Category Archives: All Things Geek

I am a geek. Like really. An uber-geek. Just ask my sister.

You Call That a Board Game?

Games I played in the summer of 2014

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I enjoy board games. Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of an understatement. I love board games. When I’m not playing, I listen to talk shows about board games. I watch video reviews on YouTube. I think about playing games, and I even ponder designing my own board games. Here is a quick rundown of games that I have played in the past few months.

7 Wonders
  • 7 Wonders – This is somewhat of a staple in our house. It offers a lot of decisions but does a good job of streamlining the game play so that you can play, what feels like a pretty complicated game, in about 45 minutes.
Airlines Europe
  • Airlines Europe – In this game you invest in different airlines by expanding their business and by buying stock. The winner is the player who has the most stock in the most successful airlines.
Caverna
  • Caverna: The Cave Farmers – You’re a dwarf family living in a cave. Grow crops, raise livestock, have babies, go on adventures, and expand your cave. So many ways to win. What will you focus on?
Elfenland
  • Elfenland – You’re an elf wandering the land, riding on dragons, unicorns, and even a giant boar. Whoever visits the most cities in four rounds wins.
For Sale
  • For Sale – Super easy to learn, and takes just 15 minutes to play. You purchase homes ranging in opulence from a cardboard box to a space station. You then resell the homes you have purchased. Whoever has the most money at the end wins.
Get Bit!
  • Get Bit! – Another quick and easy-to-learn game. You’re a robot swimming away from a shark. If you get caught, you lose a limb. Lose too many limbs, and you’re lunch.
Hanabi
  • Hanabi – You’re all working together to build an impressive fireworks display. The catch: you hold your cards backwards. You can see everyone else’s cards, but not your own. Pay attention to the hints your cohorts give you so that you can play the correct cards at the proper time.
Lord of the Rings
  • Lord of the Rings: The Board Game – This is also a cooperative game. Work together to get your hobbits to mount doom so that you can destroy the ring. Accomplish quests that follow the story line from the books, but don’t let the eye of Sauron discover you.
Lords of Waterdeep
  • Lords of Waterdeep – Send out your agents to the businesses of Waterdeep, recruiting wizards, clerics, warriors, and thieves to go on quests for you. The player who best utilizes his resources will win.
Love Letter
  • Love Letter – 16 cards. That’s the whole game. Each person has a single card in their hand. On your turn you draw a card and play a card. Try to figure out what card your opponents are holding to win the game.
No Thanks!
  • No Thanks! – As simple as they come. Each turn you’re presented with a card. Do you want to keep it or pass it on to your neighbor? Take too many cards and you’ll lose the game. Plays in just 10 minutes, but it’s a blast every time.
Puerto Rico
  • Puerto Rico – Build your city, start plantations, hire colonists, trade and export goods. You are in charge of the budding economy of the island of Puerto Rico. This game leaves almost nothing to chance. Try to anticipate what your opponents will do while making choices that benefit you.
Puzzle Strike
  • Puzzle Strike – Build your arsenal of fighting techniques (pog-like chips) to crash gems into your opponents’ gem piles. The first player to 10 gems loses. Yeah, it makes no sense at all, but it sure is fun.
Rampage
  • Rampage – You are a monster running amok in the city, throwing vehicles, knocking down buildings, and eating the citizens. Just like the classic arcade game of the same name. So much so, in fact, that the publisher recently had to change the game’s name to Terror in Meeple City, presumably because of a cease and desist.
Seasons
  • Seasons – Big, chunky dice, beautiful (and bizarre)  artwork, and deep strategy. This game has a lot going for it. Use air, water, fire, and earth to create and cast spells. Call in familiars to help out. Convert your resources to crystals to score points. Whoever has the most points at the end wins.
Settlers of Catan
  • Settlers of Catan – Collect the resources wood, clay, stone, sheep, and wheat so that you can build roads, settlements, and cities, so that you can collect more resources so that… the first to 10 points wins. Catan is a classic, and for good reason. Easy to learn, but with plenty of strategy.
Small World
  • Small World – What race will you be today? Will you be pillaging elves? Or alchemist amazons? Or diplomatic giants? How about heroic halflings? Make your pick, and then start conquering regions. There’s just one problem: this world is too small for all of us…
Splendor
  • Splendor – This game is practically the ideal combination of simple concepts, deep strategies, and quick game play. Collect gems to buy cards to get more cards to get points. First to 15 wins. A game takes only about 30 minutes, but I bet you’ll want to play again.
Star Realms
  • Star Realms – Only $15, fits in your pocket, plays in 20 minutes, quick to setup, easy to learn, quick to put away… shall I go on? I love this game. Perfect deck building game for two players.
The Three Little Pigs
  • The Three Little Pigs – It’s a kids’ game and I play it… wait for it… with my kids! Seriously, this is great fun for the under 10 crowd, and still entertaining for the adults who play it with them.
Trains
  • Trains – Is it a board game or a card game? Yes! Collect cards so that you can lay out tracks and build stations on the board. Or should you focus on just the point cards? Or should you try to block your opponents’ tracks? So many ways to play. Not the most beautiful game, but lots of fun anyway.
Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar
  • Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar – Place your workers on the gears, and then give them a spin. Make sure that you pick them up at the right time to get the most points and resources. Don’t forget to feed them! This is probably the most complex game that I own. I don’t get it, but I want to play just one more time. Maybe I’ll figure it out next game!

– danBhentschel

Yes, I Know Komputors!

My home network

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Last week was my birthday. From my eldest son, Timmy, I received a new wireless router! Yay! This upgrade will allow me to improve the wireless network in my home by increasing the bandwidth, increasing the range, and also beefing up the security.

So why didn’t I upgrade sooner? To put it simply, my home network has become so complicated as to make it somewhat scary to make any changes to it. Let me elaborate.

Wireless devices

The following devices have access to and use my home wireless network on a regular basis:

  • 2 cell phones: Marlene’s and mine
  • My laptop (both the Ubuntu and the Windows OS; I dual-boot)
  • Marlene’s chromebook
  • Marlene’s old laptop
  • 4 security cameras
  • 2 Android devices for Timmy and Nora
  • The Wii
  • The XBox 360
  • Marlene’s Kindle
  • The downstairs TV

And then there are various devices that access the wireless network less frequently:

  • My old laptop
  • Nora’s (somewhat dead) Kindle Fire
  • The Android device for our TV
  • Jacob’s Nintendo 2DS
  • Nora’s Nintendo 3DS
  • My Dad’s laptop
  • My sister’s laptop and phone
  • Various devices (phones, tablets, and laptops) that the Skidmores have configured to use our network when they visit us

Not including “guest” devices, I count 21 devices that will need to be reconfigured before I can say “goodbye” to the old wireless network. Have I forgotten anything? That’s the tricky thing with wireless networks. You tend to forget about all the devices that are using it until the network goes away and things stop working properly.

Wired devices

The wired devices aren’t typically as much of a problem. I can find them all. Just follow the patch cables from the cable modem to each device, and keep a list of what I encounter.  However, due to the complex workings of my LAN, my wired devices may actually require more reconfiguration than my wireless ones if the basic structure of my wired network were ever to change. More on that later. For now, here is a list of the devices that make up my wired network.

  • The cable modem (a router in its own right)
  • 5 routers, including the new one I just got for my birthday
  • 2 switches
  • My server with 6 virtual machines running on it
  • The server IPMI controller
  • My main PC with 2 virtual machines running on it
  • Our “home” phone system
  • Marlene’s “Purple” video phone
  • The Roku
  • The Blu-Ray player
  • 2 media player PCs, one for each TV
  • The HD-Homerun (a TV recording device)
  • The upstairs TV
  • The laser printer

That’s 26 devices (including virtual machines) that rely on the current configuration of our wired network. So how do they all talk to each other?

Network structure

network3

A picture is worth a thousand words. This diagram shows how my home network is structured. The green box labeled “Modem” is my cable modem, and is the connection between my entire house and the outside world. As I mentioned before, this modem is actually a wireless router, but I have disabled all the capabilities of the box, and it is now just operating strictly as a modem.

I consider the blue box labeled “Router 1” to be the “brain” of my network. It is the DHCP server for the entire house, and also handles routing all traffic between my LAN and the internet. The other blue “Routers” are all configured to be simple 100 Mb/s switches, and perform no actual logic, though Router 2 is also configured to host my old wireless network until I can switch all my wireless devices over to the new wireless router: the orange box labeled “Router 5”.

The blue lines in the diagram represent 100 Mb/s connections, and the red lines represent 1000 Mb/s connections. The two red “Switch” boxes are both 1000 Mb/s switches. I consider the long red line between the basement and ground floor to be the “backbone” of my LAN. Most devices (other than my server and main computer) access the Internet over this line. This is also the only means of access to the server for most devices on the LAN.

Network functions

So I mentioned that my network harbors enough complexity to make me wary about making configuration changes. What services do all these various devices provide? Here is a list of some of the functions:

  • Host all our media:
    • More than 700 home videos
    • More than 3,500 anime episodes
    • More than 3,000 TV show episodes
    • More than 800 movies
    • More than 30,000 photos
    • More than 10,000 music tracks
  • Host our web site (in fact, this blog is hosted from the server in my basement)
  • Provide instant access to all that media on both TVs
  • Host our family photo album
  • Provide access to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime on both TVs
  • Provide access to all our documents on all PCs in our house
  • Keep a history of all past versions of our documents and files (including all media) so they can be retrieved in the event of an undesired change or deletion
  • Backup all documents and files (including all media) to “the cloud”
  • Filter all internet access from all devices connected through my network to prevent connections to undesirable web sites
  • Host two phone systems, with two separate phone numbers: our main home phone, and Marlene’s video phone
  • Provide access to 4 video surveillance cameras on 2 TVs, and 4 Android devices
  • Record all 4 surveillance cameras 24×7 and provide access to the recorded video on both TVs
  • Synchronize all 4 Android devices with our server so that any pictures taken with any device are instantly and automatically added to our family photo album
  • Record specific broadcast TV shows on a specified schedule and make the recordings available on both TVs
  • Provide me access to the server, main PC, and two media PCs from any computer in the house (or from any computer outside the house via the internet) so that I can perform maintenance when necessary

That’s quite the busy network, with quite an array of custom capabilities. It can be a bit challenging sometimes to keep all that in flight, hence my resistance to making arbitrary changes.

– danBhentschel

 

All Things Dad, All Things Geek

For you, sir, no recharge

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We have a lot of toys. A large portion of these toys utilize batteries for at least part of their operation. A few years ago, I made the decision that we would switch to almost exclusively rechargeable batteries. As of this writing, I estimate that I have about 240 rechargeable AA batteries and 132 rechargeable AAAs in my house. I will share with you some of what I have learned.

The case for rechargeable

Rechargeable batteries have a lot going for them. The most important points are as follows:

  • A consistent, dependable battery supply. We’ve all experienced it before. Beth is one year old, and instead of playing a lively tune, her favorite toy produces a garbled, off-key mess of sound when she pushes the magic button. She’s confused and upset, but you don’t have the right kind of battery available. With the proper strategy in place, which I will go over later, you can easily avoid this situation when using rechargeables.
  • Long-term savings. Rechargeable batteries are much more expensive than traditional alkaline cells. I typically spend about $3.00 per AA battery. In contrast, a typical alkaline AA costs about $0.35 – $0.50, when purchased in bulk. That means that you would need to recharge a battery between 6 – 10 times before you start to see savings from it, assuming that the two options provide the same amount of usage time (capacity).
  • No more leaking batteries. NiMH batteries do not leak. Let me say it again. They don’t leak! In my mind, this is a huge win.

The case for LSD

I did some research on rechargeable batteries. Most rechargeable batteries these days use NiMH (Nickel Metal-Hydride) technology, but there are two different types of NiMH battery: the standard NiMH cells, and a newer technology called “low self-discharge” (LSD) NiMH cells. Until very recently, these newer batteries have been somewhat overlooked for the following reasons:

  • They were more expensive than standard NiMH cells, though this may no longer be the case.
  • They have a lower capacity than standard NiMH cells. The capacity of a battery is measured in milli-amp hours (mAh), and a standard Energizer AA NiMH cell is rated at about 2500 mAh. The LSD cells that I buy are rated at only 2000 mAh.
  • They have been marketed as “pre-charged” batteries. So what? I can buy them and immediately put them into something without needing to charge them first. Is that really much of a benefit?

Then what is the actual benefit of LSD cells? Why am I willing to pay more for a lower-capacity battery? The secret is that LSD batteries hold their charge for a long time. Standard NiMH batteries tend to lose up to 20% of their capacity in the first day after they are removed from the charger even if they are not being used. After the first day, they then continue to lose up to 4% of their charge per day. The result of this leakage is that your 2500 mAh capacity cell could be reduced to only about 1600 mAh after sitting on a shelf for only a week. People who have encountered only the standard NiMH technology come away from the experience with the distinct impression that rechargeable batteries don’t last as long as their alkaline counterparts.

LSD batteries, on the other hand, can retain 70% – 80% of their charge after an entire year of sitting on the shelf. This is why they can be marketed as “pre-charged”. The rate of leakage is significantly lower.

Putting it into practice

Here are some tips that I have come up with for using LSD NiMH cells in a toy-heavy, child-oriented household:

  • Focus on a single brand. After some research, I settled on the Eneloop (Sanyo) brand of batteries. At the time, it was generally considered to be the best at providing consistently high output in demanding applications. It’s possible that the landscape has changed in the last few years, and other brands may be much more competitive. I have used the Sanyo batteries in a very wide range of applications for years now, and I am 100% satisfied with their performance. I have no desire to experiment with other options at this time.
  • Focus on AA and AAA. You can buy very inexpensive C and D spacers that allow you to use AA cells in situations that require C or D cells.
  • Use a slow trickle charger. There are faster (15 minute) chargers available, but they can damage the batteries after a while. Batteries get hot when charged quickly, and  heat damages batteries. I use a BC-700 from La Crosse Technology. Again, I did my homework before selecting this specific model.
  • Use a faster charger for emergencies, and to resurrect “dead” batteries. Some batteries get discharged so much that a trickle charger won’t recognize them. For these cells, I put them into a cheap Energizer charger for about 20 seconds and then my main charger will charge them without a problem.
  • Keep at least 10-20 spare each of AA and AAA. You never know when several toys will need replacement in a single day. Since charging takes a good 10-20 hours with a trickle charger, it’s good to have plenty of stock on-hand.
  • Keep your extra batteries charged and ready to use. When a battery comes out of a toy, it goes right into the charger, or into the “on deck” circle if the charger is already full. When the charger indicates that the batteries in it are fully charged, remove them and put in any other cells that are waiting to be charged.
  • Buy extra batteries in anticipation of large events such as birthdays and Christmas.
  • Be “religious” about your homogeneous battery selection. Use only the rechargeable battery that you have selected, and don’t allow other types or brands to work their way into your fleet. I even go so far as to throw away the batteries in any toy that ships with cells from the factory.

– danBhentschel