fine whine

For the first time since September of last year, Jessica and I played Yahtzee (which a few people know as Yacht, or poker dice*) tonight.

We played six games, and I ended up beating her by a couple hundred points. A couple hundred points isn't really that much in light of how many games we've played (more numbers here), but as long as I'm keeping track I'll take the little victories where I find them.

After all, she got not one but two Yahtzee bonuses. I cannot understand why she gets more Yahtzees (5 of the same number, for the uninitiated) than I do, unless my slightly more conservative playing style is to blame.

That we are under a thousand points apart after 216 games is probably statistically insignificant (seems to be a little over 1% of either of our totals), but I don't recall anything from the classes I've taken and books I've read concerning statistics.

I do, however, remember some more elementary concepts, and was pleased to notice that, for all six games, my 'Chance' score (sum total of all 5 dice, something of a catch-all or gimme) had the same median, mean and mode.

Mean is what everybody knows as the average. Median is merely midway between the highest and lowest, and mode is the most-occurring. The latter two have always struck me as useless, and that's probably why they popped up today.

The 'math' was easy, after all - four of them were 24, and the other two a 23 and a 25. Less interesting, though much more important, was the fact that each time I managed to get the bonus 35 points for rolling enough of each number. That, combined with an uncharacteristic three Yahtzees, is probably what kept all of my scores today above average.

Whatever the case, we had fun. And in the end, that's all that matters, as long as I'm winning.

* Having recently re-discovered the origin of the "dead man's hand" I wondered if there was a corresponding roll in Yahtzee. The fact that the die faces don't directly map to the cards (aces and eights), combined with the fact that nobody has ever died playing Yahtzee (at least I found none in my twelve minutes of research), means that the "dead man's roll" will likely remain a mystery for some time.

I've been playing with POV-Ray again, making 3d models and rendering them. It's the program I used back when I was rendering LEGO models, and I had even used it for a college class to make some very impressive prototype mockups, but I haven't touched it in over a year and thought I was getting rusty. The POV-Ray Scene Description Language isn't exactly difficult, just complicated.

I write it all by hand, of course. Figuring out how to easily turn primitive shapes and solids (cones, spheres, boxes, planes) into interesting objects is just half of the challenge: the other half, of course, being the typing them in without making too many mistakes part. There are programs out there that can do it all visually on screen, all CAD-like and cool, but that's just not my bag, baby.

So what was my project this time? Pac-Man. I wanted to be all authentic, so I tracked down an arcade ROM* and a program to emulate it (thank you XMAME) and then set out in my quest to have a pixel-proportionate copy of the game screen, minus the titular character and ghosts.

Well, for now minus them. They're not exactly so complicated that I couldn't duplicate them with some more simple shapes...

So this is what I have, more or less. The key is turning it into something cool.

* Actually the ROM I ended up using is the original Japanese Puck-Man, but when Namco brought the hallowed game to our shores somebody smart noticed that the name (in big bold letters on the side of the cabinet) could very, very easily be changed to something not quite appropriate for an arcade full of impressionable kids.

Incidentally, I wasn't really ever that big a fan of Pac-Man. I never played it in an arcade. We had it for the Atari 2600 (say what you will about that not being a true port, it was the best we could get) but it was the first, and only, game cartridge that has ever died. Pac-Man has brought me little but trouble all along, I guess. The reason I ended up with Puck-Man was that I was having some minor difficulties with XMAME reading the correct pacman.zip, so I gave up and went with what worked. It's the same game anyway.

I came, I saw, I played some cards and went home.

I'd like to say that I emerged triumphant from the Magic tournament today, but I did not. I lost too many games early on, due to building a bad deck and also from taking too long in one of the matches. I had fun, though, and that's really all that matters.

I've got some twenty to thirty unfinished drafts of posts (from this month, and the last two) and a day off that would be perfect for clearing some of them out, and yet, I accomplish nothing.

Instead, I find myself trying to prepare for a Magic tournament (the card game, not sleight of hand). I haven't played competitively against people I didn't know in quite a few years, but nevertheless I'm looking forward to the opportunity.

Today was another of the whole bunch of days I've been taking off lately because I need to do so. If I were at work I'd be unpacking three cubicles' worth of junk into a cubicle smaller than any single one of them. Woo hoo.

Instead, I'm sleeping in until noon and killing time until it's time to make spaghetti for my wife. Fortunately, I've decided to pick up playing Vice city again.

Frankly, I'd rather be at work. Not because I enjoy working, but because I really don't like picking up the pieces and catching up after my days off.

Today was the annual holiday party for families of the employees of my company, held again at our local Gameworks. The location (and the food selection) was the same as last year, and on the whole I didn't find too much else different. Sure, they moved around some of the games (and replaced several Time crisis cabinets with House of the dead sequels), and this time there was an atrocious cover band, but all in all it was same stuff, different year. They moved it up to lunch and the early afternoon, though.

I played a bit of the same games, sat and finally beat Star wars arcade, but that was the only game I played through completely. Boba Fett may have gotten the better of me but I bested Vader with my lightsaber, darnit. Thankfully I never need to play that game ever again, and likely won't.

It seemed that all the newer installments of the gun game series games used rifles and other larger guns rather than the old pistols, and I must say I am disappointed. It's a lot harder to play Woo-style, two-handed, when each gun is the size of a small Buick.

Of course I can't complain, as everything was free. I again forsook Gauntlet, but having beaten it on the PS2 now I don't really mind the omission. Super monkey ball and Mr. Driller were interesting, if cute, diversions, but I spent no more time on them than I had shooting baskets.

At least those other two games don't make my arm sore. I'd neglected to mention bowling with Jessica yesterday, scoring in the 70s in one game and getting (probably) an all-time high of 129 in the second game with two consecutive strikes and then one other in the last frame. Jessica scored a little lower, but competitvely so in the first game. The second game found my score twice (frames 4 and 9, I believe) being twice hers.

But her arm doesn't hurt, and mine does. So it goes.