Author: Kyle Dickerson

Christmas 2022 Board Game Roundup

January 8, 2023 7:47 pm

We got a bunch of board games for Christmas this year. Here's my quick rundown and roundup of the games. I'll give each game my own, personal, first-impression rating and an inferred rating from Heather and Corinne based on my interpretation of how much they enjoyed the game.

Exploding Kittens (2015)

Kyle's Rating: 2/5 (simple and highly random)
Girls' Rating: 5/5 (silliness, and EXPLODING KITTENS!)

Fairly simple competitive, player-elimination card game. Every turn you draw a card from the deck, if it's an exploding kitten, you're out. Last player unexploded wins. You have a hand of cards which allows you to modify the game flow and potentially defuse a kitten. It's short, it's easy, the instructions are clear. The girls like it. We played it several times inside the air fort. The girls played it with friends that came over and taught it without assistance.

Happy Little Dinosaurs (2021)

Kyle's Rating: 1/5 (terrible instructions, probably higher rated if taught by someone else so you don't have to deal with the instructions)
Girls' Rating: 3/5 (cute and a bit silly)

You're a stressed out dinosaur trying to survive the ongoing apocalypse around you. You'll face various calamities and do your best to stay alive. This is also a competitive, player-elimination card game, but slightly more involved than Exploding Kittens. You have a hand of cards that may enable you to better survive (or throw your fellow dinosaurs under the proverbial bus). Be the last dinosaur alive to win (or be first to escape the apocalypse by moving to the end of the track).

The game is pretty straightforward, and the artwork is adorable, but the instructions are absolutely abysmal. Some of the worst I've ever seen. I think the clearest way to describe their failure is that they seem to describe the game from a detached observers view--like an anthropologist describing what's happening but not understanding why its happening. So when you read them you can understand the "appearance" of the game, but not any of the motivation for why you're doing things. Once you get past that, the rules are actually quite simple.

Perhaps it was the pain suffered from attempting to decipher the instructions, but we were not particularly impressed with this one after a few play-throughs.

Camel Up (2nd edition, 2018)

Kyle's Rating: 4/5 (clear rules, analyzing probabilities provides some depth)
Girls' Rating: 4/5 (wacky camels and light hearted)

You're in Egypt gambling on the camel races, but this race is a little....different. The camels climb on top of each other and move in stacks and a couple of camels are running the wrong way around the track.

The instructions are well written and easy to follow to get set up and playing. You take turns either making bets or moving the camels (by dropping a die out of the pyramid). Once the race is over the player with the most money wins. I think Jess is a little annoyed playing with me since I'm able to analyze the probabilities fairly readily and made good bets. The girls have liked it and Corinne, after insisting she didn't want to play, loves it.

It's silly, a bit whacky, very much non-serious, and fairly quick to play.

Paint the Roses (2022)

Kyle's Rating: 4/5 (going to especially appeal to logic players)
Girls Rating: n/a (haven't played with the girls yet)

You're gardeners for the capricious and violent Queen of Hearts. She's given each of you different instructions on how she wants her garden arranged. You must work together and use deductive reasoning to figure out what the Queen has commanded your fellow gardeners to do while they do the same for you. Keep up with the ever-changing whims of the Queen or it'll be "Off with your head!"

You place new plants in the garden to communicate to the other players what instructions you've been given and/or learn about what instructions they've been given. We lost on the very last turn when the Queen caught us and chopped our head off.

Very nice artwork with detailed figurines for the Queen, the gardeners, and the White Rabbit.

Jurassic Park: Danger! (2018)

Kyle's Rating: 3/5 (dinosaurs are too smart, should be hobbled somehow)
Girls' Rating: 3/5

Jurassic Park is frightening in the dark
All the dinosaurs are running wild
Someone shut the fence off in the rain

One player controls the dinosaurs, hunting down the humans on Isla Nublar for sport. The other players are those humans desperately trying to get the park operating well enough to call for help and escape.

I played the dinosaurs and I think the biggest flaw in this game is that the dinosaurs are too smart. Since the dinosaurs know the objectives of the humans they can make strategic decisions to deny access to key parts of the board. This seems to be required to keep the game balanced as designed, but it also means the dinosaurs are unnatural and it takes away from the atmosphere.

I'm thinking about playing around with rule modifications to force the dinosaurs to make more "mistakes" and feel more natural to the humans. Even something as simple as "roll a die to determine which of your 3 cards you use this turn" would help.

I like the theme and board design should make for good replayability.

My Little Pony: Adventures in Equestria (2022)

Kyle's Rating: 3/5 (mechanics feel a little clunky)
Girls' Rating: n/a (haven't played through a complete game with them yet)

There's trouble in Ponyville and you need the magic of friendship to set things right. In this cooperative game you'll play as one of Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, or Fluttershy and work to acquire the necessary resources to clear some hurdles and complete the final challenge.

I think this game struggles a bit on what it's trying to be. It bills itself as a deck-builder, but you don't have time to do as much deck building as in most other deck-builder games. There's a strict time pressure (not wall-clock time, but per-turn events) pushing you towards defeat. The result is that you don't have a lot of time to build-up your deck--if you try you'll lose. Instead you need to use a fairly aggressive play style to stay on top of things to win, which isn't my preference. I usually play more casually, but you will definitely lose this game if you do that.

There's a somewhat awkward "move" mechanic in the game where you need to expend resources to move your standee from one place to another. I feel like this could have been dropped entirely without losing anything related to the core game mechanic.

The Night Cage (2021)

Kyle's Rating: 5/5 (unique mechanics and well executed theme)
Girls' Rating: 3/5 (felt maybe a little too creepy)

You awake in an endless labyrinth with nothing but a flickering candle to light your way. Working with the other prisoners you must find a key for each person, find a gate, and meet there to use your keys to unlock the gate and escape. But beware, only the light of your candle keeps these walls stable. Any time a passage is not being illuminated by a candle it disappears and will change when next seen.

I heard about this game while looking for good Halloweeny games to play. I bought Horrified last October and put this on the wish list. Horrified is campy and light-hearted. The Night Cage is dark and creepy.

The constantly evolving board is well executed. And the candle theme is effectively integrated throughout the game. A little out of place in early January, but I look forward to playing it in October. The instructions are well written and the turn actions are clear. There's also an "advanced" game mode which we haven't tried.

Wingspan (2019)

Kyle's Rating: 5/5 (super chill, beautiful artwork, clear mechanics)
Girls' Rating: 5/5

Develop an ecosystem to support a variety of birds in your wildlife preserve. Manage food, eggs, and space to grow your population.

Players earn points for the different types of birds, number of eggs, and other specific goals. The player with the most points at the end of 4 stages wins. There's a lot going on, but the core game loop is easy enough. The complexity comes from how the base mechanics interact with each other as you try to expand your preserve.

I always find simple mechanics that combine to produce emergent complexity to be very satisfying. Too many games add complications to make a game seem more complex, but if not executed well it feels clunky (I think that describes My Little Pony, above).

Jess learned how to play and taught this one to the rest of us, so I can't comment on the instructions directly, but it also came with a learning tool in which it tells each player exactly what to do for their first 4 rounds to help you figure out what's happening. That feature was very nice. By the end of your 4th turn you have at least a vague idea of why you'd take each of the actions available to you and you're ready to fly solo.

The artwork is beautiful and the gameplay is very chill. Ostensibly you're playing against each other, but you're mainly just doing your own little thing collecting birds and reaching goals and then you compare scores at the end (though you could be aggressive about monitoring what everyone is doing and work to hinder them).

Splendor (2014)

Kyle's Rating: 4/5 (logical analysis and engine building, but also fairly shallow)
Girls' Rating: 3/5

You're a renaissance-era aristocrat looking to expand your influence and power. Acquire resources and grow your empire while gaining the attention and loyalty of local nobles.

This game feels like what you'd get if you boiled down 7 Wonders to a single core mechanic: Acquire low-level resources which will enable you to acquire higher-level resources until you've accumulated enough points to win. Conversely, 7 Wonders would be what you get if you built on this core mechanic to produce more depth and (somewhat counter-intuitively) speed up the game.

Jess also took on learning this one. It seemed to go well, the rules are straight-forward (since it's built around a single mechanic). Easy to learn, easy to play. I always enjoy a game where you get to watch your power build and the engine-building in this scratched that itch well.

There are several expansions that, presumably, increase the depth and complexity.

Mint 21 + Kodi 19 + Intel NUC i3

2:24 pm

The latest in my series on the subject, this follows the last upgrade in 2018: Mint 19 + Kodi 18 + Intel NUC i3.

Not much has changed in how I got my set up the way I want since 4 years ago. There is a minor change on how to get the TrueHD and DTS-HD MA audio passthrough working.

Update NUC’s UEFI

I grabbed the latest firmware from Intel (version 54) and flashed it onto the NUC. One issue I ran into (which presumably isn't new, just not noted previously), is that the NUC wasn't negotiating a display signal through my receiver and I had to plug it directly into the TV to see anything in order to do the firmware upgrade.

Next I went on a wild goose chase because after upgrading the firmware nothing could see the internal mSATA drive on which the OS is installed. After an hour and a half of messing with it (including downgrading the firmware) I eventually disconnected everything, opened it up, re-seated the drive, and put it back together and everything was fine. No idea what that was about.

Install Linux Mint 21.1

I then installed Mint 21.1.  I won't cover that in this post.  Plenty of better places to find that information.  I'm using the 64-bit distribution.

Install Kodi 19

The Kodi Wiki install guide is pretty clear:

$ sudo apt install software-properties-common
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install kodi

ALSA, PulseAudio, TrueHD, DTS-HD MA

Since last time some minor details about how to accomplish forcing Kodi to use ALSA have changed. I still use a custom session launcher, but instead of rather forcefully killing pulseaudio it uses pasuspender and sets an environment variable for Kodi.

Create our custom session launcher:

$ nano ~/kodi_custom_session_launcher

Paste in:

#!/bin/bash
pasuspender -- env KODI_AE_SINK=ALSA kodi

Make the launcher executable:

$ chmod +x ~/kodi_custom_session_launcher

Now create the custom XSession entry:

$ sudo nano /usr/share/xsessions/Kodi_ALSA.desktop

And paste in:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Kodi with ALSA
Comment=This session will start KODI Media Center
# Note: Change "kyle" to your username
Exec=/home/kyle/kodi_custom_session_launcher
TryExec=/home/kyle/kodi_custom_session_launcher
Type=Application

Now if you log out you should be able to select "Kodi with ALSA" as a session option from your login manager.  In Mint, this is accomplished by clicking the circle to the right of the user name.

After a little fussing and some restarts I eventually saw the correct audio targets in the Kodi settings and everything seems to be happy with the audio passthrough support.

Kodi Configuration

I setup some stuff in Kodi's advanced settings file to disable the splash screen, hide the ext4 file system's "lost+found" directories, and increase the network streaming buffer.

Create the file:

$ nano ~/.kodi/userdata/advancedsettings.xml

And paste in:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<advancedsettings>
  <splash>false</splash>
  <video>
    <excludefromlisting>
      <regexp>lost\+found</regexp>
    </excludefromlisting>
    <excludefromscan>
      <regexp>lost\+found</regexp>
    </excludefromscan>
    <excludetvshowsfromscan>
      <regexp>lost\+found</regexp>
    </excludetvshowsfromscan>
  </video>
  <network>
    <cachemembuffersize>15728640</cachemembuffersize>
  </network>
</advancedsettings>

NUC's Remote Control IR Receiver

To use the NUC's built-in IR receiver we need to install the ir-keytable utility:

$ sudo apt install ir-keytable

Then we define the keytable we need for the Onkyo RC-764M remote using the Xbox keycode 33003.  Create the file:

$ sudo mkdir /etc/rc_keymaps
$ sudo nano /etc/rc_keymaps/onkyo_rc-764m_nec_33003

And paste in:

# table onkyo_rc-764m_nec_33003, type: NEC
# Using Onkyo Remote Code 33003
# Code mappings match same buttons when using Original Xbox Dongle Remote Code
# ScanCode LIRC_KEY # Remote button text
# LIRC_KEY is modified to get correct action in XBMC using LIRC-in-kernel fake-keyboard actions

0x2d2d3a KEY_I #Display
0x2d2d59 KEY_LEFT #Left
0x2d2d5a KEY_RIGHT #Right
0x2d2d47 KEY_UP #Up
0x2d2d48 KEY_DOWN #Down
0x2d2d4a KEY_C #Guide/Top Menu -- Context Menu
0x2d2d4b KEY_ESC #Prev CH/Menu
0x2d2d45 KEY_BACK #Return
0x2d2d56 KEY_O #Setup -- Codec Info
0x2d2d58 KEY_ENTER #Enter
# UNUSED 0x2d2d4f #Audio
0x2d2d35 KEY_COMMA #Skip Left
0x2d2d34 KEY_PERIOD #Skip Right
0x2d2d32 KEY_R #Rewind
0x2d2d33 KEY_F #Fastforward
0x2d2d31 KEY_P #Play
0x2d2d38 KEY_SPACE #Pause
0x2d2d39 KEY_X #Stop
0x2d2d3b KEY_1 #1
0x2d2d3c KEY_2 #2
0x2d2d3d KEY_3 #3
0x2d2d3e KEY_4 #4
0x2d2d3f KEY_5 #5
0x2d2d40 KEY_6 #6
0x2d2d41 KEY_7 #7
0x2d2d42 KEY_8 #8
0x2d2d43 KEY_9 #9
0x2d2d44 KEY_0 #0
# UNUSED 0x2d2d4e #+10
# UNUSED 0x2d2d46 #CLR
# UNUSED 0x2d2d7c #Search
# UNUSED 0x2d2d7d #Repeat
# UNUSED 0x2d2d7f #Random
# UNUSED 0x2d2d7e #Play Mode

Now configure a systemd service to load the keytable at boot.  Create the service file:

$ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/ir_receiver.service

And paste in:

[Unit]
Description=Configure the IR Receiver for the desired keytable

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/ir-keytable -c -p NEC -w /etc/rc_keymaps/onkyo_rc-764m_nec_33003

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

ExecStart needs the absolute path to the ir-keytable executable.  Here's what the command options do:  "-c" clears the existing keytable.  "-p NEC" puts the receiver in NEC mode. "-w /etc/rc_keymaps/onkyo_rc-764m_nec_33003" loads our custom keytable.

And enable the new service:

$ sudo systemctl enable ir_receiver.service

Bonus: Logitech Media Server

I also run Logitech Media Server for the fleet of Squeezebox Radios in the house.  I

The information for LMS is a mess.  Lots of out-of-date information and lack of clarity on recommended approaches.  The wiki linked to in the previous post is now out of date.

However, the package repository still seems to be the right place. This XML file contains the details on the latest release: http://downloads.slimdevices.com/releases/latest.xml

I grabbed the 8.3.0 DEB release for amd64 from: http://downloads.slimdevices.com/LogitechMediaServer_v8.3.0/

$ sudo apt install ./logitechmediaserver_8.3.0_amd64.deb

Misc. Errata

My external USB3 hard-drive enclosure (a Mediasonic ProBox HF2-SU3S2) had been working rock solid under Mint 19. Unfortunately now it's randomly being disconnected. It immediately reconnects and I can re-mount the drives, but it's a major annoyance. The transfer speeds are about 50% faster than before (~120MB/s vs ~80MB/s, so we're hitting the very max of my gigabit networking--which is cool--but, I'd rather have it be stable).

After trying a few things (disabling auto-suspend, checking for the UAS driver [not in use]) and making no progress I wrote a cronjob to check if the disks had become unmounted and, if so, to remount them. The job runs every minute.

Ugly, but so far it's been effective. It could, obviously, be done with an array and a loop instead, but I just wanted it done and not have to try to remember the exact syntax for that.

#!/usr/bin/bash
needed_to_remount=false
if ! mountpoint -q /mnt/TV; then
  needed_to_remount=true
  mount /mnt/TV
fi

if ! mountpoint -q /mnt/General; then
  needed_to_remount=true
  mount /mnt/General
fi

if ! mountpoint -q /mnt/Movies; then
  needed_to_remount=true
  mount /mnt/Movies
fi

if ! mountpoint -q /mnt/4TB_Storage; then
  needed_to_remount=true
  mount /mnt/4TB_Storage
fi

if [ "$needed_to_remount" == "true" ]; then
  echo "$(date) Needed to remount disks"
fi

And the entry in /etc/crontab to run it:

# Workaround external drives being unmounted randomly
* * * * * root /home/kyle/Scripts/remount_disks.sh >> /var/log/remount_disks.log

Which logs when it detects the drives have been unmounted so I can at least monitor how often this is happening. So far it's been happening 3-7 times a day with what-appears-to-be entirely random intervals. Maybe the log file will reveal some pattern I can work with.

Christmas 2022

December 30, 2022 1:23 pm

Christmas was on a Sunday and school / work ran through the Thursday before. So we kind of ran into the day. School and work, school and work, then Friday, Saturday--boom--Christmas.

I spent almost the entirety of lead up baking. On the 23rd I made a bûche de Noël using the same recipe as my birthday cake (chocolate cake, vanilla instant-mousse filling, and chocolate buttercream frosting). It's not the traditional French recipe in any form, but it tastes better. I wasn't sure if the cake recipe would take to being rolled, but it worked well enough. I used a half recipe and baked it in a parchment-paper lined baking sheet. I messed up right at the end of preparing the cake and added a full amount of boiling water, but I also messed up and cooked it for the usual length of time. Thankfully those two mistakes seemed to cancel each other out and it came out fine.

On Christmas Eve I spent the day baking fresh baguettes to eat with fondue, and rolls for dinner the next day. I also worked with the girls to make sugar cookies using dough I had prepared the day before. Jess baked a chocolate fudge pie.

The evening rolled in and we ate our now-traditional cheese fondue with a variety of dippings: fresh baguette (so good), vegetables, apples, & crackers. The recipe Jess came up with this year was, by far, the best yet and will likely become the go-to recipe in the future.

Then we each read a story in the living room in front of the faux-fire. I read The Polar Express, Corinne read a booklet Heather wrote last year, titled Christmas Is, about what kinds of things makes Christmas feel special to her (which includes: picking out a special tree, decorating the house, the Christmas chain countdown, driving around town to look at lights, and reading a Christmas Eve story [among others]), Heather read Winter Candle, and Jess read The Night Before Christmas. The cats joined us for the stories and Phoenix even let me get a picture.

The girls each opened presents from each other (novelty socks and slippers!) before leaving out egg nog and cookies and heading to bed. And eventually the house was calm and quiet and the Christmas Magic happened.

A new piece of art over the fireplace to match the season.

Christmas morning started in the dark with Heather waking us up to say she didn't feel well and had a headache. Then waking us up again a bit later to reiterate not feeling well and then she threw up. So it was a rough start. By that point everyone was up and moving and she felt much better after throwing up. We'd chalk it up to over excitement, but she also had a fever, which seem harder to fit into that narrative.

Anyway, she was feeling better so we got the show on the road at about 6:45am.

London playing with a mouse toy.
Jess loves her some orange sticks.
Air Fort!
Heather opens a robot.
Heather painted this picture of Zim from the TV show "The Dragon Prince" as a gift to the family.

My Christmas Tree Tells me when it's Thirsty - Redux

8:02 am

Last year, I built a float sensor to tell me when the tree needed water.

This year I found a water sensor that accepts leads and I thought I'd try it out and see if it would work or if being wet would drain the battery. I grabbed an Aqara Zigbee water leak sensor ($15 at time of purchase) and some old wire to use as leads; hooked up the leads and ran them into the tree stand and mounted the sensor on the outside.

I left the float sensor in from last year, but it seems to be getting gummed up and not rising/falling smoothly, so it's not really working anymore. It looks a bit messy, but the tree skirt completely hides it.

I also bought a funnel, spray-painted it green, and stuck a hose on the end. The funnel sits about 4.5 feet up the tree around the back and the hose runs down into the stand. It was like $15 for the funnel, spray-paint, and hose. Well worth it.

So now the tree sends us a notification when it's thirsty and we add water through the funnel until it says it's happy. It's amazingly convenient. One of my best ideas. No more crawling under the tree trying to see how much water is there, finagle a pitcher around the branches, or figure out how much more to add!

My Home Assistant automation is really simple, when the sensor goes dry, send a notification to my tablet and to Jess' phone. Since it's a real water sensor I don't have to muck about telling the system to pretend it is one.

Someone should make a tree-stand water-level sensor that just lines up five sets of leads onto a piece of plastic, then you would get readings for "full", "3/4 full", "1/2 full", "1/4 full", and "dead empty." I'll probably add a 2nd sensor next year so I get "low" and "full" at least.