SonicChicken blog

I’ve been using Delicious Library to catalog our DVD’s, CD’s, and books for almost two years. It’s great for keeping track of your library, especially if you loan your books and such out to your friends–just drag the item being loaned onto the person to whom it’s being loaned.

DL will also keep track of video games, which doesn’t do me a lot of good since I don’t own any. But I do have a modest collection of boardgames that I’d like to catalog (and track!) in DL. I sent this feature request to Wil Shipley soon after I started using DL. Lo and behold, this morning I read the following (from “Transitions and Epiphanies”, about 1/3 of the way down):

…I start asking if the world even needs an app that catalogs books and DVDs and now boardgames when we could all be under five feet of water in a few years.

(Emphasis added.)

I’m running the current version (1.6.6) of DL, and there’s nothing to support boardgames in there, so I think this is a new feature being added to the upcoming version 2. I’m firing off an email to Wil begging to beta test the new version.

I just stumbled across a way-cool widget over on BoardGameGeek. It’s a javascript widget that (in this case) displays the last five games I played:

The “games played” list is from the BGG database, which I often forget to update. But this widget is just the sort of thing that will help remind me to log all the games I play.

(Oops! I forgot to link to the widget generator.) If you’re a BGG user, check out the GeekWidget generator. (And if you’re a boardgamer but not a BGG user, go ahead and register!)

The first Sacramento ConQuest game convention was held this weekend, April 7-9. There were quite a few things going on–CCG tournaments, miniature gaming (e.g. Warhammer), an anime film festival, miniature painting contest, costume contest, RPG’s, a bunch of science fiction movies (to go along with the convention theme, “Questing through time”), and…

Boardgaming! In spite of the fact that I only attended the con “part time”, (I was at home with my family at least a few hours every day), I managed to get in 14 games. At about two hours per game, that’s a lot of gaming! Half of the games were ones I’ve already played and/or own. Of the half that I had never played before, three stood out as likely purchases — Caylus, Reef Encounter, and Winds of Plunder. Caylus and Reef Encounter are both a bit complex and may not appeal to my family, but Winds of Plunder would probably get a lot of play at our house.

One of the best things about con’s is the people they attract. I already know quite a few local gamers through the Sacramento Boardgames Meetup, but I met dozens of interesting new gamers at the con. Many of them are locals that are involved in other game groups, and I look forward to getting together with them in the future. I also talked to some well-informed folks and got some news about a few games I’m interested in: Zendo, which is currently out of print, is supposed to be re-published in the near future; Winds of Plunder has received almost enough pre-orders to enter GMT’s production queue; and Take Stock, a game designed by my friend Simon Hunt, probably will be published in May or June. Take Stock was already a great game when I playtested it several months ago, but Simon and the publisher have tightened it up considerably since then and bumped it up to “excellent”. I’m really looking forward to this game’s publication!

I spoke with several of the convention organizers before I left on Sunday evening, and they were very happy with the attendance numbers. They were hoping for 400 attendees, and they managed to pull in over 500, which is quite a good turnout for a first-run con. We can look forward to an annual gaming convention in Sacramento every year in early April. Easter was very late this year and caused a bit of scheduling hassle, on top of the fact that this was organized on relatively short notice. But I understand that ConQuest Sac 2007 is already being planned, so next year should be even better!

One of the things I’m going to try out when my PowerBook comes home is Delicious Monster. This is a library management system for the Mac which can catalog books, movies, music, and video games. I’ve got plenty of the first three, (although most of them are currently in storage), but I don’t have any video games. One thing I’ve proposed to the developer(s) is a way to support boardgames, especially providing links to the corresponding BoardGameGeek entries for my games. (And for extra-cool bonus points, provide some way to synchronize my BGG collection with the DM catalog.) I can’t find my feature request on their web site, nor does it appear on the DM blog. Well, I guess I can submit it again…

Some of the other slick features of DM are public “shelves” to display your stuff and a “borrower” tracking system so you can share your books, music CD’s, videos, and (hopefully!) boardgames without losing track of them. (I’m really looking forward to the tracker, since I’ve lost more than a few books over the years that I loaned out but were never returned to me–usually nothing intentional, just people forgetting to return the book and me not remembering to whom I loaned it.)

Just an aside: I found a story on Wired! about the original development of Delicious Monster. This sounds like my kind of “office”!

We had a great turnout at the December boardgames meetup, especially since our numbers usually plummet during the holiday season. There were about 28 people (+1 baby) gaming at the Fox & Goose Public House on Tuesday night. All together we played about 10 different games — we would have played more, but about ¼ of our players left early to go to a karaoke (sp?) bar. I took a bunch of pictures, but I didn’t want to blind anybody with the flash, and I didn’t bring my tripod. As a result, only one picture was even marginally viewable.

We’ve been trying to keep track of all the games we play whenever we get together. There is a thread on the meetup message board with a list of nearly all our events since May 2005. Each event has an associated “geek list” which shows the games we played that night, usually including the players and their scores. Many thanks to Kevin for coming up with this idea and doing nearly all the work to make it happen!!!

We get together every Tuesday night at the Fox & Goose, but the first Tuesday of each month is usually our best attended. There are also several other events every month at other venues. See the full schedule on the Sacramento Boardgames Meetup site. If you’d like to join us, feel free to drop in during a scheduled event or you can join the Meetup group (free) and RSVP. You can use the RSVP comments to request a particular game or to pre-arrange players for a game.

Many of our members have listed their games collections on BoardGameGeek, also known as “BGG” or “the ‘Geek.” You can find our members’ BGG usernames by checking their Boardgame Meetup profiles for an answer to “If you have a profile on BoardGameGeek.com, what is it?” (Take a look at my Sacramento Boardgames Meetup profile for an example. About halfway down my profile you’ll see my BGG username and URL:

“I’m jimv on the ‘Geek, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/jimv“

Unfortunately, Meetup doesn’t convert all URL’s into clickable links, so you’ll have to copy-and-paste the URL into your browser.)