How to put Isaac to sleep:
Okay, one of those is a lie. If you guess which one I’ll buy you dinner the next time you come out here. The rest are all proven methods, though.
Today is the king’s birthday here in Thailand, which also means it’s Father’s Day. We get the day off today (which is much needed, the last week or so has been really crazy and it’ll be good to just relax with the family), and I get to be treated like a king. So all in all a good day. We have plans to play games with our Kiwi gamer friends and eat Thai barbeque tonight, but we’ll see what happens.
Also, perhaps not coincidentally, today is Day of the Ninja. So even if you’re not a father, you can have something to celebrate today too.
One good thing about being separated from friends and family by 8,000 miles of ocean is that my birthday can start now, and it won’t stop being celebrated for at least another 38 hours.
One of the gifts I received from the mission team was unexpected and unique. The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy Emended Edition. Whether purposely or not, this set of movies is an answer to an old request - one I thought I would never see. The back of the Emended Edition’s cover details the story of a man who, like many of us, discovered that George Lucas may not have been the genius we all took him to be, but he saw hope:
In 2005, following the release of Episode III, a visionary editor realizing that there was yet much to like in these films, conceived of a revolutionary idea: cut the crap. And in 2007, he set about his task. Working with the mind as a combat doctor who cuts away necrotic tissue in order to save a life, he edited the prequel trilogy with enthusiastic vigor. Could these films be made to be good? He didn’t know. But what he did know is that they could at least be made not bad. Which is to say, there should be nothing in these films that will make your eyes roll. Or at least… very little.
On an inner sleeve, he details everything that he cut or edited. The overall product is very well put-together and the result is precisely as the excerpt says: not bad. In some places, it’s even pretty cool. (more…)
We’re creative people. I don’t mean us here in Thailand… well, I do, but I mean everybody else too! We were created in God’s image, and the first thing we see God doing is creating (and as far as I can tell, He’s still doing it). People love creating. Music, art, writing, cooking, programming, carving, hammering, designing, sewing, planning, planting… all of these (and so many more) are forms of creation and creativity.
Anyway, the point is, I want to share some of our creativity with you today.
Symmetry Art
The bathroom in our master bedroom is frosted glass and positioned such that it is highly visible from the outside if our door is open. Cindy didn’t like that, so she came up with an art project to solve it. She had us do symmetry art (where you paint one side and fold the paper so the other side is the same) on poster board, and we used the posters to cover up the glass
Mansion
I’ve been designing games since I was 11, but only rarely have I gotten to actually play what I designed. Mansion is based on some concepts that have been bouncing around my head for a couple of years (in addition to some concepts that I outright stole from other games).
The idea is that the players are exploring and stealing from a huge mansion, while everybody else is distracted with a party in another room. The winner is the one who can steal the most stuff (which might also mean stealing from the other thieves). Because they’re there for a party, they could not bring any of their own equipment in. So the only weapons and tools they can use are what they find around the house.
We’ve played it a few times so far, and I think I’m finally happy with the latest revision. It got significantly more fun when, during a game, Cindy had everyone draw art for whatever Equipment cards they had in their hand. (I didn’t realize how much art adds to the fun of a game). The game still needs art for its 62 rooms. Maybe one day…
Learning Thai
English is both Sandra and Matthew’s first language, but they both also speak Thai very well. Reading is a different story, so we’ve been teaching Thai reading and writing skills during homeschool. One problem with this is that it’s boring. Memorize the alphabet. Memorize the tone rules. Memorize the vocab. Read boring stories about fish in a well about 100 times. Repeat.
I decided a game would help fix this. Shamelessly stealing rules and ideas from Dungeons & Dragons, I created a basic game where the players fight monsters to earn experience. With more experience, they are allowed to use more powerful weapons. Here’s the trick though: to use each weapon, they must answer a question. Maybe they have to read a word correctly, or identify which tone rule is used, or hear a word and write it correctly. If they get it right, they damage the monster. If they miss, the monster gets to hit them. More powerful weapons do more damage, but they’re also harder to use (i.e. harder questions).
The game doesn’t have a name yet, but I’ve been mentally referring to it as “นักรบ“, or “Nakrope”, which means fighter or warrior. We played it for the first time last Friday and it went amazingly well. Not only did they have fun, but both of them were highly motivated to “get it right”. As Sandra said, “I don’t want the orc to hit me!” In the near future, I may combine it with the Mansion rooms so they have a dungeon to explore (maybe with a dragon in the middle).
UPDATE (06-19-06): FlashCards v1.5.1
As promised, here is the first public release of the Flashcard Emulator I’ve been working on. You can download it here: FlashCards1.5.zip. Unzip the folder and extract the files to someplace nice (like “C:\”).
You’ll have to have a Java Runtime Environment installed (don’t worry, you probably already do). Go here to see if you have one (it’s got to be at least version 1.4), and go here if you know you don’t.
The Flashcard Emulator is a memorization aid. It’s just a software version of index cards that students around the world use everyday to memorize facts, vocabulary, multiplication, etc. It’s nothing fancier than that. It can save you time and money from creating your own flashcards, and, for those of you that work at a computer for hours, it can be extra convenient as well. I know for me, at least, I test my Thai vocab a lot more often now that I can just open the program whenever a webpage is loading or I get bored with work.
The program should be capable of any foreign language, though you may have to tweak the settings for certain languages. It’s preset for Thai. It will work for English (and other languages using a Latin character set). The README has information on what to do if the program doesn’t seem to like the language you’re trying to type in. And if you have any other problems with it, please let me know.
And now for a geek moment (the rest of you are excused). All Java programmers around the world should be ashamed of me. My former employer and coworkers should be ashamed of me as well. So, my Java IDE used a character encoding that worked great for Thai, but my default Virtual Machine had a different encoding that displayed garbage or question marks instead of Thai characters. I spent hours adding extra lines of code so the program would internally encode characters properly before I finally realized that I could just set the encoding directly on the VM with the flag “-Dfile.encoding”. I mean, Java was made for this sort of thing. I could’ve totally released this thing a week ago if I had only stopped to think. Oh well. That’s how I learn, I guess.
Normally I wouldn’t bother you with geek news, but this is important. Two years ago, I made a wildly fanciful birthday list. It was noted that I might be disappointed by my demands, but today I discovered that demand #2 is about to come true. Behold! This September: Original Unaltered Trilogy on DVD!
In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you’ll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.
Apparently it will only be available from September 12th to December 31st, but rest assured that my leftover Amazon money will be put to good use during that time. Now I’m just waiting for Spider-Man to meet up with Venom…
| I know my Goombas like brothers. I got 15/16 on the 8-Bit Gamer test. Take the test! |
I don’t normally pass these quizzes along, but I liked this one. And I can think of a number of you who are going to do this the moment you see it…
I am:
A couple of unrelated things that made me laugh recently. The comic was done by the guys at Penny Arcade.
“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.” — Ambrose Pierce (1842-1914)
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