Got a cub scout in Simon Kenton council? Cross stitch?

by Bill Sempf 13. October 2011 18:28

The council patch is DMC 307

The Den patch is DMC 939

The international Scouting patch is DMC 550

The Pack Number is DMC 817

The 100 year ring is DMC 310

Just a PSA from your friendly neighborhood scouting family.

Want some popcorn?

 

Tags:

Personal | Scouting

Recipe: Grilled Jalepeno Poppers

by Bill Sempf 12. September 2011 11:18

10 fresh jalepeno peppers

2oz Cream Cheese

2oz Shredded Chedder Cheese

2oz Real Bacon Bits

Pepper Grilling Rack, or carefully folded foil.

 

Using gloves, take the tops off of the peppers, and seed and core them.

Mix the cheeses and the bacon in a bowl.

Fill each pepper with the cheese mixture, then drop into grilling rack.

Grill on medium heat for 30 minutes, or until peppers have softened.

 

 

 

Tags:

Food | Personal

How I play miniatures with a 6 year old

by Bill Sempf 4. August 2011 09:32

My recent tweets about Warhammer with my son Adam have brought in a few questions, mostly: “How do you play that incredibly complicated game with a 6 year old?” Good question, that.  I can’t usually remember the Warhammer rules, so how am I expecting him to be able to get them.

The answer was a simple but balanced set of rules that I came up with merging some basic ideas from a lot of miniatures games.  I thought I would codify them here in case anyone else wants to try them with their kids.

Remember, this is VERY SIMPLE, so there is a lot of room for adjudication. A hard core gamer would find this very boring. Adam loves it, though.

Tourna

Tourna is a turn based miniatures game for two to four players.

Basics

Tourna is played with miniatures and dice.  Any miniatures can be used, including non-traditional figures like Legos or plastic animals. As long as they can be isolated (for instance, a lot of figures molded to a common base won’t work), then grouped into units, they will work.

At its core, Tourma is about building armies based on an agreed number of ‘dice’ in total.  Each individual miniature, or “figure”, is assigned a certain number of dice, which represents both that figure’s attack and defense value. If both sides have the same number of dice on their side, the game is balanced and may commence.

Setup

Tourna is best played on a flat clean surface like the dining room table.  After deciding on a source for miniatures, dice values need to be assigned.

Generally, individual figures are 1 dice, and generals are 2 dice.  Vehicles or machinery are 2 or 4 dice.  For instance:

Bill is playing dinosaurs.  He has 16 basic figures and 2 generals in two ‘units’, or groups that move together. His side totals 20 dice, because 16x1 = 16 and 2x2 = 4, and 16+4 = 20.

Adam is playing Legos.  He has a tank, which we decide is worth 4 dice.  Beyond that, he has 8 mounted figures with a general (total 10 dice) and 6 gunners. 4+10+6 = 20.  The sides are even, and play can begin.

IMG_20110727_192208
Simple game setup using Brettonians from Warhammer

Units stay together through the game, and can either move or battle.

Units may be designated as ‘shooters’ but they have a harder to-hit and damage roll. (See ‘Battle’)

Movement

Movement is measured in inches.  Distance can be scaled to your environment, and decided based on the figures you have available. 

A good starting point is to allow shooters to move 2 inches per turn, footmen to move 4 inches per turn, and mounted (vehicle or horse) to move 8 inches per turn.

Units are allowed one free reformation per turn.  They can rotate in place, or change formation either before or after they move.

Mounted units can ‘charge’ in exception to the ‘move or battle’ rule.  If the opposing unit is within range of the mounted unit’s movement, the mounted unit can elect to move to base to base contact, and then melee.

Battle

Battle in Tourna is restricted to melee and shooting.  Decide if each unit contains shooters at setup.

Melee

Units in base to base contact may melee.  All units except machines can melee, regardless if they are designated as a shooter.

The unit whose turn it is is attacking and the opposing unit is defending.  Attacking units may roll one six-sided die for each die of value they bring to the game.  Units roll to hit first, and if they hit then they roll for damage.  There is no special defense number for opposing units – only the attacker numbers matter.

Melee-only units hit on a roll of 3-4-5-6 on a 6 sided die.  They damage on a roll of 4-5-6.

Shooters (whether shooting or in melee) hit on a roll of 4-5-6 on a six sided die.  They damage on a roll of 5-6.

So, for instance, Bill’s unit of 8 Velicoraptors and one General is in base to base contact with Adam’s mounted unit.  The Velicoraptors are not shooters.  The General is worth two dice. Bill rolls 10 six sided dice for the 8 dinos and one general. 6 of the dice are 3 or higher, so he rerolls them for damage.  3 of them are 4 or higher, so Adam’s unit takes three dice of damage.  Bill can choose if that is 3 figures, or 1 figure and 1 (2 dice) general.

Shooting

Shooting can only be accomplished by figured designated at Setup as shooters. They can shoot the entire length of the play area. There is no distance measurement.

Shooting is line-of-sight.  One member of the shooting unit must be able to see one member of the defending unit to be able to aim for it.  All members of the shooting unit must shoot at the same defending unit. Shooters cannot move and shoot in the same turn.

Shooters cannot shoot into a melee.

Shooting units hit on a 4-5-6 on a six sided die (shooting or melee) and damage on 5-6.

So, for instance, during Adam’s turn he decides to shoot the one of Bill’s units of dinos that isn’t in melee with the mounted unit. He has 6 Lego gunners, and can draw an unobstructed line of sight from one of the gunner figures to one of the target dino figures.  He rolls six dice for the to-hit, and gets two dice at 4 or above.  He rerolls those two dice and rolls one 6, so does one die of damage to the dino unit.  He can either remove one of the figured from the unit, or reduce the general to a one die figure.

Machines, terrain and whatnot

Machines with shooting capability can shoot based on the number of dice they are.  They hit like shooters – 4-5-6 to-hit and 5-6- to damage.  They can only shoot at one unit at a time.  Machines have no melee capability.

Machines without shooting capability are treated like terrain. Shooters can’t shoot through terrain. There is no bonus for cover. Terrain and machines block line-of-sight.

Endgame

The game is over when one player is left with figures still in the game.  That player is the winner.

Tags:

Games | Personal

Pyramath–the first fun math game I’ve seen in years.

by Bill Sempf 3. May 2011 17:54

 

I’ve posted about games and education before.  This is about an actual educational game – PyraMath by I See Cards.  This is a small collaboration of educators who designed, developed and produced a series of games for teaching math at the primary education level.  They were nice enough to send Gabrielle and I a copy to use when homeschooling Adam, and we both really like the game.

The premise is simple – starting with a played series of 7 cards, build a pyramid in one of two directions by playing a card that is the sum or difference of the two cards it is sitting on.  If you draw a card you can play, you can draw another card.  Play continues until you cannot play any more, and then you discard the drawn card and play passes to the other player.

The resident kindergartner and I played tonight as part of the evening school I do sometimes to keep in touch with his homeschool efforts.  Gabrielle does 99% of the work, and I like to stay in touch so I do the assessments, have him read to me and play games.

IMG_20110503_200708

Adam loved the game, and handled the math well.  Because you have to opportunity to play on the six and 9ninecard (for an example pair) until you draw a five or a three, you keep running the arithmetic over in your head.  “nine plus six is 15 and nine minus six is three but I have an eight so not there…” Adam is pretty good at arithmetic, thanks to Bakugan, but this was a very good repetitive resource, with a very visible ‘winning’ position.

If you have a primary schooler and need math drills, put away the flash cards and play PyraMath.  Also look at their other games, FracTazmic, Prime Bomb and I See Cards.  Much thanks to Linda for the demo copy – I’ll be buying more!

Tags:

Personal | Games

Mustard Dip for Pretzels

by Bill Sempf 20. March 2011 17:03

1/2 Cup Dijon mustard

1/4 Cup Mayo

1/4 Cup Cheve (Softened in microwave)

2 green onions, chopped fine

1/2 tsp Celery Salt

 

Mix until smooth, eat with pretzels.

Tags:

Food | Personal

CodeMash v2.0.1.1

by Bill Sempf 16. January 2011 06:05

 

Another CodeMash is in the books, and all kinds of new stuff was in the offing for me this year.  But first I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Jason Gilmore, Brian Prince and especially Jim Holmes (along with the rest of the board) for uncompromising management of simply the best conference on this topic.  Period. Not for the money, not for the constraints of space.  It is simply the best code-centric conference on the planet.

I owe a lot of people a lot of links and information on a lot of topics.

imageFirst and foremost, I was delighted to be asked to speak again, and was pleased to have Matthew Groves join me for a discussion on Monodroid.  We had 100 people join us for a look at how Monodroid came to be and what the future holds.

Then Matt took us for a tour of his excellent Stock Tracker application (shown left), converted from Windows Mobile.  There were a number of good points made all around, and generally a good time was had by all.

The Monodroid documentation contains nearly everything that you need to know to get programming.  The tutorials are the best starting point, and provide the templates for all of the major use cases. Matt’s application is on GitHub – please feel free to get it an mess around.  It’s a good app.  I’ll have BabyTrak up here in a couple of months.

imageThe Locksport openspace was a rousing success.  About 40 people were taught to pick, and about that many more stopped me in the halls and told me that they would like to have been there.  I was frankly astonished by the turnout, and would have brought 5 times as many picks if I would have known about the interest – all 15 of the sets I brought were sold.

For those looking for more information:

The Locksport International site has a lot of good links to publications and whatnot.  Deviant Ollem’s book, Practical Lock Picking, is excellent – he is the guy who wrote the presentation that I gave (twice). The best community is online at Lockpicking101, and they have an IRC channel too.  If you need to order picks, look at LockPickShop – Red does an awesome job.  The 14 piece set is on sale right now and is a great learners set!

imageFinally, if you are in the Columbus area please join us at the Columbus branch of Locksport International.  We have a Meetup group – just go sign up and you’ll get the locations for each meeting.  You can attend for free, but if you want a membership card and to participate in competitions, it’s $20 a year.

And last but not least, I got a ton of comments on the jam band.  Lots of questions too.  Yes, I was a professional musician for many years.  I taught at a lot of area band camps, like Upper Arlington and Teays Valley.  I played in a Dixieland band in London Ohio called the Lower London Street Dixieland Jazz Band and Chamber Music Society for nearly ten years. I haven’t played in quite a while, and I have to say it was a lot of fun.  Hope to do it again next year.

All in all, an awesome conference.  Again, I was a net producer of content rather than a consumer of content, and that’s OK.  I still learned a ton just by chatting with friends old and new, and picked up information about the hip new technologies that the cool kids are using by osmosis.

Hope to see everyone at DevLink!

Tags:

Biz | Personal | C# | Enterprise Architecture | VB

Recipe: The Spanner

by Bill Sempf 3. January 2011 10:59

 

Bastard child of the Screwdriver and the Shirley Temple.

  • 1 shot Absolut Vodka
  • 1 shot Mandarin Orange Juice (just pour it right out of the jar or oranges)
  • 4 slices of Mandarin orange
  • Fill the glass with Sprite

Preferably put it in a Pleasure Island Jazz Company 8oz shot glass.

Enjoy!

IMG_20110102_233006

And yes, no ice.  Make sure the ingredients are cold.

Thanks to Matt Groves for the name.

Tags:

Personal

The terrorists have won

by Bill Sempf 23. September 2010 11:24

When I was a sophomore in high school, we had a unit in our World History class about the Holocaust.  Fran LaBuda, a German Jew who escaped to the US through despite the Nazis, would stand at the door of our classroom and bark orders to us in German as we entered, using a pointer to tell us where to sit, and even push us around as necessary.  A militant looking fellow (later I learned it was her son, and as gentle a guy as you could imagine in real life) escorted anyone who didn’t take it seriously out of the room, rather roughly.

The point was to show us in general how easily we could be cowed by a force we didn’t understand taking our power of independence.  These are upper middle class high school students, and used to getting their way.  Their parents bought them the cool clothes and looked the other way when the rules were transcended.  They wore their ego on their shoulder like a badge of honor.

But when the going got rough, they folded like a bad hand at cards.  Only one person tried to joke about the event with Mrs. LaBuda, and was taken from the room.  He was the class clown, but was nearly in tears when pushed out of the door by the enforcer.

Fast forward to today.  I was in line at the TSA’s security gate at SeaTac.  Walking up and down the line was a rather militant looking fellow yelling out in plain, though loud, English:

“If you do not take your liquids and gels out of your carry-on luggage you will not be allowed to get on your plane.  You will be escorted to enhanced screening, and there is a half day wait.”

Next to me stood a seventy year old woman, grey hair, a Russian Jew by her accent; tears were streaming down her face.  She was frantically digging through her plain bag looking for the satchelof toiletries that was plainly sitting on the table in front of her, unnoticed.

“Your bottles are right here,” I showed her.

“Oh, thank you son,” she sighed in relief.  “I’m just trying to get home to Florida to see my grandson.  I’m so terrified that these people will lock me up.”

She was so terrified that those people would lock her up.  People that were purportedly trying to keep us safe, but who were instead driving this woman, others, myself to tears with worry that one wrong move with the toothpaste could cost us time with loved ones, money, business, whatever.

The terrorists have won.

The goal of a ‘terrorist,’ and thus the name, is terror.  They don’t really care, as a group, if they kill anyone.  As  long as the people they attack live in fear.  They state that they want to kill Americans, and then, largely, don’t.  They just want us to think that they will. (Remember, while 9/11 was a huge tragedy, it doesn’t make much of a mark in the numbers that have died in simple in-fighting in the Arab Alliance. The deaths weren’t the point.  The after-effects were the point.)

We, as a country, as a people, as individuals, have folded.  Just like that classroom of sophomores 20 years ago, we have turned in our independence to the authorities with our papers and our shampoo.  Even the clowns in Washington, once a source of hope, are led crying from the classroom the moment the chips are down.

Please don’t think your humble author is putting himself above you, the reader.  I had planned on traveling with a firearm this trip: because I can, then lock my luggage with my locks, and pretend that I am more secure than most.  I did not, fearing hassle, fearing delay, or just fearing – I’m not sure which.

I don’t have a solution to suggest, dear reader.  I simply needed to lament the passing of a once great country – the greatest of social experiments – into the waste bin of political history.  I do not believe that is within any of us to turn the social tide now, unless Atlas truly does shrug and some number of us retreat to a contemporary Galt’s Gulch.  The slope of our decline is too firmly now in place.  We have lost.

Tags:

Personal | Rants

Fiction and human achievement

by Bill Sempf 17. September 2010 18:13

 

For almost 200,000 years, humans were indistinguishable from animals. 

For 5,000 years, we had only achieved the advancements of agriculture and prostitution.  Nothing to be sneezed at for sure, but certainly not the pinnacle of potential.

In 100 years, we went from farming to the Industrial Revolution.  There were a lot of reasons, but note the sudden easy availability of fiction.  I know, I know, correlation doesn’t equal causation, but I can’t help but wonder how much the insurgence of fiction, and how it influenced the play of children, impacted the next generation and the ideas they worked from.  Factories? Space travel?  Computing?

Fast forward to Asimov, Clarke, and the other Science Fiction writers of the 50s.  They pointed our eyes to the stars and our minds to the unimaginable.  Is it a surprise that the generation that grew up reading their books and reenacting it in their play gave us the fathers of the Internet?

Please don’t dismiss child’s play as a waste of time.  Please don’t assume that the introduction of fictional universes into a children’s playtime is an “overdose of media.”  You don’t know what the availability of universes is doing for our children’s fertile minds.  Wouldn’t you rather let them run with it and see what becomes of it, rather than shut it down, afraid of the future it might bring?

Tags:

Rants | Personal

If

by Bill Sempf 7. September 2010 10:45

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!


-Kipling

Tags:

Personal | Rants

Husband. Father. Pentester. Secure software composer. Brewer. Lockpicker. Ninja. Insurrectionist. Lumberjack. All words that have been used to describe me recently. I help people write more secure software.

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