since the first round when they got 19.
Each month there is also a bonus round that is handed out at the beginning. This month it is a sheet of thirty ‘thumbnail’ size pictures of famous people (mostly actors, a few music and sport).
To me this kind of thing is very simple. 28 (!) of them are obvious, there’s just two that I spent most of the evening thinking about.
No 29 is a woman wearing pink with untidy mousey blonde hair. She’s singing. Eventually I realise that it’s Suzi Quattro.
No 21 is a young looking woman wearing a yellow rain mac. I have a couple of unlikely ideas (who seem too obscure, based on the other people), and then I decide it’s a young Jane Fonda. Colin isn’t so sure.
Reading out the answers, I have all the first 20 correct. No big surprise. No 21… is Jane Fonda. Yes! Numbers 22 through 28 are correct, and I’m pretty confident Suzi Quattro is correct. It is! Now I think I’ve got all thirty in the bag, but can’t avoid the nagging feeling that maybe I’ve made a hideous mistake somewhere…. No, I got 30!
This gets me a big cheer from everyone on the team, and many congratulations are sent my way.
The final scores are announced in reverse order. With the 30 points from the bonus round we have 76, and when fourth place is reached with a score of under 70 points it is apparent most teams didn’t do quite as well on the bonus round as we did…
Sure enough, the team that had been leading throughout finish second with 74, and we have won. This is only the second time ever (the first was a couple of years back, before I was on the team).
After the quiz, it’s home to watch the Super Bowl. Historically I’ve always been an AFC fan (I first become a fan of American Football during the NFC’s winning streak in the 80s), and Tony Dungy deserves a Super Bowl, so I’m supporting the Colts.
After the opening kickoff is returned for a Chicago TD, the first quarter is strewn with errors. In the pouring rain that’s not completely surprising.
As well as the many turnovers during the first half the Chicago secondary completely blows the coverage for a 55yd touchdown. Still, by this stage the Bears had already scored a second touchdown, from a decent drive that included a 50+ yard run, and it looks like they might make a game of it.
Sadly it’s not to be. The Indy offence is totally dominating the Chicago defense with a short passing game, and having established the pass, they are also able to run with some success. The only thing that keeps the game close is the Colts inability to convert all of their yardage into points. Several times they get into good positions but have to settle for field goal attempts. Vinatieri misses a 36 yarder (!), another is fumbled by the holder, so they enter half time only 16-14 ahead.
At half time I cook Burgers for Lucy and me, so I’ve no idea if Prince was any good.
During a third quarter in which they again dominate possession they extend the lead to 22-17. By this stage they have completely dominated in terms of both possession time and yardage, but it’s still only a one score game!
The thing is the Bears don’t look like scoring even once. In the fourth quarter Grossman has a long pass intercepted, it’s returned for a Touchdown, and that’s basically game.
Eli Manning gets MVP, which was always a dead cert. I was really impressed by Rhodes and Addai, the two Colt running backs, who both had over 100 total yards. And so that's it for another postseason (I don't have Sky Sports so I only watch Football during January).
Monday, February 05, 2007
EVERY SINGLE BOOK I OWN!!!
This is currently a work in progress!
Created - 05/02/2007
Edited 05/03/2007 (added Science / Tech)
Sci-Fi / Fantasy
Isaac Asimov
The Early Years Vol 1 The Early Years Vol 2 The Early Years Vol 3 Buy Jupiter Nightfall The Bicentennial Man The End of Eternity The Currents of Space Earth is Room Enough The Winds of Change The Positronic Man (with Robert Silverberg) Nightfall (with Robert Silverberg) I, Robot Robot Visions The Caves of Steel The Robots of Dawn Foundation Second Foundation Foundation and Empire Foundations's Edge Foundation and Earth Forward the Foundation
Douglas Adams
The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Life, the Universe and Everything So Long, and Thanks for all Fish Mostly Harmless Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy (by Neil Gaiman)
Clive Barker
Weaveworld The Great and Secret Show Imajica
Greg Bear
Blood Music The Infinity Concerto Queens of Angels Slant Moving Mars Eon Eternity Darwin's Children
David Brin
Glory Season Earth Sundiver Startide Rising The Uplift War Brightness Reef Infinity's Shore Heaven's Reach Kil'n People
Arthur C Clarke
Imperial Earth Of Time and Stars Rendevous with Rama Rama II (with Gentry Lee) Garden of Rama (with Gentry Lee) Rama Revealed (with Gentry Lee)
Greg Egan
Quarantine Permutation City Axiomatic Luminous Diaspora Terenesia Schild's Ladder
Jon Courtney Grimwood - Pashazade
Peter F Hamilton
The Reality Dysfuntion The Neutron Alchemist The Naked God Fallen Dragon Pandora's Star Judas Unchained
Frank Herbert - Dune
Robin Hobb
Assassin's Apprentice Royal Assassin Assassin's Quest Ship of Magic The Mad Ship Ship of Destiny Fool's Errand Golden Fool Fool's Fate Shaman's Crossing
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
George R R Martin
A Game of Thrones A Clash of Kings
Richard Morgan
Altered Carbon Broken Angels Market Forces Woken Furies
Alastair Reynolds
Revelation Space Chasm City Redemption Ark Absolution Gap Century Rain Galactic North
Kim Stanley Robinson
Icehenge The Wild Shore Red Mars Green Mars Blue Mars The Martians Antartica The Years of Rice and Salt
J R R Tolkien
The Hobbit The Fellowship of the Ring The Two Towers The Return of the King The Silmarillion
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Dragons of Autumn Twilight Dragons of Winter Night Dragons of Spring Dawning Dragons of Summer Flame Time of The Twins War of the Twins Test of the Twins
Tad Williams
The Dragonbone Chair Stone of Farewell To Green Angel Tower: Siege To Green Angel Tower: Storm Otherland: City of Golden Shadows Otherland: River of Blue Fire Otherland: Mountain of Black Glass Otherland: Sea of Silver Light The War of the Flowers Shadowmarch
Jane Austen - Emma
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility
Iain Banks - The Crow Road
Pat Barker - Regeneration
Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door
Pat Barker - The Ghost Road
Julian Barnes - Arthur & George
Louis De Bernieres - Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Umboerto Eco - The Name of The Rose
Umboerto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum
EM Forster - A Passage to India
Charles Frazier - Cold Mountain
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Jospeh Heller - Catch 22
Joseph Heller - God Knows
Joseph Heller - Closing Time
Nick Hornby - Fever Pitch
Nick Hornby - High Fidelity
Nick Hornby - About A Boy
Jack Kerouac - On The Road
TE Lawrence - Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Ursula Le Guin - Always Coming Home
David Mitchell - Cloud Altlas
William Nicholson - The Wind on Fire
Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker
Richard Dawkins - Climbing Mount Improbable
Richard Dawkins - The Ancestors Tale
Richard P Feynman - QED: The strange theory of light and matter
Richard P Feynman - The Character of Physical Law
Richard P Feynman - "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman!"
Richard P Feynman - "What do you care what other people think?"
Richard P Feynman - Don't you have time to think?
James Gleick - Genius: Richard Feynman and modern physics
James Gleick - Chaos
John Gribbin - Science: A History 1543-2001
Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe
Stephen W Hawking - A Brief History of Time
Douglas R Hofstader - Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Brian Penrose - The Emperor's New Mind
Brian Penrose - The Road to Reality
Steven Pinger - How The Mind Works
Karl Sigmund - Games of Life
Bruce Sterling - The Hacker Crackdown
Clifford Stoll - The Cuckoo's Egg
Created - 05/02/2007
Edited 05/03/2007 (added Science / Tech)
Sci-Fi / Fantasy
Isaac Asimov
Douglas Adams
Clive Barker
Greg Bear
David Brin
Arthur C Clarke
Greg Egan
Jon Courtney Grimwood - Pashazade
Peter F Hamilton
Frank Herbert - Dune
Robin Hobb
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
George R R Martin
Richard Morgan
Alastair Reynolds
Kim Stanley Robinson
J R R Tolkien
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Tad Williams
Other Fiction
Jane Austen - Emma
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility
Iain Banks - The Crow Road
Pat Barker - Regeneration
Pat Barker - The Eye in the Door
Pat Barker - The Ghost Road
Julian Barnes - Arthur & George
Louis De Bernieres - Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Umboerto Eco - The Name of The Rose
Umboerto Eco - Foucault's Pendulum
EM Forster - A Passage to India
Charles Frazier - Cold Mountain
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Jospeh Heller - Catch 22
Joseph Heller - God Knows
Joseph Heller - Closing Time
Nick Hornby - Fever Pitch
Nick Hornby - High Fidelity
Nick Hornby - About A Boy
Jack Kerouac - On The Road
TE Lawrence - Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Ursula Le Guin - Always Coming Home
David Mitchell - Cloud Altlas
William Nicholson - The Wind on Fire
Science / Technology
Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker
Richard Dawkins - Climbing Mount Improbable
Richard Dawkins - The Ancestors Tale
Richard P Feynman - QED: The strange theory of light and matter
Richard P Feynman - The Character of Physical Law
Richard P Feynman - "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman!"
Richard P Feynman - "What do you care what other people think?"
Richard P Feynman - Don't you have time to think?
James Gleick - Genius: Richard Feynman and modern physics
James Gleick - Chaos
John Gribbin - Science: A History 1543-2001
Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe
Stephen W Hawking - A Brief History of Time
Douglas R Hofstader - Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Brian Penrose - The Emperor's New Mind
Brian Penrose - The Road to Reality
Steven Pinger - How The Mind Works
Karl Sigmund - Games of Life
Bruce Sterling - The Hacker Crackdown
Clifford Stoll - The Cuckoo's Egg
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Wednesday 31/01/06: Disposition at Yates
A change from the normal stuff: The last Wednesday of every month is live Metal at Yates. I’d been meaning to suggest to Matt that we go for a while, so this month we went.
Matt & I are obviously completely out of the loop when it comes to the current Metal scene – we don’t recognise any of the tracks the DJ plays (apart from Angel of Death), though Matt does at least thinks who knows who some of them are, which is a start I guess. Clearly having Scuzz as your background of choice at home isn’t enough to keep up to date.
Polonium 210
The least heavy band of the evening. I actually thought they had a pretty good grove going on, and really enjoyed the music. Shame about the awful ‘singing’ though, which dragged everything down. (Obviously a complaint that you could level at many bands in this genre: when you can achieve international success by just screaming and grunting, why would you bother learning to sing?)
After Polonium 210 I think the DJ forgot to start playing music again. So it was actually quite nice to have a conversation for a bit. As accountants are usually ‘quite’ busy in January I hadn’t seen Matt for a while, and I can’t remember the last time we went for a drink together.
Apart from the temporary lull it seems the only other place to hold a conversation is on the stairs to the toilets. I am taken aback when somebody starts a conversation just cause I’m wearing my Audioslave shirt. And on the way back down, I bump into Kerry, who seems surprised to see me. Clearly my everyday disguise of a quiet intellectual type is very convincing (actually of course, I am both quiet and intellectual).
Heterodox
An amazing development – the guy fronting this band can actually sing, and really well. A couple of times he holds long notes and he seems to have a decent range. Not so sure about the music, seemed okay, but for me this was all about the guy singing, he was great.
Sentenced to Rebirth
The headliners, and the only band of the evening I’d heard before (there’s four or five tracks on their myspace site). I’d actually quite enjoyed the tracks online, but live it just didn’t seem to work for me. Being the heaviest band of the evening didn’t do them any favours, it just sounded like a bit of a racket to me I’m afraid.
Luckily Kerry came over while STR where playing to chat to me and Matt, so the music was just (very loud) background. She actually remembers Matt from the Squadron – “the guy with crutches” (She doesn’t remember me, but then why would she?) Apart from that her and Matt have something else to talk about, because she lives in one of his old homes, so they can gossip about the neighbours from hell.
Kerry is even nice enough to buy us Sambucas. Which are pretty hideous, I discovered.
Matt & I are obviously completely out of the loop when it comes to the current Metal scene – we don’t recognise any of the tracks the DJ plays (apart from Angel of Death), though Matt does at least thinks who knows who some of them are, which is a start I guess. Clearly having Scuzz as your background of choice at home isn’t enough to keep up to date.
Polonium 210
The least heavy band of the evening. I actually thought they had a pretty good grove going on, and really enjoyed the music. Shame about the awful ‘singing’ though, which dragged everything down. (Obviously a complaint that you could level at many bands in this genre: when you can achieve international success by just screaming and grunting, why would you bother learning to sing?)
After Polonium 210 I think the DJ forgot to start playing music again. So it was actually quite nice to have a conversation for a bit. As accountants are usually ‘quite’ busy in January I hadn’t seen Matt for a while, and I can’t remember the last time we went for a drink together.
Apart from the temporary lull it seems the only other place to hold a conversation is on the stairs to the toilets. I am taken aback when somebody starts a conversation just cause I’m wearing my Audioslave shirt. And on the way back down, I bump into Kerry, who seems surprised to see me. Clearly my everyday disguise of a quiet intellectual type is very convincing (actually of course, I am both quiet and intellectual).
Heterodox
An amazing development – the guy fronting this band can actually sing, and really well. A couple of times he holds long notes and he seems to have a decent range. Not so sure about the music, seemed okay, but for me this was all about the guy singing, he was great.
Sentenced to Rebirth
The headliners, and the only band of the evening I’d heard before (there’s four or five tracks on their myspace site). I’d actually quite enjoyed the tracks online, but live it just didn’t seem to work for me. Being the heaviest band of the evening didn’t do them any favours, it just sounded like a bit of a racket to me I’m afraid.
Luckily Kerry came over while STR where playing to chat to me and Matt, so the music was just (very loud) background. She actually remembers Matt from the Squadron – “the guy with crutches” (She doesn’t remember me, but then why would she?) Apart from that her and Matt have something else to talk about, because she lives in one of his old homes, so they can gossip about the neighbours from hell.
Kerry is even nice enough to buy us Sambucas. Which are pretty hideous, I discovered.
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