dr4b | wednesday

Well, aside from my midlife crisis over highschool reunions, it was a good day. I was financially responsible for once and finally remembered to go the bank and deposit some checks (including the one from Bayani, sorry about letting that slip) and tonight I even wrote out checks to pay bills, which for some reason just kept slipping my mind to do, so some were a little late, but ah well, it should all work out. I even remembered to finally fill out an address change at the bank so the people at my old house don't have to write "PLEASE FORWARD" on my bank statements anymore.

The closest WaMu to work is in the Red Apple on 132nd street. They have a decent sandwich selection for lunch, though Safeway wins in terms of being much closer to work and having a lot of OTHER things like salads. On the other hand, the Red Apple is next to a Pagliacci's which is next to Tech Bowl or whatever... mmm, Pagliacci's...

Uh, I got screwed over today again by supplies at work and gave back my one TV box, was supposed to get a replacement, didn't. Doh! Spent the day debugging a python script instead, and eventually succeeded. Woo. I don't even KNOW Python so this is pretty cool.

Went to D&D. I brought a whiteboard to keep spells on. It works pretty well so far actually. We mostly just fought battles against drow elves today. I guess it was fun, and I got a spellbook from one of them, wheee! I was picking out spells and pretty much decided that yeah... burn mage. Whee.

In Puzzle Pirates... I left Black Death and joined Llyr's Pact. I suppose it was inevitable, but the reasoning was specifically that the new flag ("Carpe Noctem") has been formed, and Black Death can't join it until Complicated logs in, and he won't log in until we pick a new captain, and that won't happen for who knows how long, so... I hopped to LP so I could be involved in the damn flag and so I could plank Chernabog. Err, I mean, work on store stuff. Yeah.

Tomorrow I'll be at work for only a few hours, gonna leave super-early and go to the Red Sox vs. Mariners game with Brian. I cannot cannot wait. Yay Red Sox! Errr I mean... go Mariners! Well, tonight's game sounded exciting though -- Greg Dobbs homered in his first major league at-bat. And I mean... it is kinda neat that half the team we saw at Tacoma 2-3 weeks ago is now on the Mariners (Greg Dobbs, Jeremy Reed, Mickey Lopez... I guess my only question is, why didn't they call up AJ Zapp?). Heh. Well. RED SOX! WOOOOO!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Red Sox! Hooray! :) I can't wait to see them again. And I hate it when they're on the West Coast. I have problems staying up late enough to watch them.

Sometime next year I am totally coming out there and going to a Red Sox game with you. I've never been to Fenway.

My first experience with Python was, also, debugging a script. Coming from a background of Basic, Pascal, C, and a variety of scripting languages ... python was bloody weird. It took me awhile to grok syntactic whitespace.

Y'know... he could log in and change the crew to an oligarchy. Then you can select a new captain and join flags and do all sorts of things without him needing to be there or even to ever log in again. You could even expel him if you like.

You could even expel him if you like.
At a guess, that might be a reason why he *wouldn't* want to change things to an oligarchy...?

If he makes someone else captain, then they can just do that to him anyway. There's not a lot of practical difference, I think.

If we made it an oligarchy, we'd need a bunch of our SO's to log in to vote on things.

80% of them don't log in on a regular basis (where "regular" is defined as "more often than once a month").

It'd suck.

Not my problem anymore. I wonder if Thirdling's been booted from BD or not... but I can't check until much later tonight.

"Their fire has gone out of the Galaxy, and you, my friend, are the last of their religion."

I never thought about using a whiteboard for spells. Hmm.

A guy in my Monday night group has a three-ring binder, with a laminated card for each spell in his character's spellbook that contains the full spell description and the reference to which book and page the spell came from. He's got them all in alphabetical order, ad he uses paperclips on each page to mark which spells are prepared each day. His paperclips are colour coded according to the level and the school of magic. It's pretty clunky and anal-retentive, though very effective.

But yeah. I'm thinking whiteboard sounds a lot easier to keep track of :)

Oh, and help me get better at SFing? I've tried dueling really good players, but jeez, I don't get any better by being instakilled. And I'm reeeeeally tired of crew-shopping. *sigh*

I've been talking to Kuibbles about you guys, I wish you could join our crew. I don't think SFing is as important as the other guys do (I'm not up for having this become BD Part Two, honestly). Though I can do what I can to work with you... catch me online sometime later. It might also be the sword you're using. Do you send more swords than sprinkles? I can lend you my old skull dagger for a bit maybe...

I was considering spell cards but I'm awfully lazy. The paper clips is a GOOD idea though -- I had been wondering how I'd do it if I had to prepare a spell several times that day. Hmm. Either way, I don't want to go through another campaign of erasing and rewriting paper until it wears through and then having to make a new sheet. Seems silly.

I'm using a rapier, and I send more strikes than sprinkles. BUT I tend to build most of my combos in the 2-3 and 4-5 columns, instead of on the edges. Dunno if that makes a difference or not.

LP seems more promising to me than any other crew I've shopped with because it's got the only crew management that I genuinely respect AND like. One or the other is easy enough to find, but both is more rare. :)

While I suck at SFing, I feel like I *should* be better. I am MUCH more successful with Puzzle Fighter. That says to me there's something else I'm doing wrong. Watching Rune play, I realize I don't play anywhere near fast enough, and I'm already playing as fast as I can. But I'm too meticulous about sliding things in hard-to-reach places and stuff. Meh.

As for preparing the same spell in multiple slots, you just use more than one paperclip. I'll hunt down Lycus and see if I can get him to post his exact system for you. He's got all his paperclips colourcoded so he's the only one who really understands exactly what he's doing with it. Obsessive-compulsive? Maaaaaaybe just a *little.* But that's why we love him :) ...And why he's the kickassingest D&D wizard ever?

I've played Puzzle Fighter but not PP, and used to beat dr4b maybe half the time a few years ago. I apologize if Puzzle Fighter knowledge simply doesn't apply to PP.

We had a friend who was very good at puzzles, but had a little trouble with Puzzle Fighter. He had a habit of setting up a monster combo through careful play, and then have it covered by a smaller combo that landed first. Basically, speed is more important than perfect play. I don't know a good way to explain the details, but you need to be able to dig yourself out from under a small to medium sized drop. Generally, this means being able to start the combo even after a couple rows of sprinkles, and letting breakers stay on the board whenever you can. In order to compensate for imperfect play, you need to be able to dispose of a lot of garbage pieces quickly. Generally, I stuck them on one or both edges, because you need the middle open in order for more pieces to come out with time to place them.

My game plan involved putting together a sprinkle-proof combo (strike?) as fast as possible. What this means is that you need to focus on your combo, and get rid of unwanted pieces as fast as possible in order to reach the ones that help. If it doesn't fit, shove it out of the way until you get your combo off. After that, clean up the worst of your mess and then start over. I find that the mess usually cleans itself up a bit on its own if you get a combo off. However, you really need to be first with your combo. It has to both be big enough to stop your opponent's combo, and land before theirs does. If it's not big enough, it has a good chance of getting sent back the moment it solidifies.

Your weapon plays a major part in how big your optimum strike needs to be. Some weapons require larger strikes in order to avoid becoming additional ammunition, while other weapons aren't anything special as large strikes, but aren't quite as bad to sprinkle. You want your weapon to suit your style of play. You need to learn the largest combo you can perform consistently and quickly, and pick your weapon accordingly. Naturally, you want to increase the size of this combo over time, but there's nothing wrong with a short-term fix if it doesn't stunt your growth. For example, if you have a strong drop pattern looks something like this:

AAAAAA      AABBAA
BBBBBB  or  AABBAA
CDCDCD      CCDDCC
CDCDCD      CCDDCC

You better drop at least 3 rows with few sprinkles. If you can't manage this, you're better off with something like this, which is good if you aren't sure what you want.

ABCABC
ABCABC
ABCABC
ABCABC

I was a big fan of whiteboards and RPGs. If you want to go to a card-based system, you could do something similar to what we did for Warhammer Quest. Grab an old deck of playing cards or other cards, and put them in protective sleeves. Format your spell descriptions into card-sized areas, print them out, cut them from the paper, and slip them into the sleeve. Multiple spells just means multiple printouts, and the contents are easy enough to swap. You can use different card backings to distinguish between spell levels if you really want. The playing card is there just to supply rigidity and a colorful backing.

They apparently think Zapp strikes out too much. He and Mike Cameron.

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