Posts

Hypothesis As per my previous post about reviewing my red ale recipe, the question arose as to whether I was measuring my volumes correctly in the fermenter and kettle. I decided to test this and calibrate the markings on same. Method My good friend, the IKEA jug I filled an IKEA 1L jug up to the 1L graduation and poured it into both the kettle and fermenter until each was full. After each 1L was added, a new graduation line was drawn on the side of the vessel using permanent marker. ...

Observation I’ve done two batches of the red ale (which I wrote up one run-through of) and I’m pretty happy with the flavour, but one thing that has vexed me is the quantity. I ended up with about 17L of beer at the end of the last batch, where I was expecting something closer to 25L. Hypothesis I think that if I play with the Brewer’s Friend website, I can increase the final yield without altering the flavour too much. ...

Setlist Support by [[Andrew O’Neill]] In My Mind Map of Tasmania Astronaut Ampersand Missed Me The Killing Type A Mother’s Confession Mandy Goes to Med School Drowning in the Sound Vegemite (The Black Death) Coin-Operated Boy The Bed Song Poem recital by [[Neil Gaiman]] - The Mushroom Hunters Brick ([[Ben Folds]] cover) Death Thing Half Jack/Zombie ([[The Cranberries]]) mashup The Ride Ukulele Anthem Thoughts This gig was the Monday after the Abortion Referendum. Lots of positive vibes about the result. ...

Over-obtrusive branding bugs me. Especially if it’s on something that I ends up in my eyeline for extended periods. I decided to do something about two offenders - my mousemat and my headphones. My mousepad is the Corepad Deskpad XXXL, which is a great product. It’s enormous, so you can spread mouse and keyboard into whatever position is most comfortable and use the mouse on lower sensitivity easily without falling off the desk. Two gripes with it - it shows dust up a lot and the logo is enormous. The first problem is fixed with cleaning and the second…well let’s see. ...

This is a major learning process and I knew I didn’t have the skills required starting out to do this one justice, so I saved it for game number 4! Discworld Ankh-Morpork (unfortunately out of print since the death of Terry Pratchett, the author of the Discworld books) is one of my very favourite games (only one that gives it competition is Cosmic Encounter!) so I wanted to do right by it. After learning a bit about removable parts of inserts while doing my Codenames insert, and my Mysterium insert I decided I wanted to incorporate that idea into Ankh-Morpork too in order to speed up set-up and improve the use of table space. ...

So You’re Going to Buy a House Money is kinda important in the house-buying progress. You might be lucky enough to be able to buy a house with cash, but most people need a mortgage to do so. Please note that I am in no way qualified to give financial advice, this is all based on my own understanding of the mortgage process and my own experiences of same. If you follow my advice and end up in debtor’s prison or indentured servitude, that is completely your own fault - absorb this information at your own risk! ...

This one turned out extremely well! I improved my cutting technique, so I don’t have the rough edges of my Mysterium insert and I made the angles a bit less of a headache than in my Avalon insert. The big strength about this insert is that it reduces setup time to…nearly zero. You take the card box and main insert out of the box, plonk them in front of the spymasters and lay out the cards. Makes for nice quick cleaning up too. ...

No in-progress shots of this one, unfortunately. I learned a lot of lessons from my Mysterium insert and I’m much happier with the finish on this one, though I do have some unfortunate glue spill-over around some of the joins. The big challenge with this insert was the angles for the separators for the big cards - major heartache getting those right! Inspiration from Mike Holzman over on Boardgamegeek, but I added the angled piece for the Lady of the Lake and Crown cards which allows them both to be seen at once. My core desire for this insert was that I wanted as many different components as possible to be visible at once to allow for easy grabbing. ...

Mysterium is a very enjoyable cooperative game that combines Cluedo with…Pictionary? One player is the ghost and gives clues to the other players about each player’s unique combination of murderer, location, and weapon to solve the crime. The ghost player cannot speak though - they must give their clues by presenting the other players with “vision” cards. These cards are super trippy and oblique. It’s a fun game and always great to get to the table. ...

Some boardgames are a pain to set up with multiple bags of tokens to hand out to players, draw decks to separate out and place around the board, or pieces to assemble - all of this slows down the amount of time it takes for the game to get from the box to the table (and vice versa when clearing up). As a means of speeding up game setup, I’ve been looking into making custom inserts for board games. ...