Jennerosity

Had our monthly games night last night.  In addition to the usual crew of awesome, we had extra awesome, because our friends brought some of their friends.  And when the friends you have are awesome already, it stands a good chance that their other friends are awesome too!¹  Anyway, in addition to the usual Rock Band and arcade cabinet, we also played some more of my new favourite game: Dominion.

I first heard about the game on one of the GeeksOn podcasts².  I knew right from the start that it was right up our alley.  The game is a card game where you build the deck that you play with throughout the course of the game.  You use your treasure cards to buy land and actions.  You ultimately want to be the player with the most land in the game.  The different action cards are what really spice it up though.  It comes with a large selection³ but then you select 10 to actually play with.  Depending on the cards that are selected and the random draw that each player gets each hand, each game is really different and interesting.  You also have to be adaptable.  There is no single strategy that is going to win every time.

My only (very small) criticism is that it’s only a 4 player game and I hate people being excluded.  However, I also enjoy watching other people play this game much more than our other standard tabletop games, so it isn’t really terrible.  Plus, we will be picking up the Intrigue expansion sooner or later and that’ll essentially let us run 2 games simultaneously.

1. Everyone was so awesome that we gamed until 2am.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve stayed up that late on purpose! [↩]
2. I’m way too lazy to look up the exact show so you’ll just have to listen to all the episodes if you really must know [↩]
3. which you can expand upon by purchasing the expansions [↩]

I haven’t had time yet to process my notes into a proper blog post about it, but here are the 5 big things I learned at WordCamp Vancouver.

• Social bookmarking is important.  I need to look into that some more.
• WordPress = Joyful; Drupal = Dragon Slayer.  As much as the keener in me wants to slay some dragons, the realist¹ realizes that Drupal is definitely NOT for me.
• Asking lots of questions is good for figuring out what you actually should do for your online presence.  Going to apply the questions that Lauren Bacon,² from raised eyebrow,³ shared during her presentation when I make my next attempt at building a website for work.
• Catherine Omega & Tris Hussey are awesome lunch companions and speakers.  They made me fall in love with WordPress 3.0 and some of the new theme options.  The keener in me may even try tinkering with building my own themes.  ((You know, eventually, when I have ‘free’ time :D ))
• WordPress people are the best kind of geeks: friendly, smart, helpful, and generally awesome! (Ok, not NEW knowledge for me, but it still deserves to be said again.))

And, a bonus geek tip for you all . . . the wi-fi hotspot and electrical plug-ins are the geek equivalent of hanging at the bar for meeting new people ;)

1. and lazy person [↩]
2. Who incidentally, has awesome hair [↩]
3. the name makes me giggle and want to wiggle my eyebrows [↩]

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m stuck on a roller coaster of emotions.  And instead of the damn thing stopping so that I can get off and take a few slow deep breaths, the stupid thing just keeps looping around and around again.  So I decided that I need to take a day, an entire day, just for myself.  A day completely free of outside distractions and commitments.  But, I know myself well enough to understand that if I don’t put my own spiritual commitments there, a ‘plan-free’ day is actually going to turn into a busy day where I do household things or sit in front of a screen all day long.  I don’t want that.

So, I’m planning a little spiritual stay-cation and I thought I’d blog a bit about it and invite you all to join me.  Er . . . well . . . except you shouldn’t actually join me, because I want to be alone that day.  I’ve only just started the planning, so I’m not sure entirely what the agenda will look like.  I do know that the day will start with turning off every phone in the house and that some meditation and journal writing will be a part of it.  Oh, and I also know that it’ll be June 28th.  So mark the day and don’t expect to get any calls, emails, or tweets from me.

Got any ideas, tips, or advice to throw my way?  I’d also love to hear about any stories you have about your spiritual retreat days!

This week was pretty geeky actually . . .

• I got to put up a secret password protected page on my blog¹
• I actually went to a DnD game night without my husband.  I think that’s a first for me!
• We decided that we will be attending PAX in September²
• I downloaded a zen garden onto my iPod Touch³
• I’m going to WordCamp Vancouver tomorrow!  So stoked about it.⁴  Comes with very good timing too as I’m hoping to have another website to work on soon!

There are my geeky 5 things to share on Friday.  What geeky things have you been up to this week?

1. it’s going to be up for only another few days [↩]
2. though we haven’t actually booked our passes or hotel yet, we will be very soon! [↩]
3. I only got the lite version because my replacement credit card STILL has not arrived and with my other one frozen, I can’t upgrade to the paid version. [↩]
4. Except the part where I have to wake up at 6am in order to get there on time. [↩]

Wow, I feel so geeky recommending a non-fiction book, but I really liked it.  My review on Goodreads pretty much says it all.  If you’re a business type person, or just enjoy books on business and networking, then you might want to check it out and read it for yourself.  I do find that some non-fiction tends to drag a bit.  Each chapter tends to follow the same formula and your brain kind of gets overloaded.  But, this one made some pretty good points, kept the stories and examples to a minimum, and spent most of the book telling you WHAT to do, instead of justifying WHY you should do it.

Benevolance’s sister-in-law got engaged last week and it’s had me thinking about romance.  Part of me is quite envious of the story of the engagement.  All the stops were pulled out for this one – champagne, fancy hotel getaway, romantic dinner, rose petals & candlelight.  It sounded like a fairy tale.  But another part of me knows that had this been attempted with me in one of the lead roles, it wouldn’t have felt right.  Because I’m a geek¹.

So, today, this post is really just asking the question . . . What is Geek Romance? Give me your two cents in the comments :)

1. and not a princess [↩]

I broke my Friday blogging trend last week.  I had the flu.  No one seemed to notice.  About the blogging anyway, people noticed that I had the flu.  And her it is a Friday already again.  And I don’t know what to say.  Not just for this particular blog post, but about a lot of things in general.  There’s a lot I WANT to say, but since I was taught to think before I speak, I’ve been caught up in the thinking part and not saying much.

Hmmmm . . . am I being a bit cryptic?  Yes, probably.  But too bad!  This is my blog and I’ll encrypt if I want to!

Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large — I contain multitudes.” – Walt Whitman

And there’s a part of me that wants to throw caution to the wind and be raw and honest and brave and rock the boat.  And there’s another part of me that thinks I should just hit the delete button, because no one would probably notice it if I did.

This week on 5 Geek Things For Friday, I thought I’d share a few Geeky things I’d like to do, just for the sake of doing them.

1. Hack someone’s wi-fi. I don’t even have to let anyone else know I did it, but just for my own satisfaction of knowing I could do it.¹

2. Hack our router for improved wi-fi. Which is why I keep saving every lifehacker article that describes different ways of improving your router signal.

3. Watch the LOTR extended editions back to back without breaking for sleep.² Mostly just need a mildly serious flu and/or time to burn to make this happen.

4. Try out all the Altoid tin hacks I keep seeing and saving online.³

5. Read⁴ the entire Wheel of Time series⁵

1. Luckily for me, I have plenty of neighbours within range with secure networks for me to try on. I’ll likely pick the one with the most obnoxious name. [↩]
2. I think every geek either has done this, or says they want to [↩]
3. Yes, I promise, one day I WILL get around to tackling these projects! [↩]
4. I reserve the right to interpret ‘read’ loosely to include listening to the audiobook versions [↩]
5. though I’m going to wait until the final book is published before I begin [↩]

This week, gaming stuff has totally been on my mind.

1. I got really excited about the fact that Scott Kurtz is now on the west coast (Seattle).¹

2. I finally got around to making a ‘gamer’ list on twitter. Makes it much easier to follow the gaming conversations that I’m finding increasingly interesting.²

3. I *think* I finally settled on a 4th edition character sheet. It might even save me from needing to spend so much time shuffling through all my power cards.  This theory will be tested on Monday night.

4. I found an etsy shop who will do custom sewn dice bags. She also has a bunch of pre-sewn ones you can choose from.  She’s now been favourited.³

5. I wrote a blog post all about using Evernote for gamers.⁴

1. I don’t actually follow his comic anymore though. My husband, who does, will probably be disappointed since midnight in his old time zone was a few hours before in ours, and now he’ll be reading the comics on the actual day they get posted. [↩]
2. I think soon I’ll be at the point where I no longer view my ‘all friends’ column, or push it way over to the right, and just focus on my specific groups and searches. [↩]
3. I keep saying I’ll sew one myself, but these are so nicely done and reasonably priced I can now snap out of it and just buy one when the time is right. [↩]
4. No, posting about one of my own posts is not cheating, it’s just boosting my SEO! [↩]

In the most recent edition of 5 Geek Things for Friday, I mentioned that Evernote was one of the tools I was considering for plotting my novels.  The gist of my comments on it was that it was more frustrating than helpful in that regard.  Shortly after the post went live, the Northern Voice blogging conference commenced at UBC campus, and I was watching the comments stream in via twitter.  One of the talks that generated quite a bit of buzz was on Solutions for Coping with Social Media by Alexandra Samuel.  One of those solutions was using Evernote.  After reading her article (and her 2 previous articles that she links to in the post), I decided to jump back into the program to try to see if I could recapture my initial enthusiasm for it.

It struck me as I was playing with the interface and weeding notes out of some neglected notebooks, just how handy this program could be for gamers if you can have a laptop or an iPhone/iPod Touch at the table.  And I promptly set about revitalizing my RPG (Role Playing Game) notebook.  I’m currently playing in 4 different campaigns that are being run in several different systems, but it’s mostly the classic Dungeongs & Dragons.  Here are a few of the things that I’ve set up that will hopefully help me out at the table:

1. Character Progression
   For a couple of the campaigns, I’ve got the future progression of my character planned out with regard to which feats, skills, powers, etc. they will be taking.  I had this all set up previously in Evernote, but since I originally planned it all out, Evernote went and added tables¹.  As I was re-organizing my haphazardly spaced text into a properly formatted table.
2. Character Notes
   Since I have a terribly short memory, I have a hard time remembering all the little details I come with about my character’s backstory and their goals and motivations.  After reading an article over at Gnome Stew on how to Cover Your Character Sheet I started creating one page character summaries about my characters.  Since I can’t draw character sketches and don’t have the time to find appropriate images online² or appropriate figures/miniatures, I try to make the text & layout match the personality of the character.  I find it’s a great way to connect.  But, sometimes, with all the paper already at the table, it can get a little unwieldy.  But, with Evernote, I can have a note with the same information in it, and my iPod Touch takes up a lot less room.  I can also refer to that while I’m in the process of creating my cover sheet³
3. Campaign Notes
   Depending on how evil forthcoming your Game Master is, you may, or may not need to keep notes about different clues that arise during your adventure.  Or, perhaps you run a character that likes to collect things and write it down somewhere.  Our group often likes to jot down hilariously appropriate in-character quotes that someone says at the table.  But, add to that my horribly messy writing, tendency to spill things, and (lately) my penchant for trying out different character sheet templates, and it’s easy to see how these little notes can become indecipherable or get lost entirely.  So, I can keep them digitally now.  The other benefit of this is that if you keep your character sheet at the host’s house, you still have access to the list of clues and information between sessions so you can still work on figuring out what to do between sessions.
4. Rules
   Since some of our campaigns have adopted a few house rules, this is a great place for characters to keep track of the changes to the game mechanic that the campaign is using.  I also tend to get incredibly confused about the way areas of effect work in DnD 4th edition.  So now I have a note with the rule wording.  This way, I’m not going to be) interrupting people on the turn before mine, asking for the book or asking them how it works, when I’m trying to figure out which power to use and where to place it.⁴
5. Images
   For one of the campaigns I’m in, the Game Master created some digital maps for us to look at and emailed them to us along with some other background information.  So, I clipped them in to Evernote.  We’ve got access to at least one of the maps at the game sessions, but the table is tiny and we have anywhere from four to six people around it, so space is at a premium.  This way, if I want to look at it between turns, it’s easy for me to flip open my iPod Touch and check it out, without causing two or three other people to have to twist, turn, move books, etc.  If you had an iPhone, you could also snap pictures of the battle map at the end of the night, hand drawn symbols, etc.

The nice thing is that since you can tag each note, I can put them all in one central notebook, and then just call up the relevant ones by searching for the tag of the campaign/character that they refer to.  I can see them whenever I have access to a computer with an internet connection.  The only potential downside is that I might get distracted by other iPod Touch apps while I check things during the game.  But, since that sometimes happens anyway, I don’t think it’ll be too big of a deal.

Got any other ideas on how to use Evernote for gamers?  As a player, what tools do you use to get organized for your campaigns?

1. Yes, I’ll have to eat some crow about that, since my previous post said they didn’t have tables [↩]
2. sort of the same way I don’t have time to find good pictures for my blog either [↩]
3. since sometimes it can take a while for me to be inspired and/or have enough time for it [↩]
4. Instead I can interrupt them about entirely different things :D [↩]