Posts from 2004

Music to my ears

A while back I talked about some of my musical interests.  This post prompted some helpful comments that pointed me to some other artists.  Here are some tho...

Two New Weblogs

My friends Mike Deans and Eric Landes recently unveiled their weblogs.  Check ‘em out.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all! The weather has turned for the worse today - high winds, rain, and so much fog we can barely see across the bay.  We've had a wonde...

Cruise on the Voyager of the Seas

It’s Christmas Eve and I finally have a few spare moments to post some pictures and a narrative of our recent Caribbean cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Voyager o...

Pre-Sail in Miami

I’ve got free broadband access in my hotel room here in downtown Miami.  We head over to the ship in about an hour, so hey, why not squeeze in one more post ...

Blog updates=off

I’ve got a huge backlog of things to post, but my hosting ISP had my home blocked out in their firewall so the whole world has been able to see my site but n...

Video Tour of the Salishan House

Now for something a bit different.  Using the great Microsoft Photo Story 3 tools I created a narrated slideshow / video of the Salishan home.  There are low...

Fresh Fish Rises from the Ashes

Looks like I have permission from Plenary Games, publisher of the fine Fresh Fish game, to resume development work of the Windows-based implementation of the...

Salishan for Thanksgiving

Julie, the boys, and I drove out to Salishan today for Thanksgiving weekend.  Jan and David came out on Sunday and we are all very excited to have our first ...

Gaming in Atlanta

I had some business travel to Georgia last week, and my meeting ran to late to catch a flight back on United so I had to spend the evening there on Thursday....

Playtesting Report

KC, Rita, and I ran two playtest sessions here in Portland in November.  Our goal was to get feedback on four of KC’s designs and narrow down a list of publi...

Catchup - Goldbräu, Power Grid x2, and more

I’m well overdue on a number of session reports, including recent playtesting reports for KC’s games.  Hopefully this is part 1 of 3 posts I’ll make tonight....

New Publisher on the Block: SimplyFun

Found on Gamewire: there’s a new game publisher starting up called SimplyFun.  They have an interesting business model: The company won’t be selling their g...

Ruby on Rails

OK, let’s geek out in the technical way for a bit.  Patrick mentioned that I pointed him to Ruby, and more specifically to Ruby on Rails.  I’m...

I’ve Arrived?

Looks like I finally surpassed Chris Brooks, progressive rock guitarist from Australia, as the #1 Google hit for “Chris Brooks”.

Acquire, Buyword, Lightning D-Day, Boomtown

I’ll have a sizable post tomorrow about the playtesting we conducted over the weekend, but till then here are a few games played over the weekend. I managed ...

Metro 2

I took off for the east side of Portland to help Rita setup for a games playtest day we are running today to showcase and evaluate 4 of KC’s game (Pizzza, Ha...

Life in San Andreas

My friend and co-worker Travis is (!) taking a week off to play GTA: San Andreas.  He’s, very humorously I might add, documenting his week there in the first...

GeekSpeak / PodCasting

There’s been quite a bit of talk about the pros and cons of PodCasting.  Part of this issue is that people get too wrapped up in the technology as opposed to...

I Voted Today

Well, sort of.  Julie and I voted last night while the kids were out trick-or-treating.

November Games Journal is out

The November issue of The Games Journal is out.  My favorite article this month is “Living the Dream 2.0: Promotion.”  Check it out.

Amazing Transformation

My friend and co-worker John Hibbard has documented his transformation, self described as From Morbid Obese to Ironman.  Best of luck John next week at your ...

Keythedral, St. Pete, and Empire Builder

Time to catch up on a couple of session reports. Last Saturday KC and Rita came over to discuss some planning for the upcoming playtest days we are running i...

End of Fall Sports

Saturday marked the end of fall sports for Jacob and Matthew.  Matthew finished the season with a strong win against a Tigard team, while Jacob’s team suffer...

Happy Halloween

For your viewing pleasure, here are a few costume photos from the weekend.  Julie and I are big fans of Shaun of the Dead in case you don’t know what you are...

Tivo Removing Features

Boy, this could be enough to push me back towards cable and Windows Media Center.  I don’t know if they’ll push this patch down to DirectTivo (which isn’t of...

Piecepack Solitaire

While watching the Cardinals look ever more futile this evening, I managed to try out a few solitaire Piecepack games. First up was Tula (ppwiki), which feel...

Yourself!Fitness

Looks like Yourself!Fitness, the XBox-based personal fitness trainer, shipped this month.  This is a product of responDESIGN, a company founded by Corillian ...

Gaming Birthday Party

We finally celebrated Jacob and Matthew’s respective birthdays with their friends on Sunday afternoon.  The opted for a joint gameday, with each inviting 4-5...

Acquire

Time to catch up on some session reports.  I had some good gaming activity over the weekend, starting with a Friday lunchtime session at work.  Side note: I’...

Musings on St. Petersburg

Last week I participated in a four-way discussion on the pros and cons of the card game St. Petersburg.  Obviously I like this game.

Übergeek?

This is where I am today.

Games Magazine Awards

You can find the Games Magazine 100 list, along with the awards for 2005, over at Funagain.

Ole is Back

Thankfully, Ole has returned to the blog posting world.  Welcome back, and stay for a while!

Alt Country / Americana

I’ve never really been a fan of popular country music.  I don’t take it seriously, consider it worse than top 40 pop, and have spent most of my life befuddle...

Nashville

I spent last weekend in Nashville at my good friend Russ Waitman’s wedding.  Russ and I were roommates in college, sharing an engineering suite our sophomore...

Play Ticket To Ride Online

You can beta-test Ticket to Ride online over at Days of Wonder.  I played a 2-player game with Eric H tonight - well done implementation.

Gaming with the Billabong Boardgamers

Tonight I had the fortune of spending a few hours gaming with the Billabong Boardgamers of the greater Melbourne (Australia) area. Alan Stewart was kind enou...

Solitaire Middle Earth: the Wizards

I awoke this morning at about 4:30am local time.  Not too bad in all - that’s about 7.5 hours of sleep and I’m on may way towards adjustment.  I wanted to go...

Melbourne on Saturday

I arrived in Melbourne about 10am Saturday morning after about 18 hours total flying time.  Things sure have changed since the last time I was here: I had to...

Off to Australia

I’m sitting in the Red Carpet lounge at PDX, doing some demo work for Corillian and waiting for my flight to SFO.  I’ll end my journey in Melbourne, Australi...

BoardGameSearch

BoardGameSearch is a useful site for searching prices for online games.  This is a good start, but I want more (actually, my friend George wants more and I a...

Gmail Invitations

I know these are SO scarce these days, but let me know if you’d like a gmail invitation.  Please leave a comment here with your first and last name and email...

Bargain Games

There are a few good deals out there that are worth looking into: ToysRUs is still offering Roller Coaster Tycoon for a paltry $5.97 plus shipping.  Well wo...

Lunchtime Gaming at Corillian

I recently organized a lunchtime gaming group at Corillian in our cafe.  A couple of us had met spontaneously for some gaming over the past year, but about a...

Movie Ratings for Kids

Julie and I want to see a movie today, probably Shaun of the Dead, so we are looking for a movie for the boys to see at about the same time, at the same thea...

Playing CCGs Without Collecting

Many folks into German- or European- or Family Strategy Games or whatever you call them these days played collectible card games in the 90s, especially the o...

Dave has a Blog

My friend and fellow RipCity gamer Dave Eggleston has a weblog (atom).  Dave is in the midst of an interesting project: developing some Windows-based (but th...

Spycraft CCG

Jacob and I gave the SpyCraft CCG a play while at the coast over the weekend.  We also played several other games - I’ll post some pics shortly - but I wante...

Robo Rally

I didn’t see much of the kids this week due to work committments each night, so I was eager to sit down and spend some quality time tonight.  We decided to p...

Join Me in Wallenstein

Come on over and join me in a game of Wallenstein.  The name of the game is Wildcard, password is “cubswin”.

Fall Sports Begin

Not only was this the opening weekend for the NFL (my Colts and Cowboys appear to be off to a stellar start.  At least the Seahawks won…), but Jacob and Matt...

Heroscape, Taj Mahal

On Monday, Jacob and I ventured across town (about as far across town as you can imagine) to KC and Rita’s home in Gresham.  KC, Rita, and I are planning a p...

First Day of School

Yesterday was the first day of school for Jacob (4th grade) and Matthew (2nd grade).  Jacob was a bit stressed for most of the weekend, and Matthew in typica...

Weekend at Salishan

We managed to spend Fri-Sun this weekend at Salishan.  We mixed in a bit of housework with some fun - best of all, Jan and David (Julie’s mom and step-dad) w...

Chinkway / FÜNF

Got my latest issue of Counter magazine last week, and there was a nice article by Derek Carver about a trick taking card game he designed.  What made the ar...

St. Petersburg PC Game

Thanks to Aaron Haag and his post over at BGG, I’ve just learned that there’s a PC version of St. Petersburg available for download.  If you are an English s...

Memoir ‘44 Overlord

Jacob and I went over to Ken & Brandon’s house this weekend to try out a two-board game of Memoir ‘44 Overlord.  Days of Wonder was kind enough to give m...

More Gmail Invities

I’m starting to think that anyone who wants a gmail account has one by now

Gaming this Week

I managed to get in a few games this week, both at home with Matthew and at Die Hard Thursday with the RipCity gamers. Wednesday night, Matthew and I had som...

Anime for Kids

So my kids, particularly Matthew, love Anime movies.  They haven’t seen very many, but they’ve really enjoyed classics like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away,...

GenCon 2004, Day 3

GenCon is now over, it’s hard not to be a little saddened by how quickly it wrapped up and how much I hoped to do/see but didn’t have time to.  No worries; t...

GenCon 2004, Day 2

Day 2 at GenCon is at a close, and here’s my report for the day.  Today was quite different - less time at the show, and I brought Matthew and Jacob today.  ...

GenCon 2004, Day 1

Jacob and I spent our first day at GenCon Indy today, lasting from 8am until about 5pm.  Overall the experience was great; I would say better than last year....

Stephen Colbert on Dungeons & Dragons

GameSpy has a pretty humorous interview of Stephen Colbert (of Daily Show fame) relating his experiences playing Dungeons & Dragons as a youth. He got ...

My GenCon Schedule

This is mostly for my own reference, but here's my schedule at GenCon this weekend: Friday, August 20 8-10am -Giant Seafarers of Catan (Jacob and I, BG0035...

Fish Stories Part 2

I just had to post this photoshop edit Bob sent over. If fish could talk.

Fish Stories

I’m not a big-time fisherman; you won’t find me watching many fishing shows on TV and I rarely purchase my own fishing tackle.  The sport has always facinate...

More Salishan Photos

I’ve had a few requests from family and friends for more pictures of the house in Salishan.  We were able to spend the weekend there again, doing some more w...

Gmail Invite?

Looks like I can give at least one gmail invitation.

GenCon Meetup

Going to GenCon? Interested in meeting up for some open boardgaming, perhaps at Gamebase 7? If so, leave a comment here and I'll post a schedule and locati...

Salishan

Last week Julie and I, along with her mother (Jan) and stepfather (David), closed on a home in Salishan, near Lincoln City, OR.  This was originally an idea ...

Runebound

About a week ago, Jacob and I joined Ken and Brandon at the Rude household for a game of Runebound, the fantasy boardgame from Fantasy Flight Games.  This ga...

Gmail is pretty sweet

I was fortunate enough to get an invite to open a Gmail account from my friend Scott Ladewig. Gmail is Google's answer to Yahoo, Hotmail and others: free ...

Back to Some Gaming

Last week our annual vacation to Keuka Lake finished (perhaps I’ll post a few more pictures this weekend), so we are gradually working ourselves back to some...

Keuka Lake

Greetings from Keuka Lake, NY!  We took the red-eye from Portland last Thursday night, arriving at the lake cottage around 11am on Friday morning.  The weath...

What Are Wargames?

Check out this interesting article in the recent issue of the GiocAreaA online magazine. The translation is a bit stilted at times, but the content is very n...

Memoir ‘44

I finally received my copy of Memoir ‘44 this week, the new game from Days of Wonder.  DoW is on a roll, with the Alan Moon designed game Ticket to Ride winn...

What’s Up

Wow - long time since I’ve posted anything too meaningful.  This post won’t break that trend.  It has been a busy few weeks, so very little has happened on t...

Review of the Iron Dragon Computer Game

Shannon Appelcline wrote a nice review of the Iron Dragon Computer Game over at RPG.Net.  Funny thing, I just discovered this game on Saturday after a referr...

Gaming at Kevin’s

Jacob and I spent Saturday afternoon at Kevin Graham’s for some gaming.  We picked up Ken and Brandon around 12:30 and arrived at Kevin’s place on the east s...

Piano Recital

Jacob and Matthew had their end-of-year piano recital on Saturday.  They both did very well, and given that they enjoy it so much (and therefore practice) we...

Army Humor

Somehow I got on the email list for Army ROTC alumni at Washington University.  Probably an alumni database screwup, as I was actually in Air Force ROTC ther...

Weekend in La Pine

Julie, Jacob, Matthew and I spent the weekend in La Pine, Oregon, located in central Oregon just south of Sun River.  Jacob had a busy weekend of baseball sc...

Philips Senseo

Sorry for the brief diversion into home appliance review, but I’m pleased enough with my recent purchase of the Philips Senseo that I just had to share my th...

Back to the Sun River Area Today

Later today (it is Friday early morning right now), the four of us will pack up the car and head back to central Oregon (La Pine, to be specific), this time ...

Sun River, Day 3

This will be my last entry on the Sun River gaming extravaganza.  Sunday was a shortened day - George and I left together around 3:30pm to get home in time t...

Sun River, Day 2

Moving on to day 2, Saturday, at Sun River. This was my heaviest day of gaming, both in terms of the number of games played and the style of games.

Sun River, Day 1

Twice a year the RipCity Gamers group journeys to Sun River for 3-5 days of gaming goodness.  Doug and his family are kind enough to offer up their vacation ...

Avalon Hill Goodness

I mentioned last week that some parts were missing from my Axis & Allies: D-Day game.  Sent an email to Hasbro/Avalon Hill/WOTC and got this quick respon...

Jacob’s Oregon City Tournament

Forgot to mention - Jacob’s baseball team took second place out of 8 teams at last week’s Oregon City baseball tournament.

O Zoo Le Mio and Alexandros

Quick session report this time - I’m in Sun River with the RipCity group and got a bit behind.  Gotta catch up so that I can start posting photos from the we...

Ole’s RSS Cookbook

If you still haven’t taken the plunge and picked up an RSS reader, maybe all you need is a nice tutorial on what it is and how to use.

Mark Johnson’s Gathering Thoughts

Mark wrote a very insightful post about his recent experiences at the Gathering.  Even though I’ve lobbied for an invite, it would take some serious thought ...

A Day of Some Significance

United Airlines has been doing a lot of things right lately.  I spend a lot of time on this airline, and am already half-way to 1K status this year (missed i...

Axis & Allies - D-Day

Friday evening Jacob and I started our first game of Axis & Allies: D-Day, a game that we managed to finish tonight after his baseball game.  Jacob playe...

Music Program, Baseball

Time for a few more family photos.  Julie and Matthew are in Reno for the weekend, so I’m spending each day shuttling Jacob to his baseball tournament out in...

Axis & Allies: D-Day Released

Axis & Alies: D-Day (publisher site, preview) was released this week.  I was fortunate enough to be a playtester for this (thanks for the invite Doug!) -...

More Baseball Photos

I’m having way too much fun with my Digital Rebel. I’m especially impressed with the results I’m getting with high-speed (1/1600, 1/2000) action photos of Ja...

Baseball Season!

Jacob and Matthew are playing baseball again this year.

Funny Referrals

DasBlog provides some nice referral tracking that helps me learn how people find the site. Often the referral is from a strange search at Google, MSN, or e...

Doug’s Gathering Report

My good friend Doug Walker (and wife Mimi) spent last week at The Gathering of Friends in Columbus, OH. This is a private, invitation-only event sponsored b...

First Impressions: Dracula, San Juan

Jacob and I spent most of the weekend in Corvallis at the Oregon Destination Imagination state tournament (more on that later). I brought along three of the...

Memoir 44 vs. Axis & Allies D-Day

George asked this question: _So how does this coincide with Hasbro's Axis&Allies D-Day release? _ I believe they will both be released about the same t...

Drool

Will it be possible to not purchase this game?

Cats

Julie and I are cat people.

Gaming in Redmond

Finally some gaming! I was in Seattle/Redmond today on business

Photos from KL and Beijing

I finally got around to posting some photos from my recent trip to Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.

Tivo Hacks

This is mostly just an entry for me to remember where to find the stuff, but here is the best place to find the list of Tivo hacks for modifying default se...

Back Home

Made it back home safely yesterday, flying from Beijing to Tokyo to Seattle to Portland.

In Beijing

We safely made it to Beijing today

Day 1 in KL

After a breakfast here in the hotel this morning, I went for a stroll to see what is near the hotel. I wandered into the KLCC shopping complex, a very mode...

Portland to KL

Yesterday (2 days ago?) I made the long journey from Portland to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I departed PDX about 9:45am on Friday morning, flying to SFO. Thank...

Family Gaming

Julie’s mom Jan was in town for most of the week, which is spring break for the kids.

Puerto Rico Online

I gave the new version of Puerto Rico Online a try last night.

West Side Saturday - March 20

This will be a rather long session report - there was a ton of gaming going on last Saturday at Mike’’s, mostly due to the unusually large crowd of 12 people.

Digital Rebel

A while back I raised the quandry "should I get a Digital Rebel". Well, about a week ago Julie and I took the dive and we are starting to get some nice res...

Happy Green Day

Been a while since I posted some family photos, so here are a few I thought were more than worthy.

Preparing for Europe Engulfed

A strange title for a post, but I’ve spent the last week reading (and re-reading) the rules for Europe Engulfed in anticipating of a trial short scenario pla...

Gaming at Doug and Mimi’s

Yesterday Jacob and I made the long trek up to Vancouver's east side to attend a game day hosted by Doug & Mimi. It had been too long since our last vi...

State Chess Tournament

Today I take the Archer Glen chess team to the Chess for Success State Tournament in downtown Portland. We have a strong team but frankly, I don't know what...

New Gaming Blog

Clay Blankenship has started a new blog, rss feed here.

Recent Acquisitions

I picked up a few games over the past few weeks - some from the great online store Boards & Bits and some at the recent Game Storm. Here's a sampling: ...

GameStorm - Day 3 (non-Uberplay)

The better of day 3 at Game Storm for me was my Uberplay Games demonstration session, which was supposed to last from nine until noon but actually lasted f...

GameStorm - Day 1

Today was day 1 for GameStorm in Portland, OR. I had to get there by 4pm to hand deliver KC's New Eden prototype; I thought I gave myself plenty of travel ...

A Game of Thrones Online Back in Business

The AGoTOnline team and Fantasy Flight Games reached an agreement this week that will allow the online site to continue operations. Games already in progres...

Gaming in Sherwood - Sunday, Feb 15

We welcomed a small crowd into our home again this weekend for some gaming on Sunday. Gameplay lasted from about noon until 8:30pm, and we were fortunate to...

Saturday Gaming

After spending 4 hours this morning at Beaverton Toyota getting my car worked on (regular maintenance plus some repairs from vandalism at the Portland airp...

A Game of Throne Online Goes Dark

Bowing to pressure from Fantasy Flight Games, the great folks that built A Game of Thrones Online have taken the game down. Apparently one of the concerns i...

Vanished Planet

I took a bit of a chance and ordered the game Vanished Planet

Weekend Update

After a long week of travel to the east coast, and a busy week of activities for the kids, we were all content to lay low and take it easy this weekend. On ...

Great ASL Article

Check out Chris Farrell's article on ASL pros and cons. My favorite quote: ...I think an unhealthy percentage of the skill involved in playing ASL is in ...

Superbowl Gaming

My friend Mike Deans was kind enough to open his household for a day of gaming with a rather large crowd. All four us joined the crew from Rip City Gamers. ...

My Visit to Uberplay Headquarters

On my way home to Portland from Seattle on Thursday, I stopped by the Uberplay Entertainment headquarters in Issaquah. Almost a year ago Jeremy Young, invi...

Gaming in Seattle - Jan 25

I travelled to the Seattle/Redmond area this week for business, and managed to squeeze in some late-night gaming on Wednesday evening. Tom Powers from Boar...

Jason Sato has a WebLog

Jason Sato (aka Magic Rat), with whom I had the pleasure of gaming in Arizona last year, has a new weblog.

Good Chess Books for Kids

Every once in a while I get asked what chess books for kids would I recommend.  I haven’t read too many, but here are a few recommendations: Starting Chess,...

PiecePack Solitary Confinement Contest

I can't believe I forgot to post this. A while back I mentioned the latest PiecePack design contest, Solitary Confinement.I even submitted a (very lightwei...

Senjutsu with Jacob

Jacob and I had some spare time this afternoon while Julie and Matthew went shopping for a birthday present. Looking into the game closet for a two-player ...

Some Used Games I Picked Up

I checked out Greg Aleknevicus' Games for Sale list and found a few things I wanted for a reasonable price - plus he was having a buy 2 get 1 free sale! S...

Plug for a Couple of Tools

I don't write about technology too much in this forum, but every once in a while I like to plug some cool toys or tools that I find useful. First, have a lo...

Wrestling Tournament

Jacob and Matthew have been practicing with Sherwood youth wrestling

Casual Gaming in Sherwood - January 15

Our new friend Kevin McKenzie was still in town on business (we gamed with him last week), so we invited a few folks over for some gaming at our home on Wed...

Photos from the Chess Tournament

If all goes well today, there will be a barrage of postings as I clear out the backlog. It was a busy week and I just didn't have time to touch up and post ...

Holy Cow - Titan: the Arena is Back!

Just read on the Gamewire that Fantasy Flight will be re-releasing Titan: the Arena and will call it Colossal Arena.  I haven’t played the original Avalon Hi...

Rick Thornquist’s Best (and Worst) of 2003

Another good list reflecting on 2003, this time from Rick Thornquist of “gone cardboard” and “gamewire” fame.  I agree with his list, though there were sever...

My 5 & 10 Report for 2003

Many folks who play board games will provide a year-end report of games they played, often in a form known as a "5 & 10" or "five and dime" report. This...

New Year’s Eve Gaming

Our good friends the Rudes joined us for our second annual New Year’s Eve game night.

More Snow in Sherwood

We had a healthy dose of snow on New Year’s day - woke up to about 4 inches another 2-3 fell during the day.