The Brad Hole

Around about October of last year, I awoke a demon that I didn't know I had: I'm a board game geek. Beth and I were in the recent habit of playing card games at night, our favorite being Phase 10. We got a little burned out, so we started looking for other similar games at toy stores, Target, Hobby Bench, Wal-Mart, you name it. We found a few other card games, but for the most part they sucked.

I remembered that the website BoardGameGeek.com contained a comprehensive database, so I hit it up to try and find something that would suit us. That led us to the brilliant game Lost Cities, and from there we researched games that were purported to be great for couples. That led us directly to Ticket to Ride, and a full-on addiction. At one point, Beth had the "urges" so bad that she went online to play Ticket to Ride against - gasp! - complete strangers. (TtR comes with a code that allows you to play online - it's a brilliant idea.)

And so it is that I re-discovered that my preferred form of gaming is the board game - specifically the "light Euro-style" board game. If you've played Settlers of Catan, you know the type. Back in the mid-90's, I frequently played Settlers (we called it by the German name Siedler for short) with a few friends and Tikal after that. We even received a copy of Tikal as a wedding gift.

If you have not been to boardgamegeek.com, I recommend you pay a visit and look around. As websites go, the depth and breadth of information is staggering. More interestingly, the site has its own form of currency, Geek Gold, earned by contributing to the site, which you can then use to "buy" things like custom forum avatars and even board games. You can find me there under the cryptically-chosen name of "Brad Oliver". ;-)

As a parallel to this, I've discovered tanga.com, a "deal of the day" website that markets to the boardgamegeek crowd by frequently offering up board games for their daily deal. But the best part of tanga is the daily puzzles. Since its launch late last year, I've attempted to do every daily tanga puzzle. You get "tanga points" for completing the puzzles, which you can then use later on as currency to pay for items in special auctions. In this way, I was able to purchase the very first tanga auction item - a board game - for 150 tanga points and $7.00 shipping. Yeah, the shipping is where they nail you, but you still come out way ahead if it's an item of interest to you.

Tanga frequently has "Puzzlethons" where they run 1 puzzle an hour for 24 hours, and award prizes at the end. I managed to solve all 24 puzzles in the puzzlethon from this past weekend and had a lot of fun doing it. The hardest puzzle in the contest (IMHO) was the very last one, which added a little stress. I was able to get it with just minutes to spare! Great fun - I highly recommend it.

Posted by bradman at 02:27 AM | Permalink

In my last post, I started out with the intention of convincing you, the discriminating reader, why I felt this Apple phone rumor was crap, and indeed, a crappy idea. Somewhere in the middle, I managed to convince myself that it actually had some legs with my fantasizing about PDAs (you can practically see it happening if you re-read it).

And so it is that Apple's newly-announced iPhone is in fact a PDA/phone/iPod mixed up in a sexy Caligula-style orgy. Did you get your peanut butter in my chocolate? Yes, and someone else managed to get their delicious piratey rum mixed in too. I have to admit I'm a little surprised at just how appealing the mix seems right now. Many questions appear unanswered though: how much will it *really* cost to you, the Cingular customer. As I said in my earlier piece, cell phone companies love to pick your pocket at any opportunity, and if that rampant greed can be put to rest I'd be all over it. Hopefully Apple has the clout to make it happen, but I do have some lingering skepticism. I'm also a little skeptical that it'll work as good as it seems - I haven't forgotten the promise of .mac and the bitter reality.

I also waxed about gaming on the iPhone, and sure enough, I see a great deal of potential in the device. It's practically as I imagined in my wet dream - a "full screen" display and an innovative input system (those wacky rumors sites were right on). If the higher-ups at Aspyr aren't loudly knocking on Apple's door right now, they should be. With Apple's projected sales of 10 million by 2008, that represents a gaming platform almost equal to the current Mac market in size (for practical purposes).

I've said before that I think PDA and PocketPC gaming is a dead-end and I'll stand by that with a caveat: what Apple's iPhone represents is more than a PDA - it's a bona fide OpenGL platform that (IMHO) could rival the PSP and Nintendo DS if allowed. I find that exciting.

The other thing about the keynote that caught my fancy is the move by Apple away from "computers" and towards "devices". I thought about this for a little bit, and I think I can see where this is heading. Keep in mind, as I stated in my last entry, I'm not good at predictions or seeing the future. (I thought both the iMac and iPod were, well, duds. Looking back, I see that they simply didn't appeal to me as-is when they were introduced.)

All that said, in the future, who really wants to have a desktop computer sitting in your home? Smaller, focused devices are where it's at: iPods, iPhones, laptops, etc. The days of beefy, big desktop computers are past us now, at least for the common man. And frankly, I include myself in that. I do want a big, beefy desktop, but only because I know they come with multiple core CPUs, and Xcode (sadly) needs those to be even halfway productive. For "normal" usage, it's gross overkill. If I didn't do programming for a living, my preference would be to live off a laptop (the new MacBook is more than good enough for me), upgrading every few years. I'd let my Apple TV do video and/or audio to my stereo and TV, let my iPhone be my home away from home, and use my MacBook for when I need something more than the iPhone.

I'd really like Apple to address the DVR problem with Apple TV - hopefully in the not-too-distant future, and slip in a DVD (or BluRay or HD-DVD) slot on the Apple TV. When that happens, my life will be gadget heaven.

Posted by bradman at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)