-
blueberries!
& yawn way
Waitress :|
The sweet filling was
nice at first, but before long
I had too much pie.
Crazy
Frog
Temporal Anomalies
in Time Travel Movies
"Most played this month was Treehouse with 25. I suspect
this will be my most played game for many months to come. I keep
a tube in my jacket pocket and take it out when the family is
waiting for something, like at a restaurant, or the half hour
between the kids' swimming lessons. It's a great time killer." -- Dean Maki's reply to a BoardGameGeek Geeklist
Question: What
game did you play most in January 2007?
On the Radio, plus links
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Big Changes in Rabbit Support
/ Ruth's Wedding |
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 We've
been doing a lot of internal evaluation of our little game company
recently, trying to figure out how to streamline and improve
our operations. As I mentioned in my
previous update, one change we've already made, as a result
of this analysis, is the shift of these updates from weekly to
bi-weekly.
This week we're announcing even more radical changes. Although
we love our rabbits and we still want people to teach our games
to others and to jabber enthusiastically about Looney
Labs whenever they can, our reward/support program is in
major need of overhaul. This is partly technological; the gradual
switchover from our old system ("SuperFRED") into the
new one ("Sweetie") is hung up on the complexities
of the whole Rabbit Points system. But there are other issues,
the most pressing of which is the need to cut back on everything
that isn't absolutely essential, which means we're scaling back
on the rabbit program as a whole. Unfortunately, that includes
our official Rabbit Coordinator, Carol
Townsend.
Carol's been full-time with us for the past year,
and it's been great having her on our team... but sadly, with
these changes we're eliminating her position with the company.
Instead of having someone on-staff with the title of Rabbit Coordinator,
we're asking rabbits everywhere to step up as volunteers to help
us out as more general, localized Rabbit Coordinators. If you're
the Rabbit in your group who gets your friends organized for
the next event, you could be a Local Rabbit Coordinator.
Another way we'll be asking the Rabbits to help take care
of themselves for us is with our new Rabbit
Wiki. This new community-maintained database will be the
go-to point for fans who need help from us, since without Carol
the rest of us will be even slower in getting around to answering
fan support questions.
But again, what a lot of it comes down to is those pesky Rabbit
Points. So we're turning that whole system off. Without Carol,
there'll be no one here to keep track of what individual rabbits
are doing, deciding how many points to award for this event or
that, etc. Therefore, we're not going to give away any more Rabbit
Points. Furthermore, since we can't figure out how to implement
the old Rabbit Point system in Sweetie, we've decided we need
to make the Rabbit Points expire. This means ALL RABBIT POINTS
MUST BE REDEEMED BY THE END OF AUGUST.
But here's some good news: Since we're making Rabbit Points
expire, we're also lifting the restriction on how you can spend
them. So, while we're giving you a limited time to spend them,
you can use your remaining Rabbit Points to buy our
mainline products!
Please be sure to read Kristin's
letter to the Rabbits for her perspective on this. Feel free
to email us your thoughts and comments, and we'll look forward
to discussions about these (and other) changes next week at Origins.
Thanks again for all your hard work, Carol, and best of luck
in your future adventures! We'll miss you!
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 Speaking
of Origins,
this page won't be updated again until after Origins is over,
so here's some late-breaking news about that. Shown here is art
I just created for a new medal
(bringing the total up to 50) which will be awarded to the player
who gets the most points for winning Giant Pyramid games. (We've
got a full schedule of Icehouse
games played with Giant-sized pyramids, but previously they've
always been simply exhibition games, not real competitions. This
year, we'll award points for games you win with the big pieces
(fewer or more points depending on the length and complexity
of the game). This last medallion will be awarded to whoever
wins the first Big Giant Pyramid Game-A-Thon!
It's going to be the best Origins yet! I hope to see YOU at
Big
Experiment #8!
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 In other news, Kristin's
sister Ruth has gotten re-married! The three of us flew down
to Texas last weekend to attend the wedding, and we had a lovely
time.
The wedding was held in their backyard and although the imminent
possibility of rain was a source of great angst, it turned out
to be a beautiful afternoon. The ceremony was very nice, and
at the reception party afterwards, music was provided by bunch
of different musicians from the popular Austin area live music
scene. The evening stretched on as we ate Mexican food and ice
cream cake while mingling with Ruth's friends and other family
members. And everyone who came got as a gift either a CD by one
of the performers, or a Fluxx
deck (in any flavor of their choice)!
Ruth's new husband Brett seems like quite a catch, too. Everyone
likes him a lot and I think they're very good for each other.
Here's wishing them great amounts of happiness and a wonderful
life together!
As a wedding gift, Alison
made a special new mobile, suited to Ruth & Brett's mutual
love of numbers: a huge floating numbers mobile! Check out this
week's movie for footage of a bunch of Alison's
Mobiles, including the Numbers Mobile.
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 Thanks
for reading, and have a great fortnight! |
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Our refrigerator died this week. We can't really complain,
since we've gotten plenty of life out of it, and it's sure better
to have happened now than during Origins,
but still... we sure didn't need that particular added expense
just now, and of course, a broken fridge isn't the sort of repair
you can put off until it's more convenient to pay for. |
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While on travel to Texas, I read a great
book by Audrey Niffenegger called The Time Traveler's Wife.
I loved it. I hear they're about to start production on a movie...
I hope they can capture the feeling of the book. As I thought
about these things, I wondered whatever happened to plans for
a movie based on Replay, another excellent time travel
romance. Sadly, nothing seems to have come of those plans, and
the real bummer is what I learned by looking into it: Ken Grimwood
died a couple of years ago, with his sequel to Replay
unfinished. (Ironically, he died of a heart attack, just like
the main character on the first page of Replay.) |
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In general, I enjoy changes. It's always a mixed bag... one
can see good and bad aspects to every change, from a person's
opinion to a change in the weather. Sometimes it's hard to find
any positives in a particular change, while others are almost
totally great. In many cases, different people will disagree
on whether a given change is a good thing or a bad thing. But
no matter what, it's always interesting, so as one who hates
being bored, I love it when things change. Maybe that's why change
is basically the theme of my most successful card game. |
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