Cthulhu Versus Cancer

From the UK Roleplayers Forum:

My friend Paul Fricker has released a Call of Cthulhu scenario — Dockside Dogs — to raise funds for Relay for Life, which is a cancer research charity. I played Dockside Dogs with him a few years ago, and I can recommend it
without hesitation as one of the most original takes on Cthulhu that I’ve encountered.	The press release follows, and the donation link can be found at the end.

Dockside Dogs (Cthulhu vs Cancer)

Paul Fricker (author of ‘Gatsby and the Great Race’, ‘My Little Sister wants you to Suffer’ and the forthcoming Seventh Edition Call of Cthulhu Rulebook) has released a modern-day Call of Cthulhu scenario. All monies raised are going to the Relay for Life (Cancer Research) charity.

Paul said, “I originally wrote Dockside Dogs a few years ago and I’m very proud of it, but doubt it would ever be released otherwise. At the time of joining the fundraising team a few months back I didn’t know my own father would be diagnosed
with cancer. Sadly the release of this scenario has co-ordinated with the day of my father’s death.”

Dockside Dogs is a modern-day scenario for 3-6 players and includes character sheets for Mr. Beige, Mr. Purple, Mr. Black, Mr. Red, Mr. Silver and Mr. Green.

PDF, minimum donation £3.25 / US$5 (include a reference to Dockside Dogs with your donation and Paul will email you the scenario soon after)

http://relay.cancerresearchuk.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/General?px=1006535&pg=personal&fr_id=1132

Carcassonne Tournament #UKGamesExpo

Each year at the UK Games Expo there are a number of events which are part of the Grandboard Game Tournament run by Declan Waters:

• The UK Carcassonne Championship
  • This is a qualifier to enter the world finals in October in Germany (£100 expenses)
  • Sponsored by UK Games Expo.
• The UK Settlers of Catan Championship
  • This is a qualifier to enter the World Championship in USA in 2012 (expenses paid).
  • Sponsored by Heron Games and Mayfair Games.
• 7 Wonders (new event)
  • £25 vouchers for spending with Northumbria Games.
• St Petersburg
  • £25 vouchers for spending with Northumbria Games.
• Agricola
• Puerto Rico

Being the experienced board-gamer that I am, Carcassonne is my game of choice as the others are either too dull (Settlers) or too hard (the rest). Any game that just requires you to lay tiles on the table in an easy-to-follow fashion is fine by me.

Normally the player that wins the most games and by the widest margin over the other players in his or her games becomes the overall champion (if I remember correctly, which I probably don’t). This year, though, we received the instruction “Score as many points as you are able” with winning only providing a miniscule bonus (plus being used as a tiebreak). The best 4 players after the first two rounds play together in the third round for the Championship; everyone else plays for pride.

That seems strange as we all try to score as many points as possible anyway. The cunning amongst us, though, quickly realised that the largest scores are obtained by cooperating:

1. Instead of building a city on your own, coordinate play so that everybody gets to be part of completing it – and make sure you use as many tiles as possible.
2. Similarly, roads should be a multiple effort using the same approach
3. Fields, again, should be jointly owned by all the players with the biggest area possible to touch the greatest number of cities.
4. Cloisters built together will result in overlapping areas and increased individual scores

For most, this was an alien way of thinking. Helping each other? In a tournament game of Carcassonne, of all things.  Where were the opportunities to foil the plans of your fellow players? What about the warm, fuzzy feeling you get from winning a game?

One player (let’s call him Mr Poor Loser), discussing the winning criteria afterwards with Declan, was definitely not pleased. I remember him from the first two rounds being especially pleased with his wins, not realising at the time that a low-scoring win would count for little.

For those interested, and to show the massive difference co-op can make, the final scores were:

	Round 1	Round 2	Round 3	Total
			Top Table
Richard Gough (Champion)	110.006	115.01	195 (tie-break)	420.016
David Dorward	86.001	109.003	195 (tie-break)	390.004
David Bruckley	93.01	113.006	193	399.016
Matt Young	88.01	119.01	165	372.020
			Playing for Pride
Ben Richards-Cousins	108.003	82.01	65.006	255.019
Martin Zommers	115.01	59.006	63.006	237.022
John Breakwell	77.01 (a win)	102.01 (a win)	50.003 (jt 3rd)	229.023
17 other losers people	87.006 – 28.001	109.006 – 43.001	88.010 – 26.001	227.022 – 136.007

Personally, I think it’s a great approach to chuck in for tournaments every now and then to get people to think about what they are doing. It’s common for players to build up an array of winning tactics so throwing a spanner in the works can have a real levelling effect. I can’t wait to see what happens next year (assuming I go to the new venue).

Bug Village for Windows Phone 7

I’ve been playing Bug Village on my phone for a while now. There are few free games worth playing on this platform so I’ve given it a go. It’s a basic resource farming game which you just dip into every now and then to build homes and collect acorns. Not particularly a stretch but it passes the time.

I didn’t immediately realise what the revenue stream was for this game – it has no ads, for example, but instead taps directly into the Xbox Live Points system – and so quickly used up the initial allocation of free coins by accident. I’ve since managed to achieve level 19 without having to spend any money as there are a range of things to build which just require acorns to purchase. Spending money basically speeds up the game. Now, though, I’ve reached a task which says “build stuff that can only be done with money”. In this case I would need to use eight game coins which probably equates to £1 (10 coins is 160 XBL points). Spending £1 is no big deal if you put it against the overall value of the game instead of the valueless in-game content you’re actually buying but how much will I need to spend before I can complete the game? Completion here means collecting all 7 achievements and they are all “grindable”. Maybe if I spend some money then I can finish the game faster and so move on to something else?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Recently I decided to file a bug report (no pun intended) for a problem that was getting on my nerves:

Summary: Black screen during gameplay
HTC Radar C110e running Windows Phone 7.5. Seems to be a problem with too much activity causing screen to go black. The fixed parts of the UI (acorn score, coin total, exp, food, etc.) still display. Also, things like “Collect” labels will still show. Moving to far left or right usually helps as there is less calculation for those parts of the screen so mainly the middle third affected.

Having spent many years submitting bug reports, I was interested in how this would pan out. How you are treated is always a good indicator of the quality of the product group.

Thank you for contacting Glu Mobile Customer Care.
The Windows 7 platform is a new area for us and we are still working out some kinks in the port. We will be releasing updates periodically in accordance with Microsoft’s schedule. So it may be that your issue will be covered in the next update.
Meanwhile we have sent this report to the development team for review, Thank you for your feedback.
Regards,
Glu Mobile Customer Care.

So basically “fingers crossed it’ll be fixed some time in the future – be lucky” and the problem set to “Solved”. Well, at least I received a response.

Asking for trouble

The squirrel in the picture below is the first invader of its species in our garden since we moved in over in 1999. Considering how far away the woods are – the width of the road – that’s quite surprising.

But now one foolhardy Sciurus carolinensis has decided to come over and make a right mess of the peanut dispensers hanging from the small tree at the end of the garden. I say foolhardy as he obviously noticed the air rifle that occasionally sticks its barrel out the kitchen window to take pot shots at the remaining pair of rats still eking out a living underneath said tree.

To really annoy me, the creature didn’t deign to sample any of the specially imported Chinese peanuts. Not good enough, eh? {{Blam, squeak, thud}}

But not this time. Partly because shooting at anything above the fence line will probably result in the police being round. Despite the fact there was no one else in sight, it was 100% probable that any shot would miss the furry target and hit some unseen dog walker deep in the woods.

Additionally, I wasn’t fully cognisant at the time of the legalities around squirrel slaying. After a little research, I found there are a few limitations to bear in mind:

1. My whole house is within 50 feet of the centre of a public highway so any pellets going near anybody on the other side of the fence would be … an offence (£1,000 fine).
2. Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 only lists Red Squirrels as protected. The handily named Grey Squirrel Control website says “blow the bastards away” {{although I may be paraphrasing here}}
3. If the squirrel isn’t killed by the shot, it will have to be humanely terminated. That’s not going to be fun. It’s one thing to try and kill it from several yards away but another entirely to pin it down and deliver a killer chop to the back of the skull. According to the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996, you can’t mutilate, kick, beat, nail, impale, stab, burn, stone, crush, drag, drown or asphyxiate the pest which narrows the options down a bit.

I think I’ll leave squirrel culling to my dad.

What annoys me (most) about modern action movies

I saw the Avengers movie last night and was impressed by the spectacle and the humour. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone that appreciates the superhero genre. There were times, though, when my enjoyment was interrupted by the way the action was filmed. This isn’t a gripe specifically about the Avengers movie itself but instead with quite a few over recent years.

It’s the computer game tie-in. I know that computer games are a bigger industry than Hollywood (depending on who you listen to) and to my jaundiced eye there is too much influence of the former on the latter. During an action movie there will be scenes that look exactly like the sort of events you’d see in a game.

Take, for example, the part in the film where Captain America has to swing from one place to another to reach a lever. The perspective and framing is exactly what you’d see in a 3rd person computer game. When playing a character in a game, you need to clearly see what you’re doing and where you’re going but that doesn’t apply to a movie.

Another example is the compulsory chase scene with falling obstacles along the way. The filming style doesn’t add a feeling of danger or risk, just an idea of exactly how the same event will look on a computer or TV screen while you’re driving the chasing vehicle.

The computer game has to have scenes which are easily recognisable as key stages within the movie and the easiest way to do that is to make them both the same. Considering the resources available to the film-maker, that just means downgrading the movie.

Café Scientifique – “Our food in 2020: challenges facing society”

Tonight I went along to one of the monthly Café Scientifique events at the Déjà vu Bar, a presentation by David Gregory entitled “Our food in 2020: challenges facing society”. The rest of my family was otherwise occupied so the evening was my own to use as I wished.

Monday night is pretty quiet in Reading so taking over the establishment didn’t conflict much with the usual clientele. In front of the bar was set up a podium with mike stand; arranged around were a number of comfy chairs between the podium and dining tables. Ample space for the 20+ that turned up.

David chatted at reasonable length about the challenges to society around providing food in the future. 2020 was just chosen after he heard FaceBook was 8 years old which showed how things can appear from nowhere and become part of day-to-day life in a relatively short period of time. Being able to listen to someone that actually knows what they’re talking about rather than having to read newspaper articles written by journalists that don’t was quite refreshing.

Just a few of the many points of interest

• Fresh fruit and obesity – people are moving up the sugar scale on the fruit they eat; grapes are the most popular at the moment (16-17% sugar) replacing banana (12% sugar), the old favourite, and apples (11% sugar). I’ve taken my data from the Sugar Stacks website where strawberries are the healthiest fruit on their list. Seems counter-intuitive that eating more (of some) fruit may not be as good for you as you’d think.
• Nearly all research and investment is in the pre-harvest period of food creation (generating new disease-resistant crops, etc.) and maybe 5% in post-harvest where there is so much waste – crops taking too long to get to market, inadequate storage, etc. Of course, that brings its own problems – refrigeration units, for example, require a lot of energy which poorer areas don’t have.
• A big difference can be made by raising the performance of underachieving farms by a few per cent – not necessarily by the use of fertilisers but through more basic assistance such as education on farm management.

David Gregory’s CV

• Visiting Professor at University of Reading
• Member of Governing Council at BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council)
• Chairman at Assured Food Standards
• Director (non executive) at Boparan Holdings Ltd

• Ex-Director of Technology at Marks and Spencer

Architecture can definitely be inspirational

This picture is of the river side of Thames water’s head office. I find the glass-enclosed staircases very eye-catching. Whenever I see them, which is every day as I walk to the station after a long day at work, I think of two things.

1. The columns are huge glass jars like you may have in the kitchen to keep dry spaghetti in.
2. More amusingly – for me, anyway – is the imagined sight of someone with a big pile of loose sheets of paper falling down the stairs, filling the column with floating flecks of white. Obviously they don’t hurt themselves on the way. Maybe they are a trained stuntman and can roll over the foam-covered steps without too much trouble. There will need to be massive fans at the bottom of the shafts to keep the pieces of paper floating around as the person spirals down. Or how about two people bumping into each other at the top and having to chase their documents down the staircase, accidentally grabbing the wrong sheets and getting in each others’ way as they do.