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Dice Dice Baby

Thursday, June 11th, 2020

Around 1983, I got my first Dungeons & Dragons set. Inside, along with the rule books, were these six dice:

They have 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 20 sides, and all are used when playing D&D. Yes these are my exact dice: although the rule books are long gone I kept the dice and they eventually made their way to me here in the US (thanks B!). The dice weren’t inked and came with a crayon used to fill the depressions and make the numbers more visible. You can still see nearly 40-year-old crayon in my dice:

Interestingly the particular D&D set I got (the famous ‘Red Box’) was packaged with dice of many different colors so it’s not unusual that my 6-sided is a different color from the others. Some sets even came with pre-inked dice or (as a result of shortages) a coupon to send away for dice. I feel sorry for the kids that bought the box set and had to wait weeks for dice so they could play!

I recently learned that these original dice are somewhat collectible now, and although inferior to modern equivalents could fetch $50 or more online. I’ll never sell mine of course; they’re one of the oldest of my original possessions I still own.

Speaking of modern dice, here’s a set:

These are solid metal, precision made and (apparently) balanced to be truly random. I also suspect they could damage a hard surface (look at the sharp corners) so you’ll want a dice mat if you’re going to use ones like these. I bought these after buying AW a set for Xmas and thinking they were quite nifty. Since he actually plays D&D I assume he’ll use his more than I will mine 🙂

The last die in I’ll share today is this weird example:

It’s a 100-sided die! This is designed for rolling percentage values but is very impractical since it’s so spherical it takes forever to stop. I did some distribution tests a few months back and found the results to be comparable to the Excel random number generator and random numbers as given to me by about 50 of my students, so I assume this is a mostly random tool.

In the mid 1980s an inventor patented a unique type of 100-sided die with an internal braking mechanism he called the Zocchihedron. You can still buy them today but they’re quite expensive so I went with this cheaper, solid example. My guess is if you really have a use for a 100-sided die go for the patented one and save yourself time on every roll 🙂

Do you need any dice rolled? Leave a comment and tell me which one and I’ll tell you what you got…

Posted in Games, History, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Toys | Comments Closed

Eats A Pizza

Friday, June 5th, 2020

Time for some more lockdown cooking! I’m guessing most of you tried the meat boats and loved them so now you can follow up with my new creation: The Golden Slice

Start with a pizza base. You can make it yourself or buy one, but make sure it’s not too big, not crispy and not too thick. I use small Boboli brand bases, about my handspan in diameter. Even that’s too big though, so I cut them in half!

Next cover it with a tiny amount of pizza sauce. You’ll want the blandest sauce you can find (no garlic or herbs!) and you want to put so little on that you can barely taste it in the finished product. In other words, just a misting of sauce: I probably put a bit too much on in the above photo.

Next lightly sprinkle it with cheese. I use a packaged ‘pizza blend’, but you can adapt to your taste. As with the sauce less is more: you’ll want to have maybe a 75% density, single layer of cheese.

The ‘magic ingredient’ is Canadian bacon! This is a rare type of ‘bacon’ that is (secretly) ham from Canada. It’s probably unique to where we live since we’re so close to Canada so if you can’t find it you can just use normal ham. Whatever you use, cut it into tiny bits.

The second ‘magic ingredient’ is crushed (not sliced) pineapple! Delicately arrange it on the cheese so it’s more or less uniform. Again less is more, but don’t worry too much about going overboard since fruit is good for you.

After the pineapple you put the Canadian bacon on, again trying for uniform coverage. There’s a lot of fine tuning in this last step: you want it to look as delicious as it will taste! The above shot is the finished product…

And here it is after 9 minutes at 450 F. Doesn’t it look fantastic?! Here’s a better shot with a food filter:

So original! So golden! So scrumptious! I think this may be my culinary masterpiece, even surpassing my spaghetti!

Why not try it yourself and let me know how it turns out 🙂

Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments Closed

Turn Off The Dark?

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020

I think there’s a good chance we won’t go to the cinema at all this year, and if so that will probably be the first time this has happened since before I can remember.

Due to coronavirus our cinemas are closed and won’t be opening any time soon. Even were they to open there’s no movies of note being released for a few more months. And now we’re hearing that America (and the world’s) largest chain is bleeding cash and says there’s significant doubt it can remain in business.

Could the age-old experience of ‘going to the movies’ be another of the countless victims of coronavirus?

I always loved going to the cinema. Every time was an event as a child, and once I started earning my own (paper run) money a good deal of it went into seeing movies. In high school a girl I knew worked at Tower Cinemas and gave me free tickets which meant that one year (1988?) I saw almost every movie released. And then when the cinema opened in Charlestown within walking distance of our house (with a massive arcade next door!) I went and saw everything they screened that I was remotely interested in. Good times; good memories.

Kristin and I have seen countless movies at cinemas over the years, but in the last 5-10 years our frequency had notably decreased as we discovered and grew to love the drive in. Now we only go to see big ‘event’ films at cinemas – which seem to be only Star Wars or Marvel films these days.

Many films I once would have gone and seen at the cinema without hesitation now wait until we can stream them or buy on DVD (yes I still buy DVDs). It’s often more comfortable watching at home anyway: we have a massive TV, comfy recliners, cats in our laps and we don’t have to worry about the now-too-common sight of someone using a cellphone during the film!

The romance and attraction of the cinema seems to be generational as well: my students rarely go and seem quite content to watch new releases online. If cinemas close forever, maybe they’ll be missed only as much as the average person misses CDs?

Of course there’s still the drive-in, which I consider quite different from going to the cinema. Ours is open right now, but it’s showing older films that are already available streaming and the list of rules and restrictions is daunting enough that we haven’t seriously considered going. But in the months ahead if studios release some of the event films we may see them at the drive-in, assuming it remains open.

Unlike other corona effects – the lack of travel in particular – a ‘gap year’ (or two…) away from cinemas doesn’t particularly bother me. And even though I don’t wan’t cinemas to close completely, I don’t think I’ll be too bothered if they do.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Movies | 1 Comment »

Pandemic

Friday, March 13th, 2020

I climbed the hill, lay in the grass
A little dark-eyed girl drifted past
She said all the best is come, it could not last
And the worst, it has come true

That’s from one of my favorite Nick Cave songs. I’ve heard it countless times and often I think of what it would mean for the worst to have come true. Is that what we are facing now?

Back when I was in Japan I was reading about the novel Coronavirus as I sat in my Tokyo hotel room and texted Kristin that I thought it could “change the world”. I wasn’t being grim or fatalistic; it’s just that I had read about what was happening (before China officially admitted it) and had a feeling about the future. I returned to the USA and it was like it didn’t exist: no airport screening, virtually nothing in the media and almost no-one had heard of it.

Then China quarantined and it spread quickly. My idle comment had become portentous and I personally knew people that were affected in China. And still virtually nothing was said here in the US. When I signed and submitted my summer contract almost a month ago I asked what the backup plan was if coronavirus was keeping us all home. I was at least half serious, but there wasn’t any plan since most of the people in the office hadn’t even heard of it.

I wasn’t surprised by this. Even those of us who had been aware of the virus probably found it hard to believe it would shut down our ‘normal’ lives like it now has. Only three weeks ago a TA asked me if we’d have any classes after Spring Break (which starts next week) and I assured him yes since I couldn’t imagine the alternative.

Two days ago my school shifted all classes online for the remainder of the semester (2 months) and from now I’ll work from home. Yesterday KLS was sent home as well to work, and we’ve already bought her a desk for her computer since we have no idea how long this may last.

We’ve stocked up on supplies – our cupboards have never been this full – and personally witnessed the empty shelves in local shops. We’ve canceled appointments and are now prepared to stay here – in our house – until we need to go out and get more groceries every couple of weeks.

I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me shifting my course online (I have over 300 students who need to do the same) and there’s currently more questions than answers. Likewise for Kristin who must now adapt – with almost all her coworkers – to a distributed office communicating via the internet. We’re not just working from home; we’re learning (or rather devising) how to do our jobs in brand new ways from home.

And the virus only continues to spread as America and the world shuts down. Every day the news is grimmer and silver linings seem absent. The leadership in this country is a gaggle of incompetents who have made things worse and we can only hope they haven’t messed things up beyond the ability of the real adults (currently the state and local officials) to fix.

And yet I don’t think the worst has come true. The world has seen that China and Korea have waged bold and apparently successful fights against this, and I believe other countries will too. It will take sacrifice yes, but staying at home and skipping events and vacations is a small price for this victory. Like H1N1 in 2009 I believe the tide will turn with a treatment or vaccine, and right now everyone with the relevant expertise anywhere in the world is working on that (including at KLS’s company). It will take time, but someone will create it eventually.

Stay safe everyone. Stay home and limit your exposure in the interests of public health. Follow the advice of the experts and don’t be fooled (or scared) by misinformation.

This will be an uncertain and likely difficult period we are moving into, but there are sunny skies beyond. Look forward to them!

Posted in Miscellaneous, The Unknown | 2 Comments »

Long Time Man

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020

I saw an interview yesterday with a British bloke who is 112 years old. His earliest memory was from WW1 and was a Zeppelin attack on his town in the UK. This got me thinking of my oldest memories…

I lived an adventurous life as a baby, fighting off cannibals in the jungles of PNG before jet-setting half away around the world for an extended stay in Germany. I don’t remember any of those days, and the earliest memories I do have come from just before I entered Kindergarten, back in about 1976.

I have two very specific memories from that era. The first is of brushing my teeth at daycare. I would have been 4 years old, and while I have dim memories of the daycare itself (playing with Duplo, listening to stories being read to us and sleeping on cots) I have a strangely vivid memory of a lesson on how to brush our teeth where we all copied what the instructor (a dental nurse?) did in front of us.

The next vivid memory – also I suspect from around that time – was of a heavy metal cylinder falling onto my head and cutting me. It left a scar that remains to this day! Bernard was hoisting it up a tree for an inscrutable child-reason and I was standing directly underneath ‘helping’ when the string broke and it fell directly onto me. I recall crying and lots of blood! I bet mum almost panicked!

There are a couple of other trauma-related memories but they are incomplete and not as clear as the above: losing a toenail due to a fall, losing two teeth in one day, and cutting myself everywhere after a fall into a rose hedge 🙂

A year on and I have a very vivid memory from kindergarten about learning to write! We had books containing sentences that were missing words and we had to write using slates and chalk the missing words. As the book progressed we were writing more and more of the sentence until it was just pictures that we had to describe. I expect it’s all done using computers now, and that even in the day we may have found the slates old-fashioned.

Around 1977/8 my memories start becoming much more abundant and I can easily recall specific events at primary school or during the summers of those years. Maybe I’ve lost the correct order and I’ve certainly lost fine detail, but it’s reassuring to know my memories go back over 40 years ago now.

Over 40 years… where did all that time go?

Posted in Blog, Family, Miscellaneous, Time | 4 Comments »

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