17 Aug 06
Just a brief reminder that there is a whole bunch of lovingly-designed rules summaries and reference sheets for many of the most popular boardgames (and some old classics) in the Freebies section. All free to download to enhance your next game (and make re-learning the rules much faster and less painful), of course. I’ve just uploaded some new files.
And don’t forget Boardgamegeek for all your boardgaming needs. My number one internet distraction.
Board & Miniatures Games game sheets
16 Aug 06
You know all that lint that collects in the lint collector in the dryer every time you dry your clothes? Where does it all come from? How come your clothes don’t eventually disappear?
Stuff
15 Aug 06
… you’re too busy to post anything on your blog and most of your recent posts disappear off the front page because they’re so old?
Stuff
20 Jul 06
Jackson Pollock Terrible appropriation of name, but great fun.
Stuff
19 Jul 06
A friend of mine just went to a meeting and got to twenty playing Buzzword Bingo:
take it offline, stakeholders, deliverables, key inputs, clock starts ticking, ‘rock ‘n’ roll’, timeframes, milestones, critical path, committed to, working model, limited resources, liaise with, walkthrough, empowerment, methodology, dependencies, on-stream, lock that down, go-forward date
BINGO!!!
Update: Thanks top Sarah for pointing out that ‘wherefore’ means ‘why’, not ‘where’. See, you can never stop learning!
Stuff
14 Jul 06
Disney unexpectedly struck gold with this franchise, despite their fears that nobody wanted to see a pirate film (oh come on, Cutthroat Island wasn’t that bad). The second in the trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest delivers the rollicking adventure we all expected, and if there were some of us who were hoping for something a little bit more special, well, I guess we can still just enjoy the ride.
From start to finish we hardly get a chance to draw breath as Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp channelling Keith Richards), Will Turner (the competent Orlando Bloom), Elizabeth Swann (an energetic Keira Knightley) and a cast of assorted misfits jump from one action sequence to the other. And like an adventure ride, there’s not a whole lot of concern with rhythm and pacing — Gore Verbinski basically throws every pirate cliche you can think of in a bag, gives it a good shake, and pours it out on the screen with the aid of absolutely stunning digital effects and a cast who are obviously enjoying themselves.
Talking about effects, I have it on good authority that Bill Nighy, who plays Davey Jones complete with squirming tentacles and slimy squid skin, doesn’t actually appear in one frame in this film. Every shot with him in it is completely digital. When you see how well they have captured his performance, you’ll be amazed—despite the covering of tentacles, those are Nighy’s mannerisms to a T. The digital effects work in this film, with a very few exceptions, is absolutely astounding. In fact it’s almost so good it can be distracting; I found my eye sometimes wandering to the myriad of little details in the background as a main character was speaking.
Sure, Bloom’s leading man is as one-dimensional as ever, but this is Depp’s film and he knows it. Flush with the success of his foppish, half-drunken characterisation in the first film, he lays it on thick here. Jack Sparrow has quickly become a loved film character, but if the writers are skilled enough to develop him somewhat further in the third film he could become a classic.
Along with all the running, sailing, swordfighting and rolling (yes, rolling, and lots of it) we do see a little bit more emotional depth, which I found myself hoping for about halfway through the film. It’s a bit of an afterthought but augurs well for the third in the franchise.
But all these quibbles don’t detract from the fact that Pirates is a bloody entertaining film. It could have been something really exceptional, but if you shut your brain off and strap yourself in, you’ll be taken on a fun ride.
Four and a half rubbery barnacles out of five.
Movies and TV pirates
06 Jul 06
Self-referential, actors-playing-themselves films have become a lot more common these days, probably since Being John Malkovitch, which I remember at the time seemed so revolutionary with its use of Malkovitch playing Malkovitch (well, a somewhat larger than life version, anyway … and a version whose head you could enter through a little passageway in the wall of an office building).
So faced with filming the nine volumes of Laurence Sterne’s novel, “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Michael Winterbottom in fact gives a pretty light look into the world of film-making, mixed with a bit of the novel here and there. Not having read the book, I can’t tell you if the themes explored here reflect the themes of the book, but if they do, that’s another layer on an entertaining and funny film that can happily be taken at face value.
Steve Coogan, actor and comedian, aka Alan Partridge, plays a somewhat larger than life version of himself as the eponymous hero. You can tell Coogan had a lot of fun with the part, happily sending himself up as an egotistical and somewhat petty actor trying to do a ‘serious’ role. Well let’s hope he’s sending himself up anyway. Rob Brydon plays his genitally challenged cousin (war wound)—and himself as Brydon dealing with Coogan’s ego armed with an array of excellent voice impressions; Gillian Anderson has a brief cameo as the Widow Wadman—and herself; the crew deal with the demands of a tight budget and a nitpicking historical advisor (I bet he plays boardgames), Coogan deals with his wife and baby on set while he is tempted by an affair; and we get a fascinating insight into the ego clashes and compromises in a day on a film set.
Winterbottom keeps all these balls in the air, and more, with great aplomb, and there’s a wonderful fly on the wall feel about the whole film. There are some excellent moments with Dylan Moran as an inept 18th century doctor, and a brief appearance by Stephen Fry who seems to be popping up in a lot of things these days. It’s a post-modern book about a book that was post-modern before there was any modern to be post about … to paraphrase Coogan.
Three and a half powdered wigs out of five. Oh, and stay for the credits.
Movies and TV
06 Jun 06
Today is the 62nd anniversary of the D-Day landings, as was pointed out to me by my far more educated-on-the-subject friend, Will. Take a moment to look around you and be grateful you’re not storming the beaches of Normandy right now.
It may seem strange, but playing games can be highly educational. The Days of Wonder game Memoir ’44 has taught me a lot about this particular subject, and also given me an insight into the specific struggles that happened during and after the landings. I’m also playing the XBox game Call of Duty: Finest Hour at the the moment, and it’s certainly as close as I’d ever like to get to real warfare.
Thanks to those men, most of us can never imagine what they had to go through. And we can only imagine what the world would be like if it wasn’t for their sacrifice.
(Photo from the U.S. Coast Guard/National Archives, Washington, D.C. Used without permission.)
Stuff
04 Jun 06
I’ve been thinking about other people lately. Mostly because my neighbour is proving to be a dickhead, and it has reminded me of the times I’ve come up against other dickheads in my life. I’ve also come to the frightening conclusion that there are a hugely disproportionate number of dickheads out there.
When you’re a child, you live in a safe little family cocoon, insulated against the frustrations and horrors of the outside world. Your main concern is whether you’ll get to stay up past 8.30 at night, or whether you can complain just enough to get that bag of lollies, but not too much so it results in really pissing mum off. You get taught a set of rules, not only about how to behave at home with your family, but how to behave in the outside world with other people. And you learn—well, some people learn—the fine art of self-awareness and self-control. You learn to examine your own actions, and weigh them against your ideas of right and wrong. To do the right thing.
But as you get older, you start to realise that some people—a lot of people—somehow missed out on learning a lot of these rules.
Some of them are capable of the one thing I really fear, the mindless rage you cannot reason with. Twice in my life—and I’m not counting the occasional schoolyard bully—I’ve come up against it. Once, I was in a car that ran over a dog. The dog wasn’t on a leash and ran at full speed in front of the car; there was no way we could have avoided the collision. Of course we stopped, but the dog owner (a local drug dealer of no fixed address, we later discovered) completely freaked out, with the result that the next thing I knew I woke up in hospital with concussion. I still can’t remember exactly what happened.
Another time, in England, I drove out into a road in the countryside and, unbeknowst to me, in front of a fast driving car that had just come round a corner. The driver began swerving all over the road, obviously gripped by road rage. It looked to me that he was just trying to dangerously overtake, so when he did so, I gave him the finger. That was a mistake. The driver and passenger got so angry that the passenger was opening his door as they drove at high speed ahead of me, eventually cutting me off and forcing me and the car behind me to brake suddenly. They then got out of the car, ripped open my door and started pummelling me with blows.
You can’t reason with people like this. They could kill you—your life could end—because of their moment of stupid, unthinking rage. It happens all the time, all over the world. And in a thousand tiny ways, every day, people do stupid things because they have no manners, or don’t think about others, or allow the anger that is bottled up inside, possibly because of some totally unrelated frustration with their life, to explode violently.
We gather a group of like-minded, good people around us to protect us from the world. People who are kind. Friends and family. Sometimes it seems like we’re outnumbered by the stupid, the ignorant, the rude, the angry, the self-righteous, the blinkered, the un-self-aware.
There’s no way of changing this state of affairs, and sometimes I get angry and do stupid things too; but I also try to do little things to help. Smile at people behind counters. Always indicate when I’m driving. Walk quietly in my house at night. Make sure I’m not jumping ahead of someone in the queue. Warn the neighbours when I’m having a party. Park so I’m leaving enough space for the next car. Don’t let my ego dominate others. When I’m accused of doing something wrong, try to put myself in their shoes. Admit when I’m wrong.
We all have to think about other people, people.
Opinions people
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