Alex Bain's Blog

Speed parking

In real life I'm only half decent at parking a car. I've never botched it so bad that I caused damage, but I know people who can park any car anywhere, like my Mom or my friend Hector.

Here's a game where you test your skills. My buddy Hutch sent it to me:

http://www.107.peugeot.co.uk/peugeot.swf

Here's a screenshot of my high score. If you try to beat it, don't get mad at me when you've lost 30 minutes of productivity.

I double dare you

With the new version of this blog, I'm committing to more frequent postings, but of a shorter variety. Here's an example...

I'm addicted to backgammon. I play online against real people, and I play all the time on my cell phone, against a computer, whenever there's a down moment. The thing with backgammon is: the game itself is no better than checkers, but the doubling rule makes the whole thing awesome. What's the doubling rule? Each victory counts as one point, and a match is played to a predetermined number of points, usually 11. At any point during a game, either player can offer a double to his opponent. The opponent must either take the double, making the game worth two points, or forfeit a single point. If he accepts the double, the game cannot be doubled again (becoming worth 4 points) unless he wants it so. The way this works is, you get out to an early lead, offer a double, and force the opponent to either concede before he wants to, or play a doubly important game from behind. The strategy behind doubling in backgammon is more important than the strategy within the game itself.

Wouldn't this work in any other game though?

What if the NBA finals or the World Series were best of 11 matches, but with the doubling rule in each game. It would kill the joy of watching a game live if your team got down early and needed to accept a double. This wouldn't work for spectator sports, but what about in pick up games? In fact, my buddy says that his friends from work all play golf with in this style. Match Play golf, but with the doubling rule. Brilliant. I'm gonna see if I can apply this to other leisure pursuits, like ping pong and Uno.

Uno works well as a 2 person game

Lisa and I play a LOT of Uno together. When we were in Italy, we played several times a day, and we'd bring the cards to all sorts of fun locations. We started playing about a year ago, and I was surprised to learn how much strategy there was. I always played the game in groups of 4-5 people growing up, and with that size, the game is complete luck. But with two people, you have to make some tough decisions. There's 2 main rules that explain why the game is so different when you play with two people:

1. Reverse cards, skip cards, and "Draw 2" or "Draw 4" all allow you to play again immediately, since the other player loses their turn.
2. You have to draw cards if you can't play, but you can draw cards even if you can play.

It's key to have a "Draw 4" in your hand for when the other player is nearly out of cards. The best way to win is to stack up bunch of reverses and skips, so that it looks like you are far from winning, but then to play them all in one big wiz bang.

The other wrinkle that makes the game extra fun: When you buy the deck, they include a few blank cards, which are intended to be replacements for anything that gets lost, but we play with them, and when a blank card is played, the opponent must pay you a kind, sincere compliment. Makes the game quite romantic.

Geosense: A nifty little geography game

I'm not terribly worldly wise, but I came across this little game on the net recently that tempts those with a competitive nature. It names cities anywhere in the world, and asks you to click your mouse as close as possible on a map to the spot of the city. The closer and faster you do this, the more points you receive. Sounds simple, and it is, but it's also addictive and educational. My record so far is 3190. Trust me when I say: if you thought you hated Russia in the 80's wait until so random city over there kills a good round for you in this game.