Sunday, November 29, 2015

Splendor: A Splendid Game for the Entire Family

    In a time where the classic board games of our past have turned digital, taking away from the fun and education of simple math, you might be searching for an new alternative to games like "Monopoly" or "Life" for your family. If you're a fan of Renaissance era artwork and nobility, then search no further. There is "Splendor".
    Published by Space Cowboys and designed by Marc Andre, "Splendor" is a resource management game where the players are gem merchants competing to buy gems, mines, and shops for prestige. The first player to reach 15 prestige points by the end of a round wins the game. During their turns players can collect gems, buy cards (which represent various mines, transportation, and shops), or claim a hold on cards to prevent other players from claiming them. Players must choose wisely what gems they do collect, as the game's supply is limited to 40 chips which sets the competitive tone between the players for achieving their win. As the players gain properties eventually they can earn visits from notable nobles of the game, who also add prestige points to the players. The gameplay quickly gains speed and momentum as the gem chips start to dwindle on the board as well as the property cards. This brings a real sense of excitement to the game as the predictable winner can suddenly find himself losing as strategies play themselves out in the final rounds of the game.
  The artwork, by artist Pascal Quidault, is superb and gives the game a painted elegancy that a Renaissance styled board game demands. For a price varying from $20 to $30 depending on the retailer, the game's pieces of 40 gem chips, 90 cards, and 10 noble tiles are of a sturdy quality. "Splendor" brings an edge of speedy gameplay and competitive spite to a game genre that can sometimes be simplistic and boring. But much like the Renaissance period it represents, "Splendor" excites the senses with both it's bright nobility and it's dark greed.

Sunday, November 22, 2015

You Get What You Pay For: A Review of the Nextbook Ares 11

    Back in my early twenties, when I was inexperienced … oh who am I kidding! Back when I was young and dumb I used to buy everything in the cheap, store brand versions. That included shoes, which I used to buy from Walmart for $10. I didn’t care how bad they were, ten dollars was a great deal I couldn’t pass up for work shoes. I was just going to tear them up anyway, right? That’s right and tear them up I did. Every month those cheap shoes had to be replaced with another cheap pair. Well it’s only ten dollars, surely I can spare that every month but after eight months of replacing these cheap shoes I realized how I had spent what I could have spent on one pair of good shoes to last the whole year. And if you include the gas I spent to go to Walmart seven additional times, really the cheap shoes ended up costing me more in the long run. It was a lesson I learned the hard way but the fact is you get what you pay for, and it’s wise to invest in quality.
    Wait, I clicked this link for a review of the Nextbook Ares 11! What the heck does this guy’s stupid shoe story have to do with anything …”
    The Nextbook Ares 11 is the Walmart store brand of tablets, and like those shoes you get what you paid for. From the box it looks comparative and promising for a $197.00 price tag. It has a sleek look to it’s design, with the blue edging and blue backlight to the keyboard. It has 64GB of storage which can be extended to 128GB with the use of a Micro SD card expansion. The tablet has a crisp looking 11.6” display running at a 1366x768 pixel resolution. There’s a modest but capable Intel BayTrail-T CR Quad-Core 1.83 GHz CPU and a GEN7 GPU processor inside. One of the greatest selling points for me at it’s price is the inclusion of a backlit keyboard attachment. And the tablet has lots of ports including 2 USB ports in the keyboard, a Micro HDMI port, a Micro USB port, and also the Micro SD slot I already mentioned. It runs on Android’s Lollipop 5.0 operation system. Oh did I mention it’s under $200!! What a deal!
    Then  we get home with it and start to use it, and the shoe begins to wear thin quickly.
    The first issue with the device is memory. It can handle singular tasks fairly well with a bit of longer load time than your average tablet, but once you try to run multiple Apps at once the background apps begin to shut down. For example when facebook’s Messenger App pops up with a message the App can shut down as you're in the middle of typing your reply. You have to stop what you’re doing and load the App as the main application of focus to have a chat session. This is especially annoying if you’re someone like me who likes to listen to music while you browse the Internet or type documents in your word processor. I’ve fiddled with the settings as much as the OS allows. I’ve minimized my Apps to just two, the music and my simple word processor, and still after about a minutes time of typing the music quits. So kiss multitasking goodbye!
    The rest of the issues seem minor again considering the tablet is so modestly priced. Yeah it’s bulky and gets hot. Sure the keyboard is a little awkward to use and the mouse pad actually gets in the way if you’re typing too fast. I consistently hit the mousepad with my spacebar thumb, popping my typing text to a random spot on the top of the screen. The speakers are a joke, as is the camera but what’s my battle cry here … you get what you paid for. The load times can linger on, and the gaming performance is a bit laggy on the graphically intense games.
    Did I mention the bang for your buck? For singular tasks it gets the job done and the display is very nice all things considered. Video play is bright and crisp, as long as your video App is the singular application running. The keyboard setup is very handy for a writer like me, with an easy detachment to switch the tablet to a convenient, but heavy, reading device. For a Walmart brand device it could be worse, but one could easily argue it could be better. Is it a worthy investment, hell no! But for someone who’s struggling financially it offers some nice features that the $200 market usually doesn’t get. Choose wisely because, one more time, you get what you paid for.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Knowledge Is Power: a Review of Andy Weir's "The Martian"


    Space, the boring frontier ...
    No, I'm kidding. Space is immensely interesting. And dangerous, which is what makes it such an exciting environment for a thriller. Well at least for a space geek like me, but what about the mainstream? Where is America's interest in space exploration now and what would it take to invigorate it? Well Andy Weir gives us one nightmarish example of a fictional situation that could turn the attention of everyone to NASA and to space.
    In his novel "The Martian" astronaut Mark Watney is stranded alone on the planet Mars after a manned exploration mission is abandoned due to a dangerous dust storm. During their evacuation strong winds blow a satellite dish into Watney’s side, damaging his space suit and convincing his team that he had met his demise on the martian surface. But he survives and reaches the safety of the NASA Habitat to begin his adventure of survival, beginning with a log entry of "I'm pretty much fucked ..."
Watney's Path on Mars

    And that's the avenue the novel uses, reading as a collection of Mark Watney's recovered log entries. It gives the book a cool "found footage" feel I've never experienced in a novel before. Spoiler alert, eventually the narrative turns to a more traditional third person writing to tell the tale of the events back on Earth as NASA discovers Watney's still alive. It gives the reader a nice change of pace to the reading. Just when you're starting to find the log reading a little dull, the book brings you into the drama back at earth. There's also some nice back story breaks on the building and science behind NASA's equipment, just in time to understand how and why it breaks.
    The meat of the novel though comes in the entertaining character of Mark Watney. Watney's delivery is edgy and hilarious in a nerdy kind of way. Maybe it helps being a nerd myself to catch all the references to Dungeon and Dragons, 70's sitcoms, and comic book character Iron Man. It's Watney's geeky enthusiasm for engineering and science that gives the novel a tone of adventure and fun that lessons the dullness of scientific detail. It reminded me of reading a Michael Crichton novel. Superb, real feeling dialogue with nuggets of science sprinkled in between. And if the novel teaches the reader anything it's that knowledge is power. And while I'm no astronaut, the novel comes off as well researched and accurate. My favorite science lesson moment in the book is when Watney decides to make his own water out of his oxygen tanks and the Hydrogen from the MAV's rocket fuel. It's basic chemistry, but still being accustomed to a society where everything is pre-made and canned it was a kick of inspiration to think, "wait you can MAKE WATER!".
Author Andy Weir

    The enthusiasm, humor, and engineer's attitude of Mark Watney I'm suspicious is a bullhorn for the genuine personality of author Andy Weir. Weir’s do-it-yourself attitude can be seen just in the publication of the novel. Weir independently published The Martian in 2011 as a free download off his personal website. As it gained Internet popularity, readers requested a Kindle version to be released. Weir complied, giving the book the most modest pricing Kindle would allow, 99 cents. It became a bestseller, gaining the attention of publishers and the movie industry. The first set of rights were sold for an audiobook version by Podium Publishing in 2013, followed by the hardback printing by Crown Publishing in 2014 and then the current feature film released by 20th Century Fox in 2015. Not bad for a first novel!
    As of this writing the movie version has earned 207 million dollars, while the paperback novel is second on the New York Times Bestseller list. So I take back my earlier assumption, it look’s like america does still have interest in space. Well, at least in fiction we do and why wouldn’t we with the quality of science fiction making a comeback with books like "The Martian". Speaking of which … STAR WARS!!!! Woo hoo!! Who’s excited? This guy.