The game is beautifully designed and the artwork is fantastic. You’ll be tagging along with your fellow players to exorcise ghosts, save the villagers and ultimately prepare yourselves for the incarnation of the evil Wu-Fung, the penultimate ghost that has super evil powers.

Onto what I don’t like about this game… the rule book is terribly written. It’s vague, ambiguous and thoroughly unclear for a game of this level of complexity. I want to give a major shout out to Grudunza, whose four video tutorials on how to play this game were indispensable in learning the game mechanics.

Once we’d mastered the mechanics, the next hurdle my group faced was winning this game, and boy is that hard! We probably lost around 20 or so games before finally winning one. I created this video strategy guide to help other newbies who are trying to win Ghost Stories for the first time. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be winning all your games!

Ghost Stories is fun, highly replayable and even has a couple expansion packs, so if you’re up for a greater challenge, you’ve got it. As compared to other collaborative board games, such as Shadows Over Camelot, Ghost Stories is much faster paced. Once you’ve got the hang of it, an average 2 player game is about 30 minutes.

Playing this as a solo player is also really fun. In some ways I find it easier than playing with others since you’re given more Tao tokens and power tokens to start off with.

Overall this game gets 4/5 stars. Once you understand gameplay it’s awesome, but the poorly written rulebook make learning to play this a challenge.

Got that?

Yeah, what a disaster. I really want to like Screenflow (previously known as screen capture software #2), but I have encountered so many bugs that I really have to wonder if the people who make this software have ever tried to do a screen capture (or edit a video). I have talked with their support in the past who have been very nice, but I’ve never received a satisfactory answer as to how to resolve a variety of issues.

Those issues include: crashing, encoding errors, random “unable to save” projects, random “unable to rename media” problems, and then today — unable to export the video I have been working on for a couple weeks into anything that resembles an actual video. If I wanted an avant garde post-modern art piece with squiggly lines and cryptic graphics, what I exported would be AWESOME. I could probably get an MFA with that alone. Unfortunately, that’s not what I’m going for.

I’ve learned to work with Screenflow in the past by fastidiously saving my projects and quitting and restarting the application every 20 minutes. That usually holds most of the aforementioned bugs at bay.

Self Portrait Taken Amidst The Video Crisis

Regarding the exporting problem, I’ve contacted Screenflow and expect to hear from them in a couple days and try to work out what’s happened this time around. For the time being, I was really in a bind. I NEEDED MY VIDEO, GOSH DARNIT! So I did what all resourceful people do and used another screen capturing software, Camtasia, to capture my screenflow in full screen preview prior to the export gobblygook. Pretty smart, right?

PRETTY INSANE, RIGHT?

Camtasia, I was delighted to find out, works. It has successfully exported my video and while it’s not 100% the way I want it, it’s good enough.

If you do a fair amount of video editing, I’d love to know what software you use. I’ve found myself using Screenflow because iMovie simply does not that the features or granular control I need. I have been trying to hold off on Final Cut Pro simply because of the price tag, but maybe it’s time.

(There was also a pull up competition on my first day at the office.)

Recently, our office chatter has taken a turn from fitness talk to Lionel Richie’s video for the chart topping 1984 hit, “Hello”.

If you’re unfamiliar with the song, it comes out of the great ’80s “stalker genre” of song (ie: Every Breath You Take by The Police). The song is undeniably awesome. The video, however, is incredibly cheesy and slightly creepy, taking us through the life of a professor, played by Lionel, that is secretly in love with a blind student, Laura.

Lionel calls her up, singing his love on the phone, only to hang up mid sentence. He sings behind her in the cafeteria as she’s eating lunch, follows her into a dance class to serenade her, and so on. Eventually we learn that the love between Lionel and Laura is mutual, for she sculpts his head out of clay and reveals it to him by saying, “This is how I see you”.

This video has caused so much hilarity in the office that all kinds of “Hello” pranks have ensued. One morning I came into the office to find this on my desk (courtesy of my work wife, Angie):

I knew I needed to one up Angie, and with Lionel as my inspiration, Jonathan and I decided to build the clay sculpture of Lionel’s head.

This was not an easy process. Considering neither one of us knows how to sculpt, I immediately took to the internet to see if anyone else had sculpted Lionel’s head. I did come across this unbelievably hilarious tutorial by Ted Fines. Ted, also a n00b when it comes to sculpting came up with this:

Photo by Ted Fines

As you can imagine, that left me pretty concerned.

I was down, but not out. Determined to find a way to sculpt Lionel’s head, I stumbled upon the story of a bunch of art students in the UK, which undertook “The Hello Experiment”. They actually sculpted Lionel’s head blindfolded:

With renewed inspiration, I crafted my plan. We went to the local weave and extension emporium in the heart of the Tenderloin and bought a foam head. Next, we purchased a bunch of air dry clay and a variety of clay molding tools. Mind you, I had no idea what to do with this tools, but I felt they would add more authenticity to my newfound life as a sculpter of creepy celebrity busts. (For the full set of instructions on how to make your own Lionel Richie clay head from “Hello”, check out my Instructable.)

We decided to mold the clay around the foam head so to have a bust that was, at the very least, anatomically correct. Next, while carefully pouring over an image of the original clay head from “Hello” we began to sculpt. The whole process took about two hours, and in the end we had our very own Lionel “Hello” head:

The happy couple

Once dry, I carefully packed up Lionel’s head and plotted how to get it onto Angie’s desk without her noticing. When she went out to grab coffee, I placed Lionel on her desk and waited for her return. This is what happened when she came back and found Lionel:

So good, so sweet, so Lionel.

Pinterest lets you create an online pinboard of inspiring ideas and projects from around the web. Most importantly, whatever other people in your friend circle pin shows up in a stream on your homepage. Finding new ideas and inspiration is dead simple.

One of my favorite categories is food, and I’ve pinned close to 100 food projects on my “Food Porn” pinboard. Looking at food pictures is fine and dandy, but I want more! This is my Pinterest weekend, and in keeping, here are the recipes I’m making from Pinterest:

Corn Soup from La Tartine Gourmande

Pesto chicken stuffed shells from What's Cookin, Chicago?

Pumpkin Banana Bread from Skinny Taste

Cheddar jalapeno cornbread muffins from Love and Butter

Pinterest is awesome for food and craft projects, but I’m not having much success with finding tech projects. Where do you go for project inspiration (tech or otherwise?). Put your favorite sites in the comments and spread the love.

I’ve been on Points Plus for the past four weeks and the results are in:

Weight lost in the last four weeks: 5 lbs
Total weight lost in past seven weeks: 10 lbs
Inches lost in the last four weeks: 3.5 inches
Total inches lost in the past seven weeks: 10.5 inches

I am really happy with the Weight Watchers plan. I do tend to eat the same few meals every day, so counting points is easy. Also, I’m NEVER hungry. It actually feels like a diet I can do without feeling like I’m on a diet! I am also taking one day off a week where I don’t count and that has been totally fine. I generally don’t gain wait the day after my binge day, either.

Throughout the last two months I haven’t been doing any exercises. In Month 3 I’m going to switch that up. I am going to start exercising this month and see how that changes the numbers. I’ll check back in next month with an update!

1) Playing host to all these new people and making sure everyone was happy, comfortable, feeling like part of the group

and

2) getting help in my project to have a bird house tweet when a bird comes along. With the help of Jof, Michael and Andy, I figured out the best way to “activate” my arduino to transmit a message via Xbee to the computer (and then to twitter) was to use a PIR (passive infrared) sensor.

The great news is that Ma’velous is very happy to have us in their cafe. They generally reserve a table for us and the owner, Philip,  is looking forward to our arrival each week. The bad news is that Ma’velous has little/no outlets to plug in, so if you come next week, COME CHARGED!

If you have any comments about how Code Cafe could be improved, please let us know in the comments or next time you visit!

Here are the details on our next meetup:

Code Cafe #3: Tuesday, May 24th
Ma’velous, 6 – 9pm

Whether your in San Francisco for a weekend or a week, here are a few things you should definitely put on your list:

1. Tour Tech Shop: why? Because you want to drool over their millions of dollars in equipment. Amazing machinery and beautiful space. Day passes are also available.

2. Raygun Gothic Rocketship at Pier 14: yes, a rocketship! Get our your best Barbarella costume and come see this beautiful piece of art. On display until Fall 2011.

3. Market Street Blooms at 7th and Market: two towering metal flowers have been placed in San Francisco’s mid-Market area, brightening up one of the more depressed areas of San Francisco. The 15 foot pieces of art are well worth seeing and bring a beautiful sense of whimsy. This installation will continue until November 2011.

3. Electronics flea market: held on the second Saturday of the month and focusing on electronics and amateur radio gear (March – October). Giant nerd swap meet.  http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/

4. Museums: Visit the Tech Museum, Computer History Museum and Exploratorium. GO!

5. Visit Instructables.com HQ: So I am biased. Whatever. Point is that Instructables is a DIY mecca for millions of makers, hackers and hobbyists to post their projects and be inspired. Come visit our office for a tour — meet the robots, check out our laser cutter and get to know the team behind this popular site. And if you’re in town for Maker Faire 2011, RSVP for our Ice Cream Social.

6. Hackers, you say? Visit Noisebridge and revel in its chaos.

7. Head south to Weird Stuff and HSC: if you’re heading down the Peninsula, you are going to want to check out these two warehouses full of parts, pieces, components and awesome stuff for makers, hackers and hardware geeks. You’ll be able to identify either by the “unique” cars in the parking lot — such as the one with 20 antennae strapped to the roof or another with 60 feet of CAT 5 strapping down items in the back of a pickup (yes, I have seen both of these at HSC).

8. Tour a data center. Why? Because if you haven’t already they’re awesome to see. There are a couple in the city itself, so find yourself a network engineer and get an inside peek.

9. Take a mini-class at the Crucible. Learn to play with fire, make kinetic art, metalwork, glassmaking and so much more. They have regular events and weekend classes for all interested.

10. Shoot guns at Jackson Arms. If you’ve never shot a firearm, I highly recommend doing so. It’s a wonderful education in the power of these machines and safe handling. Plus… it’s just fun!

What else am I forgetting? Post your suggestions in the comments!

Ma’velous learned through Twitter that we were going to be hosting Code Cafe at theirs and reserved a large table for us in advance. How awesome is that?

@m_c_t and @jof joined me to work on various projects. I mainly stuck to working through Programming Ruby and learned some cool new shortcuts. We learned about @m_c_t’s trip to China’s electronics city, Shenzhen, and all the cool gadgets he found for rock bottom prices.

The evening was capped off with tons of great coffee and an impromptu key signing party. Having a small group was great. It was really nice to be able to ask my Code Cafe cohorts for help or clarification and learn about some of the issues they were facing. It’s incredible how much you can learn just talking to really talented developers.

Hope you join us next week!

Code Cafe #2

Tuesday, May 17th
6 – 9pm
Ma’velous (1408 Market)

Photo by SpecialKRB (Flickr)

Four weeks ago I embarked on an intrepid plan to eat beans, eggs, lean meat and veggies as part of the slow carb diet laid out by Tim Ferriss in his book, The Four Hour Body.

I followed the diet religiously for the last four weeks.

The diet was appealing to me because of the notion of a “cheat day” — a day where you could eat whatever you wanted with no regrets. Sadly, these days appear to do nothing but reset whatever weight loss I may have made during the week.

Here are the results:

Days 1 – 10: 5 lbs lost, 7 inches lost

Days 11 – 28: no weight loss, .5 inches lost

You know you’ve hit rock bottom when the thought of eating another can of beans actually induces tears. Tim Ferriss says that people think they need more variety in their diet than they actually do, and that eating under his plan won’t bore you to death. After four weeks, I couldn’t disagree more. By the end of the four weeks all I wanted to eat was anything but THIS.

Why didn’t the slow carb diet work for me? I suspect it was way too high in carbs (beans) and calories.

I turned to Weight Watchers to help me understand why I might not be losing weight. I’ve used WW before and their new Points Plus system takes calories out of the equation and looks at only Fat, Fiber, Carbs, and Protein to give each food a point value.  Based on your age, height and weight, you have a certain number of points you can eat each day and from there you can figure out how many Twinkies you can eat until you hit the mark.

I’ve never liked the aspect of counting anything (a large part of why the slow carb diet was so appealing), but when I input my daily food log into the WW Points Plus calculator, my points were off the chart. I was simply eating more than I should have been.

With that in mind, I’m back on Weight Watchers. I am sticking with a lower carb diet, but incorporating some of the things I love back into it. A typical day on WW looks like this:

Breakfast: Greek yogurt, granola, berries

Lunch: Chipotle chicken salad with guacamole, salsa and pinto beans

Dinner: Chicken sausage, lots of steamed veggies, rice

Snack (if needed): banana

I’ve been including a couple glasses of wine after dinner as well and am so much happier. WW gives you some extra points to play with, so I’m still going to have a cheat day once a week, but stick closely to the diet the other 6 days.

Being on Weight Watchers I’m also losing weight again! Down 1.5 lbs since starting it two days ago. I’ll provide another update in a month’s time and we can see how well the WW plan works.

Photo by Agathe B (Flickr)

I received a surprisingly large response on Twitter to asking if friends would be interested in a weekly coding cafe. So we’re doing it!

I haven’t been doing any programming since starting at Instructables and am really missing it. This is a great opportunities for booth noobs and more experienced folk to get together and code it out!

We’ll be doing the first Coding Cafe at my favorite new coffee shop, Ma’velous. This place is awesome for a number of reasons:

1. awesome coffee and wine
2. local business that needs our support
3. not busy
4. centrally located at Market and Polk (two blocks from Civic Center Bart and one block from Van Ness Muni station)

Ma’velous doesn’t have wi-fi. If you’ve never worked in an internet free environment, I highly recommend trying it out. Programming doesn’t generally require an internet connection for coding, so I like the ability to just sit down and focus without email/IM/Twitter constantly distracting me.

If you do need wi-fi, I will be “bringing the internet with me”, and in theory, can tether eight computers to a cellular access point. Hope to see you there.

Coding Cafe #1
Tuesday, May 10th 6 -9pm
Ma’velous (1408 Market St)

Hook up with us on freenode: #codingcafe

Photo from maveloussf.com