ALFRED'S BEST OF THE BLOGOSPHERE

We've got an Amun-Re game together! Excellent! Looking forward to this one...

Today, we have a dedication and an anti-dedication. The dedication goes out to Granny Smith apples, kings queens of the fruit kingdom. The anti-dedication goes out to the interlibrary loan department at Samford University, which kindly photocopied an article I needed...while cutting off the leftmost three letters of every line and the top line or two of every page. Thanks, guys!

On to the links. We're going to have some new ones today...

Best line I read about games this week: "Sorry is a vision of hell, frankly. Who designed this game? Sisyphus? It teaches several valuable lessons, such as the pleasure of revenge and the uselessness of initiative." From James Lileks, on playing games with kids.

The big gameblogging event is The One Hundred, which as of this writing is up to #26, Civilization. There are some great comments over there; providing extensive running commentary is Brian at Tao of Gaming, who takes (legitimate, I think) issue with the methodology. Myself, I'm eagerly awaiting for that moment, when all the games are finally up, for someone to express extreme displeasure that Caylus isn't on the list somewhere.

Matthew Gray, to his credit, has uncorked another web-based tool for us geeks: A Blue Moon Database. It's a little rough at the moment, but I'll be keeping an eye on it. He also breaks down the big Essen games. Mesopotamia, Antike, and...oh, heck...Caylus look like the winners for me. I'll try Beowulf--I like studying the "original" enough to do that--but I'm not persuaded as of yet.

Then again, maybe I'll try Caylus first, too. Three hours? For half the game?

DW Tripp begins his exploration of Gamer Types by profiling Skinny Little Dweebs and Large Blimpy Oafs. He claims there's going to be a follow-up, but I'm not sure what it could possibly contain...ba-dum bum! Speaking as a skinny little dweeb, striving to retard the metamorphosis into a blimpy oaf.

(You never hear the word "dweeb" anymore. It was such a major part of my elementary- and middle-school existence; it's wierd to not be around it anymore.)

The Dice Tower is giving away a copy of Memoir '44 and all the trimmings to the best answer to the question: Is Memoir '44 a simulation? Walt provides an interesting answer. I'm trying to come up with an answer that, contrary to my usual style, is "pithy" rather than "flogging the horse until there is nothing left to hit."

Walt's Look at Battleground is also interesting. I often have trouble getting myself involved in fantasy battles, so I'll probably pass on this until they come out with an ACW edition, but it looks like it could work, as a cheap and decent miniesque game. Which I suppose there's a market for...

According to Naturelich, there's a fan produced map for Ticket to Ride that depicts...um, Europe. I guess that makes sense. I also liked the news that there's a GoogleMaps Risk game out there. Lots of possibilities, indeed.

Interesting discussion over at Gathering of Engineers on growing the hobby, National Games Week, etc. Personally, all I've done for NGW is snag a game bundle off their website. If I do anything, it'll be accidental and I won't be hosting. The next...however many years aren't going to see me too active in organizing anything for games, or doing much active gamer-generation. I say, now.

Yehuda's American Adventure continues. Notably, he became the first person, I think, to walk into The Strand bookstore and not buy anything. I'll have to check out Mirrormask, though...

Neat BGG.con pictures from the Rozmiareks, possibly my favorite being the big ol' dice tower.

It occurred to me, as I started putting this together, that I've never sought out many Go blogs. There's not a particular reason for this, other than that the presence of stronger Go players makes me feel weak and ashamed. I'm pretty lousy. At one point I had lifted myself to where I was merely "bad," but I've since regressed from disuse of my Go faculties. Anyway, the point is that there are some good Go blogs out there; here are the more recently-active ones I've found...

Mr Ooijer's Blog is about a Dutch player who spends much of his time (apparently) in Seoul. The posts aren't all about Go--a fine thing--but most have nice pictures.

It seems popular to use a blog to narrate one's progress up the rating scale. Getting good is a lot of work. Such blogs include Go Shodan Challenge, frankiii, and The Axis of Heaven. A quote from Axis of Heaven: "Wow, now I think I know what it feels like to be an Insei. Ten hours a day of playing and instruction, then going home to stay up until 2 am replaying the day's games and playing new ones. Some of the college-level participants stayed up until 4:30, then fell asleep in class the next day."

For a look into the Malaysian Go scene, check out Falling Stones are Not Heavy. Again, a lot of other stuff, which I like.

My favorite, right now, is probably ChiyoDad Learns Go, with lots of reviews, meditations, MinuteManga, and much else. (And pictures. Lots of pictures.) I'm particularly fond of the "Lesson Plan" caroon. I suppose I suspected that there'd be a lot of Hikaru No Go junk memorabilia, but it's more extensive than I suspected (middle section). Is the world ready for HNG figurines? I sure hope so...

So, these are in the rotation. Next week, I'll see what I can dredge up for Chess blogs. I suppose I have this fear that it's nothing but a wasteland of twenty-move-deep variation analyses and conspiracy theories, but I could be wrong.