Wired Magazine on Settlers and Klaus Teuber

I finally read an article from the April issue of Wired magazine, titled "Monopoly Killer". This is a very good article about the boardgame Settlers of Catan, and its creator, Klaus Teuber. It gives the history of the game, the context of the game as helping to launch a revival in board-gaming, the significant strength in this industry that the Germans have, and much more.

I especially enjoyed this article because I play Settlers with my family, having been introduced to it many years ago by my college friends. Actually, we haven't played Settlers very much lately, as we've also gotten hooked on another contemporary game, Ticket to Ride. I highly recommend both games, and perhaps I'll write about them more in the future.

Tetris, Happy 25th Birthday!

As many are reporting, today is the 25th birthday of the classic video game, Tetris. Even Google is getting into the celebration, dedicating their logo to Tetris today.

Most readers will remember Tetris, the simple block-shape puzzle game. It is quite addictive for many people, and overall it is probably my all-time #1 favorite video game. I wouldn't want to guess how many times I've played it over the years, first my old Atari computer, then on various game console machines, then on various handhelds, most notably the Gameboy.

I'm proud to say, I'm pretty good at Tetris. The scoring systems on different platforms vary, but I'll report that on the classic Gameboy version, as of a year ago, my high scores at each starting level on that platform are:

• Level 0: 384,327
• Level 1: 648,029
• Level 2: 581,570
• Level 3: 336,696
• Level 4: 622,523
• Level 5: 472,289
• Level 6: 461,939
• Level 7: 384,704
• Level 8: 577,083
• Level 9: 625,747

And yes, I introduced my wife Susan to Tetris in the 1990s, and she quickly became hooked as well. We don't play it as often as we used to, mostly taking it on trips or getting it out in the winter when there is less to do outdoors. I find it can be helpful to play once in a while if for no other reason than mental exercise: I find it relaxing and stimulating at the same time.

Yes, years ago I played it so much that a few times I "dreamed in Tetris", meaning my brain would somehow generate the pieces during my sleep and I'll play the game automatically. Strange!

Although we hadn't played Tetris in many months, Susan and I played the game a few times last night, in honor of the Tetris birthday.

And finally, much thanks to both Alexey Pajitnov who invented the game at the Moscow Academy of Science, and gaming entrepreneur Henk Rogers who was key in bringing the game to Nintendo and a broader American market.

Star Trek Movie Trailer

Based on this trailer, I'm definitely looking forward to the next Star Trek movie!

Monty Python on YouTube

I found the official Monty Python "channel" on YouTube recently. There is lots of good stuff here, including clips from their movies and their TV show. As this Gizmodo posting notes, providing free clips at YouTube has driven sales of their DVDs at Amazon -- so everybody wins!

Some of my all-time favorite bits from Monty Python are included here:

• The Killer Rabbit
• The Argument Clinic
• Ministry of Silly Walks
• Silly Olympics
• The Black Knight
• Witch Village
• The Parrott Sketch
• Constitutional Peasants
• The Knights Who Say "Ni!"
• Spam
• French Taunter

Mr. Lucky and a Very Early Jack Nicholson Role

Lately we've been watching some episodes of a TV series called Mr Lucky. This show aired for only one season, 1959-1960. We were given 10 episodes on VHS tape a few years ago as a gift, and have finally gotten around to checking it out.

Mr. Lucky was produced by Blake Edwards, and starred John Vivyan as "Mr. Lucky", a casino owner. There is only a stub entry for Mr. Lucky at Wikipedia, and here is the entry on it at IMDB. This paragraph from the IMDB page nicely summarizes the show:

Mr. Lucky was an honest professional gambler who had won a plush floating casino, the ship Fortuna, and it his base of operations. Staying beyond the 12-mile limit, where he could operate a gambing ship legally, Mr. Lucky played host to a wide variety of people, all of whom came to make use of his sumptuous facility. Helping him run the casino was his good friend Andamo. When he got into scrapes that required police assistance, Lt. Rovacs usually provided it.

I'll add that at first we found the show to be somewhat silly/campy. But it grew on us, and at this point I have to admit I kinda like the show. The two main characters are quite respectable in many ways: honest, entrepreneurial businessmen who do right by their customers and friends. At least, that is my take based on the ten-episodes we've seen.

Beyond that, what is prompting this posting is that the episode we saw last night starred a very young Jack Nicholson. In fact, it is listed as his third earliest credit at his IMDB page here. He plays a major role in the episode Operation Fortuna. This episode also had Richard Chamberlain in it. Other episodes we've seen have had other well-known actors, including Lee Van Cleve and Jack Elam.

Best Sidekicks

The March issue of Wired had a brief writeup of the Best Sidekicks of all time. Pretty good list!

From MST3K to RiffTrax

I was pleased to learn (thanks Stu Bushman) that many of the people behind MST3K have returned to what made they successful in the 1990s: making funny comments during movies. I assume most readers of this blog will remember the wonderful TV series Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (see wikipedia entry), which ran for many years on Comedy Central and then the Sci-Fi network, where a human and two robots appeared as wise-cracking sillohuettes overlayed on really bad movies mostly from the 1950s-1970s. It was one of my favorite shows during my college years in the early 90s, and I continued to enjoy it until it was finally cancelled in 1999.

Well, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbet and several others involved in the MST3K are now doing much the same thing with their RiffTrax service. Gone are the sillohuettes and robots, but the basic idea remains: funny commentary while you watch a movie, or now also some popular TV episodes too. One big difference is that rather than picking on easy targets like Ed Wood movies and other cinematic bombs, they are taking on some of the most popular films of all time. Take a look at their site for a sample of what they are riffing on these days.

Their work isn't free -- seems like it $3.99 per movie. I haven't bought any yet, as I'm too busy and have too much of a backlog of other entertainment to watch right now. But I liked the couple of samples I saw on their homepage (refresh the page to see a few of them)... so I'll probably buy a few rifftrax at some point, to see their comedic take on some of my favorite movies.

River Tam Action Flick

This is a great comic for Firefly fans. (Thanks to Rational Jenn for the link.)

Costa on the Format War

The June 26 issue of PC Magazine had a good column by Dan Costa, on the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD format war for video on optical discs. I'll admit I don't know very much about this battle, other than it exists. And that's because a while ago I came to the same conclusion that Costa states in this column: that it really doesn't matter, in the long-run, what wins this "format war". Once we can reliably download movies from massive and reasonably priced media libraries, why would very many people want to buy them on physical media (of any format)? To be sure, when that day comes, the existing media formats will linger for a long time, just as music CDs are lingering and will continue to for some time. But I agree with Costa that the long-term media distribution solution is downloading/streaming, not physical media. (Well, at least not single-movie discs, as I suppose if someone could purchase a single piece of physical media/hardware that had tens of thousands of movies already stored on it, that might be appealing if priced reasonably. But that doesn't seem like a viable approach, since it would presumably come with a hefty price tag.)

I'll go even farther than Costa, by just noting that I've even stopped buying regular DVDs. Since I switched from VHS to DVD relatively late, I never really acquired very many DVDs -- two dozen or so. But a while back I decided there was little reason to own many more movies on DVD. If I can get a great movie on DVD for 50 cents or a dollar, then I might do it. But any more than that it just isn't worth owning it. Presumably, one day in the not-too-distant-future we'll be able to access pretty much any movies we could want to see, from massive media libraries, at reasonably per-movie or subscription prices. For now, I use and really like our Blockbuster Access membership to see new movies, but I really have no need to own movies on physical media.

All-Time Favorite Television Series

I've now posted to my website a page listing and briefly describing my all-time favorite television series. There is quite a range here, covering my childhood and also current favorites.

About Meerkat Manor

One night, when both of us were too tired to continue with work or even to read, Susan and I were flipping around the TV channels and found a wonderful show called "Meerkat Manor" on Animal Planet. This is an ongoing documentary about the lives of several gangs of Meerkats, which according to Wikipedia is a member of the mongoose family of mammals. They live in the Kalahari desert in southern Africa. These are very cute creatures (who doesn't love seeing them all stand together on their hind legs?). And they exhibit very interesting group behaviors, such as babysitting each other's pups while some of the gang leave home to forage for food. But what makes this series particularly appealing is the way the shows have been put together. First, the meerkats are each given their own names (see here for the most prominent members of the Whiskers), and their personalities are described in detail from show to show. You get a very strong sense of the storyline of the meerkats lives, both as individuals and as members of their family gangs. The narration keeps it interesting, and there is always a cliffhanger at the end of each episode, such as "Will casanova Carlos hook up with an unattached female from the neighboring gang?" or "Will the deadly cobra snake hidden in their burrows be a problem for the unsuspecting pups as they sleep overnight?" or "Will baby-sitter Shakespeare be able to defend the young pups against the attacking neighbor gang... can he hold out until the rest of the Whiskers family returns from their foraging trip?" Good stuff!

On Tetris and New Tivo Features

Unlike many people, I don't drink coffee. So when I wake up and am feeling groggy, I need something else to spring my mind into action for the day. One tactic I employ is playing one or two games that require logic skills. When Tetris (see Wikipedia) came out in the early 1980s we had it on our computer at the time (was it our last Atari or our first IBM PC? I can't remember.) This has been my favorite of what I call "simple games" -- that is, conceptually simple in that they aren't complex role-playing games or graphically intense action games. Tetris has just a few graphics, a few basic rules, and that is it. The rest is just logic and being able to visualize color patterns and so on. I introduced Susan to the game many years ago, and she is hooked too.

A few saturdays back I woke up early, got some cereal, and proceeding to set a new personal all-time high score. Scoring systems vary on each gaming system. I still play Tetris mostly on my old handheld GameBoy Color device. My new high score is 648,029 (see my updated top scores here).

Feeling pretty good about that accomplishment, I decided to spend the rest of my "waking up time" that morning exploring some new features of Tivo. I didn't realize it, but at some point in the last, oh, 18-months or so, my Tivo device's software was updated such that it now provides a wide array of interesting services. You can get various Yahoo!-driven services on the Tivo now for instance. And I knew I could access digital music and photos from home network through the Tivo, though I don't really use these features much.

But what was news to me was the Live365 music radio channel service. By first visiting their website and selecting various channels as pre-sets, you can then listen to these radio channels through your Tivo system. Only the those tagged as "Professional" are available through Tivo, which very much limits the scope of what is available. But it is still a wide range of stations, far more than the built-in digital music channels I get from TimeWarner Cable (which are nice too, and completely ad-free -- the Live365 ones have after every six songs or so, unless you subscribe).

But even more interesting for me were two games I discovered that Tivo provides. I think these have been available for over a year, but I just got around to finding them recently.

The first game is WordSmith. This is based on scrabble, but is a one-player game. You get the scrabble tiles arranged in a rectangle of columns and rows. You can build a word from only the first row's letters. However, when you use a letter, the ones below it in its column shift up, making that next letter in its column immediately available for use. This way, you can plan ahead to try to form big words knowing what letters will be coming up. Also, the scoring is based on the tile point total multiplied by the length of the word. So a major goal is to spell the longest words possible, and to do so with the highest scoring letters as you can. Sometimes you are wise to spell small words -- for admittedly small points -- to enable you to then spell a longer, higher-scoring word later on (and hopefully one that uses the Q, Z, J, or X tiles!). People who are already big scrabble fans, or crossword puzzlers or otherwise wordsmiths, will really enjoy this WordSmith game I think. I've only played it five times so far, so I won't share my scores as they aren't very good in my opinion.

The other game I discovered is SameGame. See the Wikipedia entry for this, as it apparently has been around for decades, and was just recently ported to the Tivo system. Somehow I had never seen it before though. In this game you have a rectangular grid of blue, red, yellow, and green balls, randomly arranged. The goal is to eliminate the balls from the grid, and get the highest score you can in doing so. You can eliminate balls when two or more are touching. Your score is based on the square of the number of balls eliminated in each move... so I think getting rid of only 2 (minimum) will score you 4 points, whereas getting rid of 10 balls touching each other will get you 100 points. Some versions of this game are timed, but the Tivo version is not. Also, the Tivo version gives you a massive 500 point bonus if you can clear the entire board -- this isn't easy, as it is common to be left with say a few balls at the end, with no two neighbors being the same color. Initially my scores were often in the 400-700 range. Then I started getting 800+, with a few over 1,000. Some of these were because I cleared the board and got the bonus, but some were "naturals". Then this morning I got 1,804, which is more than 600 higher than my previous best. I've seen online at various sites where people report higher Tivo SameGame scores than this, including several who have topped 2,000. But I think 1,804 is a pretty good score for just two weeks of practice with this game.