Boardgame hoarding

I'm a sucker for boardgames, especially if they're fantasy-based and/or treasure-oriented. Monopoly or Risk can be fun to play, but they're too anchored in the real world for my liking. Bring me a Troll or someone weilding a sword any day. ;]

Drakborgen: Legenden
Drakborgen: Legenden was the first boardgame I bought and also the one we've played with the most. It's based on Drakborgen I & II which was released as Dungeonquest in English. The objective of the game is to enter the dungeon with your character and move towards the center where the dragon is watching her treasure. On the way there you'll face monsters and traps, opponents that may try to thwart your progress and the occassional dropped piece of treasure. It's a good fun game and I really only see two flaws; the timer sometimes move too fast and the dragon is too bloody strong. Other than that, it's golden. :]

Dungeon Twister
This is the most recent game I've bought, i got it only a few days ago. We've played it only twice, but it's a fun - and rather fast paced - game. By itself the game is for two players, but there is an expansion allowing for 3 or 4 players that I'm looking into buying. Two teams built up of characters with various strengths and weaknesses are trying to win by getting five "Victory Points". You earn points by escaping the dungeon or by killing your opponents. The players move through a maze built up over a set of rooms, and at the same time trying to keep the other team from leaving. All the rooms can be rotated, which makes for an everchanging maze. The floors have traps and some rooms are sealed off by "Portcullis", a portal-like door that only two of the characters can either open or break so the rest of the team can move through. And there's one character that moves through walls, which can make for some sneak attacks.

Dungeoneer
Dungeoneer is a series of stand-alone decks that can be played individually or combined with other decks. I have Dungeoneer: Call of the Lich Lord and Dungeoneer: Vault of the Fiends, the first two decks in the serie. Dungeoneer uses playing cards instead of tiles to construct the dungeon (which in my opinion is both good and bad; it's easier to stash the cards, but you can mess up the dungeon by breathing on it.). Each player gets to control a hero and you explore the dungeon while fighting monsters, completing quests, and leveling up along the way. It's good fun, except that I rarely win. In fact I think I have come out victorious only once...

Doom: The Boardgame
"Attention all Marines! We are under invasion. I repeat, we are under invasion!" While it's not fantasy, it's fantastic enough for three games. Doom is built closely resembling the videogame with lots of figurines portraying the Space Marines and the demonic invaders. One player controls the invading forces and up to three other players control the Marines that are trying to escape the base on Mars. During the game the players encounter new weapons and items that will help them on their way through the vast hordes of demons. I'm not a huge fan of games where one player is the "game master", but Doom is a pretty neat game none the less.

Cave Troll
Each player controls a group of explorers that are raiding the Cave Trolls...well...cave. This game isn't as fantastic as the others, the map is always the same and the gameplay is almost too easy, so it gets a little boring after a while. We've never tried playing with the alternative monsters and rules though, something that might make it more exciting.

Reading Kanji and Hiragana/Katakana online

I recently watched a videoclip by a guy called Gimmeaflakeman where he describe the use of, and link to, a very useful plugin for Firefox called Rikaichan. Along with a dictionary (also found on that site) you can hover Kanji or Hiragana/Katakana and it will translate the words in a popup. Either watch the video or go to their site for a preview. Really nifty plugin. :-]

Guitar Hero: Metallica

I decided to order GH: Metallica (along with World Tour for the instruments), splitting the cost with my brother.

Unfortunately I ordered it for the wong console; the Wii instead of the 360. D'oh!

It's just a matter of sending it back to have it replaced, but it's still a bit of a bummer. I really need to start paying attention to what I'm doing.. Silly thing.

Silly update: I recieved a mail stating that I could bring the package along to their nearest store to get a refund and/or swap for the correct version. I went but we quickly realised that a part of the shipment was missing - GH: Metallica. After a bit of searching and a quick call to support they could confirm that it had been sent in a separate package, which I hadn't picked up on (sometimes threaded mails in Gmail can be a nuisance if you're not observant). Nothing much to do but to return home with the box to await GH:M which'll hopefull be here Monday. And then return once more to swap 'em.... -sigh- Sometimes our postal services are a bit....postal..

A further update: Got the parcel and went to swap it for the right version. Turns out they were sold out, but I got my money back. We decided to order the game from another store that had the games in stock. Previous purchase was a bundle with both Live Tour and Metallica but we decided to buy them separately (which was a little bit more expencive). Also, instead of just ordering the game, we decided to get the version that included a guitar. A mighty cool looking guitar, if ou ask me. :]

The game's pretty sweet, and rather challenging. At least on drums, I can't play a higher difficulty than medium without fucking up too badly. ;D I thought drums would be pretty easy, having played real drums in the past, but the way we had the drums positioned back then is almost mirrowed to this drumkit. Makes it more of a challenge = more fun. :] The only crappy thing I can think of when playing drums is that they are pretty noisy (no shit, they're drums!?) and it makes it hard to listen to the song without a reasonable loud volume. Playing is a great workout though. ;]

Spotify and my Playlist

When it launched I was a little sceptic towards Spotify, I've been using various websites that offered almost the same thing (or so I thought) so I wasn't really impressed. But after trying it out I have changed my mind, and for the last few weeks it has been my source of music (even playing tunes I have on disk).

Having Spotify's radio set to only play Heavy Metal from the 00's I have found a bunch of new bands and arranged them in a playlist. As of now the list consist of only one song from each band. (So far it's basically just a way to keep track of the bands; the songs may be picked somewhat randomly).

At the moment the list is called "band som är lite småbra" which roughly translates into "alright bands", meaning if I find a song/band that doesn't suck, it may very well end up on the playlist.

Enjoy! :)

New template!

As per usual, when I've been modifying a previous template to where I think it looks great, I find a new one. This theme is called One Room and was ported to s9y by YellowLed. I won't fiddle too much with it, it looks good the way it is.

わたしのところでなにかのみませんか

Just finished writing down the material from lesson 6. Here's some of what's been covered so far:

x はどこですか。
x wa doko desu ka? - Where is x?

ここですか。
koko desu ka? - Is it here?

あそこですか。
Asoko desu ka? - Is it over there?

ここじゃありません。
Koko ja arimasen. - It's not here.

あそこじゃありません。
Asoko ja arimasen. - It's not over there.

なにかたべますか。
Nanika tabemasu ka? - Would you like something to eat?

なにかぬみますか。
Nanika numimasu ka? - Would you like something to drink?

いいえけっこです。
Iie kekko desu. - No thank you.

どこでたべますか。
Doko de tabemasu ka? - Where would you like to eat?

わたしのところで。
Watashi no tokoro de? - At my place?

あなたのところで。
Anata no tokoro de? - At your place?

わたしのところでなにかのみませんか。
Watashi no tokoro de nanika nomimasen ka? - Would you like something to drink at my place?

Cut a pig.................some slack

I'm concidering a slightly more vegetarian diet. I wouldn't (read: couldn't) cut back on meat completely, there's too much taste-sensations at steak there.........no pun intended, much.

In all seriousness though, it would be for health reasons, although the reasons themselves are not huge. At least not yet, I suppose.

It's not all that often, but now and then after I've eaten meat I can feel my intestines cringe, like (mildly) cramping. I'm guessing I'm either not chewing enough or my body's getting worse at digesting meat. Which would be a bit alarming, but probably not all that surprising. But it's not too late to change, right?

And actually, another reason would be that vegetables are fucking tasty.

I don't see myself being picky about animal products as such, eggs and milk for instance. Can't really live without them. Remember this is just to make myself feel better physically. If I have to beat up a cow now and then, so be it.

Forklift certificate, days 2 and 3

Day 2 was actually wednesday two weeks ago, but nothing exciting happened (so I didn't bother writing anything). There were no driving, just a day full of theoretic stuff. We did a small test to see how much of the information we had picked up. Most of us did good. We all went home to practice some more though, in preparation for the big final day.

Day 3 (today) was rather awesome. Started out with the usual, casual cup of tea (the others had coffee, branding me 'tea-man') before we did the final test. I dunno if it was the tea that did it, but I got through and managed to score enough points to win myself a certificate. Sweetness, thank you very much!

Yay me! \(^ ^)/