1870: The Board Game

Resource management games can be found on both computer and on the board. I prefer the board variant because there's a limit to how much time you can sink into it before the game ends. Yes, I've had a couple Civ video game binges, but I never come out of those feeling good. And while you can video game with friends, it's better in person over a board.

1870 sort of puts this to the test. Unlike other super-long board games it doesn't overly rely on randomness (Risk) or excessive politicking (Diplomacy) which I'm no good at. It however far exceeds any normal board game in duration. How far? I've no idea. We've tried to play it twice so far and after 6+ hours each time we've yet to reach the end. We've yet to even really get the end in sight. Rather than infuriate me, I'm more determined than ever to play it through (and win, damnit! I'm a winner. Things are gonna change, I can feel it.)

One of the best things about the game is the ridiculous complexity that all sort of makes sense. It seems like half the game is just learning and remembering the rules. Towards that end I whipped a cheat sheet for our second attempt this last weekend.

They're meant to be 5.5" x 4"- here's the Google Doc Cheat Sheet that has them laid out 4 a page.

Above is the "Operating" phase, below is the "Stock" phase (aka, excellently named the President and Person phases by Allison)

Why is such complexity tolerable? I'm not sure. Maybe once we finally reach the end I'll throw my hands up in disgust and come to the same conclusion that I have with Power Grid. Why play resource management games at all? There's just some sort of itch that it scratches... the idea that it can all be done correctly. Both times I've played so far I feel like I failed not due to a bad draw or poor luck or because someone was uncooperative (try as some might to be a thorn in the side), but rather because I fucked up. And if I fucked up that means maybe next time I wont fuck up and then I'll win. And then I'll have won because I'm a winner and I did it best.

But who knows... maybe next time we'll actually reach "mid-game" phase and I'll be able to get a better read on things. To give you an idea of how little progress we made, here's two pictures from our first game.

They're almost 4 hours apart. Can you see how not-covered by tiles that board is? Yeah. Next time... or maybe the one after that...

Interested in the rules? Check them out over at the publisher's site.

Extracting comments from Google Docs

One of the best parts about Google Docs is the whole easy-to-share aspect of it, which includes an excellent commenting system.

Google will happily let you export your document, but this extra info is harder to get ahold of. From the drop-down menu you can currently export your file as: PDF or RTF (has formatting, lacks any comments), TXT (has comments, lacks formatting), or HTML (has comments and formatting). However, check out what the HTML output looks like:

That's really close to what I want, but it lacks the highlighting to indicate exactly what the comment is referencing. Or does it?

Here I've marked up all the <p> tags with a green border and all the <span> tags in blue. You can see that there are spans wrapping the formatted text, but also where the highlighted text would be. Most notably, see how "obnoxious" is split across two tags.

Unfortunately, there's no markup in the <span>s themselves to indicate which comment it goes with. There's the tag/link right after it, which will have to be enough.

^{<a href="#cmnt1" name="cmnt_ref1">[a]</a>}

But now, how to tell how many of those previous span tags, working back from the link, is part of the comment? For that, you gotta' lean on the Google Drive API. Specifically, the comment's list endpoint.

Look at that! It even has the user who made the comment and the timestamp. All we could ever want. It also indicates there was a reply, which the [b] comment is. The important field it has though is context. It doesn't tell me *where* in the document that context is (that's okay, we've got the HTML) but it does tell us how much of the content the comment spans.

And that's it. Well, the basics at least. From there, it's a bunch of corner cases about character escaping and sticking together the spans the right way so you can match the context string. Haven't ironed all those out yet, myself.

For some specific examples (and some gnarly code) you can checkout some segments of my project on Github, specifically grabbing file information, content, and comments and pairing comment with highlighted text in a very brittle way.

If there's a better way to do this, I was unable to find it and would love to hear about it! Seems odd that it was this convoluted... am likely missing something.

One Month In

So I've had a month to myself now. Have I squandered it? Probably. Lets review:

Visit all the public library branches in SF.

Am at 10 of 28 now. I've picked off all the easy ones, they're just getting further and further away from here on out. Mostly the western half of the city left, with a few far north and south to check out. I still believe it's a good idea, gets me out of the house. I've discovered that the Teen section of the library is much larger than I thought/remembered it was. There's apparently a non-trivial section/genre called 'Urban Teen' that I've never encountered before. Also, the graphic novel section is pretty neat. And there's a *lot* of romance novels there, more than I even expected.

Today I flipped through Emily Post's enormous Etiquette book. It was fun and enlightening.

Try to walk more than 5 miles a day.

Working out reasonably well... Travel had an impact, but I'm not beating myself up over it. One thing that I find particularly interesting is that it's not so much that the distances increased that much (I used to walk to and from work, and then frequently out to dinner or activities), but that the "active time" is what most noticeably jumped up. Even sitting at home crafting or cooking, I'm moving around around so much more than when I sit and code.

Finish piecing/appliqué of quilt so I can start actually quilting it (and taking it with me when I travel).

Quilt progress continues, slower than I'd like. But it is progressing. There's just so much work to do. I still have about 7 station dots to sew down. And two track bends to correct. And some more border to piece together. And then the whole thing to assemble. And then the back to assemble. And then the quilting can begin. And then, yeah, there's that whole second quilt I'd like to kick off real soon here. Hmmm. Quilt progress, as it comes along, can best be tracked via the #quilt tag over on my Tumblr.

Wrap head around food/cooking.

Eh, going reasonably well. I cooked chicken for the first time ever in the oven. Pathetic, but at least I'm trying to correct the situation. I made some super awesome sourdough bread using just starter recently. Sour and chewy and delightful. Am going to take another stab at it soon.

Draw more.

Fucking failure. A huge gaping hole in my pretty picture of intentions. I don't know what's wrong with me. I've sat down several times, both at the Cintiq and with my pencils. Aside form Dr. Sketchy's, I've not been able to produce anything. It's getting to be a little disturbing... Not tracked in inital post, but worth mentioning:

• Code for fun : going quite well. Have been really enjoying my Google Doc-to-LaTeX document converter project. Will make a stand alone post for that soon. Just got set up today (Tuesday) to run sutro.fm locally so I can start working on that again. Gah, I've forgotten how much I for (no good reason, really) dislike Backbone. Also, after bumping into a swarm of ex-Rdio co-workers, one after another, I feel an urge to clean up my animation patch for Thor. There's also some inventory management system project mentioned in passing by Logan and the joke-but-maybe-not-a-joke idea of contracting for a friend. And finally I'm starting to bump into enough minor nits that I don't like about Stalk like Stecker that I might need to re-write it.
• Be more social : Seems to be going reasonably well. I have friends. They're pretty fucking awesome. They'll even hang out with me some times. There are things on the calendar. A number of them. I'm excited. Will post separately about it so as to not forget. Remember, future Rebecca. Life and friend can be good.

(written Tuesday night)

Scrap

"Keep your shit together," I tell myself as I gaze at the limbless bust of a male mannequin. "I'm past all this. I have all the miscellaneous art crap I need." And then I wander down the next aisle. And I lose my shit.

It's a meltdown with screaming and sobbing in delight. All in my head. Externally I calmly ask the lady next to me where the bags are because I stand before a wall packed tight with fabric scrap rolls and there's a sign that says 15 for $1. I feel tears of joy prick my eyes.

She points me in the right direction. Her glasses rest cartoonishly low on her nose. Because it's the way things are, we start talking. She repeatedly invites me to join the SFQG. I smile and express interest and will never do more than glance dismissively a the website. We ask about each other's projects. She makes scarves out of beautiful fabric bits. I find it hard to express the quilt idea but she helpfully and insightfully suggests that it sounds like a collage project. Old people, they're so smart!

We both discuss how the real value and emotion is in the process, not the final project. She leaves. I spend the next REDACTED minutes picking up fabric, stroking it, sometimes putting it in my bag, some times putting it back on the shelf only to do it all again several more times. I leave with only 30 small roles. I will be back.

I return less than a week later. I leave with fewer rolls but more fabric. There is no more purple fabric left.

If you want to live dangerously, I highly recommend checking out Scrap in SF. It's not just a fabric store. It's an everything-I've-always-wanted-to-hoard-for-potential-art-project store.

Kiel, Wisconsin as a True Detective location

For family reasons, I spent five days in Kiel, Wisconsin. It was interesting. It was hard. My phone had weak signal and no data. The only wifi I could connect to was at the public library. There is no Starbucks, the only chain here is a Dairy Queen, and I spent a lot of time quilting. Things improved when, on the suggestion of a friend in passing, I looked at the town through the lends of True Detective (season 1 only, 2 does not exist). Here are some photos and notes that I took.

Walking down a road. On my left there’s a hum on power lines, on the right is the rustling of leaves in the wind. Down the road there is what looks to be an abandoned housing development. Bird cries and cicadas. The roar of Harelyes and trucks.

Everyone sees you. They are looking, they are watching, and you will know it. Unlike in San Francisco, where you can walk passed someone a foot away and their eyes will not track you, in Kiel there will be eye contact. And possibly a smile.

Of course the truck that drove, at speed, down the gravel road had a billowing confederate flag off the back of it. True, there’s some sort of printed text over the flag but... I’m skeptical that it was a statement condemning the flag it crossed.

There are many discussions about food. What did you eat? What did they eat. Opinions about the quality of food, how filling it was, and how much it cost. Is there really anything else to talk about?

The yards are large. Each house has one to five trees on it, and these are not light weight trees. These are testaments to how long this neighborhood has stood. These old houses’ architecture harkens back to German architecture, houses built by folks to remind them of where they came from, lived in by people who will never go there. All of the houses have basements and I am continuously reminded of Silence of the Lambs.

We’re in the back of a church-run thrift store. It’s a flock of old ladies, ranging in age from old to very old. There’s whispered discussion about how the church is trying to raise four million for a new roof or some such and folks are going to start to go door to door, asking for funds. There’s also the pie stand at the city fair to raise funds. One of the women scowls and mutters under her breath that she’s not going to bring a pie this year. Moments later a lady across the room loudly asks what pie she’s baking this year. “Oh, I don’t know yet...” the first calls back with a smile.

The women fill out nicely here. And then they keep filling in.

There are signs of breeding everywhere. People aren’t having just one kid and there’s whole jungle gyms being constructed for each brood. Toys litter all doorsteps and yards. The names are listed here on sign-posts in the yard. Custom little wooden slats, presumably hanging in birth order, one under the other. It’s unclear what happens to the dead.

On Wednesday, I started talking aloud to myself.

Don't get me wrong, it was great to see family. I got a tour of my Uncle's office and saw a picture hanging on the wall, made by my cousin in his youth. My heart warmed to see how fucking creepy it looked. Talking to my blood... forever interesting. My Aunt said something that struck me, something about "that typical Stecker coddling" in regards to making a sport of watching their friend dying of ALS trying to eat. You know, in a friendly way. Sounded very much like something I would say.

I found myself walking a lot, to get out of the house, to get away from the TV, to not go mad, to not get mad. On one of my walks I wandered by the Sheboygan river that snakes through town. Giving into a whim, I constructed a hanging stick triangle construction, binding it with just river grass and hanging it from a tree. You know, to reflect my thoughts onto the landscape.

The towns sprawl until they just sort of peter out for no discernible reason. A thin sort of sprawl. Crawling but uncrowded across the rolling landscape. Panning shots of residential girds bursting with trees. Patchwork fields on the horizon. I am so happy to be flying home.

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Onto New Things

So July 10th was my last day of work at Rdio. I learned a lot during my 2.5 years there and chose to leave for a number of reasons. There's a large number of really awesome people still working there and I wish the best of luck to them. I still plan to use the service and do some side projects with the JS and Android SDKs.

As a tech worker in the Bay Area I understand I'm extremely privileged and lucky when it comes to employment. Because I have the freedom and security to do so, I've decided to take a couple months off before looking for my next thing. And so today was the end of week two of that horrible phrase which I'll use once and avoid using from here on out: "funemployment"

I've lots of projects, both in progress and still in the idea stage, that I want to work on. I have years of learning-to-cook to catch up on. I've a basement that still needs to be cleaned/sorted/half thrown out/organized. I've travel and friends and beautiful weather luring me outside. There's so many things to do and I already feel like there's not enough time in the day. At least my previous stint between jobs helped prepare me for that one. I'm not surprised when the end of the day rolls around so soon, but I still grit my teeth and wince.

A couple key things I'm trying to focus on:

Visit all the public library branches in SF. I'm at 6 of 28 right now.

Try to walk more than 5 miles a day.

Finish piecing/appliqué of quilt so I can start actually quilting it (and taking it with me when I travel).

Wrap head around food/cooking.

Draw more.

Doing so-so on everything other than the drawing and quilting. Purchased a dehydrator at the start of week one and have been experimenting with that. Dehydrated mango- insane success. Dehydrated avocado- not so much. Dehydrated rhubarb- iiiiinteresting. Anyway, also hope to blog more in coming weeks. We'll see how it goes.

Things Things Things in June

The month has slipped by and I'd kick myself if I didn't post *something* to record the passage of time.

First half of the month

The youngest Stecker got married. Who knows, she may be the only one of us to do so.

That's Dr. Bride, to you!
It was nice to have the family rallied up in Washington. The turnout wasn't as good as our cousin's wedding, alas, but that's what you get when marrying on short notice and later in life. We were in Wenatchee, WA (currently on fire) and endured some serious heat wave-ness. I also endured some wine tasting, for the sake of the bride. We also endured each other. In our advanced years we managed to get through a multi-day event without fighting. How adult of us. Mother spent a lot of effort wrangling a photo booth for the event, making it clear to me where I get my craftiness from. Other than the blistering heat, the venue was lovely. We got to stay the night before and after there on site in a ridiculous room. (For some reason, while I was not in attendance, it was decided that Adam and I would get the Bridal Suite)

Second half of the month

Another 4th Terminus session finally happened again. And it was breathtaking. Like... I couldn't breath. Because I was laughing so hard. So so so good. But how can I not delight in a session dedicated entirely to my character?

Adam and I went back up for Mt Tam Pancakes, which alas remains a car-based hike. For the first time we tackled the Beach to Inn and Back Again loop, hitting up a new portion of the trail this time. Highly recommend it- too bad it's nameless. We literal came out of the trees, left the (main) trail, and stomped straight up to the peek. An intense ascent- would not have been possible if I hadn't gifted Adam some hiking sticks that morning. Everything was made better by the rolling high fog of the morning. Pancakes were tasty as ever. Adam always regrets not bringing real syrup but personally I was raised on the artificial stuff and it brings back fond memories. After a 5 mile hike, who cares about the quality of sugar you're putting atop your pancakes? Another 5 miles later and we were back at the beach.




And now June is (almost) over. I am certain July will be even better, but more on that later...