Self-Referential

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay What’s the minimum requirement for an online community? I’ve been discussing online communities with a couple of people, more so than usual, so wanted to get some of my basic ideas down. I actually run the meetings of the Game Experimentation & Development Group, as much as anyone does, for Stone Paper Scissors, and keep an eye on the server. I wouldn’t say I run this community, but I have been, or am, a member of quite a few, so I’m interested in how they work. ...

Book Review: Ctrl + Alt + Chaos - How Teenage Hackers Hijack The Internet Ctrl+Alt+Chaos I was lucky enough to win a copy of this book from the author when he posted a competition on BlueSky. The very short review of this book is that it’s well written, and an “easy” read that will hold your interest on a complex subject. To go into slightly more detail, meant in the best possible way, I want to emphasise that it’s an easy read. I usually read at night, when I should probably be asleep - but this is well-written, clear, and grabs your attention, so it’s suitable for the beside table or noisy commute; which can’t be said of many non-fiction books. ...

Just a few months this week Prologue More on this later As always, this is an intentionally browseable set of weeknotes regarding things I “beheld” over the previous “week”1. These “weeknotes” support two purposes - recommendations to the handful of people who read it, and also giving me somewhere to look if I’m trying to remember if I watched something or not. My exploration of Hugo Themes2 is still something I need to properly work through, so there will be a Table of Contents around here somewhere, you can use that to navigate to whatever catches your eye. ...

Just a few weeks this week Prologue Image by uwe367 from Pixabay This is an intentionally browseable set of weeknotes regarding things I “beheld” over the previous “week”1. These “weeknotes” support two purposes - recommendations to the handful of people who read it, and also giving me somewhere to look if I’m trying to remember if I watched something or not. Or, well, in the case of the last entry in this post, to give me somewhere to look to see if I wrote up what I watched. ...

Time is a weird soup Prologue Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay This is an intentionally browseable set of weeknotes regarding things I “beheld” over the previous “week”1. So, how to divide up this mass of half-written notes and turn it into something useful to both of us? These “weeknotes” support two purposes - recommendations to the handful of people who read it, on whether they should consider spending their time on a piece of media. And also giving me somewhere to look if I’m trying to remember if I watched something or not. Oh, and to practice getting thoughts out of my own head into other people’s heads in a format that makes sense. So I’ll support that first purpose as best as I can, while resisting the urge to turn this into a long table, marking each piece of media as “yes”, “no”, or “maybe”. But I am going to do that in a slightly longer form. ...

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay Regular readers will have noticed that the theme for this blog has changed. I was using Vitae but the requirements and developer for that have changed, so I thought I’d try something new. I’m now using the Awesome theme - I like the simplicity of it, and the Table of Contents functionality works really well, see this recent post. But tags and categories would be good without me trying to hack something together, and it handles the about pages weirdly. And I don’t need the multi-lingual functionality of course. ...

I’ve written a couple of pieces in another couple of places: On the Milmud blog I wrote up my recent experience of using an online LLM to help me research relevant facts quickly, you can read that here. On LinkedIn I’m running a poll-based game about how an invented organisation should handled a potential cyber security issue, if you’ve got an account on LinkedIn you can participate here. Otherwise my latest episode of weeknotes, covering the last couple of years, are due out any day now…

These are the weeknotes1 on the games I’ve played since I last wrote up my weeknotes…. about sixteen months ago I think. These are highlights of the games I’ve played that either were particularly notable, or are a strong recommendation for or against playing them. I’ve divided up the short reviews and thoughts into fairly arbitrary categories below: And yes, I really should get into the habit of writing up notes as I go along - which I’ve started doing with Chestnut Lodge Wargaming Group games, I’ve included links to games I played there below. ...

A couple of recent comments about games, and being immersed in them, really got me thinking. Firstly - in this comment on LinkedIn, Vikki McCall of the Socialudo social enterprise was commenting on my post about using fictional scenarios for serious games. She said “when the fictional scenarios are driven by research and real lived experience that can add some real impact”. This is absolutely true. I think a benefit of an imagined scenario is that it removes a lot of the baggage people might bring to a game, so players can concentrate on the issues and decisions abstractly, without being caught up in either an historical context, or their own personal experience. ...

A prediction of what will be underwater when the sea rises two metres. Water Water Everywhere I helped run this session as part of the CLWG design conference; CLWG being the Chestnut Lodge Wargaming Group. I believe the organisation is around forty years old, and is much more focused on the design of new games rather than playing existing ones. Well, I say “helped run” the session, I mainly took notes while my co-designer, Terry Martin, asked the questions. ...