Linkblog - 12.3.2014 - 11.1.2015

Gears of War: The Board Game. On the day of his arrival at his new post, Markus Fenix made a truly pitiful figure - Dom would laugh at him. But it was only flesh wounds, quickly patched up by the medic and right back in, that damned hole must be plugged. And this time it worked. The grenade launcher that the Boomer lost, which suddenly appeared in front of his Lancer - where do these big guys always hide? - and which he couldn't grab, did bother him a bit.

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Forbidden Desert. Navigator and water carrier had no major problems finding their way out of the desert, despite the storm picking up and the scorching sun. The game is really nice, relaxing, and fluid to play, even for the first game - although I had of course read the instructions and watched the game on Tabletop. Can definitely become a regular guest with us, and offers space for 2-5.

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. Aragorn and Frodo visited Celeborn and helped him get a captured Orc through Fangorn. The Huorns were a nuisance but could be kept under control and the group made it through with a few scratches. The deck isn't running really smoothly yet, I still need to optimize, even though it achieved its goal here.

xslt workbench. Please don't ask why I need something like this. The pain is already great enough.

sharplispers/cormanlisp. Haven't lisped in a long time. Corman Lisp - one of the coolest implementations of Common Lisp on Windows at the time - is now open source and on GitHub. However, it probably still needs a lot of work before it runs smoothly on modern Windows versions. But the first step has been taken with the source release.

Galaxy Defenders - blocked for later, so around May 2015 - with the Windows program you can create your own missions. And with the tracker you can keep track of the current status in a campaign, so you know how it ended the next time.

We spent the New Year's change in 2014 on Gran Canaria and of course produced a lot of vacation photos again.

Sentinels of the Multiverse. Baron Blade destroyed Legacy, Ra and Fanatic on Insula Primalis. I guess I need to get better.

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer. And another time killer on the plane. Offline against the AI.

San Juan. On the return flight from Gran Canaria, this was the perfect relaxation in the plane, even if only against the simple AIs.

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

What I considered worth reading during the week and did not want to link separately, collected here and uncommented.

What I considered worth reading during the week and did not want to link separately, collected here and uncommented.

magefree/mage. Keep an eye on it - client and server in Java and cross-platform, AI integrated in the server and rule control with the cards (though not all cards, so potentially a problem with EDH). Oh, it's about Magic the Gathering.

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

A Brief History of Wiz-War - Interesting history of the inspiration for Magic: The Gathering. The game itself is also very interesting, albeit somewhat random. It's really good, solid Ameritrash. And wild spell-slinging and wild brawling. It's a lot of fun, but it is quite text-heavy due to the cards. The design is really very similar to M:TG, the cards simply convey their effects through text that you have to understand and execute (and not, for example, like in classic Eurogames through symbols and clear rules).

Here's what I considered worth reading during the week and didn't want to link separately, collected and uncommented.

Alderac Entertainment Group • View topic - Thunderstone Variant - Cutthroats & Sellswords. Fascinating game variant - fan-created and brings Thunderstone more into an interactive RPG direction. Always amazing what fans come up with as their own rule sets for games.

Deckmaster: A MTG Variant Format by Jim Bowie. Interesting Magic variant that turns the cards into a deckbuilder similar to Star Realms, but still allows the use of the very interesting Magic card pool. Build your own Deckbuilder. I could have thought of that myself, given my preference for deckbuilders and Magic.

Those who have wondered why it has been so quiet here in the blog (quieter than usual anyway), here is the answer: Roadtrip through Slovenia. Vacation. With lots of photos. Simply click on the changing images to go to the respective album, click on a picture there and a comfortable slideshow will start.

What I considered worth reading over the course of the week and did not want to link separately, collected here and uncommented.

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

End-to-End: Google will mit Javascript verschlüsseln - Golem.de. You can think what you want about Google, but there are still technicians with brains there who sometimes build something cool. Of course, we'll have to see how well the whole thing is implemented, but if someone like Google offers PGP integration for Gmail, that could finally be the impetus for the topic to gain further traction. The biggest problem with PGP and similar things is still the availability of communication partners who can actually do something with the corresponding technology.

Getting started in legacy- Legacy on a Budget - Legacy Type 1.5. Bookmarked because Legacy might become interesting someday. Affinity is particularly appealing to me.

Micro Python - Python for microcontrollers. Oh man, so many boards to try out, so little time. Sounds really nice, a Python implementation specifically designed for embedded systems with AOT compilation and such low hardware requirements is quite an exciting thing.

High Fidelity. The interesting part: 3D world with distributed network, low latency as a goal and voxel-based models and physics simulation. Good: Phillip Rosedale on board, who has already built a quite well-functioning 3D world with Second Life. Bad: Phillip Rosedale on board, who has already messed up the spread of a well-functioning 3D world with Second Life. Hmm. I think this is a case for "let's see".

JetDrive™ 500/520/720-Welcome to the Transcend Website. Well noted - my Air could probably use some more storage. And replacing the SSD doesn't seem that difficult,

Warhammer Diskwars Deutsch. Set aside for now. Because, because I want it. Simply because the idea is fun - a miniature game, but with significantly less setup effort and no miniatures to assemble and paint (which would completely fall by the wayside for me anyway).

Here are some interesting reads from this week that I didn't want to link to separately, collected and uncommented:

EU-Chefposten: Parliament wants Juncker, Cameron does not | tagesschau.de. Why do the EU states still let themselves be fooled by the island kingdom? Are we the EU or are we just an appendix of the British? Juncker is certainly not my dream candidate, but if the heads of government let themselves be fooled by the British again and propose another candidate, they might as well skip the next elections.

Generalbundesanwalt: Kein Ermittlungsverfahren in Deutschland zur NSA-Überwachung - Golem.de. Doesn't this come dangerously close to obstruction of justice?

Here are some articles I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

click - Just stumbled upon this, this finally looks like a real time saver - many other libraries for command line integration were so cumbersome that I couldn't see many advantages over the standard library provided stuff. But this already seems quite compact.

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Photos from four days of short vacation in Leiden. Yes, just vacation photos. Hey, I'm just a snapper, you can't expect more. Just click on the link and scroll through, or click on a photo for a large view. And yes, I revived Koken. At the moment it seems to be working quite well.

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Tails - About Tails. Hmm, maybe set up a USB stick with the system, for on the go and as needed.

What I consider worth reading over the course of the week and did not want to link separately, collected here and uncommented. (Yes, it's a bit thin here, most of it ends up on Google+ these days)

.NET Compiler Platform "Roslyn" - Documentation. C# and VB.Net Compiler. Directly from Microsoft. In C#. And Basic. Under Apache 2.0 License. So honestly? I think it's great.

2.0 Series — IPython 2.0.0 documentation. Very cool. This is slowly getting closer to the surface of Mathematica. Unfortunately, the strong focus on the browser - I can understand why, but I'm not really enthusiastic about it. I would prefer it to be a more integrated solution in the normal GUI. HTML as a rendering engine is fine, but the browser as a user interface is still quite clunky compared to an optimized native environment. But still, really cool what's happening here.

reclaim hugo | Collected stuff from social networks - since the Reclaim Social project has now delivered the WordPress plugin in a first version, I have finally set up a site where I now collect my G+, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Github and YouTube activities. It already looks quite neat. By the way, I am using the Shprink One theme, which works very well with the formats and has a few nice features. And it is especially clean. And it works with different screen sizes, including mobile. Let's see how this thing behaves in continuous operation.

TheKolWiki. Of course there's a Wiki for KoL. You are in a maze of twisty little pages, all alike and all insane.