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The Terrific Game of Thrones Board Game is Full of Violence and Betrayal, Void of Sex

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:11:56 -0500

The Terrific Game of Thrones Board Game is Full of Violence and Betrayal, Void of Sex:

Kirk Hamilton at Kotaku reviews one of my favorite board games:

The challenge of writing about this board game is that it is very, very complicated. I’d say “Don’t let that scare you off,” but if the idea of a super-duper complicated board game that requires four to six hours to play and many more to master turns you off, well, then maybe this isn’t the game for you. But if you’re up for it, A Game of Thrones: TBG is not only fun, it’s a damned accurate encapsulation of everything that makes George R.R. Martin’s books so enjoyable.

A game involves three to six players, each of whom represents one of the major houses from the books. In our game, I played as House Stark in the north, my friends played as Greyjoy in the west, Lannister to the south of him, House Tyrell in the southwest, and Baratheon in the southeast. Martell would have been in the far Southeast, but we were missing a sixth player.

If you like board games, or if you are at all a fan of George R. R. Martin’s books, you owe it to yourself to try this game.

I ran the Ragnar Relay a couple weeks ago. 199 miles from Miami...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:05:52 -0500

I ran the Ragnar Relay a couple weeks ago. 199 miles from Miami to Key West, with a team of 12. My teammate put together this video of us.

I somehow neglected to share these here. I took a handful of HDR...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:55:44 -0500

I somehow neglected to share these here. I took a handful of HDR sunsets when I was in Denver for the holidays. I think they came out well.

"Pointy-headed football-lovers are a beleaguered crew, despised by pointy-heads and football-lovers..."

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:51:12 -0500

““Pointy-headed football-lovers are a beleaguered crew, despised by pointy-heads and football-lovers alike.””

- Martin Amis

Money and the App Store: a few figures that might help an indie developer

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:32:00 -0500

Money and the App Store: a few figures that might help an indie developer:

Emeric Thoa offers a glimpse at the numbers behind The Game Bakers’ iOS game, SQUIDS:

In this article, I will present all of the post-mortems and figures I’ve found interesting, and I will also explain how SQUIDS fits into the overall picture. But first, I would like to quickly give my opinion on few of the App Store myths you may believe if you’re not an experienced iOS developer. There are plenty of ways to view the App Store, but my point is that you might be a bit surprised by what the App Store really means in terms of money.

There’s some good information there for indie game developers (or aspiring indie game developers) who want to make it big on the iOS app store, including links to other developers’ post-mortems and lots of hard numbers.

Goals For 2012

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:53:54 -0500

Goals? Don’t you mean resolutions?

No. Resolutions are almost always phrased as the kind of absolute that is impossible to achieve—I will never do such and such, or I will lose all the weight. Goals are about setting achievable and realistic plans for the coming year.

Last Year’s Goals

Last year I had three goals and I achieved them all. They were to get married, run a half marathon, and read 20 Hugo-winning novels. My goals for 2012 are more numerous and broader. I am trying to challenge myself more this year.

Reading

Read more difficult literature. This is the year when I will finally get around to some of those 19th century Russian novels I’ve been planning to read. Since “more” is pretty vague, let’s define this as six difficult literary works.
Finish the Hugo winners. I have read 40; I have 21 to go.
Read all the nominees for the Hugo this year. I read most of them last year, but couldn’t bring myself to jump into Bujold’s Vorkosigan series at book 20 (or whatever Cryoburn is).

Writing

I’ve never thought of myself as a very good writer. I’d like to get a lot better. In 2012 I’m going to write at least 48000 words, not counting things written for work.

Running

In 2011 I conquered the half marathon. I’m not ready for a full marathon yet, but I think by the end of the year I will be able to handle 20 miles in a single run.
I’m going to work up to running 30 miles per week.
I’m going to run over 1000 miles this year.

Game Development

I’m going to ship at least two games for iOS this year.
I’m going to my first GDC.

Life Milestones

I’m going to move to a new city in 2012—twice.

Reading 2011

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:04:23 -0500

I like to keep track of what I read from year to year, both to challenge myself to read more, and so I can look back at previous years and see what I was reading at the time. In 2008 I read 39 books with a total of 12447 pages. In 2009 I raised the bar to 65 books and 19455 pages. In 2010 I read slightly fewer books—56 total—but they were longer on average, so my page count stayed around the same: 19190.

In 2011 I read 94 books totalling 38920 pages, for an average length of 414 pages per book. This is an insanely high number. I ascribe this to two things. 1) I started running in mid-2010, and really increased my running pace all through 2011. I listen to a lot of audiobooks while running. 2) I read some really long books—four of the five books in A Song of Ice and Fire, Michener’s Hawaii, Connie Willis, Patrick Rothfuss, and Stephen King—which helped my page count a lot.

Of the 94 books I read last year, only four were bad enough to earn a one star rating. Nine earned a full five stars. I am pretty stingy about handing out five star ratings. To earn it, a book has to be so good that I would heartily recommend it to friends, without regard for genre or subject matter. The nine books I liked that much in 2011:

Born to Run, Christopher McDougall
Emergence, Steven Johnson
A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin
A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
A Dance with Dragons, George R. R. Martin
Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes
In the Plex, Steven Levy
The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean
The Warrior’s Apprentice, Lois McMaster Bujold

One third are fantasy. Four of nine are non-fiction. One science fiction. This is a weird list, given that most of what I read is fiction, and most of that is science fiction. Maybe I am more critical of science fiction works.

Non-fiction books made up only 24 of the 94 spots on my list. Of those, most were history or science. I only read four books related to my work this year—far fewer than in previous years.

I read 29 books in 2011 that I classified as new releases. I have a pretty flexible definition of a new release—I counted books for this category if they were released within about two years of when I read them.

I read a lot of science fiction—42 books total. One of my New Year’s resolutions from last year was to read 20 Hugo-winning novels, which is part of the reason this total was so high. I also tried to read all the Hugo nominees for the year. Although it felt like I read a lot of fantasy too, I somehow only finished 13 fantasy books. Maybe it felt like more because fantasy books are all so long. Those 13 fantasy books had 8465 pages in them. For comparison, the 42 science fiction books I read had only twice as many pages as those 13 fantasy books.

I mentioned that my reading total went up because I listened to audiobooks while running. I also listen to audiobooks while driving, and I commute between Miami and Orlando (an eight hour round trip) pretty frequently. I listened to 49 audiobooks in 2011, which makes it my preferred medium, I guess. I read 10 books in hardcover, 13 paperbacks, and 22 on my Kindle.

I think my total, both books and pages, will go down in 2012. That’s fine with me. My 2012 goal is going to be to read some more “hard” books, by which I mean serious literature. I’m also planning to read the remaining 20 Hugo winners, plus whatever gets nominated for this year’s Hugo.

Non-geek Tech Usage 2011

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 19:20:30 -0500

Like many geeks, I have a lot of non-geeks in my family, and Christmas is my best chance to see how the less geeky side uses technology. Here are my observations for 2011:

Non-geeks know certain brands really well. Everyone knows about the different iPhone models, although they are usually referred to as the “3”, the “4”, and the “new one that you talk to”.
The Kindle is very popular. The majority of my family members have an e-ink Kindle—mostly the Kindle 2.
My older brother and his wife have an iPad. She uses it a lot, he doesn’t. She buys books from iBooks and apps for their toddler. Other family members were talking about getting an iPad, but they’re a little pricy.
Not one mention of a Kindle Fire. I thought for sure someone would ask me about it.
Two of my family members just upgraded from original iPhones to iPhone 3GS, now that the 3GS is free. One person has a Droid. Several family members have old flip phones, but they have plans to upgrade to the iPhone eventually. The price of the data plan is the biggest deterrent.
Everyone—even people who don’t have an iPhone or an iPad—wants app recommendations. They know there are apps out there that they would like but they don’t know how to find them.
Most everyone has a laptop—a couple Macs and the rest PCs—but nobody has a laptop newer than two years old and no one was talking about upgrading except my brother who’s getting a new desktop for Star Wars: The Old Republic.
I tried to explain Instapaper to a few people (one of my app recommendations). They understood how it works, but not really why you’d want to use it. Maybe it’s only useful if you sit in front of a computer all day.
There was lots of talk about dropping cable and going to all streaming. This idea is more mainstream than I thought. Everyone was impressed with my brother’s Blu-ray player that streams from Pandora, YouTube, Netflix, etc.

This may not be a representative sample, but it’s interesting to me at least. My conclusions:

Apple has built an amazing brand image in the mind of the average consumer, but the Apple brand is still considered too pricy for some.
If you think of yourself as a reader, you probably own a Kindle by now. Amazon is cleaning up in the ebook market.

2011 Hugo Reading Challenge

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 09:21:00 -0500

In 2011 I challenged myself to read 20 books that have won the Hugo award for best novel. The Hugo award is given each year to a science fiction or fantasy book. The winner is selected by the attendees of the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon). Along with the Nebula, it is one of the most prestigious awards that can be bestowed on a science fiction or fantasy novel.

The 20 Hugo Winners I Read In 2011

Double Star, Robert Heinlein, 1956
A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr., 1961
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin, 1970
To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer, 1972
The Gods Themselves, Isaac Asimov, 1973
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm, 1977
Gateway, Frederik Pohl, 1978
Dreamsnake, Vonda N. McIntyre, 1979
The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke, 1980
Startide Rising, David Brin, 1984
Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold, 1992
Doomsday Book, Connie Willis, 1993
A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge, 1993
Green Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson, 1994
Blue Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson, 1997
Forever Peace, Joe Haldeman, 1998
To Say Nothing of the Dog: Or How We Found The Bishop’s Bird Stump At Last, Connie Willis, 1999
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon, 2008
Blackout, Connie Willis, 2011
All Clear, Connie Willis, 2011

What can we say about this list?

There’s a lot of 70s on the list. (In fact, the 70s is the first decade for which I have finished all the Hugo winners.) That’s weird, because I didn’t particularly like 70s sci-fi before undertaking this challenge, and I didn’t actually like a lot of the 70s books on this list. The couple that I did like from that era were arguably the ones that are the least like other 70s sci-fi, so while I didn’t care for Dreamsnake, The Left Hand of Darkness, or Gateway, all of which felt very 70s, I liked The Gods Themselves, which felt like it belonged in an earlier era.

I really like 90s-era sci-fi. Almost every book I read from the 1992 to 1999 winners was excellent. Also, my favorite book of all time won in 1996.

I managed to get at least one book from each decade that the Hugos have been awarded. It was cool to see how far genre writing has come over the past half century and how it moves in trends and cycles.

Dealing with Series

Sci-fi and fantasy books often come in long series, and that makes this kind of challenge tricky. For several of the books on the list I had to read earlier books in the series that were not Hugo winners, just to get to the books that were Hugo winners. For example, Red Mars did not win in 1993. (It was up against some stiff competition from Connie Willis and Vernor Vinge, both of whom seem to win every time they are nominated.) The rest of Robinson’s Mars series did win, in 1994 for Green Mars and 1997 for Blue Mars. I think Red Mars is the best book in that series, and well worth reading, so in this particular case I am glad that I was “forced” to read Red Mars to get to Green Mars and Blue Mars.

Bujold, Vinge, and Willis

There are a few authors that seem to dominate the Hugos in the modern era: Connie Willis, Vernor Vinge, and Lois McMaster Bujold. I made sure to include at least one book from each of them. At the outset, I was sure that I would love the Vinge book, like the Bujold book, and hate the Willis book. It was the complete opposite. After reading Doomsday Book I couldn’t wait to read the rest of Connie Willis’s tales of time travelling historians. Meanwhile, the Vinge book (A Fire Upon the Deep) bored me to tears. His books are packed with brilliant ideas, and they should be so much fun, but they are weighted down by clunky prose. I liked the Bujold books, and I look forward to reading the rest of the Vorkosigan series.

The Best

I really enjoyed the Connie Willis time travel books and would recommend them heartily. Start with Doomsday Book. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy is incredibly ambitious hard sci-fi that works really well. I recommend it if you like a lot of hard science and research mixed into your fiction. A Canticle for Liebowitz is a real classic—it stands the test of time.

The Worst

I hated almost none of these books. Some of them were not quite to my taste, but the only ones that I thought were a complete waste of my time were the David Brin books, Startide Rising and Sundiver (which did not win a hugo, but is the first part of the series that includes two Hugo winners). I just do not see what people like about these books. Maybe they’re supposed to be funny?

Prior to 2011 I had read 21 Hugo winners. In 2011 I read 20. I have 20 left to read.

Next Year’s Reading List (The Remaining 20)

They’d Rather Be Right, Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, 1955
The Big Time, Fritz Leiber, 1958
A Case of Conscience, James Blish, 1959
Here Gather the Stars, Clifford D. Simak, 1964
The Wanderer, Fritz Leiber, 1965
…And Call Me Conrad, Roger Zelazny, 1966
Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny, 1968
Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner, 1969
The Snow Queen, Joan Vinge, 1981
Downbelow Station, C. J. Cherryh, 1982
Foundation’s Edge, Isaac Asimov, 1983
The Uplift War, David Brin, 1988
Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh, 1989
Hyperion, Dan Simmons, 1990
The Vor Game, Lois McMaster Bujold, 1991
Mirror Dance, Lois McMaster Bujold, 1995
A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge, 2000
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold, 2004
Spin, Robert Charles Wilson, 2006
The City & the City, China Miéville, 2010

All that, plus whatever the 2012 winner turns out to be. My money’s on Embassytown.

The Real News from the Apple Event

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 10:49:32 -0400

All the news from yesterday’s iPhone event focused on the iPhone 4S, Siri, and the new iPod touch, but for me those were not the most important announcements. Apple has sold 250 million iOS devices. At this time last year, that number was 120 million. That is astonishing.

As a developer, numbers like that are motivating. Here are some more numbers from yesterday’s event that make me want to develop for iOS:

Apple’s percentage of mobile OS installed base (a plurality): 43%
iPhone year over year growth: 125%
Percentage of Apple customers “very satisfied” with their phone: 70%
New price of an entry-level iPhone: $0

If you are a mobile developer, and you’re not building for iOS first, you’re crazy. Sure, Android is big, and it’s also growing fast, but given the headaches of dealing with different hardware and different stores, there is no reason why any developer should be building for Android first.

Tor/Forge Books and NASA Jointly Announce Publishing Collaboration

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:30:45 -0400

Tor/Forge Books and NASA Jointly Announce Publishing Collaboration:

This is a cool idea.

In an effort to educate and encourage math and science education Tor/Forge Books, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, and NASA have embarked on a collaboration to publish a series of science based, commercial fiction books, referred to as “NASA inspired Works of Fiction” around concepts pertinent to the current and future work of NASA. NASA will allow existing and new Tor/Forge authors to team up with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s (GSFC) Subject Matter Experts (SME) to create scientifically accurate and entertaining novels in a distinctly unique way.

Tor/Forge and NASA hope that pairing scientists and engineers with the imprints’ award-winning roster of writers will raise awareness and inspire the study of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), in line with the President’s Technology Agenda. They also hope to contribute towards the goal of attracting and retaining students in the above fields, thereby strengthening NASA and the nation’s future workforce in a compelling manner.

Risk Legacy

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:10:09 -0400

Risk Legacy:

Risk Legacy is a new version of Risk that has game mechanics that permanently alter the game based on decisions made while playing. This includes stickers that permanently modify the board and mechanics that destroy certain game components (tearing up a card). So each time you play the game it evolves a little bit, and you are battling over a world with history based on your previous games.

I really like this idea.

2011 Hugo Award Winners

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 16:01:22 -0400

2011 Hugo Award Winners:

The 2011 Hugo Awards were given out yesterday. Click through for the full list of nominees and winners.

Best Novel:

Winner: Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis

Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold

The Dervish House, Ian McDonald

Feed, Mira Grant

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin

Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 10:48:36 -0400

Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books:

This is a really good list. If you count series I have only partially read, as well as books I am currently reading, I have read 57 of the 100 books listed.

Jacob:

Neuromancer is over-rated. It may have been amazing when it was first published, but it has not aged well.
Stephenson is well-represented, as he should be.
I, too, was glad to see the Thrawn Trilogy made the list.

longshankss:

Top 100 sci-fi/fantasy books as decided by NPR listeners’ votes. Anything missing? Before answering that, know that they omitted all young adult fiction, which explains the absence of Rowling, Pullman, Narnia, Earthsea, et al.

Goddamn right Lord of the Rings is number one!

Impressed with A Song of Ice and Fire snagging fifth place given its youth.

Will admit to falling headfirst into the vortex of The Wheel of Time, but that crap took a massive nose-dive into sprawling, sluggish over-complexity. Full disclosure: dropped the series books ago, so can’t speak to the most recent entries.

Same story with the Sword of Truth series, but due less to overreaching and more to boredom. Might be a good series. The Syfy show they made out of it is terrible/awesome for mindless viewing.

Need to read Neuromancer. Supposedly one of the best. Anyone know first-hand?

Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson have an impressive number of appearances.

Huzzah for a Star Wars novel making the list! Haven’t read any of those since middle school.

I think the whole Ender series (or at least the core of it), rather than just Ender’s Game, deserve some recognition here.

Here is some interesting commentary.

I’ve got my reading cut out for me.

2011-12 EPL League Table Predictions

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:43:00 -0400

Because next May it will be hilarious to look at how wrong I was.

Manchester United
Manchester City
Liverpool
Chelsea
Tottenham
Arsenal
Sunderland
Fulham
Aston Villa
Everton
Stoke
Bolton
West Brom
Wolves
Blackburn
Newcastle
QPR
Norwich
Wigan
Swansea

I posted a huge set of photos from my honeymoon on Flickr. Check...

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 23:30:34 -0400

I posted a huge set of photos from my honeymoon on Flickr. Check them out.

This is the least appetizing thing I have ever seen.

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:11:36 -0400

This is the least appetizing thing I have ever seen.

George R.R. Martin on Sex, Fantasy, and 'A Dance With Dragons'

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:45:44 -0400

George R.R. Martin on Sex, Fantasy, and 'A Dance With Dragons':

Happy A Dance with Dragons eve! Have an interview (from The Atlantic) with the mastermind himself, George R. R. Martin.

American McCarver: There's Always Hope

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 08:19:20 -0400

American McCarver: There's Always Hope:

americanmccarver:

It’s easy to joke that the only thing Americans care less about than soccer (translation for our non-U.S. readers: “the sport called ‘football’ that’s being ruined by Sepp Blatter, rather than the one being ruined by Roger Goodell”) is soccer when it’s played by women. Then again, the…

A write-up—from someone who is obviously not a huge soccer fan—of yesterday’s incredible USA match.

Death metal vocal exercises

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:07:51 -0400

Death metal vocal exercises