“be honest, be kind, be honorable, work hard, and always be awesome”

The volume of mentions I get on Twitter makes it impossible for me to read them all, and I miss most of them*. I do my best to read them, because more often than not the people who @ me are funny and interesting, but … math.

Last night, I happened to see a mention from a fifth grade teacher, who told me that one of her students said he was related to me. I don’t have a lot of school-aged relatives, and thought it was probably a kid making up stories, so I asked her what his name was. Well, it turns out that he is, indeed, related to me! He’s my brother’s nephew, and I just love him and his sister (and his mom, who is my brother’s wife’s sister. Go ahead and draw the family map, I’ll wait.)

After I confirmed that we are, indeed, family, she sent me this, which she said inspired the conversation:

Be honest, be kind, be honorable, work hard, and always be awesome.
Click to embiggen.

She designed this, and it hangs in her classroom. It forms the foundation of her class rules.

I showed it to Anne, blinking hard to get all the dust out of my eyes that had suddenly arrived in our living room.

All I want to do with my life is inspire people to be kind and awesome, and I love it so much that this teacher thought my words were worthy of sharing with her students.

*#humblebrag, I guess.

Coup: An amazing bluffing game from Indie Boards And Cards

Thanks to my fellow gamers respecting, understanding, and supporting my “I’m not here to take pictures and sign autographs, I’m just here to play games” policy at GenCon, I got to play a ton of really great games this year, including probably the best bluffing game I’ve ever played. It’s called Coup, and it comes out from Indie Boards and Cards (they do The Resistance, among other things) later this year.

While I was waiting in the airport to come home yesterday, I looked it up on Boardgame Geek, and decided to add my own review to the board, you know, to give a little something back to the community:

Subject: One of the best bluffing games I’ve ever played.
I played a demo of this at GenCon, and fell in love with it. I played with five strangers, and when the game was over ten minutes after we started (it takes all of 2 minutes to learn it) we were ready to start over and play again.

The cards look great, the rules are incredibly simple to learn, and even though there’s player elimination, it only takes about 10 minutes to play, so nobody has to sit out for too long.

This is a fantastic palate cleanser during a game day, and a great way for a few players to get into a quick game while waiting for a slot in another game.

You won’t see this on the Geek, though, because it wasn’t accepted

Comments from users that moderated this article:
Not much content
Not a review
Lacks depth.

Well fine! You’re not my real dad! I’ll put my not-a-review on my own site! With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the review!

I’m just kidding. I suppose it’s not actually a review*, and more of a forum post … but it really is a great game, and something I hope we can find a way to play on Tabletop if we do a season three.

 

*This one is, and it’s worth whatever geek gold you happen to have in your pocket.

Congratulations to Tabletop!

Last night, Tabletop won the most meaningful and genuinely prestigious award in the gaming industry, The Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming.

I don’t care about awards, and prefer to just let the work speak for itself, but it’s not hyperbole to say that it’s the Stanley Cup of gaming awards, and it is given by a group of people who I deeply respect and admire.

This show would not and could not exist without some very wonderful people, and all the work they put in from the very beginning of the first season. I owe them an incredible debt of gratitude for the work they’ve done and continue to do, and for making it possible for me to share my love of gaming with the world. We’re making something that’s more than just an entertaining show; we’re bringing families together, helping kids with learning disabilities, and this weekend in Chicago, a lady told me that Tabletop made it possible for her to communicate with her autistic son for the first time in his life. So it is my great honour to share this with

Our Director, Jennifer Arnold
Our First AD and Associate Producer, Adam Lawson
Our Executive Producer, Sheri Bryant
Our Associate Producer and Games Guru, Boyan Radakovich
Our amazing editing team, lead by Steve Grubel
Everyone on our fantastic crew
My dear friend and partner in crime, Felicia Day

I also want to thank everyone who watches Tabletop, plays Tabletop games with their friends and family, and creates the games we love to play. We will keep making this show as long as people will watch it, and as long as we can somehow pull together the funding to make it possible.

Congratulations, Team Tabletop! I’m so proud of us!

 

 

 

woob – repurpose (plus a guide to ambient)

I woke up before the sun, and flew in a lawn dart from ORD to IND on a little over five hours of mostly-restful sleep. As I walked through the airport, I heard the muted voices of gate announcements echo off the walls, and it reminded me of the Pink Floyd song On The Run. The similarities took on a surreal, dreamlike quality when I ended up in a tunnel, on a moving walkway, under rainbows of neon tubes, surrounded by fellow travellers in various states of running to their gates.

A few hours after I landed in Indianapolis, I checked into my hotel, fed myself, and came back to my hotel room to do some maintenance work on my blog. While working, I listened to the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon, followed by Echoes from Meddle.

That’s when my arm began to itch. This has been going on for months, and nobody knows why, but I get the worst itching in the world between my elbow and wrist on the top of my left arm. It feels like it’s coming from my nerves, doesn’t respond to scratching or topical creams at all, and sometimes itches so badly it feels like I’m being pricked with tens of thousands of tiny needles. It sucks, and the only thing that helps at all is benedryl. So here I am, a little loopy on not enough sleep and two benedryl, listening to Pink Floyd like some kind of throwaway joke character in an HST pop-up book for children, when Echoes finishes up and this album called Repurpose by woob starts to play.

And this is what I set out to write in the first place, which I suppose could have just been a link on Twitter: woob is one of the essential ambient acts, and the (relatively) new album Repurpose lives up to expectations.

Here, take a listen:

 

If you’re intrigued, and want to know more, you may be interested in the following, which I wrote in 2008, referencing something I wrote in 2005:

I’m always happy to share this type of music with people, and if I have an opportunity to turn people on to music that really opened my mind (without the assistance from any chemical or mind-altering substances, I always feel compelled to add) I always seize it.

I’ll point those of you who are interested to a portion of a post I made in 2005 (my god, how is it that it simultaneously feels so long ago and so recent to me?) about ambient music. The “it” I refer to is an ambient song I made in GarageBand called Lakeside Shadow:

If you like it, you’ll probably like some of the artists who influenced me over the years: Woob (especially 1194, and especially the track strange air) Dedicated (especially Global Communication, also called 76 14), and Solitaire (especially Ritual Ground). Also, Instinct Records (still alive) andSilent Records (sadly, tragically, defunct since 1996) released an amazing number of genre-defining ambient discs in the 90s. And now, just to prove how hardcore I am, I’m going to throw out Pete Namlook, and the FAX Label, but their stuff is far more experimental than the rest of my list, and isn’t what I’d use to introduce a new listener to Ambient music.

Finally, if you can find it, Silent Records put out an incredible record called Earth to Infinity (I think in 1994) which was pulled shortly after it was released, due to some sampling issues. I think it’s one of the greatest ambient recordings of all time, and don’t ask me for it because I’m not going to jail for you, Chachi.

I think I could have said “incredible” a few more times. Allow me to emphatically pulverize this dead horse deep into the ground: if you only get two ambient records in your whole life, they should be 1194 from Woob and Earth to Infinity (holy shit there are two available from Amazon). If you can only get three, add 76:14, and thank me before you touch the monolith and journey beyond the infinite.

Okay, as I said in 2005, most of my ambient CDs are from Silent, Instinct, and Caroline, and I have a metric assload of FAX recordings that I don’t listen to very much any more. If I were to expand on the artists and albums I mentioned three years ago into a list of essentials, I would add Pelican Daughters‘ breathtaking record Bliss, Consciousness III (or Lunar Phase) by Heavenly Music Corporation, and the 2295 compilation from em:t.

If you’re intrigued, and want to know what some of this stuff sounds like without waiting, please go directly to Magnatune, and fire up their ambient mix. They’ve got artists over there, like Robert Rich and Falling You, who make truly incredible music. (I really think I need to say incredible and really more. Really.) Soma FM has magnificent downtempo and ambient streams, as well. Groove Salad and Dronezone rarely disappoint.

The thing to understand about ambient, though, if you’ve never heard it before, is that it’s slow and deliberate. It takes its time. It doesn’t work in the car, and it doesn’t work if your brain is cranked up to eleven. It’s best enjoyed when you can relax, and let it fill the room around you as you slowly sink into it and out of yourself, like you’ve stepped into a giant gelatinous cube.

Hrm. Maybe that’s not the best way to describe it. Go ahead and fill in your own: “______________.”

Yes, that’s it. That’s it exactly.

This is not the first time I’ve talked about this album, but it will be the first time I’ve linked to woob’s newest album, Have Landed, which is brilliantly described as “The soundtrack for every classic sci-fi movie that should have been made.”

Have another embedded player:

It should come as no surprise that I encourage you to go buy these albums and give woob your money so he/she/it/robot/angel/devil/sentient fungus/ makes more music for us. I hope that, if you’ve come this far, you’ll go a little farther and dig beneath that one tree by the wall to find what’s there.

Login issues: resolved

14.8.14 1342 EDT: With some help from Mysterious Kevin, we tracked down the source of the commenting sign-in woes, and everything should be working once again. If you’re still having trouble, clear your browser’s cache (or login using porn private mode) and you should be all set. Thanks for your patience, and thank you for participating in conversations here at my blog.