Author Archives: Jeremy

Let’s give it a go!: Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective

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photo(2)
[The notes from our first case, along with the casebook and map]

Why? This is part of our cooperative boardgames kick. It can’t all be Robinson Crusoe, and the $120 sticker price has delayed our purchase of Mice & Mystics. Plus, I was aware of this game when I was a kid and so have always been curious how it worked, as I love mysteries.

How did it go? The game comes with ten mysteries, which are real original stories and not something like Clue or Scotland Yard. You visit different locations, which correspond to different parts in a puzzle book. You’ve got a map of London that provides the keys for the casebook, along with a newspaper that has some pertinent details (and many red herrings).

We had fun working together to solve the mystery, which was more difficult than either of us were expecting. We did figure it out in the end. The game has to involve an entirely nonlinear story since it can’t know what order you are going to reveal the clues (beyond controlling when particular names or places are revealed). The game was originally written in the early 1980’s, I think, and it could mostly be done now as a hypertext game on a computer, which would have some advantages from a story perspective. But, of course, we wouldn’t likely sit there are read together to do it if it was just hyper-text, and having to actually look up the leads invoked more thought about which lead to follow up next than mindless clicking.

Would you do it again? Yes. I don’t know if we’ll get through all ten mysteries, but it was entertaining enough certainly to give another go.

To adventure!

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adventures

Perhaps a month or so after arriving in Australia, we went to a museum exhibit called “Science Fiction, Science Future.” One of the exhibits featured a station where people were supposed to draw their vision of what the future would be like. Above is what I drew and since then it’s been on our bedroom wall.

Not a bad vision for my sabbatical, and not a bad vision for 2014. This blog: our chronicle of adventures!

Let’s give it a go!: Tweet-pandering

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tweets

 

Why?  We enjoy Twenty/20, and at the games they have a jumbo screen that includes showing tweets from people in the audience.  Twenty/20 is much more compelling than test cricket, but, still, there’s enough dead time for the eyes and mind to wander.  We made a couple half-hearted efforts to get on the jumbo screen last time, but Beckie and I: we like to go ALL IN.  We didn’t want to drive away all our Twitter followers, though, so instead we made a dedicated Twitter account so we could engage in totally shameless and unrelenting pandering to try and get up there.

How’d it go?  After the first tweet appears, we didn’t know if they’d go allow repeat-tweeters, but we kept giving it a go because Beckie didn’t get a photo the first time.  We ended up with four different tweets being featured, which was certainly more than anybody else.  We even had the team start following us!  It did distract a bit from watching the game, but on the whole it certainly enhanced the experience and was a Twitter triumph.

Will you do it again?  Maybe!

Vernacular Spectacular: a clarification of criterion

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In the “Vernacular Spectacular” blog feature, I compare the American and Australian way of saying something, and offer my winner.  The “Australian” way may be a more broadly “Commonwealthian” way, or more uniquely Australian way, but regardless it’s not how we do things in the United States.

I’m not sure if I’ll keep going or not.  Downside is that it might have been a more amusing idea in the abstract than in practice.  Upside is that the differences are bountiful and having opinions about them is irresistible, so these posts are easy to knock out.  We have a goal of trying to have something from one or the other of us between Beckie’s daily photos, because the death of this blog could go one of two ways: Beckie stops posting her daily photo, or all there is on the blog is one happy “Daily Photo” after another, which would be beautiful but sad.

Anyway, doing them makes it clearer to me that I should have some standard for what makes something the “winner.”  Am I just saying it’s what I prefer, or think sounds coolest, or something else?

So, I’ve decided on a criterion that I will here make explicit: Imagine that globalization leads to the elimination of local ways of saying things, and one of the two variants in questions is the one that survives to be used both in American and in Australia.  Which would I pick?

Let’s give it a go!: Advent calendar

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advent calendar photo

Why?  Beckie had advent calendars every year as a girl.  Me, I remember somebody explaining the concept of an advent calendar to me in graduate school because, to my knowledge, I’d never heard of one before.  I don’t think there’s any larger generalization about America to be drawn from this, as opposed to the Freese family being sort-of holiday minimalists.  We’ve never gotten around to having one together before, but Beckie saw one a little candy one in a store here and we thought we’d give it a go.

How did it go?  We were gone for ten days on a trip to New Zealand, so we never really got into a window-opening ritual.  We also had some issues with the chocolates melting, and so the calendar spend the last part of its lead-up to Xmas in our refrigerator.  But, you know, it’s chocolate, so hard to go wrong.  More importantly, the joy on Beckie’s face when we opened Window #10 and saw it was a smiling little lamb more than made it all worthwhile.

Would you do it again?  Sure!

Let’s give it a go!: Twilight Struggle

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[Note: We’ve been on a boardgames kick, so other posts about trying out other boardgames will follow. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet thought ahead to take a photo of the board to accompany our post.]

Why? We’ve wanted to try this for awhile because it’s the top-rated game on boardgamegeek.com. It’s also strictly two player game, so we could try it out without enlisting anyone.

How’d it go? The game is a competitive two-player game in which one person plays the United States and the other plays the Soviets, and the game takes place over the Cold War, with cards representing real events. We like board games but are not board-game-geeks, and it took us a couple nights and glancing a bit through the very long rulebook to get up the nerve to dive in and give it a go. All the cards and the different ways that you stage coups and compete in a Space Race are extremely cool, so we can see why people adore it.

Playing was very slow going for us, and we finished the game only because I had amassed a big advantage as the Soviets and won in Round #4, as opposed it going the full 10 rounds. Various online sources note the early part of the game is tilted toward the Soviets, especially for newbies, so I didn’t take this as indicative of a particular strategic triumph (if anything, Beckie seemed to grasp the strategy better, which might say even more about how big the hammer-and-sickle advantage is).

Will you do it again? I don’t think either of us would say “no” to this, but probably one of the things we realized while playing this is how we don’t really like competing against each other that much (touching, I know, but we both get regretful in seeing the other person lose). Given the large time investment required and that it seems like one of those games that becomes really awesome after you fully understand the strategy, I don’t know if it will make it back on an evening’s roster or not.

Jeremy uses a variety of means to ‘read’ Theodosia and the Serpents of Choas by R.L. LaFevers

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Why did you read this book? This was another book chosen from the car for our New Zealand trip. My recollection is that we were looking for a young adult crime book, inspired maybe by our joint fondness for the Enola Holmes series. Due to timing and technological experimentation, some of this book was read aloud to me by Beckie while I was driving, read aloud using Audible.com, and simply read on the Kindle.

Has Beckie read it? I’m not sure she’s finished it.

42 word review11-year old girl is Indiana Jones in story that takes place in 1906 London and Egypt. Her sidekick is a street urchin named Sticky Will. It’s fun! (Remaining 15 words unnecessary, but I’ll write a sentence of appropriate length for consistency’s sake.)

Overall rating: 4 cursed kittens (out of 5)

Vernacular Spectacular #17: “trash-talking” vs. “sledging”

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“sledging” has been in the news here because the Australian and English cricket teams have been engaging in a lot of verbal back-and-forth during The Ashes (even getting American attention!).

The short-a is a harsh sound to me. For example, my least favorite of all normal women’s name is Pam (nothing personal against the many great Pams I’ve known). I usually don’t like short-a words, but with “trash” it makes a fair bit of sense given what the word means. For this reason I would probably pick trash over rubbish in a head-to-head, but would take rubbish over garbage.

On the other hand, sledging to me connotes an image of dogs transporting something across the tundra.

Jeremy’s winner: Continue reading →