December 18th, 2007:
Quick update: there is extended footage of Jade on the WBZTV website (see yesterday's entry for context).
December 17th, 2007:
I had a wonderful trip to Boston. Your Move Games is moving forward on developing the game I designed, and there is a chance that it might be ready for publication this summer, so I'm very pleased about that.
While I was in Boston, it snowed, and we went sledding. My friend Chad's daughter Jade was interviewed by the local CBS affiliate, and you can see her television debut here. She appears at the end of the 2 minute long segment. This may be as close as I ever get to touching a celebrity, as you can just barely see my face and hand pushing the sled at the 1:24 mark. :-)
In addition to seeing playtest versions of several upcoming Battleground factions, I also got to play a few games of Shape, a new game that YMG is still developing. I played a very early version at Gencon last year, and it has changed a lot since then. One of the cool things about the game is that there are multiple versions of the rules that can be played using the same pieces and the same basic concepts, but each version requires different strategies, and different versions may appeal to different age groups and types of players.
December 12th, 2007:
Thanksgiving in Boulder was wonderful, as always. Shira's family all seem to be in great health. Alan taught me how to butterfly a bird so that the dark meat cooks at more or less the same speed as the breast meat, which is a useful trick.
This last weekend, professional Go player Yilun Yang came to Seattle to conduct a workshop. As has become tradition, he stayed with Shira and I while he was in town. The workshop itself was a lot of fun, and something of a personal milestone: I beat a Dan level player in an even game for the first time.
Author Terry Pratchett just revealed that he has early-onset Alzheimer's. :-(
I am catching a red-eye tonight to Boston to visit my friend Chad Ellis and his company Your Move Games. While I'm there I'm expecting to see my friend Aaron Fuegi, and possibly David Finberg as well. I come back on Sunday.
November 14th, 2007:
The busy holiday season is approaching. Looking over my schedule, it looks like I'll be very busy from now through the holidays:
Shira and I will be going to Boulder for Thanksgiving with her family, which is always a highlight of the year for me.
A couple of days after we get back, we're going to see Robyn Hitchcock at The Triple Door, which is a really cool venue-- you sit at tables and have dinner and drinks, there's no one standing in your way, the whole thing feels like a 40's style cabaret.
The night after that I've got a meeting of the Seattle Go Center Board of Directors, of which I was recently made Secretary.
A couple of weeks later, I'm going for a 4-day weekend to Boston, to stay with my friend Chad, the co-owner of Your Move Games. We're going to spend some time developing an idea I had for a game, and if all goes well, I may have my first Game Design to my credit!
If past years are any indication, a few days before Christmas someone will release a new internet worm or virus, which I may or may not get sucked into having to deal with at work; I guess it's a game to some people to try to ruin other people's vacations.
For Christmas this year, we're trying to go ultra low-stress, so we're just getting together with a few close friends and not doing any major cooking or anything.
No plans for New Year's Eve yet.
Project Runway Season 4 starts tonight. It's my only television vice.
I recently released a computer version of a card game, called The Battle For Hill 218. So far I've been pleasantly surprised by the number of downloads, and gratified by the fact that it has led to two positive reviews on BoardGameGeek, which is nice buzz for a new game from a small company.
October 8th, 2007:
Shira and her mom attended the JASNA AGM this weekend in Vancouver, BC. I joined them for the Saturday night banquet and ball. Shira and I successfully danced a couple of English country dances, including the one featured in the BBC/A&E version of Pride and Prejudice.
I watched the complete 26 episode series of .hack//sign, a Japanese anime from a few years back. I thought it was extremely well done, but I hesitate to recommend it to anyone else, as it has a very slow pace and can be quite depressing at times. Interestingly, the anime only tells part of the story; the project was conceived of as being a multimedia enterprise, and parts of the story are told in a series of video games and comic books.
I also quite enjoyed the first season of The Melencholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which is currently airing its second season in Japan, where it is a smash success. I think it's delightful, but again it may be a bit too idiosyncratic to recommend to others. In particular, it riffs on common tropes from anime and science fiction, and a lot of the fun is getting the "in jokes".
I'm finishing up Judas Unchained, which is the second half of a story begun in Pandora's Star. I think it may be time to say that the mantle for intelligent, high-adrenaline space opera has been passed from Iain Banks to Peter F. Hamilton.
I'm also working my way through John Crowley's Aegypt Cycle, I'm currently in the middle of Love and Sleep. While Crowley is one of my favorite authors, I really think he's pushing the bounds of how slowly paced a story can be-- as much as I'm favorably disposed to him and as much as I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, this series is just plain slow.
August 30th, 2007:
Shira and I saw The King of Kong last night. Great documentary, lots of fun. Two thumbs up.
It's not too early to pick my favorite album of 2007, since nothing is going to eclipse War Stories by the British group Unkle. It's some sort of fusion of Trip-Hop, Trance, Ambient, Dance, and Rock, but however you classify it, it's a great album. It's wearing out my car CD player and my iPod.
August 28th, 2007:
I attended Gencon in Indianapolis. It was a lot of fun. I got to hang out with the Your Move Games crew every night after they closed their booth in the Exhibition Hall, and that alone was worth the trip. I was fortunate to win the Battleground "Sword Tournament" again, making me 3 for 3 in those events, but it was much closer this time, and I'll be surprised if I win the the next one. I learned to play several new games, and bought a couple of them: HeroCard: Orc Wars, and Sen So.
Shira and I went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for our 7th Anniversary. This is the 4th consecutive year we've gone to the Festival, and I can't imagine ever wanting to skip a year. It's just a tremendous amount of fun. We saw Tartuffe, The Tempest, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, and Romeo and Juliet. All of them were very good, there wasn't a disappointing play in the bunch. We would have liked for there to have been one of Shakespeare's histories, though; in past years, those tended to be our favorites-- in particular, the 2005 production of Richard III may be the best play I have ever seen. We also discovered that, unlike at the Ballet or Opera, sitting in the 4th or 5th row is actually a Good Thing, and we may buy our tickets much earlier for next year in order to sit closer to the stage than we have been.
July 31st, 2007:
Recently read books:
The Steep Approach to Garbadale, by Iain Banks, one of my top three favorite authors. Not one of his better efforts, it feels like he's rehashing old ground-- it reads like a bit of a cheap knockoff of The Crow Road mixed with a bit of Walking on Glass, both of which are far superior efforts. Still, even a bad Iain Banks novel is better than most other books.
Company Commander, by Charles MacDonald. A WWII memoir. Short read, good details for WWII era gaming, probably not that interesting otherwise.
The Second World War, by John Keegan. Keegan is such a good writer, this book flows along at a brisk clip, and before you know it you've got a pretty good military overview of WWII under your belt. Probably not of general interest to anyone but military history buffs, though.
Firebird, by R. Garcia y Robertson. The premise is better than the book: take the basic structure of a fairy tale, with a lost princess and a knight in shining armor, kindly but scary witches, all manner of fell beasts, fearsome Huns who travel by way of sky boats, and so on, and tell the story with modern sensibilities. Doesn't really work that well in practice, as the author never succeeds in making you care about the characters.
Recently viewed movies:
The Simpsons. Pretty good. B+.
The Crow Road. Scottish made for TV adaptation of the Iain Banks novel, recently made available at the local video store. Not bad if you've read the novel, as you can hang the visuals on a firmer structure. Shira hadn't read the book, and didn't care much for the movie.
Ratatouille. Clever. See it with kids. B+.
July 16th, 2007:
The obituary for Russ can be found here.
I was appointed to the Seattle Go Center Board of Directors, due to a mid-term vacancy becoming open.
Justin and I played a Battleground scenario last night. I've posted a short battle report on the Your Move Games forums. You can find it here.
July 11th, 2007:
I went to Origins last week. It was a lot of fun. I stayed with Bill Thacker, and got to see many of my friends from when I was in high school. I also got to have lunch with my Aunt Janet, and spent half a day with my Dad, my sister, and my brother-in-law.
Unfortunately, I came home to some very sad news. A good friend of mine, Russ Cleaveland, passed away from a brain embolism while I was gone. He had been having problems with blood clots in his legs, and we knew something like this was a possibility, but it's still shocking. Russ was a wonderful person, and we'll all miss him.
June 26, 2007:
Shira and I saw Once last night. Probably the best movie I've seen in 2007. Two thumbs up, must-see.
I've been extremely busy at work the last few weeks with two security issues that I can't talk about, but suffice it to say it's been very hectic and high-adrenaline.
I'll be leaving for Origins next week, I'm looking forward to seeing a bunch of old friends there, as well as visiting some relatives.
I had dinner with a buddy from my college days, famed gaming author and soon-to-be neurosurgeon Bruce Geryk, while he was in town climbing Mt. Rainier. With luck, I'll be able to see him again at Origins.
My friend Tom Laramee just released a new CD, Seven Shades of Time. It's really good. (You can read my review here.) He's performing this week at Conor Byrne, Thursday night around 10:30, so hopefully I'll be able to make it.
June 11, 2007:
I've been spending most of my free time working on the programming project for Your Move Games. I'm pleased with the results. It's been a lot of fun, and now all of the elements of the program are working, so I can concentrate on making the artificial intelligence better, which should be even more fun.
Shira and I saw Knocked Up this weekend. I thought it was good, but don't understand all they hype; maybe I'm just not at a stage of my life where I appreciate romantic comedies as much as some people.
May 21, 2007:
The latest book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, Reaper's Gale, arrived from the UK this week. Unfortunately, I'm too busy to read it at the moment!
My friend David desJardins is going to be in town this coming Memorial Day Weekend. We'll play a lot of games with a lot of different people.
Then the following weekend, Guo Juan, a professional Go player currently living in Amsterdam, is coming to the Seattle Go Center to give a workshop. So that will eat up that weekend.
And in my remaining spare time, I am teaching myself the programming language Java, and writing a computer version of a new card game from Your Move Games. Their game hasn't been released yet, so I can't say anything about it; I don't know if they'll want to make use of my computer version or not, but in any event it's a fun way to learn the language, and I'm using it as a way to prepare myself for a bigger project, which is to write a campaign system for Battleground: Fantasy Warfare.
April 18th, 2007:
I just got back from a week in Boston. I visited my friend Chad, co-founder of Your Move Games. It was a lot of fun, and I got to play several games of Battleground against the designers/developers.
People in Boston seem way friendlier than in Seattle. In my brief experience on the T (Boston's public transit system), I was continually asked how I was doing, how I liked Boston, whether I needed help figuring out where to transfer, and so on. (Carrying luggage being the tip-off I was from out of town, presumably).
I finished Stumbling on Happiness on the plane. Highly recommended.
When I got home, I discovered that Shira had painted the living room in my absence. It looks great. Perhaps she's rewarding me for being gone and encouraging me to take more gaming-related solo vacations? :-)
April 9th, 2007:
My friend David desJardins pointed out that my list of top 10 books was really a list of top 10 novels. I should have made that explicit-- I really was intending to only consider novels when I formulated my list.
Which of course leads to wondering how the list would be different if it was open to all books. Comparing a textbook on neuropsychology to Pride & Prejudice to determine which one is "better" seems like such a difficult task that I'm not sure I want to attempt it. So, without further ado, I present my top 10 non-fiction books:
(1) How the Mind Works, Stephen Pinker
(2) Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, Kolb and Whishaw
(3) The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
(4) Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter
(5) Invincible: The Games of Shusaku, John Power
(6) Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook, Ellen and John Schrecker
(7) The Nurture Assumption, Judith Rich
(8) The Language Instinct, Stephen Pinker
(9) Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Abelson and Sussman
(10) The Glory of Their Times, Lawrence Ritter
April 5th, 2007:
There's an ongoing discussion on the David Foster Wallace discussion group about his purported Top 10 books. (See http://toptenbooks.net/blog/2007/03/is-david-foster-wallace-serious.html for an example of the sorts of questions being asked.)
The discussion got me thinking about how difficult it would be to choose exactly 10 "favorite" books. Should you attempt to pick the 10 "best" books you have read in some objective sense, for the benefit of others, or just your personal favorites, warts and all? And once you have the criteria, how to narrow down your selections to just 10?
Anyway, I spent some time browsing my shelves last night, and here's my list of top 10 novels. I have attempted to sort them in order:
(1) Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
(2) Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
(3) Little, Big, John Crowley
(4) The Crow Road, Iain Banks
(5) American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
(6) Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
(7) Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
(8) The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt
(9) Islandia, Austen Tappan Wright
(10) Memories of Ice, Steven Erikson
March 26th, 2007:
Shira and I have both celebrated birthdays in the last two weeks. We went to Salish Lodge for Shira's birthday; it was nice, but some of the prices made us laugh.
I'm currently reading Nonzero and Redemption Ark, and enjoying both.
March 9th, 2007:
I saw the midnight screening of 300 at the Cinerama last night. Not bad, though I think my friends all liked it more than I did. The cinematography is gorgeous, but I thought the movie itself was uneven. I'm not in any great hurry to see it again.
This weekend is my birthday, I'll be 39 on Sunday.
I played Battleground:Fantasy Warfare with two folks I met through BoardGameGeek. Maybe I'll be able to put together a group of people to play semi-regularly in Seattle after all.
Shira has been having problems with side effects from her anti-migraine medication, so we're trying to get that sorted out. In more positive news, the web designer for her private practice website (she's a mental health counselor) got back to her with the initial proposed design, and it's very good, so we're both happy about that.
February 22, 2007:
Today is my sister Diana's birthday. Happy Birthday, Diana!
I have a confession to make. I have read, re-read, and thoroughly enjoyed a novel written for teen girls: Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. At first, I swore my wife to secrecy. But then she read it, loved it, and re-read it. Then she loaned a copy to her friend Roz, who loved it. Then she told her friend Cathy, who stayed up all night reading it and went out the next day to buy the sequel. Then Roz gave it to her son Lucas, who enjoyed it so much that he spent some of his very limited funds on the sequel as well. So I figure, at least I'm not alone, I might as well 'fess up.
I have two accounts on KGS: andrewgr and andrewgr2. One of those accounts is standing at 2 kyu, the other one at 1 kyu. This should mean that, were I to have played enough AGA rated games, I would currently have an AGA rating of either 1 kyu or 1 dan (the KGS ratings generally being slightly lower than the AGA's.). When I finally do manage to make AGA 1 dan, it will probably be the single most difficult thing I have ever accomplished; certainly, it has taken longer and consumed more effort than either my undergraduate or graduate degree did. I plan on hosting a big party when this happens, hopefully sometime this year.
I just booked flights for an excursion to Boston in April. I will be spending the weekend with the Your Move Games team, play testing Battleground:Fantasy Warfare. I'll also be seeing my friends David Finberg and Aaron Fuegi to play some Titan.
February 12, 2007:
Shira and I saw The Lives of Others again at a benefit for the Seattle Film Festival; it was just as good as I remembered.
I'm trying desperately to avoid buying The Burning Crusade, the first major expansion to World of Warcraft. I got way too addicted to World of Warcraft early last year, and wound up spending a truly troubling amount of time playing it. I cancelled my account and have been cold turkey since March of last year, but the expansion is very tempting. I have been reading a lot of fantasy novels and painting a lot of miniatures in an attempt to get my geeky fantasy fix in a less obsessive manner.
February 1st, 2007:
I've been back from India for a week now. My internal clock has been messed up all week, but I think I'm finally resuming a more natural sleep pattern.
I saw Pan's Labyrinth last night. I recommend it highly. A. O. Scott has a pretty good review here.
Also on the movie front: my favorite movie (by far) from the Telluride Film Festival this year is finally getting a wide release-- there was a trailer for it before Pan's Labyrinth last night. If you get a chance, go to see The Lives of Others when it opens; you won't regret it.
January 21st, 2007:
Rishad and I went to a museum and to the zoo today. I was not permitted to take my camera into the museum, but it was pretty interesting. I particularly liked the various sculptures, most of which depicted various Hindu mythological figures. There were also some extraordinary carvings made from ivory tusks-- for many of them, you could tell from the overall shape of the carving which part of the tusk the artist had to work with.
I did take a few pictures at the zoo. We wanted to see the Bengal Tiger cubs, but truthfully they were already large enough that they didn't look very "cub" like, and also they were behind a wire fence that interfered with pictures. Anyway, some snaps I did take are in the India section of my photo gallery.
January 20th, 2007:
I went to dinner at a co-worker's house last night. Rishad is the Dev Lead for the Client team, so he was basically my counterpart in India before I quit my Dev Lead role a year or so ago. He has a lovely wife and daughter, and he also invited over several co-workers. I don't want to risk offending anyone my misspelling names, so I'll wait until I talk to Rishad on Monday at work before putting names here. In the meantime, I have a few new pictures from the night in the India section of my photo gallery-- for some reason they seem a bit blurry, but I guess they're better than nothing.
January 18th, 2007:
I've been mainly going to work, then going back to the hotel and playing Go on the internet and reading. However, I have a busy weekend coming up: tomorrow night (Friday) I am going to a co-worker's house for dinner. Then over the weekend I am going to a museum, and possibly also to the zoo, which is supposed to be quite nice and feature natural environments for the animals. I expect another batch of pictures sometime in the next few days.
I just came from a meeting in which they gave a going away party for a guy that's been in the group for 3 years. He speaks 5 languages fluently, including English and French (he speaks English more fluently and idiomatically than many college educated Americans I know); and another 5 languages at a grade school level, including Japanese. His going away gift was an acoustic guitar, on which he proceeded to play a beautiful piece of classical music. He is going to join Microsoft in the U.S., because his extended family needs the money, and U.S. salaries are significantly higher than those in India. Of my co-workers that I have gotten to know well enough to have a personal conversation with, I think all of them send a significant portion (certainly over half) of their paycheck to various family members.
January 14th, 2007:
I have added a few pictures from my brief excursion into the city. They can be found in the India section of my photo gallery. Note that because of a bug in Front Page, I am unable to add captions to the pictures at this time; please spare me the Microsoft jokes. Also note that I forgot to bring my picture editing software with me, so these pictures are about 10x as large as they should be, but still should be viewable with any reasonable internet connection.
January 12th, 2007:
I crashed hard last night, went to sleep around 7. Of course that meant I woke up at 5. Still, I'm feeling much better today.
Many years ago when I was in graduate school, I was asked to help a Political Science professor I know. He wanted me to come up with a research project for some of his students, who were learning statistics, and also provide them with a data set that would allow them to make some attempt at solving the project. I wound up making them an extract of the U.S. Census from a number of different years, and asked them some questions about the rising inequality in the distribution of wealth in the United States. When the day came for their presentation, they showed their graphs and charts, and gave their talk, and then it was open floor to ask questions. As the person that had assigned their project, I asked the first question: "Why should we even care about income inequality? As long as poor people are better off now than they were 50 or 100 years ago, why should we care that rich people are even more better off?" And none of them had a reasonable answer. They hadn't given the matter any thought. I was rather insufferably smug, I think, as I enumerated several reasons why massive inequality in the distribution of wealth can cause all sorts of problems in society. Looking back on it, I wish I could give that younger version of Andrew a healthy slap, because he certainly deserved it. I didn't understand anything about income inequality before this trip to India. It's just so visceral and overwhelming. I feel like crying on my way to work every day. There are houses that look like palaces surrounded on each side by shanty towns made of blue tarps and cast off corrugated siding, not just here and there, but everywhere. I have a bad case of culture shock.
That said, I am going to make an effort to do some cheerful site seeing this weekend. It is a 3 day weekend in Hyderabad, a harvest festival I believe. I am going to try to see an outdoor market, and find a few safe meals outside the hotel. I have tested my camera functionality and it seems everything is working, so I should have pictures up sometime over the weekend.
January 11th, 2007:
Obviously the National Championship game was quite distressing. But if OSU had to lose, I prefer losing in a way that makes it clear that the better team won; it would be much more heartbreaking to lose a very close game and then have an entire off season of "what ifs".
I am writing this from the Microsoft Campus in Hyderabad, India. My total travel time, including time at various airports, was over 30 hours. I am expecting jet lag to kick in at some point, but as of now, I feel fine.
My first impression of Hyderabad is of poverty. I have reason to believe, based on the experiences of my co-workers who have visited here, that I will wind up finding many other sides to the city; but my first impression is of just how many poor and homeless people there are everywhere, the state of decay of so many of the buildings, etc.
I did bring my camera with me, so I will try to take some pictures this weekend.
January 8th, 2007:
Tonight is the National Championship game, Ohio State vs. Florida. Tomorrow I'll either be very sad or very happy.
Either way, I'll have a significant distraction to take my mind off the results of the game: I leave for India. I'll be gone a little over two weeks.
I played another two games of Battlelore with Lee, and this time won them both convincingly. Fun game.
January 1st, 2007:
Shira and I cooked dinner for 11 people on Christmas, including my sister and brother-in-law. It was a lot of fun, but we were so frenzied that I completely forgot to take any pictures. Sorry if you are one of the people I promised pictures to.
I have discovered a wonderful resource for learning Go: http://www.audiogolessons.com Lectures are 1 Euro each, and last anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. I'm working my way through some of the ones intended for players much weaker than myself, and am still learning things I didn't know (but probably should have). I am excited about getting caught up to the lessons intended for my level.
My New Year's Resolutions: (1) Solve 10 tsumego problems per day, and (2) Lose 12 pounds by next January 1. I figure 1 pound per month should be achievable without resorting to extreme measures.
I played 2 games of Battlelore with Lee, a gentleman that I met on Boardgamegeek. I lost both games, but the game is a lot of fun, and I look forward to playing more in the future.
I leave next week for a 2 week business trip to India. It will be rough leaving Shira and Nuxhall for that long, but as compensation, it is sunny and 85 degrees there right now. I will be taking our digital camera, so hopefully I'll have some good pictures to share.