Makeshift Mic Stand

Singing and playing a fake plastic guitar at the same time. 

Ticket to Ride vs. Thurn and Taxis

Recently, Cait and I have been playing quite a bit of Ticket to Ride: ten times in the past month, plus a handful of plays of Switzerland and Nordic Countries, the maps for fewer players. (We still prefer 1910’s Big Cities with two, as mentioned in my recent Boardgames! post.)

This weekend we picked up Thurn and Taxis, another Spiel des Jahres winner, and have already gotten seven games in as of this writing.

The games have some similar mechanics: route building, card drafting, and a race to trigger the end of the game. As co–Spiel des Jahres winners, they’re both lightish, family-friendly Euros. They also share, at least as we play them, an “oops, sorry I got in your way” level of player interaction, rather than explicit conflict.

Though I still enjoy Ticket to Ride, I’m really starting to prefer Thurn and Taxis, and not just because it’s the newer, shinier game in our collection.

Porcupine Islands, Bar Harbor

Window view, two days in a row. 

GeoLogTag: Geotag With Any Camera for $5 (+ iPhone)

Today Cait and I wandered around Acadia National Park with our SLR (a D50 with Nikon’s 18–200mm VR, both highly recommended, though the D50 has been effectively replaced by the D40). I wanted to geotag the photos (maps on computers are fun) but, alas, the D50 does not have GPS.

The iPhone does though, so I was able to use a nifty app called GeoLogTag [iTunes, $5] to do the tagging for me.

Word.