Category Archives: Articles

How-To: Screw up Your Sleep Schedule

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People need sleep, but not everyone needs the same amount. The secret is finding out how much sleep you really need, and after following these few simple steps, you’ll find out it’s surprisingly little.

First, isolate yourself from other people; they will only slow you down. If you have a job, quit that job in a spectacular fashion and start making 50K online right now. Now that you’re working from home with no friends, you are the master of your own domain. Name it a pun based on your name, and proceed with the next phase.

Second, using the massive amounts of money you get working from home, purchase all of the soda you can from the nearest store. If you break the shopping carts there you get bonus points. Begin drinking all of this soda as if you were a programmer, only it’s not diet soda, and you don’t need it as a requirement for your job.

Using this technique, start going to sleep an hour later each day while working. If your work doesn’t allow you to work later, pretend you have friends (remember what it is like; it’s surprisingly easy to get caught). And set your alarm for the same time each day. When you don’t get up with your alarm, don’t worry. Just keep repeating the process until you sleep through every alarm, are tired all of the time, and have no sense of what time even is.

Quickly you will find that you have gone to sleep at 7 in the morning, and have no idea what time it is when you wake up because all of the batteries in your house have died. Congratulations, you have done it. Now celebrate with soda.

Lessons From Board Games – Xiangqi and Intimidation

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Xiangqi is a hard game to get to the table, for various reasons. I could really have picked a lot of games here. But the simplicity and abstract character of Chinese Chess allow me to easily make points about what makes it difficult to get people interested in playing games.

Traditional Xiangqi Set

Traditional Xiangqi Set

Theme – While one could say Xiangqi has a war theme, it is fairly clear once one learns about the game that it is essentially theme-less. The theme is conflict in a general sense, and the pieces don’t really behave in ways their names would suggest. This is a problem as the theme of the game both serves to get people excited about playing it, and also to give them a grounding in reality for when they might not understand why certain game mechanisms are the way they are. Essentially the game is more fun after you’ve played it a few times. But why would you play it if it doesn’t seem interesting?

Iconography – To many people icons symbolize complexity. Games like Monopoly have words written on them. And when the game mechanisms require too many words to fit on the pieces and are replaced by pictures, people don’t want to deal with them. And when the icons are things the have to learn, like a foreign language in Xiganqi’s case, they tend to tune out and look for other things to do.

Strategy – Abstract games and European style games have a lot of depth and strategy, and while hardcore gamers (of both the video and board varieties) relish strategy, regular people tend to know when experienced people will beat them, and don’t want to commit the time to learning something complex that they will lose all of the time at and feel bad afterwards. Glancing at Xiangqi will make it seem simple, but really looking at it will reveal complexities people just don’t want to deal with.

Time Investment – Chess has a reputation for being a long game (an undeserved one in my opinion), and Chinese Chess comes with this baggage as well. People don’t want to commit much time to something new, especially if it has the previously mentioned problems.

Player Count – People don’t like things that require very specific numbers of people because they want to be inclusive and to socialize. Two player games are hard to play for this reason, but so would be games that only play five, or only play eight.

Really, Xiangqi is just a bad game to try to get people to play. If they already like chess and want to learn new things, teaching them might be fun, but playing with people who already know the game is best, either from their heritage, or from discovering it online. People need to be eased into games, especially abstract games. That’s why “gateway” games like Ticket to Ride, Love Letter, and Catan are so popular. People need to be introduced to games that you as the gamer might not like as much but can still enjoy. Starter abstracts like Gobblet and Blokus should be used before introducing some one to Chess and Xiangqi. It’s important that people know they like games before letting these ones intimidate them. And more people gaming means more fun for you.

Lessons From Board Games – Love Letter and Letting Go

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Love Letter is a giant of a game, quite disproportionately to its components. I carry a copy around in my backpack every day with a deck of cards. It is that universally appealing and easy to teach. Its popularity is a testament to how many other people feel the same. The game has reached such a wide audience and is such a runaway hit that I’d be surprised if we didn’t have it in print for years to come.

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But still, the game is pretty luck based, even though it might seem like it’s not, with its layer of theme and modern game design. But that can really be attributed to the fact that it’s a modern game. It’s designed in such a way that it makes you feel like you’re much more in control than you are. In the end you’re just at the whim of the deck and it’s quite possible to draw a hand with which it is impossible to win.

But that doesn’t make the game not fun, just light. People have enjoyed games in which there is only luck and no strategy for centuries, and this game does have elements of strategy and theme, which make it more fun to play. But neither of these are at their most prevalent. With Love Letter one just has to let go of the idea that they can control the outcome of the game by having the absolute best strategy and outplaying the other players (which still isn’t possible in most games) and also the idea of having a theme that is so immersive that one can’t separate it from the mechanics (A Princess and Batman being the themes of versions of Love Letter make that point).

It’s a great game, and a lot (a Lot) of people really enjoy it. It has a balance of theme, strategy and luck that draws a lot of people to it and keep them coming back for games (and its length helps with that). But one does have to let go of some strategic and thematic preferences to embrace the luck and enjoy it at times.

More Suits in Playing Cards

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I have a large playing card collection; I love decks of cards. I’m not entirely sure why I like them so much, but I do. And I’ve ended up with hundreds upon hundreds of decks of cards via my collecting. It was only a matter of time before I came upon one of the many more unique decks of cards out there.

Most of us know the classic French deck as the one we use all of the time, with four suits that don’t make a whole lot of sense, 13 cards per suit, and two jokers (that are in no way related to the fool from Tarot). This deck is accepted by many in the United States and abroad as the standard deck. And it is so popular that it is easily the standard of the world. But variations are fun, and while the suits and number of cards in each suit change over several European countries (Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain all have different styles), for some people that isn’t enough.

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Some people question why we only have four suits with games like bridge, which can handle more suits (so I’m told, I can’t actually play bridge, but I think we’ve all played a game where suit doesn’t really matter). One of the earliest (and one of the only) decks that I found that realized this was the vintage Sextet Bridge deck that I picked up from a garage sale. The new suits of wheels (ship wheels) and racquets (as in tennis), while interesting, are only that. The design of the pips are far too complicated and modern to really fit the motif of a deck of cards, but are still fun nonetheless.

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After seeing these, I became fascinated by decks that added more suits to the standards bunch. The most common of these are the Star-Deck and various other decks that include stars as a fifth suit, like the game Five Crowns. The star works as an addition, but it’s a bit bland, and including it smudges the overall design appearance that is so refined, in my opinion.

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While five suited decks were fun, and so were decks with non-traditional suits, I wanted more. How many suits could one fit in a deck and still have it be useful? I started looking at other six-suited decks. The Blue Sea deck, which is available from print on demand services, does this, but again I think the new suits don’t quite fit the older deck. The Empire deck of cards with anchors and crowns makes a really good and nicely fitting deck, but I think better could be done. And that’s when I found a blog post from a graphic designer (New Link) online about this very topic in which he presented his own two new suits designed specifically to blend in with the existing decks (the symbol for every suit can be made with fewer than 7 lines). These two new suits are wonderful and I believe they are the best-designed additions to a normal deck of cards that exist. I just wish there was a deck using them (Edit: It appears there is now a deck featuring these cards).

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But I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted more suits, not for any reason, really (some people want to play Cripple Mr. Onion). I just wanted to see if companies could consistently design a counterpart, or set of counterparts, to the modern French deck. The answer to that for me was unfortunately no. While the Fat Pack playing cards, and 8 Suit playing cards are far from terrible (the green Eagle as a fifth suit was terrible*) they do fail at being what I wanted, which is a simple and consistent addition to the French suits. The makers of these decks read more into the patterns of what the shapes represent rather than the patterns of the shapes themselves. Still, I was going to obtain several decks and play with them (in what game? Well I’d have to invent one, or play Cripple Mr. Onion).

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I never did end up buying either of those decks, and after getting back into collecting strange decks after buying them some odd ones at Garage Sales and thrift stores (including Five Crowns) I went on the same journey of finding photos of each of the differently suited decks I’ve talked about. I was less satisfied this time than I was originally, and decided that I would make my own. I’m far from the greatest designer in the world, but I stuck with several of the principles that were used in the creation of the six-suited cards, and several of my own, like the simple line numbers. I decided that adding new red and black cards seemed like it would be problematic so I decided the cards would be in two new differently colored pairs (then each one would be individually colored, which was prompted by me looking at 4-colored, 4-suited decks).

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Right to Left Top to Bottom: Spades, Hearts, Wheels, Towers, Diamonds, Clovers (Clubs), Globes, and Sheilds

 

What I came up with was this Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, Clovers, Wheels, Shields, Globes, and Towers. Each is paired off the by similarity in the bottom half, hearts and diamonds being pointy, shields and wheels being round etc. I made these cards into a 104-card deck (with the other alteration of using a P for Prince/Princess instead of a J for Jack) and had them printed at a print-on-demand service. While they aren’t amazing, I think with refinement and a better quality printing they will turn out great.

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I’ve created several games to play with them, and if they are a hit with my friends (we generally play more complex games at game-night so maybe this could spice cards up enough to get it back into the front for a while) I will hopefully make more. And I don’t think that I’m finished even with the concept of my new suits. I’m sure they will change, as they need to change, and as playing cards changed when they needed to change over centuries of use.

*

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Using a Pocket Knife

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“Using a Pocket Knife.” I wrote that title a few months ago on a list of things to write at some point. I’ve added a lot and crossed a lot off of that list since then, and I still don’t remember what I was going to write about. Obliviously, the world doesn’t need an online written tutorial on how to use a knife (that would be sad) but I can come up with something.

So I’ll be the first to say (well, maybe not the ‘first”, some people speak real fast) that knives aren’t as relevant in the lives of regular people as they once were. And I really don’t have too much of a need to carry one around. I still do, though, and while I don’t use it every day all of the time, when I do use it I am glad I have it.

I know that most of the tasks I use a knife for could be replaced with the scissors, utility knife, and letter opener I already have. But it is very handy to just have a dedicated thing I can use for all of my opening and tearing down needs. I see quite a few unboxing videos on the internet (because that’s a great content source and it should be exploited more) and most of the people in those use a kitchen knife or something to open a box, which it has never occurred to me ever to do. I did grow up with a dedicated folding knife in a drawer for small tasks and scissors right nearby to cut tape.

But while in general my cutting tasks could be done slightly less conveniently with things everyone already has around, sometimes there are scenarios that pop up where using a knife is the best way at that time. How am I going to cut this string? How can I get this bead out of that crevice? How am I going to cut this hose? How am I going to strip this wire? etc. And it’s super convenient and sometimes the only possible way to do things where I am.

I get that this isn’t as applicable to everyone, and some people use their knives more (like for food preparation, which is another thing I would never have considered: using a pocket or “carry” knife for food) or less (like not at all) often than me. But I think that at some point everyone has a use for a pocket knife or something similar. And it’s probably worth everyone having a Victorinox Secretary, Pocket Pal, or Classic, or something like that around. Knives are useful, for some people more than others, but still useful, and worth having around even in this day and age.