Recent Posts

11

Table-top Games / Wingspan

« Last post by Dragon on May 25, 2025, 11:08:48 »

Last night we played Wingspan. This is my son's favorite game, but we haven't played it in a few months. I'm actually surprised that I haven't mentioned this game before.

It's a game that I originally wasn't interested in because the theme didn't seem like a good one for a game and honestly it looked too pretty for me to think of it as anything beyond becoming a "shelf queen." Of course, that was before I ever played the game. The game was gifted to me by someone who was in a bird-watching family, even though they also hadn't ever played the game. After it was gifted to me, I gave it a shot and I must admit I was was pleasantly surprised by the game play.

The box is nicely organized, even providing a diagram on the edge of the inside box to assist with putting everything away. However, after playing the first time, I felt like I needed something specifically for holding the egg tokens during game play. I found a nice nest-styled-bowl online for 3d printing, and I had some yellow filament at the time so I printed a couple nice little bowls to hold the egg tokens.   

Wingspan has gotten me more interested in the subject of bird-watching, at least a little more than the nearly zero interest that I had before. I've actually been thinking recently that it might be nice to put a birdbath in the backyard.

Anyway, last night's game ended up being a tough one with not much momentum getting built up compared to previous games that we've played. The bonus score board had goals that we had randomly set up, along with the cards that were coming out, made it so we had pretty low scores on the round bonus board. The first two rounds, none of us had more than 2 and even the last round I had 0 points for the round bonus. It was still fun, and Isaac still got some good stuff together.

Final score - Beth: 75; Isaac: 84; Nathaniel: 63.

12

Blogs / AI Might Just Give Us More Garbage

« Last post by Dragon on May 11, 2025, 23:59:10 »

Recently at work we've been discussing using AI. Obviously, it's a hot topic right now, and I have successfully used it for some things at work, but in a lot of ways it's just a comical waste of time.

Earlier today, I decided to give Copilot a shot at creating an image based on an idea I wanted to print out for a Mother's Day card. I saw an image with a heart made of flowers and some random geometric shapes forming a border around the heart. The image was intended to be printed out so that a child could color the picture for their own mother.

I thought that it might look cool to have the heart made up of the same thing, so I opened up Copilot and started with a basic explanation and image. I first tried several times with no avail. At first, it seemed to get close, but eventually it moved further and further away from what I initially asked for, so I tried to get back to basics by asking for just a simple rectangle which generated a rectangle that had a bunch of rainbow colored arches inside it. Well... I wanted it more simple than that.

I tried asking for something I could make out of wood, or something a young child could cut out of paper. Over and over again, I asked for it to be more simplified and eventually got to something that was close - a rectangle that had a shadow across the corner and some other colors surrounding it. I tried asking for something without a shadow, then it gave me one with gradients and other colors. I tried asking for no gradients and no shadows. All failures in one way or another. 

The last one I got, which I'm including here as an example was hilariously wrong. Just trying to get it super simple, I just wanted a black and white rectangle, but it seems to have already gone off the deep end. Sure... it's black-and-white... it has a rectangle (square), but I never wanted background stuff - I never said it needed scenery. Worst of all, it somehow still has a gradient of white to black in the box and, of course, shadows in the scenery.

... Ok. Just one more try... How about a 2-dimensional box. 

13

Table-top Games / Re: The Crew

« Last post by Dragon on May 07, 2025, 22:49:18 »

Tonight we got The Crew out again. It had been a while and Beth had completely forgotten how to play. I hadn't remembered that I even played it with her until I noticed this post above.

This time it was me, Beth, and Mike (tampamac2002). We started on Mission 1 and worked our way up to Mission 4 before we ended for the night. Maybe we'll continue from there next time Mike comes over. 

As a side note, I found a great fan-made Mission Log on BoardGameGeek.com for this. Attached is a preview of it, but there is a full color design in addition to the low color design that I'm using. For the best quality (and most up to date version), check out the Files section for The Crew on BGG. Printing it double-sided and then tearing it in half (down the middle) makes it a nice size to fold up and have a log in the box for two different crews.

14

Table-top Games / Jaws

« Last post by Dragon on May 02, 2025, 20:11:38 »

Played on April 6th, 2025

Players: Grace (Shark) vs Nathaniel, Anna & Beth (The Crew)

Winner: The Crew

Beth, Anna, and I made haste in Scene 1 tracking Grace. Grace only had 2 turns before we got two barrels on her and moved on to Scene 2.

Going into Scene 2, we were a little confused at first about a few rules. One thing we weren't quite sure about was the selection of cards between the Crew. We ended up splitting up the cards and each taking an even stack along with our two personalized items, but since we split up the cards before we looked at our personalized items, we just split them based only on what cards were general. After getting into play more, we looked at our personalized cards and realized that we should have been comparing those too. Some other rules, such as how the shark appearance, adjacency rules, and the hooked items worked, were a little confusing, but referencing the examples in the rulebook seemed to clear them up.
 
We finished Scene 2, not as quickly as Scene 1, but Grace felt like it was pretty fast and she had no chance because we were avoiding her almost every turn and managed to wound her with at least one attack each time. So, ultimately, as The Crew, Anna, Beth, and I won the game.

We all had a fun time and I asked them all to rate the game based on that one play. Beth gave it a 3. Grace, Anna, and I gave it 4 out of 5 stars, so thumbs up overall.

15

Tyco RC / Re: Folks I am back (2025)

« Last post by Dragon on April 13, 2025, 11:49:25 »

Hi Scorcher! Glad to see someone else came back! I've been trying to keep the site alive... I'd love to see some more activity on here, other than the spammers.

16

Tyco RC / Folks I am back (2025)

« Last post by scorcher on April 12, 2025, 09:25:38 »

just came in to say hi guys how have you all been ive been really tight for time and sailing in my spare time about to buy my own boat im still collecting tyco and have also been enjoying arrma 3s range cars on break times in work about to retire this year time for a new adventure see where the wind takes me hope there are still a few watching the forums hope you are all well and safe will get some new pics up soon seeya

17

General Discussions / Re: Email to Txt

« Last post by Dragon on March 29, 2025, 16:46:04 »

It's been a while, but unfortunately this update for Email to Txt is to say that AT&T is disabling that function.

From their article, "Say goodbye to email-to-text and text-to-email" on https://www.att.com/support/article/wireless/KM1061254, "Starting June 17, 2025, you won’t be able to send or receive texts using email."

18

General Discussions / ROT13

« Last post by Dragon on March 25, 2025, 23:19:08 »

Just a little programming exercise that I thought would be fun, creating a simple shift cipher in multiple programming languages for comparison.

First up... PHP

Code: [Select]

function rot13($input)
{
  $output = "";
  for ($x = 0; $x < strlen($input); $x++)
  {
    $ascii = ord($input[$x]);
    if ($ascii >= 65 && $ascii <= 77 || $ascii >= 97 && $ascii <= 109) { // A-M & a-m
      $output .= chr($ascii + 13);
    } else if ($ascii >= 78 && $ascii <= 90 || $ascii >= 110 && $ascii <= 122) { // N-Z & n-z
      $output .= chr($ascii - 13);
    } else {
      $output .= $input[$x];
    }
  }
  return $output;
}

echo rot13('Hello World!') . '<br>';
echo rot13('AaMmNnZz') . '<br>';
echo rot13('ABCDefgHIJKlmnopQRStuvWXyz') . '<br>';


Next... C#

Code: [Select]

using System;

public class Program
{
public static void Main()
{
Console.WriteLine(rot13("Hello World!"));
Console.WriteLine(rot13("AaMmNnZz"));
Console.WriteLine(rot13("ABCDefgHIJKlmnopQRStuvWXyz"));
}

public static String rot13(String input)
{
String output = "";
foreach (var letter in input)
{
int ascii = (int)letter;
if (ascii >= 65 && ascii <= 77 || ascii >= 97 && ascii <= 109) { // A-M & a-m
output += (char)(ascii + 13);
} else if (ascii >= 78 && ascii <= 90 || ascii >= 110 && ascii <= 122) { // N-Z & n-z
output += (char)(ascii - 13);
} else {
output += letter;
}
}
return output;
}
}

...And now, SQL:

Code: [Select]

ALTER FUNCTION dbo.ROT13
(
               @PLAINSTRING VARCHAR(255)
)
RETURNS VARCHAR(255)
AS
BEGIN
               DECLARE @MAX INT = LEN(@PLAINSTRING)
               DECLARE @COUNTER INT = 0
               DECLARE @LETTER CHAR(1)
               DECLARE @ENCODEDSTRING VARCHAR(255)
               WHILE (@COUNTER < @MAX)
               BEGIN
                              SET @LETTER = SUBSTRING(@PLAINSTRING, @COUNTER+1, 1);
                              IF(ASCII(@LETTER) BETWEEN 65 AND 77 OR ASCII(@LETTER) BETWEEN 97 AND 109) -- A-M and a-m
                                             SET @ENCODEDSTRING = CONCAT(@ENCODEDSTRING, CHAR(ASCII(@LETTER)+13));
                              ELSE IF(ASCII(@LETTER) BETWEEN 78 AND 90 OR ASCII(@LETTER) BETWEEN 110 AND 122) -- N-Z and n-z
                                             SET @ENCODEDSTRING = CONCAT(@ENCODEDSTRING, CHAR(ASCII(@LETTER)-13));
                              ELSE
                                             SET @ENCODEDSTRING = CONCAT(@ENCODEDSTRING, @LETTER);
                              SET @COUNTER += 1
               END
               RETURN @ENCODEDSTRING
END
GO


19

Blogs / Re: Word For Word Bible Comics

« Last post by Dragon on March 25, 2025, 13:01:52 »

Two more Word For Word Bible Comics are on Kickstarter now: Epistles of Galatians & James Word for Word Bible Comic: NIV.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/word4wordbiblecomic/epistles-to-the-galatians-word-for-word-bible-comic-niv?ref=dr9s6y

20

Table-top Games / Machi Koro

« Last post by Dragon on March 23, 2025, 22:36:26 »

Isaac's girlfriend Mackenzie visited us yesterday and we got to play a couple games. We started off playing Machi Koro, which is a game that we've played a few times with Beth, but she can't ever remember playing it. Personally, I think of Machi Koro as being similar to Catan since you want to build a variety of things so that you pick up resources no matter what gets rolled. In the case of Machi Koro, the money is the only resource and you don't have trading to deal with. It plays much faster since there is less to deal with but I could definitely imagine a Catan branded version of Machi Koro.

I started off the game getting the first couple Wheat Fields and started to get a nice lead. Eventually I bought a Stadium and things really seemed like they were picking up for me, but Beth was making her way up. Beth got more of the buildings above 6 than I did. I bought a few of the Mines but they never paid out. Beth was close to building the last landmark, but I had a second Stadium and managed to roll a 6, taking some money that she needed for that build, however it wasn't a very good payout for me overall and I couldn't get my final landmark built either. After taking another turn to save some money, Beth finally won the game. I had 3 of the landmarks built, Mackenzie had 2, and Isaac had 1.