For reasons, I would like everyone to know that the German word “Bulette” translates to meatball or hamburger.
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Is that literally “little beef” or something similar?
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Now that you’re asking… I don’t really think so. -ette as an ending is usually indicative that we stole the word from French and boule might just be a ball… → meatball. Because Bulette is more roundish not as flat as a hamburger. The other German word for it is Frikadelle. Depending on where you live, you use one or the other.
Duden | Bulette | Rechtschreibung, Bedeutung, Definition, Herkunft → says I am right about it being derived from French.
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Related fun fact, some early D&D monsters (including the bulette) are based on little plastic monster toys.
(From the D&D “Art & Arcana” book.)
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I did a mistake. I just put games in boxes without checking them off a master list so I have no idea if that is 20% of my collection or less … certainly not more. We drove it over to the house and stacked them in my dad’s office.
Can you see the one that is peeking through that hole?
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A question for the optical types among us…
I’ve recently listened to a radio drama in which the McGuffin is a pair of spectacles; the person who set it all up encoded the secret information in their prescription. And I’m wondering how much information you could actually recover from such a setup.
I’ve been to opticians and taken my old glasses for them to measure, so I assume you could get spherical and cylindrical correction values at the very least. But with what sort of accuracy, and over what range? Nobody actually needs to wear the spectacles so I assume the whole normal range would be usable, and there’s no need to make one eye at all similar to the other.
(If it helps, the original was broadcast in 1947.)
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So, in theory you could measure both the sphere and cyl to about +/-30.00 in 0.25 steps (which gives you 240 steps for sphere and 120 for cyl) which could be measured accurately. You’ve then got 180 degrees for axis which could be measured accurately with lots of combinations.
Varifocals have etchings on the lenses which are invisible unless you look for them.
There’s a lot of stuff written on the inside of the frame as well (brand, model, size etc).
Does that help?
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Lovely, thanks! Even before the axis that’s 28,800, and something like a one-degree resolution ought to be plenty for encoding a lat or long close enough to say “dig here”. Unexpectedly more plausible than this writer usually is! (Paul Temple and the Sullivan Mystery, if anyone’s interested.)
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Cylindrical correction is typically done in 10 degree increments, because of accuracy in how they’re worn.
There’s also prisim correction, which is also specified in diopters, and four directions (up, down, left, and right)
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I was talking to the office person of our tile layer (craftsperson not games, people!) the other day while she was taking some measures at the house and she saw my boardgame collection and was quite impressed. Then she griped that nobody wanted to play games with her. We chatted a bit and I asked if she knew Carcassonne. Which she didn‘t.
Then she said she liked to play „Stadt Land Fluss“ (you have various—mostly geographical—categories, someone says a letter and you have to write places starting with that letter to get points, classic game here and probably everywhere).
So I thought, if she still likes that at almost retirement age, she probably likes Kniffel (Yatzee) as well and go „You should try Ganz schön Clever“ and she says „Oh I know that one“
Gave me a small happy to have guessed at something she would know. Sadly, we were then interrupted and so I had to let her leave without a recommendation for something new 
I would probably have pointed her at Cascadia.
Or I might actually have told her about Dorfromantik, because my friends who always buy every SdJ have finished the campaign „for the first time“ and quite enjoyed it. They played all 16 games during their vacation 
Because now they only have Terra Mystica and Ares Expedition for „big games“ with them, they went out to buy new games and the selection was very disappointing. Guess they are stuck with just 2 games (and a bunch of fillers) for the rest of their vacation. Oo. To have nerd-friends.
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I hate buying lamps, they are either expensive or awful mostly both
We just need 2 lamps to light the upstairs hallway. I know whatever I put there will remain for at least 10 years.
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Hours of sorting materials on Sunday. Last night it took me 2 hours to setup the first tutorial mission for Voidfall. Posting here because I stopped short of actually playing the game. It was too late by then and my brain was fried … the explanations aren’t bad it is just SO MUCH STUFF.
My favorite component is the dual layered player board that you can slot various “houses” into between the layers… that is a really neat idea.
Also the usability of the orange thingies around the population dice is far better than I anticipated. They have a square base that fits into the dice slots nicely.
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Myself and my partner suckled from the old C-dog (as the kids say) somewhere on the way home from Portugal. She’s a little brighter but I’m still feeling like… hmm, what’s the best metaphor? Like a human that has become an unwilling host to marked viral replication with a consequent systemic inflammatory response. There’s not really much else that feels like that but I suppose a close approximation would be a large sack of shitty biscuits.
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There are like 3 people with copies arriving that all want to get the game played on Sunday. I’m hoping to avoid getting dragged into a very long introductory session…
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Then you probably better wait it out
The start is … … slow. I will post updates when I have learned it.
I personally feel I should not subject others to my learning process unless we specifically meet to learn a game together. If I bring a new game, it is my responsibility to be able to teach it. That doesn’t mean a teach is going to be quick… I just can’t teach Ark Nova in less than 40 minutes. But I should know the game well enough to not be reading the rulebook constantly.
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Slight brag.
JC Bouvier, designer of the Rallyman series, invited me on BGA to join a tournament of his new game, Ticket Gagnant. (It’s quite like the Tempo-Downforce metasystem; you have a hand of cards that will move various racers, bet on the winner, and then run the race.)
In said tournament, I came up against him (the third time I’ve ever played the game), and beat him.
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Help!
There’s an episode of an anthology series where an Amazon like company just delivers stuff to a village. Not everything is how it seems in then village though. Anyone know it?
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I thought it must have been a Black Mirror episode but roughly scanning the list of episodes I have seen didn’t turn up one. I was thinking Doctor Who but chatGPT said there isn’t an episode that fits the description however it suggested Electric Dreams and there is an episode called “Autofac” that I think I have seen that might fit your description. → Electric Dreams (2017 TV series) - Wikipedia
edit: lol I input your whole description as prompt and suggests Black Mirror just not an episode but the special: White Christmas. Check that one. (But the description on Wikipedia sounds wrong)
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I also tried that and got a completely different episode of Black Mirror that doesn’t match the description (Nosedive)
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Yes!
More letters
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