Monthly Archives: July 2005

Nomic is Fun!

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I spent a good chunk of Saturday playing B Nomic, which I’ve been involved with since about the start of the year. For those who haven’t heard me rant and rave about the wonders of Nomics, they’re a type of game, where the gameplay centers around changing how the game is played. You can propose just about any change to the game, which can make for interesting contradictions where you want to vote for a change that you don’t want, or sometimes the game just completely crashes. Usually though, it’s just a fun Internet community where you keep on changing what it is that you’re trying to do.

Some of my major accomplishments on Saturday were proposing transactional support and proposing turning voting into a math equation.

I know that not many people besides me really care, but I’m excited about the game. I like messing with the rules of systems. And if it sounds somewhat interesting to you, too, you should check it (or another Nomic) out and join in the fun!

House Building Update (and more pictures)

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The doors and cabinets have arrived, although they’re not installed yet. Also, the heating registers are installed in most (maybe even all) of the rooms. I have some pictures. I especially like the box that quite clearly has its “This side up” arrows pointing down. (No, the camera was not upside-down, nor was the image rotated.)

The thing that’ll take forever is the telephone poles so that we can get power and data. We may end up having a completed house just sitting there for a few weeks without power (and thus, without an occupancy permit). The person who owns the land across the private road from us said that they would sign an easement to let Verizon and Mass. Electric put up poles on the road, but they apparently haven’t done so after about two weeks. So, we’re probably going to just put a pole on the corner of my parents’ yard near the paved road, and have wiring go underground from there all the way to the house (instead of just from a pole-on-the-private-road to the house). This method will cost a bit more, but then we don’t have to worry about anything since it’s all on our lands. (The person who owns the land across the private road is making a rather dumb decision by not getting that in quickly, since having the utilities put poles on the road would likely increase his property value significantly.)

We’re also currently planning on having data wiring go underground between my parents’ house and ours, so that we can network with each other and share an Internet pipe.

Poor Code, Poor User Interfaces

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Over the past 5 years or so, I’ve amassed at Checkerboard a collection of screenshots called the “Error Hall of Fame”. (Well, I can’t take credit for everything in there, but I think that the majority of contributions are mine.) They include errors like “An error occurred”, “An attempt was made to remember a device that had previously been remembered”, and many other goodies that I can’t remember off the top of my head. I ought to post some of them online for the rest of the world at some point.

However, other people have their own collections of things that are just plain broken. One that I read occasionally features some very Broken Code. I know I’ve seen other horrible-interfaces and horrible-error-messages sites out on the web somewhere at some point, but I can’t seem to find any at the moment. Does anyone else know of any offhand?

Life Update

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Last night, I tried to run a Magic NAC Qualifier, but we only had 5 people. (The minimum for running a sanctioned tournament is 8). That was rather disappointing, especially since we managed to have 11 last time. So, we had an informal unsanctioned booster draft instead. Jessi came in first place and I came in last place.

They were supposed to finish plastering our house today, although I haven’t actually inspected it to ensure that they did. I think the critical path is just waiting on the phone company to put in poles for us. Hopefully, we’ll be in the house within a few weeks.

I was disappointed that Discovery didn’t launch today. I don’t know why I’m particularly excited about it, but I was tracking its progress today until they called off the launch.

I can’t think of much else worth noting.

Reader Satisfaction Survey

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I’m interested in knowing what, if anything, people read from my journal. So, if you have a minute, please comment on each of the following topics and whether I should include more about them, less about them, or keep on doing what I’m doing with them. This may be related to how much you want to read about them. Feel free to elaborate and/or add additional topics and comments. I may use this feedback to change my posting habits, or maybe I’ll completely ignore it. I’m not sure yet.