Category: Games

Yes, More Gamebooks

January 15, 2011

Today was a mix of used bookstores, Japanese stores and bootleg Korean DVD shops. It was also swelteringly hot and humid, and by mid afternoon both Adam and I had “a touch of the sun”. This led to zombification in his apartment around 3 pm 🙂

Here’s some graffiti spotted in Chippendale:

It’s a wall on which stencils were permitted to be used by permission of the owner (Bernard, this is not too far from where you used to work). Look closely at some of the remarkable stencil graffiti on display. My favourite was this guy:

But I liked this goat as well:

Here’s another mural on a wall, in Newtown:

That’s from Burst Angel, if memory serves correct.

My last photo for the day was a busker seen near the Queen Victoria Building. A must unusual busker:

Yep, speed chess busking 🙂

Long Walk

January 13, 2011

Finally I walked the entire Fernleigh track from Adamstown to Jewells! It was long and hot but I managed to finish the ~20 km trip (including from my parents place to the start of the track) in a little over 3 hours.

A couple of notables I saw on the trip:

This walk, which diverts from the track just beyond Burwood Road near Kahibah, leads all the way to Sydney! Although I love walking, I’m not one for multi-day hikes. That said, I’d love to walk to Sydney from Newcastle!

If you’re looking for spiders, walk Fernleigh. I must have seen about eight-hundred zillion this morning and this guy is a nice example. He’s a Saint Andrew’s Cross spider, and measured about 6 cm in length. I saw some spectacularly big webs this morning as well, spanning the entire width of the path (ie. meters). I can only imagine the size of the orb weavers who created them (in one night!)

This was an ironic find. Many, many years ago I was walking (with a few friends of mine) on the old rail line that has now been turned into the Fernleigh Track. We came across a tiny old shack that contained a single chair and a wooden box. In the box was a collection of very old – but well preserved – magazines (I can remember some Playboys, Family Circles and some train magazines) and some unopened – and also very old – tinned vegetables. It was a bit creepy because we wondered who put it there and why, and also how long it had been there, presumably forgotten. So we just put it all back and left.

Cut forward ~20 years and imagine my surprise when I found the shack again on the track about five minutes north of Whitebridge! As you can see it was very overgrown, so I didn’t explore. But it certainly brought back memories of that strange find many years ago.

Dad was to meet me in Redhead for the final leg of the walk to Jewells. I got there early though so strolled down to the beach. It was very, VERY hot (easily over 30, with no breeze) and I couldn’t believe the amount of people out sunbathing. It was all I could do to stand out in the sun just to take a few photos.

Also near Redhead I found this on the track:

Oh the memories! That’s a used firework, probably brought home illegally by someone who holidayed in another state. I could (and one day, will) do an entire entry on the fun Bernard and I had with fireworks in our youths. Before they were banned in our state 🙂

I had seen and heard countless birds along the way, including kookaburra, cockatoos, whip-birds and bellbirds (common between Whitebridge and Redhead) but down in the north Belmont wetlands dad and I were treated to a fine performance of bellbird song:

After we finished the track we bussed to Charlestown for some lunch and quick shopping. Both of us were pretty tired by now, so I debated the madness of getting off the bus home on Beaumont Street for one last look at the used bookstores. How fortuitous I did though, for I was able to get two more gamebooks I didn’t have, that were – the attendant told me – just sold to the store yesterday!

Two last shots:

Pretty mannequins! Why do I always take photos of mannequins? In this case I like how they are all different…

Yesterday I bought my parents Scrabble. The new version includes an incredibly complete rulebook, that contains advanced rules (“Don’t think about using the X unless you can make at least 30 points…”) and a dictionary of all legal 2-letter words. Fun stuff, but this next shot shows what can happen to a game when such a dictionary is available:

Tomorrow I shall bid my parents goodbye and take an early train to Sydney. I’ll have 2.5 days left to amuse myself. Hopefully I shall make them productive!

Solo Tastes Better Than Lift

January 10, 2011

My big walk was delayed by the threat of rain, which turned out to be a good thing since we ended up tweaking the plan a bit (which you will find out Thursday).

At any rate, today I went and hit three other used bookstores in search of the elusive gamebooks. Details at the end of this post.

There’s my lunch. I’m starting to realize how weird it is I always eat at the most marketed fast food joints. Why don’t I stop in one of the uncountably numerous cafes and get a sandwich for instance? I can’t answer that…

I observed two things over lunch:
1) Popcorn chicken isn’t chicken
2) Solo tastes better than Lift

Each of those is groundbreaking – scary even. I’m going to ignore both though and move on with my life.

My walk through ‘lowland Newcastle’ led me through Hamilton, Broadmeadow, Islington, Tighes Hill, Mayfield, Maryville (a suburb I never knew existed by the way), Wickham and Newcastle before arriving back in Hamilton. I somehow managed to walk almost 18 km today, and it took me about five hours. So much for no big walks on a rainy day. (The rain never came either, as it turned out).

Amongst other things I walked along Throsby Creek to the mangrove catchment. Along the way I ran into this little guy:

That is a legless lizard! It was about 15 cm in length and moved very, very quickly (like a snake). I think these guys are quite uncommon (based on a childhood of digging up creepies in the garden) so it was a surprise to see him slither across the path right in front of me. I took some video as well, in which he miraculously disappears 🙂

Further up the path on Throsby Creek I saw this very large bird perched on a sunken shopping cart:

I have no idea what is it. A species of cormorant perhaps? It was very large (compare the size to the cart) and had a mean looking beak. If you know it, please identify in the comments.

The mangrove catchment at the north end of Throsby Creek (one of the waterways that feeds Newcastle Harbour) wasn’t much to speak of. I saw no crabs or fish, but many, many very large orb weaver spiders (including some with webs across the raised walkways) and heard the din of zillions of cicadas.

The day was quite hot (27 C apparently) and where there was no breeze the humidity was excessive. Last year I experienced a very dry summer, this year it is a humid one it seems. I hadn’t had a drink outside my lunch for the entire five hours of walking and when I finally got back to mum and dads I downed two cans of lift in a minute.

And for once I am not exaggerating.

That’s a bonus shot of Lucky right there. He’s a very old man now and spends much of his time sleeping. He’s so gentle and sweet. He’d fit right into our house at home in Albany.

The nights entertainment was cards again, and I won in a most convincing manner:

If you’re not familiar with the rules of Rummy, that hand on the left that I was dealt is more or less an “I win” hand (although I got a better one a bit later, with three jokers in it!). Dad was not amused 🙂

Now onto the gamebooks!

So, today I obtained no less than four more gamebooks that I did not previously own. Here’s a photo of two of them:

These are two books in a series called Crossroads based on popular works of fiction. Apparently a total of eleven of these books were printed, although I’d never heard of it. One of mine is a US imprint, the other UK. The books are designed (but not written) by Bill Fawcett, who worked on a few other gamebooks of US origin including the (quite good) Swordquest series.

But what I love about each of these is the rules section preceding the actual gamebook. Obviously intended for an audience unfamiliar with RPG’s, Bill goes into some detail about what each of the statistics mean and includes real-world examples of what the numerical values may mean. Here’s a photo for example:

I was reading this over lunch and having a great chuckle. It’s so quaint and dated and geeky it warmed my heart. I mean who on Earth these days would list ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ as an example of someone with Dexterity 17???

Further howlers include Lee Iacocca as having a Wisdom of 13, Leonardo da Vinci with Intelligence 18 (no Einstein?), and Magnum, PI as having a Charisma of 14.

Not to mention ‘Dr Who’, with his Charisma of 18 🙂

Robot Claw