Author Archives: bshirley

2021 Top BGG Heavy Games

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BoardGameGeek has been releasing collections of games in different categories leading into the holiday gift-giving season. They have come upon their list of “Heavy Games” – ones that hard-core gamers enjoy. There were five on their list, and I touched each of them.

Steel Whisper's custom paint of a Nemesis Intruder, from BGG https://boardgamegeek.com/image/4464180/nemesis
Intruder from Nemesis

Three of the five are reimplementations of prior games. I think that’s a little sad, but also indicative of the source of the list: polling gamers. But a good meaty game is not that easy to spin out.

  • Nemesis (2018) – As mentioned, this is a veiled implementation of the movie Aliens (1986). I’ve played it twice, and it does a good job of what it sets out to do. You will likely die. In the second play of this I managed to survive on luck and guts and earn a co-win, blowing up the ship with one of the players in hibernation at the end.
  • Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy (2020) – This game reimplements Eclipse (2011), which I have played five times. It’s a massive ships n bits, explore and destroy, epic-length game. I don’t know the details of the update, but I’m sure it delivers a similar experience.
  • Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition (2021) – This game reimplements Clash of Cultures (2012) and includes several expansions and the base game together. I played the original once in 2014 and don’t much remember it. It’s similar to Eclipse in that it’s hex tiles creating a map, development of controlled areas, and exploration and battling of uncontrolled areas.
  • Dominant Species: Marine (2021) – I’ve played the precursor, Dominant Species (2010), to this one three times. I enjoy the theme and the execution, but it’s a quite lengthy game and I have to be in that mood. This game as well as theming it to the underwater realm changes up several of the mechanisms from the original. I haven’t heard from anyone who’s played both (but i’m sure some of the reviewers make the comparison).
  • Hallertau (2020) – I briefly picked this one up at the recent BGG.Con 2021 in the library, but set it back on the shelves. It was hefty and after a quick look, I didn’t think I had time to read and play this new one. I enjoy other Uve Rosenberg designed games, and would prob’ly like this one. Though many of his are so hefty, I don’t care to revisit them often. It’s a hefty worker placement, with enough added on that it should seem a little fresh.

Fast Lounge to Guyville

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I have vaguely heard of Fastball in the background of my brain, but they never came into my consciousness. They are ultimately an Austin band, and you don’t see many of those in Houston. Or maybe I wasn’t looking. Or it wasn’t what I needed at the time.

Anyway,… i acquired the late 90s album Lounge-a-Palooza soon after is was out, and listened to it a lot. Today it still peppers into my listening. (How can you not love Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé singing Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun? #interobang)

I didn’t notice the fact that track 2, This Guy’s In Love With You (Burt Bacharach and Hal David and Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass), was performed by Fastball. As I didn’t notice who most of the artists were, I just enjoyed a great album.

Years later I became enamored of The Small Stars. A lounge performance act in which all the musicians took on different personas. Normally I will notice a vocal commonality, but I missed it here.

I knew that one (or more?) of the musicians was from Fastball. But I didn’t make the connection to the ‘Palooza album. But Miles Zuniga as Guy Fantasy sings quite a bit differently (more raspy burned-out lounge singer) than Miles singing This Guy’s.

Tonight I found myself listening to the ‘Palooza album, and heard Guy, singing This Guy. Really threw me back. I don’t think The Small Stars performed too often; most of their members had other musical gigs. I saw them several times, I always went out of my way to do so. The performances were so, so good.

Seek out their albums The Small Stars (2005) and Tijuana Dreams (2007) and I sometimes still listen to a live recording made in San Antonio in 2005. It’s not the best recording, but it reminds be about the best of their shows: the show.

I would love to see that band perform again. Lacking that, I’ll seek out the musicians in that band and what they’re doing now. I leave you with Guy’s Lament.

The Trouble with Voting, 2018 Midterm Edition

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After spending the past year (post-Harvey) unemployed, I finally landed a new job (and I’m loving it). However, the new job took me to Austin. I started the new job on the first day of early voting: Oct 22.

"I voted" sticker.

2018 Midterm Early Voting

I went to the Harris County Clerk’s Office on Wed Oct 12 to request my ballot-by-mail. After a full week of early voting and not having yet received a ballot, I called and then officially wrote a signed letter delivered via email to the clerks office requesting a second ballot.

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It Burns

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I was…
having an enjoyable evening.
Exploring my new neighborhood,
dining at a new place,
enjoying the food, the drink.

I stopped into a japanese book store:
interesting nick knacks,
a nice pen,
an intriguing book.

I stepped into the japanese market:
looked at the deli items,
the varieties of fish cake,
the baking ware.

Nice baking ware, I thought.
I thought.
Shit!

I left water boiling on my stove.
Did I turn it off?
No, I’m sure I didn’t.

A pot I’m loathe to boil water in.
A nice one. But the only one I brought.
A nice non-stick coating
that stinks when it’s cooked. On high.

It was otherwise a sturdy pot,
so just sat there absorbing
and radiating heat
for the time I was gone.

Now I have the windows open
and a fresh cross breeze.
Cool early evening air.

I’ll have to go back and see
the rest of the supermarket.
I’m in the market for a new pot.

Swift Xcode Asynchronous Testing

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A while back I posted my tweak to some Xcode testing for asynchronous calls. Here’s an update I did in Swift for XCTestCase.

extension XCTestCase {
  /**
   For use testing async functions.
   Will wait for completion of the function.
   You need to provide a test function for when the call is completed.
   The ultimate timeout should be provided for cases of there not
   being a response.
   
   let _ = self.waitUntilReady(completionTest: { () -> Bool in
   return remoteInterface?.isBusy == false
   })
   
   or as a trailing closure:
   
   let _ = self.waitUntilReady() {
   return remoteInterface?.isBusy == false
   }
   
   optionally using your own timeout:
   
   let _ = self.waitUntilReady(timeout: 20) {
   return remoteInterface?.isBusy == false
   }
   
   */
  func waitUntilReady(timeout seconds:TimeInterval = 30, completionTest: () -> Bool) -> TimeInterval {
    let start = Date.timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate
    let loopUntil = Date(timeIntervalSinceNow: seconds)
    
    while completionTest() == false && loopUntil.timeIntervalSinceNow > 0 {
      RunLoop.current.run(mode: .defaultRunLoopMode, before: loopUntil)
    }
    
    let finish = NSDate.timeIntervalSinceReferenceDate
    let runtime = finish - start
    return runtime
  }
}

Mac Black Screen of Death

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After a power outage, my iMac (27″, Late 2012) with macOS Sierra (10.12.2) booted into a black screen with the mouse in the upper left. Notifications seemed to be showing up (as they do on the login screen).

Several leads didn’t pan out. Ones that were basically different kind of resets.

Mark Gibbs tipped me off that it might be a problem with a corrupted /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist file.

Single User Mode

Booting into single user mode (Command-S during boot) drops you into a terminal, which allowed me to look at the file. Not knowing what it’s supposed to look like, it was hard to tell if the (likely digitally stored) file should look like.

bplist00€	


_RetriesUntilHint\GuestEnabled_OptimizerLastRunForSystem\lastUserName]autoLoginUser_OptimizerLastRunForBuild_HiddenUsersList[AccountInfoXlastUser_autoLoginUserScreenLocked^lastLoginPanic	
XbshirleyXbshirley`°Y_conveyor”\MaximumUsersYAllLoginsYOnConsole—Xbshirley—XloggedIn	#AæFt?È`2?[hvë£Ø?‘„ÂÊÎÙ?",68;DGPQZ

The beginning of that file indicates it’s a property list stored in binary form, so it’s hard to interpret in textual form.

The filesystem is read-only when you boot into single user mode, so by default you can’t delete (or preferably move) the file.

Remount Filesystem

The answer to that I found on Stack Overflow. You can use the UNIX mount command to remount the existing filesystem in a writable state.

sudo /sbin/mount -uw /

Rename File

Once that was the case, I rename the file (incase I needed it for something) and then

cd /Library/Preferences
mv com.apple.loginwindow.plist com.apple.loginwindow.plist.XXX

Once that was done, exiting single user mode and rebooting is as simple as

reboot

A few items were reset from my previous login, but otherwise all was well.