10 hours left to vote Toronto onto the new Monopoly board!

Last day to vote Toronto onto the new Monopoly board! Last I heard, Toronto had slid to 21st place. :-( To build suspense, the Monopoly people have taken the leaderboard offline, so it's tough to tell whether Toronto's going to make it or not; it needs to be in the top 20.

If Urban Tapestry didn't have tons of FKO stuff to prep for already, I would have loved to write a "Vote Toronto" song. However, in addition to covering some new songs for our concert as well as reviving a few much older songs (it's our 15th anniversary as a group this year, after all!), we'll also be performing two brand-new songs in concert which...er...I haven't finished writing yet.

Allison and Jodi are VERY patient music partners. :-)

Anyway, if you haven't voted today, please do consider casting a vote for Toronto. You can find instructions here. You can still vote for your own city as well but please do vote for Toronto as well.

Or if you don't need instructions, just go directly to the voting page.

Just over 10 hours left to vote, according to the page right now, so I assume this means voting at 6 pm EST tonight.

I got a Facebook message from someone at CBC asking if I'd be willing to be interviewed for tonight's edition of CBC News at Six; I'm assuming she sent it to everyone on the Facebook group devoted to the effort -- though if everyone in that group decides to call her, she's going to be spending a LOT of time on the phone. I gave her my friend Craig's contact info in case she didn't have it already, since he's the one who told me about it in the first place, and has also motivated many other Torontonians.

From a marketing/PR move, I have to applaud Parker Brothers for their ingenuity. Monopoly is generally regarded as a family standard but I suspect many families already have it...this popularity contest to get one's own city onto the new board is free advertising for the game when it comes out.

There's a certain risk, of course; if a city doesn't make it onto the board then they'd probably be less inclined to buy a copy of the new game...but then again many people wouldn't even have considered it before this popularity contest anyway.

Anyway, I'm crossing my fingers....






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Managing E-mail and Blog Reading Time: How Do YOU Do It?

Wireless broadband access has made reaching the Internet so much easier but one of the problems, I'm finding, is that it makes reaching the Internet so much easier.

Yesterday I tried an experiment. Twice through the day, I purposely went without e-mail or blog-checking for two hours at a time. That may not seem like much to you, but I've been getting into the bad habit of checking e-mail frequently throughout the day, or taking a break "just to catch up" with blogs. With writing-related blogs, it's easy to convince myself it's work-related.

Anyway, I did make it through the two-hour stints twice, but it was way more difficult than I expected. I was horrified, in fact, to find that e-mail checking has become part of my muscle memory - I do it without thinking; it's almost become as natural a habit as eating and breathing.

I set a timer on my computer to keep myself honest. Anyway, the results were enlightening:

1. I was twice as productive (in terms of my daily wordcount, but that wasn't as surprising as #2)

2. How ingrained my email/blog-checking habits had become.

I'm going to continue doing the "two hours at a time" experiment. Maybe I'll be brave enough sometime to go to THREE hours, but first I have to retrain my muscle memory and also retrain my work contacts to accept the fact that I'm NOT in constant e-mail contact all the time. If anything urgent comes up, they can always pick up the phone.

What about the rest of you, especially those who work at home? How do you control your e-mail and blog reading time?



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More board games...and Star Wars according to a 3-year-old

Thanks to everyone who answered my board game survey. You've gotten me curious about wanting to try out some new board games. Also interesting to see the wide range of game types.



Above: Jeff's gaming buddies.

For you board/card game people, here's a more specific survey question: What TYPE of games do you tend to prefer? I like games where winning depends more on your own striving toward a particular positive goal (connecting all your assigned cities with train tracks, or getting the most cards or points, etc.) rather than betraying and destroying your opponents.

Not that I can't enjoy the latter, of course, but I admit I lean more toward more cooperative or at least peaceful games. Unless I'm feeling restless or crabby, that is, in which case all the betrayal and destruction can be enormously satisfying.

I also tend to like games that require some kind of strategy and skill rather than pure luck, and games that rely on a board or cards rather than freeform talking. I hate "social party" icebreaker-type games like Truth or Dare, First Impressions, Icebreaker, etc. I like games which are absorbing, which require focus.



Speaking of board games, only two days left to vote your favourite city (Toronto, of course :-) onto the new Monopoly board! See my Blathering on the topic



Above: Erin and Rand watch Walter, Jeff and Rafael play Geschenkt at GAfilk.

I may be attending the BoardGameGeek convention in Texas with Jeff this year. It sounds a LOT like filk conventions except, of course, it's all game-focused.

Even though I don't tend to join Jeff at his weekly gaming sessions, I actually do like playing board games -- I'm just not a night person. I figure that this way I could play games during the day and crash in the hotel room when I get tired at night while Jeff plays games into the wee hours.

Plus it's a couple trip, sort of! Sure, we'll be spending most of our time playing games with other people, but at least we'll be in the same hotel. :-) I'm also hoping to see my friends Scott and Amanda during the weekend.



Above: Gaming at Tom's and Michelle's place. Jeff, Tom, Bruce, Reid and John. I'm actually playing as well (between Tom and Bruce, far corner), since it's during the daytime. :-)

Unfortunately it doesn't look as if I'm going to be able to attend the SCBWI conference in California this August (mainly scheduling challenges), but I plan to go next year.

Videos O' The Day

Thanks to Ray for pointing me to Jonathan Coulton performs "Still Alive" in Rock Band:


Jonathan Coulton performs "Still Alive" in Rock Band from Joy Stiq on Vimeo.

Thanks to Ray for the link above.

Thanks to Jeff for Trunk Monkey Ads:



And thanks to Jeff again for Star Wars according to a 3-year-old:






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B5, Bedlam Bards and a Board Game Survey

Had a great time at the house filk yesterday. Thanks so much to Sally for hosting this fun event! We also found out that the Bedlam Bards are going to be performing at FilKONtario. The Bards are a Celtic duo who sing (among other types of music) songs based on Firefly and Serenity.

Urban Tapestry recently learned a Bedlam Bards Song (a Firefly song brought to us by Allison), and I'm looking forward to hearing the Bards perform.



I've updated Babylon Five Virgin with two episode reports, for those interested. And thanks to our friend Scott Murray for lending us his boxed sets!

Some random photos...



Above: Jeff and I have been playing Trans Europa with my family lately; I first played at Reid's and Luisa's New Year's party with Walter and his family. Fun game, easy rules, short.

Another game I've been enjoying: Werewolf. Each player draws a card to discover their role: Werewolf, Villager, or Seer (a special Villager). Each night, the Werewolf or Werewolves kill a Villager. Each day, the Villagers vote on the player they suspect is a Werewolf, and the voted player is out of the game. It's a great game to play by candlelight. :-)



Speaking of games, my friend Mabuta introduced me to a Japanese computer game that seems a LOT like Guitar Hero, except you use a stylus to tap different places on the computer screen in time with the music. Meanwhile, there are lots of entertaining animations going on in the top screen, but unfortunately I couldn't understand any of the kanji. :-)

SURVEY:

What's the last BOARD GAME you played?

What's the last COMPUTER GAME you played?



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Seven Things

Jeff Bohnhoff tagged me for the "7 Obscure/Surprising Facts" meme. I don't usually do memes, but JeffB rarely posts and I found his "7 Facts" so interesting that I felt compelled to answer. Instead of tagging people, I'll throw it open to anyone who wants to answer in their own blog or my comment section; if you post in your own blog, please do include a link so I can read it.

Seven Obscure or Possibly Surprising Facts About Me

I've been blogging since early 1997, so if I haven't blogged about something, then it was probably too personal to blog about and I'm not about to start now. However, I'll bet there are very, very few people who have read every single one of my Blatherings, so I thought it would be ok to reference some old ones here.

1. I used to have a Sea Monkey (tm) named Sigmund (May 30/97). I also had a hermit crab named Martha. Surprisingly, I found the Sea Monkey (tm) way more interesting. It took two weeks for me to notice that Martha was dead.

2. I have a Geeky School Photo gallery online. I'd forgotten completely about this page until someone just recently e-mailed me about it; he had found it through Google. I'll probably be deleting this page in the next few weeks, so you should check it soon if you're interested. You may even recognize a name or two.

3. One of my first computers was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III; it was a family computer. We briefly had a Model I until our Model III was ready. SOOO exciting! My brother and I used to spend hours typing in BASIC code from a computer games magazine; we'd take turns: one person would read, the other would type. After we typed in the whole program, we'd try running it. If it didn't run, it meant that one of us had mistyped at least one character. Debugging was a MAJOR pain -- we'd have to read through the entire thing again. We saved our programs on cassette tape. Yeah, I know, I'm OLD!

4. I've had the "magazine/newsletter editor" bug in me for as long as I can remember. I put together Family Weekly (cover sample at top of this page) for many years; I think I started when I was around 12 or so - my editorial staff consisted of Ruth (10 at the time) and Jim (8). My very first regular comic strip was called Boppy, about a weird little baby. I drew it for Family Weekly.

5. I wrote my first "novel" when I was nine years old. I can't remember if it was for a school assignment, or if I did it just for fun and submitted it to my teacher. I remember being SO proud of the fact that it had chapters. Here's the first page:



I'm not sure why my teacher praised my use of "instantly." Though I suppose she said "good word" and NOT "good use," didn't she? :-) I used to be a bit of a word freak. When I found a word I thought was really cool, I wanted to use it in my writing right away.

6. I used to play the piano for a youth group in a Baptist Church that learned contemporary Christian musicals and would then tour around to different churches to perform them.

7. I used to collect souvenir spoons as a kid. I still have the collection and really should throw them out (they're VERY tacky-looking and all rusted) but I can't bring myself to do it because they're associated with such wonderful family memories. I also used to collect autographs. Here are some of them:

From top to bottom: Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Bill Gaines (editor of MAD magazine), Robert Heinlein.

8. (bonus, heh) I graduated from the University of Toronto with two majors: one in Computer Science, the other in Psychology - and a minor in Climatology. Yes, I said Climatology. I got interested in the subject after working one summer at Environment Canada, creating weather summary reports for clients using JCL.

I honestly can't remember how many of the above I've mentioned in Blatherings before. Anyway, JeffB also tagged one of my music partners, Jodi, and she's (*gasp) actually been posting in her blog recently as a result, much to the shock of her friends.

Had a great Urban Tapestry practice with Allison and Jodi last night. I'm looking forward to attending a local housefilk tomorrow.

Video O' The Day

Thanks to my pal Ray Vankleef for pointing me to the following video, which was a great way to start the morning. In Instant Messenger, Comedian Nick Thune talks about childhood romance, but from a Internet geek perspective.