C.I.T.O.K.A.T.E.

I prepared for this year's tournament more meticulously than any before, but got a worse outcome than ever before. Contestants: I hear you, I understand exactly what caused this, I have a plan to fix it, and it will never happen again. Previously, I have never had such space constraints that I would have to make it clear to the programming team that my event needed tables empty for an hour beforehand to set up the tournament. That was my downfall.

The sign-up sheet was almost full. The tournament was scheduled to start at 4PM. I was scheduled to be in the Penguicon Board of Directors meeting from 3 to 4 PM, so I got some minions to set up the tournament. I gave them setup instruction sheets and one pre-assembled material packet per table. Unfortunately, there was a presentation going on in the Private Dining during that hour, so all the tables were full of gamers. My minions are kind-hearted and would never kick gamers out of the only places available to play. Due to space constraints, they would effectively close down the entire game room, end all the games in progress, and kick pretty much everybody out. I was the only one assertive enough to do that, and I was in a meeting.

As a result, setup did not take place, and the tournament started almost an hour late in a huge panicky disorganized rush, while the room was crowded with contestants. A lot of our signed-up players walked out during this time, meaning we had to re-organize the seating chart, and it took even longer. There were some setup errors, so some games had cards in them which I did not intend, resulting in extremely slow and/or swingy games.

How to fix it:

1. A sign on each table at the start of the day, saying "Please be done with games on this table by 3PM, to allow for Dominion tournament setup".
2. Do not accept being scheduled to do something else during setup.

Congratulations to the winner, Mike Riverso! He jotted his contact info and shipping address on Evernote on my phone. As soon as he left, it gave me a "java.io.IO" error and lost his information. I put up a sign in the lobby, and he sent me his info through email, so all's well that ends well. He will receive a copy of the new Dominion expansion, "Guilds", in about a month when it is published.

New things that went well:

Penguicon's new Dominion collection. The convention now owns two copies of every Dominion product, so we had enough cards. With thirty-two players and eight simultaneous games, it was the largest Penguicon Dominion tournament ever, so we needed it!

Using a megaphone. No more shouting myself hoarse.

I ordered plenty of "Estate" "Duchy" and "Province" ribbons to hand them out to each contestant. I have next year's supply already.

I am presenting in the following events at Penguicon:

Friday, 8 PM: Sci Fi on the Radio
Come attend a live dramatic reading of several early century radio scripts! Close your eyes and use your imagination, and allow our talented voice actors and foley artists to create terrors and intrigue!

Friday, 9 PM: Vinyl Cutting Demo
Your own custom design would be way better for your car window than stick figures of your family, or Calvin peeing on things you hate. This class will explain and demo how to: make vector art; use a plotter to cut it out of vinyl; weed the excess off; transfer it to a masking tape backing; and apply it. Bring an SVG or AI file on a thumb drive to go away with your own decal.

Saturday, 1 PM: Laser Cutters
The i3Detroit hacker space in Ferndale raised $6,800 in donations to buy a 150-watt laser cutter and engraver with a 3'x4' bed, capable of cutting through up to half an inch (depending on the material). This will be a presentation of photos of the machine, samples, a description of the process and capabilities, and a demonstration of the laser cutter software. This class can be your first step in certification to use it.

Saturday, 3PM: Penguicon Board Meeting
No, it's not spelled B-O-R-E-D! The important, long-term decision making squad assemble for a quarterly meeting. Open to the public.

Saturday, 4PM: Annual Dominion Tournament
Plan to play through 2 games with pre-designed sets. You can sign up at Ops to make it easier on me, but if not, please just walk in! Winner will be shipped a copy of the "Guilds" expansion when it becomes available. In this million-selling “non-collectable card game”, players start with the same simple deck, and use their cards to buy cards into their collection from the middle of the table. They go through their deck repeatedly to use their new cards to buy even more lucrative cards. Whoever buys the expensive victory cards first, wins.

Saturday, 11PM: Divination With Dominion Cards
Just for fun, we will pretend to perform cartomancy with Dominion cards. I have devised an intricate system for interpreting 20 randomly-selected cards, to tell you the winning strategy for the next few days of your life.

This was the most noteworthy of all FestiFools in which I have participated. The differences were pretty interesting, so I'm writing about it. I didn't make a puppet of my own this year, and decided to help out as a volunteer puppet operator.

I went with Adrienne, who some of you may know from conventions and others may know from i3Detroit hacker space. We went to a pre-meeting last weekend. Some of the central organizers for the event are new this year. One of them gave a description for an elaborate choreography that they were going to try to introduce. The very idea of choreography struck me as a bit out-of-place, given that the theme of the event is chaos and spontaneity, which has always been pretty fun. But in reality, the spirit of Festifools is not so much "chaos and spontaneity" as "whatever happens, roll with it, and see what emerges". So I rolled with it.

On the day of the event, we showed up a little bit later for setup than anticipated. After we signed in for volunteering, the organizer had to pause and give some thought to which puppets needed more operators. That was unusual, in that normally they have been starved for puppeteers.

One of the event organizers teaches an art class at the university of Michigan, and this class produces most of the puppets for Festifools. We were directed to what the organizer called "that grid thing over there". The artist who made that grid thing over there was one of the students. The artist was on the phone, and attempted to have half a conversation with us until I suggested that we discuss it when the call was complete.

The grid thing was a cage with a multitude of mannequin arms which were painted brown. After the phone call, the artist explained the message of the artistic thesis, concerning the perpetuation of slavery into the modern day. We were introduced to a paper-mache head that the artist had made to come out of the top of the cage. It was a blackface caricature, with googly-eyes and big red clown lips. To the cage were attached large cartoony paper-mache shackles which we were to wear over our necks.

"Are you OK with your mouths being duct-taped shut?"

"This doesn't look like it's a lot of fun", I said. "Is it intended to be a fun part of the festivities?"

"No, it's not fun. We're going to operate these arms in a way that expresses grieving and desperate fear."

"I'm not sure I know how to do that in a way that would get across your vision. I'm really good at giving a light-hearted or comical performance, but I might not be the right performer for this." I did not also say that I don't want to be guilty of cultural appropriation as a privileged white heterosexual male, pretending to be part of an aggrieved party, while benefiting from oppression.

The blackface minstrel show artist was really cool about it. We went back to the event organizer to see if I could be assigned to a different art project and the artist could recruit a different random stranger to use insulting stereotypes to promote social justice in an April Fool's Day parade.

After being directed to several puppets whose artists told me they were full up, we finally landed in a puppet troupe centered around a performer who carried a huge melting clock. Another carried a replica of the face of Salvador Dali. Each other member of the troupe carried a pole bearing a paper mache blob. I had the good fortune to carry the only other recognizable object: a human ear. The artist explained that when aligned in front of the clock he was carrying, these blobs would form up into a recognizable approximation of a human face, inspired by the surrealist style of Salvador Dali.



We were instructed to keep the pieces separated and show no connection until instructed to assemble. Until that time, this puppet had to be explained to the crowd by the artist shouting at them.

"IT'S SUUUUURRRRRREEEEEEEEEAAAAALIIIIIISMMMMMM!"

"SALVADOR DALIIIIIIIIIII!"

Fortunately, when we performed our Voltron-like assemblage, the face emerged and there was much applause.

One part of this artist's vision was for us to suddenly hand out our parts of the puppet to random onlookers in the crowd. We had been carrying the puppet pieces for about fifteen minutes when he called upon us to do this. "Roll with it", I thought, and immediately held out the pole with the ear, and asked the audience who wanted it. About a dozen hands raised eagerly. Unfortunately, one hundred percent of the hands were that of children. I gave the ear to the nearest child, who was the first to respond. You can guess what happened next. Her parental unit didn't want to be dragged into the parade, and wouldn't let her wander off. I pointed out to the artist that the ear was still poking out of the crowd about a block behind us. The artist thought that was fine.

Adrienne similarly divested herself of her puppet part, as instructed. No one else had rolled with it. The two of us followed our assigned group, not as puppeteers, but just a couple of people wandering through the middle of the parade for no apparent reason. So I took some pictures. I had been a parade participant for probably twenty minutes, tops.

Soon a drum beat started up, and the artist said we should all conga, so I rolled with it. Once again, Adrienne and I were the only ones who followed his instruction. It was as if no one else heard him at all. So we all stopped.

I'm not sure what happened to the choreography that guy planned out for the overall procession. If anyone enacted it, I didn't notice. But that's fine! Each FestiFools is a more vivacious spectacle than the last, and this one was no exception. The lesson learned this year is to once again make my own puppet for FestiFools 2014, or at least, to not be late and get stuck with the last pick of the puppets.

The French illustrator Naiade is my favorite game artist. FunForge has started cranking out games that immediately grab my attention with his art. So naturally, Tokaido caught my eye.

This is a game that moves quickly, and only takes about forty-five minutes.

It has a very light and non-violent tone. This is a game of vacation planning. You attempt to have as good a trip as possible along the East Sea Road ("Tōkaidō") in medieval Japan. Eat sumptuous meals, view gorgeous panoramas, buy beautiful souvenirs, and meet interesting people. Each stop along the track gives you one of these in the form of a card, which you keep face-up in front of you. Mostly, you are trying to collect combinations of cards.

The gameplay is simple: if your pawn is the farthest behind on the road, it's your turn. Move it forward to one of the tourist attractions, and take a corresponding card. Whoever is now in the back of the line-- even if that is still you-- takes a turn.

The attractions can get too crowded. Each attraction can only accommodate one or two guests at a time. In order to make sure nobody crowds you out of an attraction that is important to completing a set of cards that you need, sometimes you should pass an empty attraction and skip ahead. You can usually have exactly what you want, if you are willing to sacrifice.

The first question you will hear during an explanation of Tokaido is "So, as my first move of the game, I can go all the way to the end of the road?" There are inns at the conclusion of each of the four legs of your journey. You are required to stop at each inn and wait for all the other players to catch up. Besides, you wouldn't want your first move to go as far as the game rules permit, because your first leg of the journey would score you only six points (your meal at the inn), while your opponents would soak up all the luxuries you skipped. Probably the most subtle and crucial decision in the game is when to skip an attraction.

Be advised, each player starts with a different character who confers a unique advantage. The tacticians among you may wonder if your choice of character at the beginning of the game has an undue influence on who wins. This is also a game in which you are unlikely to win if you focus on yourself. Observe which sets of cards your fellow travelers are attempting to build.

The production values make the equipment a joy to use, the play is suitable for children and adults, and it's short enough that I found myself wishing the East Sea Road was a little bit longer.

Ladies and gentlemen, I humbly suggest we may have found our next Penguicon Hack of Honor. Not to mention that the creator of this device is renowned in the hardware hacking community and is GoH-worthy in her own right.

Minutes ago, I was in the final elimination round of the Dominion tournament. I was in a 3-player rather than 4-player game, so that was easier on us. The cards were mostly from the Seaside expansion, which my opponents had never played, and which I've been playing for years.

I noticed they both bought Outposts, widely considered one of the worst cards in the game.

I used Ambassador to put my least useful cards into my opponents' decks, and Salvager to recycle the rest for money. This left me with a tiny powerhouse deck of cards into which I put two Treasure Maps, and used Haven to store them so they came up together. The Treasure Maps put four Golds on top of my discard pile. My opponents complimented me on these fancy stunts and said they were in awe. We all agreed I had the game in the bag.

But when the score was counted, I lost by four points. It took too long to set up all those flashy stunts, and I wasn't able to catch up on their early lead.

But no matter! I won the new base card reprints with gorgeous illustrations! I got into the elimination round! It's been an incredible day.

I noticed some of yesterday's laser cutter pledgers are from MakerWorks in Ann Arbor, as one of their members put this pledge drive on the Shop Mates mailing list. We now have 22 pledgers.

Not even one person has filled out the "$0" option in the questionnaire yet, so who knows? If you haven't pledged zero dollars, maybe you're still going to pledge a few bucks! If you're one of those, is the two-thirds mark what you were waiting for? Because we passed the $4,000 dollar mark yesterday! $6,000, here we come!

Remember, please keep spreading the word about this! We need ideas for other groups where we might be able to find pledgers. Thanks!

Reward levels & FAQ

I'm running a fundraiser for i3Detroit to buy our own laser cutter for $6,000. We have raised $2,560, and the first day of the fundraiser is not even over yet!

And here's why maybe you should chip in a few bucks. I will laser-cut a project of your choice from Thingiverse (laser-cutter projects only-- wood or chipboard will be substituted for acrylic), and ship the parts to you, with your name engraved in it if you want. A TARDIS, unique booklet cover, Settlers of Catan board that locks in place, adorable chibi Cthulhu, flyer rack, and many more.

Just make a contribution of at least $15. Add $25 per square foot if your project has to be cut from acrylic.

Donate $20, send me an image, and I will design and make a custom jigsaw puzzle of your choice, in which the shapes of the pieces conform to bits of the drawing, and ship it to you. Or, a box of literally any size and shape up to 3 feet, with an image of your choice engraved on it.

Donate at least $50, and you can dream up any laser-cutter project that could fit in a breadbox, and I will design brand-new schematics for you. Then I'll cut it, glue it together, and ship or deliver it to you.

Donate at least $80, and you get the $50 reward level, plus custom art engraved on it, drawn by me, based on your own description.

Let me know if you would like a larger reward level than that, and I'll see what I can work out.

We're more than a third of the way to our goal. Can you help us break the halfway point on the first day? Pledge here!

FAQ

Q. Why a laser cutter?
A. This is an overwhelmingly useful tool for basic fabrication of components for a wide variety of projects, as well as complete projects using nothing but this tool. A laser cutter serves as the flagship of the best hacker spaces.

Q. Doesn't i3Detroit already have one?
A. Not any more. The member who owned the laser cutter sold it.

Q. Then what was that laser cutter you were using recently?
A. The one at TechShop. They gave me a free six month membership because I make cool stuff. Once that runs out, their membership fee too expensive to continue.

Q. How much are you getting for $6,000?
A. It's amazing. 150 Watts is more than double what we had before. That's powerful enough that eventually, we might be able to modify it to blow oxygen and cut through paper-thin sheet steel. The bed is just short of 3 feet by 4 feet. The gantry also travels faster, to get the job done quicker. This model is able to run on powerful software, not the poorly-translated Chinese workaround we had to use with the previous machine.

Q. Who owns it?
A. It will be the property of i3Detroit hacker space, a nonprofit membership group. i3Detroit has a facility near 9 Mile and I-75 in Ferndale, Michigan, open to guests most days of the week, with membership available to anyone for $39 a month.

Q. Is my donation tax-deductable?
A. Yes. Your donation is to i3Detroit, a 501c3 educational and public service nonprofit.

Q. When do you need the money?
A. When our pledge drive passes the $6,000 goal, which I predict to happen in about a week. If you need longer, just let me know and we can work something out.

Q. What if it breaks?
A. Our system of charging members an affordable hourly rate to use the laser cutter has always generated more than enough income to replace the bulb or power supply when they wear out. As for the rest of the machine, it is straightforward CNC motion as used in plotters, vinyl cutters, plasma cutters, CNC routers, and so forth. Many members of our group are exceptionally skilled, and experienced, in maintaining this form of technology, and have demonstrated a willingness to do so for the group. There is a massive amount of tech support from the CNC community online through such sites as chineselasersupportforum, cnczone, and Sam's laser FAQ.

Q. Are you taking into account the cost of shipping the machine?
A. Yes. One of our members found a way to ship it to the port of Detroit and save about $4,000 in shipping costs alone. Our funding goal includes all stages of shipping.

I should frequently repost the comments that I make on interesting OKCupid questions. Today's question: "Would the world be a better place if people with low IQs were not allowed to reproduce?" No.

Taking the value of reproductive liberty as a given, there are also more complex and surprising reasons to reject this measure.

Suppose one's reason for supporting this measure is to get a smarter population of offspring. Those who know anything about genetics know that is not how it works. All you get is a population that is evolved to be good at rigging the eugenic system. They'll still be dumb in all other respects.

The best reason for dumb people not to reproduce is that children are their greatest source of misery (though they're too hopped-up on parent-infatuation hormones to recognize it). But I will defend to the death everyone's right to screw themselves up.

Most parents are not dumb, but nearly 100% of dumb people are parents-- depending on whether we define dumbness to include incompetence at family planning. But this illustrates how difficult it is to measurably define intelligence. Often, as in this case, measuring intelligence merely penalizes is people who are different from me, because I'm the one doing the measuring.

This research (PDF) shows those who get more happiness from their money...

(1) buy more experiences and fewer material goods; (2) use their money to benefit others rather than themselves; (3) buy many small pleasures rather than fewer large ones; (4) eschew extended warranties and other forms of overpriced insurance; (5) delay consumption; (6) consider how peripheral features of their purchases may affect their day-to-day lives; (7) beware of comparison shopping; and (8) pay close attention to the happiness of others.