Sith, Vacation, Toys, and Tor
Got a lot to cover this morning. I've been itching to write some stuff down, but time has been at a premium lately. I've been hacking out pieces of this post all weekend on my Treo, so I'm going to tie a bunch of stuff together this morning.
First. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. I've seen it twice, and frankly, I loved it. It was better than either of the other prequels, though still lags behind Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars (I refuse to actually call the first movie 'A New Hope'). I was going to review the film in this post, but I'm going to put the detailed, spoiler-ridden analysis in a separate entry.
Vacation. We leave Wednesday for a week's well deserved vacation. We are headed to Pennsylvania (yeah, that's was my reaction at first too..) to spend some time in Hershey, Amish country, and Gettysburg. I'm looking forward to the trip, not the least because we all need a change of pace. The kids are excited - they get to see chocolate getting made - and I'm looking forward to getting to see Little Round Top and Devil's Den. Not to mention the site of Pickett's Charge. Thanks to Blogger's email features, I'll post some from the road.
Last week, while in Wal-Mart, my 5 year old son picked up a Star Wars minatures-type game called Attacktix. He instantly fell in love with the slightly goofy looking Star Wars figures, so I started reading some. Turns out, it's a very simple game, so I took a chance and bought a starter set and two boosters. It's a 'collectible' game, meaning that you buy the initial box, which contains four known figures and a random model, and the booster packs contain three random figures. The starter box, which comes with Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader (pre-armor), a Clone Commander, a Wookie Commando, and one random figure, isn't enough to really get going, so you need at least one booster right off the bat.
My son was hoping up and down in the store, and hasn't stopped chattering about the game all weekend. We've played several games, with the simplified ruleset, and he is having a great time. I admit, so am I. The game is stupid simple. The figures are all either 'Shooters' or 'Strikers'. A Shooter has a spring loaded missle launcher of some description, while a Striker has some sort of spring action melee weapon (Obi-Wan and Vader each swing lightsabers). The object is to actually knock the other guy's figures down, and the player with the last figure standing wins. Each figure can move a number of 'tix' on its turn, and as you move the figure across the table, the base will click. When you move the right amount of 'tix' you stop. Once you move all your figures, two of your units can attack, either by swatting at another figure with the melee weapon, or by firing a missile. That's pretty much it. It's simple enough that my son can play, and he loves it. There are advanced rules regarding special powers, but we haven't gone there yet. Right now, I let him take four or five figures, and I'll line up three or four against him and we go. I don't always let him win - he's old enough to learn that sometimes you lose - but he has fun anyway.
I see all kinds of tactics that can be used, flanks, screening high value units with the fodder, etc. I'll teach him the basics of that stuff as he gets older. As it is, I plan on buying a few more boosters.
Last on the to-blog list today is Tor. Tor is an onion routing project that I read about on /. Onion routing, to put it simply, is the process of routing packets through several intermediary servers and routers to obfuscate the origin and destination of the traffic. I've been on a bit of a privacy/securty kick lately, and I think I'm going to tinker with this. While I don't have much use for it day-to-day, I can see where it would be valuable to me when traveling with the laptop and I'm not assured physical security on the network I'm connected to.
Oh, bonus material! I bought a new digital camera this weekend. Actually, it's a digital camcorder and digital camera rolled into one: the Samsung SC-D6550. So far, I'm pretty thrilled. We'll see how it fares on vacation.
Chindi, Out.
First. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. I've seen it twice, and frankly, I loved it. It was better than either of the other prequels, though still lags behind Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars (I refuse to actually call the first movie 'A New Hope'). I was going to review the film in this post, but I'm going to put the detailed, spoiler-ridden analysis in a separate entry.
Vacation. We leave Wednesday for a week's well deserved vacation. We are headed to Pennsylvania (yeah, that's was my reaction at first too..) to spend some time in Hershey, Amish country, and Gettysburg. I'm looking forward to the trip, not the least because we all need a change of pace. The kids are excited - they get to see chocolate getting made - and I'm looking forward to getting to see Little Round Top and Devil's Den. Not to mention the site of Pickett's Charge. Thanks to Blogger's email features, I'll post some from the road.
Last week, while in Wal-Mart, my 5 year old son picked up a Star Wars minatures-type game called Attacktix. He instantly fell in love with the slightly goofy looking Star Wars figures, so I started reading some. Turns out, it's a very simple game, so I took a chance and bought a starter set and two boosters. It's a 'collectible' game, meaning that you buy the initial box, which contains four known figures and a random model, and the booster packs contain three random figures. The starter box, which comes with Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader (pre-armor), a Clone Commander, a Wookie Commando, and one random figure, isn't enough to really get going, so you need at least one booster right off the bat.
My son was hoping up and down in the store, and hasn't stopped chattering about the game all weekend. We've played several games, with the simplified ruleset, and he is having a great time. I admit, so am I. The game is stupid simple. The figures are all either 'Shooters' or 'Strikers'. A Shooter has a spring loaded missle launcher of some description, while a Striker has some sort of spring action melee weapon (Obi-Wan and Vader each swing lightsabers). The object is to actually knock the other guy's figures down, and the player with the last figure standing wins. Each figure can move a number of 'tix' on its turn, and as you move the figure across the table, the base will click. When you move the right amount of 'tix' you stop. Once you move all your figures, two of your units can attack, either by swatting at another figure with the melee weapon, or by firing a missile. That's pretty much it. It's simple enough that my son can play, and he loves it. There are advanced rules regarding special powers, but we haven't gone there yet. Right now, I let him take four or five figures, and I'll line up three or four against him and we go. I don't always let him win - he's old enough to learn that sometimes you lose - but he has fun anyway.
I see all kinds of tactics that can be used, flanks, screening high value units with the fodder, etc. I'll teach him the basics of that stuff as he gets older. As it is, I plan on buying a few more boosters.
Last on the to-blog list today is Tor. Tor is an onion routing project that I read about on /. Onion routing, to put it simply, is the process of routing packets through several intermediary servers and routers to obfuscate the origin and destination of the traffic. I've been on a bit of a privacy/securty kick lately, and I think I'm going to tinker with this. While I don't have much use for it day-to-day, I can see where it would be valuable to me when traveling with the laptop and I'm not assured physical security on the network I'm connected to.
Oh, bonus material! I bought a new digital camera this weekend. Actually, it's a digital camcorder and digital camera rolled into one: the Samsung SC-D6550. So far, I'm pretty thrilled. We'll see how it fares on vacation.
Chindi, Out.
posted by DFMerrick at 09:51
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