gaming – dangermouse.net

Fate of the Fellowship

Friday was board games night with my friends. Five of us gathered at one guy’s place and we played a game of The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship, a recently released new game, which is getting rave reviews. It’s a cooperative game in which the players play various members of the Fellowship or allies and try to complete three random mini-quests scattered across Middle-earth, followed by Frodo destroying The Ring.

Wth five players, each player gets dealt two random character cards to play. There are two cards that contain “inseparable” pairs of characters: Frodo and Sam, and Merry and Pippin. I was dealt Frodo and Sam, and also Arwen. Other players had Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Galadriel, Boromir, Faramir, and the “Merry & Pippin” combo.

The board is a map of Middle-earth, and the characters all start in sensible places: Frodo & Sam in The Shire, Arwen at Rivendell, Faramir at Minas Tirith, etc. Players take turns and take various actions such as moving, mustering troops, fighting orcs (the small red pieces on the board), or more abstractly converting cards in your hand into resource tokens. The cards and resources can be spent to enable certain other things and to pay penalties. For example, whenever Frodo & Sam move, they have to pay a “Stealth” card or token, otherwise they attract the Eye of Sauron. There are also 9 Nazgûl miniatures that move around, trying to hunt down Frodo.

The game is a mixture of:

Frodo & Sam trying to move across the map to Mount Doom without being discovered by Sauron or the Nazgûl.
Other characters mustering troops and fighting off orcs, to (a) prevent them from conquering haven sites such as Lórien, Helm’s Deep, Rivendell, The Shire, etc., and (b) to draw Sauron’s attention to the battle (and thus away from Frodo).

There are several actions available to help both of these, such as passing cards between characters who are in the same location, and various unique special abilities that each character has. After each player’s turn, the forces of evil have a turn, dictated by a randomised card deck. This involves them variously: adding orcs, moving orcs towards safe haven locations (to conquer them), moving Sauron’s eye, and moving Nazgûl as they hunt Frodo.

We played for about 2 hours and had a lot of fun, completing two of the three mini-quests, but ultimately we were unsuccessful, as the orcs conquered too many safe havens and overran Middle-earth before we could destroy The Ring. We realised as this began happening that we’d made a beginner mistake, underestimating how easy it was for the orcs to do that, and hadn’t fortified the havens with troops. Next time we play we’ll have a much better idea of the overall strategy.

Here are massed orcs pouring out of Mordor while Frodo and others are trying to walk in via the Stairs of Cirith Ungol:

While playing the game I had time between turns to draw a quick sketch of the game. There’s also an “Eye of Sauron” Barad-Dûr dice tower that overlooks the board ominously, which isn’t in the photos I took.

I’m not normally a fan of cooperative games. I’ve played many, and haven’t really found any that I’ve liked, other than Codenames Duet and Hanabi. I’ve tried and haven’t liked Pandemic, Spirit Island, The Crew, Forbidden Island, Magic Maze, 5-Minute Dungeon, one of the Marvel co-op card games, and a bunch of others. My friends tend to like them and keep buying them, but I generally dislike them all. But this Lord of the Rings game was a lot of fun.

Today I did a 7.5k run – phew! I didn’t manage to do any runs during the week, so I wanted to get some distance under my belt. The weather is starting to warm up into spring and I went just before lunch, so it was a little tougher than running in cooler weather.

After lunch my wife and I caught the ferry across to Balmain with Scully and walked around the shops there. My wife wanted to drop off some old fabric that she doesn’t plan to sew with any more at a charity sewing shop there. We donated two large bags of fabric, and the staff were very happy to see it all. We stopped at a Persian cafe for a drink and snacks. I’ve had baklava there before, but today I opted for a slightly less sugary chocolate and strawberry cake, which was good.

We caught the ferry back home and are having a relaxing evening.

Finishing off pinhole cameras

This morning I had two online critical thinking classes. Then after lunch I went to Wenona School to finish off building pinhole cameras with the students – which we began work on last Thursday. I cut out holes for the different sized lenses we had and got the girls to tape the lenses into place, and then add tracing paper as a screen for the projection. We ran out of tracing paper and had to use tissue paper for the last two which turned out to be not as good as it has more texture to it, making the image not as clear. I’m hoping they can replace it with tracing paper.

Here are photos of the resulting cameras:

The largest diameter lens is on the left, stepping down in size to the right. So the projected image should get darker from left to right. It’s a little bit obscured by the fact that boxes 1 and 4 have the tissue paper, which isn’t as translucent as the tracing paper. But overall the project worked really well!

The science head is going to try to get the boarding school girls to take photos of the moon over this weekend when we get a full moon, to use for the 3D stereo effect. Hopefully they can get that achieved properly.

I walked back home, and on the way I passed the shop that has 3D-printed D&D and gaming scenery. It’s always been closed when I’ve walked past before, but today it was open! And there was a guy inside painting scenery. So I popped in to have a look and chat to him. He was happy to have a chat and we talked for several minutes about miniature models and playing D&D. Turns out this guy is also running an Old School D&D game, using the Swords & Wizardry retroclone of the original 1974 D&D rules. So it was cool to swap some stories about our campaigns.

The weather was warm today, reaching 24°C, the warmest day since early May. On Monday the forecast is 27°C!

I got home and taught three more classes in the evening, and baked a sourdough loaf which I’d made earlier. Phew!

Sketching at The Rocks

Friday night was online board games with my friends. We played some games of Jump Drive, Knarr, Can’t Stop, and Just One. Nothing really big or long, as people were popping in and out with things they needed to do. I made pizza for dinner in the middle of a game, another guy took his dog for a walk, and so on.

During the day I did my usual critical thinking classes.

After lunch we had a painter come in to inspect the place and prepare a quote for repainting our apartment. We’ve decided to bite the bullet and get that job done. It will be a big job, requiring packing a lot of things into moving boxes and storing them in the garage so we can move the furniture into the middle of rooms to allow access to the walls for the painters. The guy said it would take a full week to do the job. We’re planning to do this some time in October or November.

Today I did a 5k run in the morning. The day was very cold and very windy. A cold front system is blowing up from the south, bringing a lot of cold air. We were supposed to get snow on the Blue Mountains west of Sydney overnight, but I don’t know if that actually happened or not. It only snows up there about once every three or four years.

Scully had a vet checkup to follow-up her tooth extraction last week. The vet said she’s doing well and can go back on crunchy foods. Then after that we dropped her off at the groomer for a full cut and wash. While Scully was at the groomer, my wife and I took the Metro into the city and used the opportunity to go places where we can’t take Scully. We got off at Barangaroo and walked over to The Rocks.

We browsed around in a art supply shop and bought a few things. I found some fillable brushes with actual bristles, that you can fill with ink or liquid watercolour. I’m going to try them with ink for drawing. Then we stopped at La Renaissance, a French patisserie, and had some pain au chocolat. I did a sketch while sitting at the table outside the patisserie.

We moved to a bench seat by the street across from The Garrison Church, and where we also had a view of the Harbour Bridge. Mt wife sketched the Bridge, while I started work on the church. Unfortunately, about a quarter of the way finished, a bus pulled up and parked right in front of us, entirely blocking our view! The driver turned the engine off and got out, having a break. I had to walk around the bus and stand on the other side, next to the traffic, to finish drawing the church.

After heading back and picking up Scully from the groomer we went out to our local pizza place for dinner. Normally I have pizza, but tonight I tried a fettuccine with lamb ragu and mushrooms, which was really nice.

Games night and sketching day

Friday was online board games night. We played some Jump Drive, then Space Base, and Just One.

We finished early and then I watched KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix. Some of the kids in my critical thinking classes have been talking about it and said it’s good, so I decided I should give it a go. It was pretty good, an interesting blend of modern K-pop songs and traditional Korean demon folklore. I describe it as the sort of thing you’d like if you liked Frozen but thought it could use more K-pop and demons.

Today I did a 5k run. I started thinking I could do another 7.5k, but decided to cut it short towards the end as I’d had enough. I cleaned the bathroom and shower thoroughly. Worked on some Darths & Droids comics.

After lunch my wife and I took Scully for a drive over to Balmoral Beach and we sat and did some sketching. Here’s the rotunda:

I kind of ran out of room at the top of the page so I couldn’t fit in the top of the roof! And here’s a view towards the water.

While we were there we popped into the Bather’s Pavilion to make a dinner booking for our wedding anniversary later in the year, to make sure we can get a table. This is our favourite fancy restaurant and we’ve had several other anniversary dinners here.

Back at home, my wife took Scully out for a toilet before dinner… and got stuck in the lift! In all the time we’ve lived here, we’ve never got stuck int the lift before. She used the emergency phone inside the lift, but they said it would take about an hour for someone to come. She called me on her mobile phone and I found a member of the complex’s executive committee, and fortunately she had a key to get into the lift motor room in the garage and knew how to put it into an emergency mode that made it descend to the basement and open.

She was stuck in there with one of our new neighbours, and a new new neighbour, living in the same apartment. She was moving in today as a flatmate in the other bedroom. So they got a good introduction while stuck in the lift together.

For dinner I made a chick pea korma. I adapted this recipe for chicken korma, replacing the chicken with chick peas, and I served it with some broccoli on the side for greenness. It turned out pretty well, but next time I think I’ll blitz the cashews and onions with the Bamix stick blender instead of the food processor, because as soon as I turned it on the whole sauce smeared onto the sides of the processor and the blades didn’t have much chance to turn it into a smooth paste. So it was a little lumpy, but still tasted good.

Rainy running and Pathfinder session 3

Friday night was games night, and although this week was scheduled as face-to-face in the fortnightly rotation, we played Pathfinder online as it was a good day for all of the players to attend. This is the campaign my friend began running back in March, with the second session in May. In this third session we continued exploring the underground complex we’d been led to by a map last time.

We entered a chamber with an ominous skull-shaped platform above surrounding water, with an ominous statue looking down at it. Here manifested what we learnt to be a projection of a demon-like figure, with horns and wings. He was talkative and tried to cajole us into signing contracts for power in an ominous-looking floating book. In exchange for this power, we were to spend eternity in his servitude after our deaths. We spent enough time looking at the book to notice that Nana Slimebristle seemed to have signed such a contract, although with many crossed out parts and emendations added in. This was the Nana whose grave we’d found in session one, empty, with the dirt pushed aside as though something within had climbed out.

With this puzzle piece falling into place, and the demon thing starting to threaten us to sign the book or else prepare to die, we noped out of there quick smart, basically turning tail and running. We managed to get away without being caught, so that seemed a sensible course of action. While deciding what to do, we felt a force drawing us north, where we found a cave and decided to camp for the night.

Orcs attacked during the night and we had to fight them off. Partway through the battle an old, haggard, kinda undead looking woman appeared and helped us. Yup… it turned out to be Nana Slimebristle. We talked and she seemed teed off at the demon Vrasted, so we offered to help her. She suggested we travel north to the mountains to retrieve a magical thingy of hers that she’d lost there or something. And there we ended for the night.

Earlier in the day I’d done the usual grocery pickup and critical thinking classes. After completing my morning batch of classes, I drove with my wife and Scully over to Mix Deli, the new outlet for Lil’ Mix bakery, where we got some lunch: cream cheese filled Jerusalem bagel and a mushroom pie, and some blueberry banana bread for sweets. It was incredibly busy, I think because we were there at the lunch rush, which we might not have been before.

It rained heavily overnight and showered on and off all day today. I tried to pick a dry period to go for a run, but failed dramatically. It began raining almost as soon as I left the house and was heavy for most of the run. Nevertheless, I exerted myself and did 7.5k today instead of my normal 5k. It felt longish, but I didn’t feel too bad afterwards, and completed the distance in just over 43 minutes.

This evening I did a sketching challenge with my wife. We both started on a drawing at the same time of this old photo I took at Bronte Beach:

I just used a 2B pencil and here’s my effort:

My wife is still working on adding watercolour to hers.

Catching up with old neighbours

Friday I did my usual routine: pick up groceries, teach a bunch of ethics classes, then in the evening it was board games night. This week was online, but only three of us could make it. We played a game of Parks, which is a longish game, so that took up some time. I came a close second, though I thought I was in with a good chance of winning before the bonus pints were calculated. We cut the night short after that as one player wanted an early night and the two of us who remained decided not to continue with just two people.

Both Friday and today were cold and rainy as we continue to be hit by this southerly weather. I was woken in the middle of the night by several long rolls of thunder, and there has been intermittent dry spells and thundery showers today.

Today I cleaned up the house and I also went to the liquor store to stock up on wines because tonight we had guests over. Our old neighbours who had to move out of the apartment next door when the owner sold it (they were renting). This is what’s resulted in us getting the new neighbours recently (the new owners). We were friendly with the old neighbours, and they’d minded Scully a few times for us. So we invited them over for some pre-dinner drinks and snacks to catch up. They were keen to hear about our trip to Europe and they had various news about their doings as well.

I didn’t go for a run, though I kind of wanted to. But the weather is so cold and miserable, I didn’t want to end up in a rain shower and freeze. I don’t mind running in the rain if it’s warmer, and I don’t mind going out in coldish weather if it’s dry, but the combination is nasty. And it’s been very cold. Thursday was the coldest July day recorded in Sydney for three years, and some suburbs recorded their coldest July day in 35 years. Around 12°C maximum, which really is about as cold as it ever gets here. (It may not sound so bad for people used to colder climates, but for subtropical people like me this is unbearable.)

Neighbours moving in

Friday I did the usual: Pick up groceries in the morning, teaching a bunch of critical thinking/ethics classes online, then Friday evening board games night. It was a fairly small grocery shop this week, after last week’s big one. I ordered online, except for fresh fruit and vegetables, as I normally do, and selected those myself before picking up the order. For some reason the supermarket included a dozen eggs in my order, even though I didn’t order any. Well, given the scarcity and price of eggs these days I’m not going to complain about getting a dozen free. So for dinner I decided to make quiche and use up most of the previous dozen.

Games night was meant to be in person this fortnight, but one guy was away skiing and two others recused themselves due to sniffles and not wanting to spread potential cold or flu viruses. With very small numbers for in-person, we converted it to online, and ended up with five participants, including the guy who was down at the snow, so that worked out pretty well.

We played Marrakech to start, then a long game of Castles of Burgundy. I didn’t win either. Then we moved to Just One, which is really optimal at 5 players. We got off to a bad start, missing the first two words, but recovered to score a mediocre 11 from 15.

Today I slept in a bit, still catching up on sleep after getting over the jetlag. I think I’m good now though. Scully had her annual checkup and vaccinations today, and my wife took her in to the vet for those. I went for a 5k run. The weather was cooler today and I ran my best time since getting back from Europe. I’m also getting back into the groove there after three weeks break.

And our new neighbours moved in today. We didn’t see much of them, but heard the movers bringing in furniture. Presumably we’ll bump into them in the next few days and have a proper introduction.

This afternoon I did a task I needed to get done for Standards Australia. We decided to revise our document outlining the case for international participation in the standardisation of photography technology, and I get to go over and update the text. I rewrote parts to reflect various changes in applications of photographic technology over the past 5 years or so since we last did this. I had to look up Government policy on things like self-driving cars to update statements about them and the role of cameras in safety monitoring. At the last update, the text said that officially released policy was that self-driving cars would be on Australian roads by 2026, but the latest update now says between 2026 and 2031. So it seems they’re pushing the date out as they realise the technology isn’t mature enough yet.

Tonight for dinner we took a long walk to the pizza place at Naremburn. We tried to get a table at our favourite pizza place, but they had a large booking in the outdoor section, so we couldn’t get in. So we decided to go further to this other one. It’s a bit more old school – they only have the traditional sort of pizza toppings that places had 30 or 40 years ago, and none of the new “gourmet” variations that many pizza places have now with ingredients like satay chicken or figs and gorgonzola.

Games milestones and sketching back home

Friday was busy with ethics classes. I added a new class to Friday at 11:00, so I had even less time in between than previously. I did pick up groceries in the morning before my first class though.

In the evening was online board games night. There were only three of us participating this time (normally we can have 4–6). We played Jump Drive, Knarr, Splendor, Luxor, Cat in the Box, and Nova Luna, all on Board Game Arena. I won the game of Splendor, which is unusual—I’m normally very bad at this game. But I was surprised when Board Game Arena popped up a triumphant dialogue informing me that it was my first win ever at Splendor. I didn’t realise I’d been that bad at it!

And then later when I won another game—I forget exactly which game it was after—BGA informed me that I’d just won my 50th all-time game on the platform. Which I also found a little surprising, given how much we use BGA and how many games I’ve played overall. Honestly if you’d asked me how many games of just Jump Drive I thought I’d won, I would have estimated about 50. Clearly my estimations of my own competence are too high!

Today was a combination of trying to be lazy and staying at home, and actually going out for long walks with my wife and Scully. Before lunch we walked out to the kitchen shop because I wanted to buy a steel steamer tray for our pots, not necessarily to steam anything, but rather to use as a spätzle maker. I’ve been inspired by our trip to Europe to make spätzle at home, and I needed something with holes in it to push the dough through into the boiling water. I found a steamer with multiple stepped sizes on the bottom that could fit either our smaller or larger cooking pot. I also bought a silicone bowl scraper to use to push the dough through.

This afternoon we went on another walk, over to the Flat Rock Brew Cafe, where we sat and both did some sketching. I had a beer while doing mine, and my wife got a coffee. Here’s the outdoor seating area where we sat:

For this one I used the new coloured brush pens that I bought in Vienna, for the first time. So it’s a bit of an experiment. I wanted to colour the faces of the people, but the pens are too dark and I realised I should have left them blank instead. Oh well, live and learn!

And here’s the front of the establishment:

Tonight I used the new steamer to make spätzle, and we had it with vegetarian sausages, fried mushrooms, and sauerkraut. A real central European dish! And the spätzle turned out really well, so I’m very pleased with my purchase.

Fixing broadband… and glasses. And some nice food

Friday was online games night with my friends. After a busy day of ethics classes, and going for a 5k run in between.

In one of my classes, since we were talking about the topic of Science Fiction, the idea of AI came up, and what sort of things it might do in the future. One kid said:

Whenever I talk to ChatGPT, I use “please” and “thank you”, to make sure it doesn’t turn against me in the future.

My 5k run was very fast. The day was cold, only 14°C when I did my run around 11am. It meant I didn’t get hot and sweaty, and I managed my second best time ever for the distance, with 26:18. I was very pleased with that.

After lunch I went to pick up my new prescription glasses for use when working at the computer. I mentioned on Tuesday that they’d put the wrong prescription in, making them for close reading instead, and had to change them. I tested them out at the optometrist and they felt better, being good for reading something held with my arm fully outstretched. But when I got home I discovered that they were still focused too close. I had to lean forward uncomfortably in my chair from my regular posture to see the screen clearly. I used a tape measure to measure the distance from the screen to my eyes. The optometrist had said that screen-reading glasses are set for focus at 60cm. Which I discovered to be roughly true, in fact it was closer to 55cm where I felt my vision was clearest. But then I sat in my normal computer posture and measured the distance from the screen to my eyes, and it was 70cm. By the time I figured this out, it was after 5pm and the optometrist had closed for the day.

We stayed in for dinner and I made frittata with mushroom and tomato. After that I played online games. We played Knarr, Welcome to the Moon, Jump Drive, FLip 7, CodeChains (a game one friend invented and implemented on a Discord bot; it involves linking pairs of words into chains and then everyone trying to guess the same word that is being clued by both words on either side of every link), Just One, and Word Traveller. A lot of short games for variety.

First thing this morning I phoned the optometrist about my glasses and explained the problem. I said I didn’t want the second pair that I’d left there yesterday made with the same prescription – I needed it balanced to focus an extra 10-15cm away. They asked me to come in so they could check my eyes with the proposed correction to ensure right distance.

So after my wife returned from the gym with the car, I drove over to the optometrist. They remeasured my eyes to make sure and got the same refractive error, then wrote a prescription for new lenses to set a focal distance at 70cm as I requested. They said they’d get my second pair made with the new prescription and when they are ready I can swap the first pair back for new lenses. Fortunately this is under warranty so it won’t cost me any extra!

On the way home I stopped off at the Italian cake shop to pick up a cake to take to my mother’s place this afternoon. I got a chocolate and hazelnut torte. And then after my wife got home with Scully from her dog grooming appointment, we bundled into the car for the long drive to my mother’s place.

We arrived just before 3pm. My mission was to configure their broadband Internet and VOIP phone, which had stopped working when we deactivated their previous ISP account, as I mentioned on Thursday. I prepared by printing out a bunch of configuration info from the new ISP.

When we got there, I checked the ports of the modem/router. The phone was plugged into the only VOIP socket. The broadband was plugged into the second of 4 LAN ports. I moved it to the first LAN port, and bingo, the Internet came on! I could browse websites and access my mother’s email. That was easy.

But the VOIP phone still wasn’t working. I had some configuration information to enter into the modem, changing the old ISP server and proxy settings and entering a new VOIP password. I tried this, but it didn’t seem to work. I fiddled around a bit with it, but after a few minutes decided to contact the ISP phone tech support. I chose the new ISP for my mother because I’ve been very happy with their support on my own account, and they were brilliant again.

I got a very helpful guy who did some remote diagnosis stuff and then asked what router I was using. I said it was one supplied by the previous ISP. He said it’s possible that the VOIP was locked to that ISP and I’d need to get a new router, but he’d try a few things first. After changing some settings fruitlessly, he put me on hold while he contacted a co-worker with more experience, and together they did more diagnostic stuff and we explored the modem/router’s advanced settings. Eventually he tried turning off the firewall and lo! The phone started working! Aha! The other guy said the router’s default firewall settings were extremely restrictive, and it wasn’t letting the VOIP port through. They asked if I was okay leaving the firewall off, and I sort of hemmed and hawed and said I’d feel better if it was on. So they went back into the configurations and set up a firewall pass-through for the VOIP port, turned the firewall back on, rebooted the modem, and voilà!

We tested the phone, dialling out (to my wife’s mobile), and in (from my wife’s mobile) and it worked with no further problem. Phew! The tech support was really good. They had two of them on my call for over an hour, and they were determined to find a way to get it working without me having to go buy a new router. So kudos to Aussie Broadband – highly recommended if you’re after an Australian ISP.

We left my mother’s place later than we’d expected, and got hungry on the way home. We decided to stop at a place soon after we got off the freeway and back into Sydney’s outer suburbs (still half an hour drive from home). We went to Kipling’s Garage Bar at Turramurra, a place we’ve been to a couple of times before. We had a few tapas-style dishes to share, including arancini balls, and pulled duck with sesame chips:

And roasted cauliflower tacos:

Also some backed haloumi and for dessert a sticky date pudding. All really good. Then it was a drive back home for the evening.

Incognito Art

Friday I had my regular ethics classes, and in the evening board games night with my friends. We assembled at one guy’s place, and the five attendees played games such as Knarr, Faraway, Landmarks. Knarr was new to me, and really enjoyable. But we only played once as it’s only up to four players and our fifth arrived partway through the first game. We played Landmarks I think four times, since we were all keen to give a go at being the clue giver in the game. It’s a frustrating role, but in a socially fun way.

Today I did my 5k run and I managed to record my third best time! 26:26. My second best is 26:24, just two seconds faster. The best is a strangely anomalous 25:59, which I set on a much flatter route that I’ve only ever tried once. And to be honest I’m wondering if the tracker GPS got the distance right. Perhaps I should try that route again some time.

This afternoon my wife and I took Scully for a ride on the ferry.

We headed into the city. The day was cool and cloudy.

From the ferry terminal at Circular Quay we walked up past the State Library, through The Domain (a park) to the Art Gallery. Nearby is a gate into the Royal Botanic Gardens, where there was an art exhibition on at the Garden Gallery: the Incognito Art Show (which I mentioned previously). My wife had submitted three pieces for the show and wanted to see what else was available, and if any of hers might be on display at the moment. They weren’t, but they probably will be at some point over the next month or so that the artworks are on sale.

We stopped afterwards at the nearby restaurant in the Domain to have a drink and a snack before heading home. We walked back and had a quick look around The Rocks while waiting for our ferry. Then we hopped on the ferry and headed home.

The sun had come out and was just setting as we travelled back.

A nice day out, but after that run in the morning and all the walking, I’m pretty exhausted!