Old dog, new tricks: Stop motion videos

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I’ve occasionally wondered if there are apps to help create stop motion video. Today it hit me again, and this time, rather than allowing my brain to get distracted with something else (as happens an embarrassingly huge amount of the time), I actually sought out such a beastie. Not surprisingly, there were quite a number … Read more

Isolation Day 30 Game: Qwirkle

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Qwirkle is a game of creating lines of like colours or shapes but not both. Each player gets six small tiles with a coloured shape on it: One of a combination of six shapes and six colours. On every turn, the players will seek out the best placement for as many of their tiles as … Read more

Old dog, new tricks: Learning ukulele

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My daughter has been playing the ukulele for a couple of years now through school classes, and she’s getting pretty good at it. And as all parents can appreciate, it’s a big bonus that she actually likes playing it. Win-win. When the order for household isolation came down, the school was pretty quick to offer … Read more

Isolation Day 30 Game: Carcassonne

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Carcassonne is a competitive yet collaborative game where players build up a 2D region using modular tiles to get points as the game goes on as well as at the end. Players take turns flipping tiles from a communal deck (or various decks for easier access) one at a time and adding them to the … Read more

Isolation Day 21 Games: 3 Wishes, Fast Flip Pizza

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It was finally the time to try out 3 Wishes, a game we got at Christmas but which had sat unopened since. But of course, what better time than indefinite self-isolation to crack open something new to play? The game is simple in concept but takes focus to play well. From a very small, curated … Read more

What I read this month

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With the world flipped upside down lately, I totally forgot to post my read books for March at the turn of the calendar page, so here’s the list: The Lisa Cron book comes very highly recommended, and I stuck with it until about half-way through, where its approach to creating stories that have organic, dramatic … Read more

Two-for-one ebooks at House of Anansi Press

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In a shrewd and thoughtful move, House of Anansi Press is currently doing a “Reading Apart Together” promotion where if you buy any ebook for yourself, they’ll send another copy of the same ebook to someone else you choose. While I hadn’t taken a look at their catalogue before, they have a very diverse range … Read more

Isolation Day 19 Games: Sushi Go!, Fast Flip Pizza

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Sushi Go! is a fun, quick game that’s easy to pick up and is flexible enough that it works for two or more players. The goal of the game is to get the most points by accumulating sets or combinations of point-value cards (with a few standalone singles) over three rounds. At the start of … Read more

Isolation Day 18 Games: Ingenious, Fast Flip Pizza

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Ingenious is a great game and can be played by kids and grown-ups alike. Players have a “hand” of six funky two-hex tiles (which look something like futuristic domino tiles) with varied combinations of six coloured symbols on them, that you lay onto the board so that those symbols connect with like symbols already in … Read more

When alleged convenience is less convenient

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I’m in a lottery pool with a couple of family members. Nothing much, just an arrangement where we each spend $5 a week on some flavour of lottery and we send the numbers to each other to be all above-board, and we roll small wins back into more tickets but we’ve agreed to evenly split … Read more