A rainy afternoon with Labyrinth Lord

This afternoon it poured. As my kids splashed in the wave pool at Darien Lake, I pulled a digital book out and read.

Labyrinth Lord by Daniel Proctor is an excellent modern rendition of old school gaming. To be honest, I had to look up both open game content and Open Game License.

Neither of these concepts diminish Labyrinth Lord in any way. It calls itself “a retro-clone”, but in many ways it is a restoration of past works of fantasy and art. This is the wonderful world in which I had so many adventures. There was a sense of mystery and wonder, endless possibilities.

Labyrinth Lord comes in options: free, digital download and print via Lulu.

I can’t wait until the rain stops and I can gather the kiddos for a game of possibilities.

#TBT Iron Man and Markers

Iron Man is an old favorite. 

on drawing paper

on plain copy paper

I am using different papers to get the hang of new markers. Markers are not something I am very good with, especially color. All Black Iron Man went wrong with the hands and feet. Color Iron Man went wrong with the colors. I meant to match the colors to the classic Iron Man from issue #69. It didn’t work.

I am going cut down some marker paper and scan All Black Iron Man so I can practice colors. Over, and over, and over again.

I also obtained an old book from The ROM featuring medieval armor, so I can practice those armored hands and feet.

Observing The Can’t of Thieves

I ran into an interesting gaming scenario and real life teaching experience with my daughter, at the laundromat of all places. Rogues, thieves and con men are pretty much all the same. They have been for centuries. Techniques never change but the goods and the goals do. The good ones are never spotted, but the bad one stand out.

In real life and in gaming, we tend to gloss over the foolish ones while imagining the dangerous ones are around every corner. The only difference between the two is a poor spot check.

Two guys came in to the laundromat and instantly set off my spidey sense. Not in a physical way, but they were clearly up to no good. I called my daughter close and asked her to observe them.

I had her text me her thoughts about them. Silent communication, whether gestures or texting works to the advantage of the user, no matter the setting or year.

1. They were loud and swore around kids, like they wanted to be tough.
2. The looked the same. Bald and wearing straw hats. Sneakers but no socks. Shorts and T-shirts. Sunglasses, worn on the hat by one and around the neck by the other. 
3. They were not identically dressed, but very similar.
4. They made eye contact while speaking everyone, except children. They ignored children.
5. They looked in all the machines.
6. They said not so nice things, but smiled the whole time.
7. They went into the kids play area, the bathroom and peeked in the office.
8. They never stopped moving or talking.

I wasn’t just me, these two stood out to my 10 year old.

They waited until the attendant hung up a sign saying “Back in 20 minutes” then loudly proclaimed that they lost $4.25 in one of the machines and wanted to speak to the owner. My daughter thought it was funny that he put 17 quarters in a machine but didn’t notice it wasn't working. It was also odd that the price was 5 bucks. I shrugged and asked her to keep watching.

When the attendant came back from break, Guy Number One asked if she was the owner and explained the problem. She offered to pull the coin box from the offending machine and refund the his money. Oddly, the coin box was empty. Guy Number Two took over and “The Owner” desperately searched for the offending machine.

What they missed was the attendant had empted the coin boxes before her break. They were not going to find any machine full of “their money”. Having failed, the men switched places and roles to create confusion.

The game continued for a while, until it was clear the tactic wasn’t working.

A loud conversation about going next door for Chinese food started. Number One suggested lunch and Number Two shouted it down since he was once refunded for receiving bad Chinese food at a restaurant.

A challenge was offered and accepted. They asked the attendant if the place next door was any good and she offered an opinion, but they hardly listened.

The two men left, but this time switching roles. Number One, the one who proposed the restaurant, loudly proclaimed he would not stand for bad food. Guess what was going to happen next door?

Pick a century, any century. Con men of every era use the same tactics. Han Solo, Sawyer from Lost and The Grey Mouser all pretty much operate the same underneath the hood.

Here are the tools of the trade:

• Work in groups.
• Have a cover story ready.
• Have a backup plan, hopefully one that matches a cover story.
• Be outwardly friendly, but forcefully offended and easily aggrieved.
• Look tough, but back down with grace if necessary.
• Use respect. Use more than the normal amount of respect to elevate the self-esteem of the mark.
• Dress neatly with flash and style, but be similar to your associates so physical descriptions are easily confused.
• Appear to trust other people, so they will extend the same level of trust.  
• Case the joint, the whole place not just the obvious areas.
• Look for treasure everywhere. Anything worth anything at all is treasure.
• Never ask for the whole enchilada, ask for less. This way you can haggle with a mark to part them from their money.

All the right things, in three parts. Item two.

Image by LearningLark at Flicker.com. CC license.

Years ago, I worked in a bookstore called “The Paper Cutter”. As a receiving clerk, one of my duties was to field phone calls. One particular type of call really bothered me.

Caller: “Do you have the Cliff-notes for Fahrenheit 451?”

Me: “Lord, no! Do you know what that book is about?” Caller: “No. You read it?” Me: “Of course.” Caller: “Can you tell me about it?” Me: “Just read it. Seriously, if you come in before my shift is over, I’ll buy you a copy.”

I was good to my word and purchased that title for a few people who came in before 5 PM. I wish more people loved reading as much I as I do.

Incantato, il mio vecchio amico Alsamixer!

If you use Duolingo on a chromebook, you may have microphone problems. I tinkered around with the settings and chromebooks do not allow websites to access your microphone and camera by default. Change that by going into settings and Privacy.

Now for the surprise. This didn’t completely fix my problem. I did a little more searching and found that Alsamixer is the key. Press crtl+alt+t to pop open a new crosh tab. Type shell and enter.

Bamb! Alsamixer almost like linux. That shouldn’t be a surprise. One issue I did encounter was the function keys wouldn’t work even when I used the function key. Not all is lost. For some reason the search key needs to be pressed to invoke the function keys.

No problem. Press it with your desired function key. Escape to exit. 

I like Duoling to keep up on my Spanish, but it occurs to me that it is also useful for my horrible Italian. Duolingo lets you select multiple languages at the same time. I have no idea if there is a limit to the number, but I thought that I would stick to the two I know pretty well. 

New chromebooks are much better than the one I have. I'm going to start shopping for a new one soon.