Month: October 2018

Houses

This week, I have less of a post than a rant and a poll, as a follow-up to my previous Harry Potter related posts. I, myself, am a Slytherin. Apparently, this surprises people, as I have been told time and time again that they believe I belong in Ravenclaw. But Pottermore and my own judgement have spoken.

I feel, as a Slytherin, that I must add a note to the Houses discussion: being in Slytherin does not make us inherently evil. It means that our highlighting traits are ambition, leadership, resourcefulness and cunning. I’m not so sure about cunning in my case, or leadership, but I am most definitely ambitious, and I believe assorted incidents can also highlight a certain level of resourcefulness. You will note, however, that these traits do not include “being bad.” I have found it rather concerning how many times I have had to point out that just because most bad wizards (Ron said all, but that isn’t true, as multiple examples of others come up throughout the series) came from Slytherin doesn’t mean that all wizards in Slytherin are bad. But many bad people are ambitious, and so they end up in Slytherin with the rest of us.

While I am a Slytherin, I also carry somewhat prominent Ravenclaw traits (learning and creativity, namely). Because of this, I have determined myself to be a Slytherclaw. Mostly Slytherin, somewhat Ravenclaw, totally not evil.

Noting the hybrid Houses (putting the most prominent House in front), but also that you don’t have to identify as a hybrid, which House do you best fit in? Which traits from that House do or don’t apply to you? I look forward to hearing. Or, well, reading.

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Prepare for a Knuckle Sammich!

Or, well, it isn’t so much a Knuckle Sammich as a Kobold sammich or just a non-descript sammich… but that doesn’t sound as cool, so Knuckle Sammich it is!

In Knuckle Sammich, everyone is a Kobold, trying to eat the most sammiches without getting eaten by your friends (oh yeah, did I forget to mention that Kobolds have cannibalistic tendencies?) and serving King Torg (“All Hail King Torg!”). Because Kobold paws are quite small and don’t have opposable thumbs, they can only hold one card at a time, so when they draw a card at the beginning of their turn they must immediately play one of their two cards.

Knuckle Sammich Card Game (Kobolds Ate My Baby!)Cards have five important parts. There’s the meat, the flavor, when in activates, what it does, and the footnote. Meat is only really important if a card someone plays specifically says so. The numbers range from -1 to 13, and there are also variables such as how many beverages are on the table or how many sammiches you’ve eaten. Flavor can be chicken, bacon, beer, Kobold, baby, pretzel, everything, and, if you have the Kickstarter special, pickle. Again, these only really matter if a card brings it up.

Cards can activate in three different locations: In Your Paw, When Played, or On Your Plate (your plate is the pile of cards you’ve played). In Your Paw cards react to what someone does while you’re holding the card. There’s a card called Cursing where if one of the players swears while you have Cursing in hand you eat them. Eating a Kobold means that they place their paw face-down on their plate and are out for the rest of the round, and you get to eat a sammich. When Played is exactly what it sounds like, and On Your Plate means that it is the most recent card you have played (so, at the top of your plate).

Obviously, the most important part of the card is what it actually does. I used the example of Cursing earlier for In Your Paw. A common card is Fork, where you guess a Kobold’s flavor, and, if you’re right, you get to eat them. While the action is the most important part of the card, it’s also pretty straightforward, so I’m just going to move on. My favorite part of the card is definitely the footnote. Occasionally it’s something useful, like “You both get a sammich if you tie,” but most of the time it’s just funny. Some of my personal favorites are, “You would be surprised at what a Kobold considers soup,” “Kobolds have been known to not stop eating when they reach the plate,” “Kobolds will never understand why ‘adventuring parties’ don’t have a buffet,” “Random horrible death is the leading cause of death in Kobolds. Being lunch is in the top ten though,” and “#Drunk #Yolo #BeerAndPretzels #AllHailKingTorg.” I was shocked to find out that not all cards are fortunate to have a footnote. Oh, and I suppose the title of the card is mildly important. But not important enough for me to actually talk about.

A round ends when there is one Kobold left or when all Kobolds have been eaten, a card says to end the round or the deck (“Kitchen”) runs out and a Kobold needs to draw. The survivor (if there is one) and King Torg (“All Hail King Torg”) each eat a sammich before everyone is brought back to life, their paws and plates discarded, and a new round started. The game ends when the Pantry is out of sammiches, or if King Torg (“All Hail King Torg”) eats nine sammiches, automatically winning the game. Whichever Kobold (King Torg [“All Hail King Torg”] included) has the most sammiches by the end of the game wins and is crowned The Victor of Lunch! All Hail King Torg!

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AsapSCIENCE

Yeah, I’m talking about another YouTube channel. Sorry, not sorry. At least this one is educational! Well, my kind of educational, meaning random interesting facts. AsapSCIENCE produces a few different types of videos. Mostly, I watch the What If (and other question based) videos and songs, but there are also the other illustrated science videos and The Lab.

The What If videos include What if The World Went Vegetarian? and its counter, What If You Only Ate Meat? Not all of their question based videos had “What If” in the title. An example of this is Can Plants Think? All of these have drawings to accompany the script. Other scripted videos don’t have questions in the title, like How To Learn Faster and the Amazing Facts collection (part 1 here).

They also have an interesting song selection, such as The Periodic Table Song (which was actually my introduction to AsapSCIENCE), The Science Love Song, and Science Wars, in case you want a science-y Star Wars medley cover, because why not? I would include some links to The Lab videos, but I haven’t actually watched any of those.

They have another channel, Greg and Mitch, where they have more real life activities and less script, like their video How To Eat Bugs, where they made food out of bugs and tried it. This video is actually a companion to one of the AsapSCIENCE question based videos, Should We All Be Eating Insects?

Most of their videos aren’t specifically funny, but I find them amusing anyhow, possibly because of the illustrations. More importantly, I find their work interesting, since random facts and statistics are my kind of thing, and, as a writer, What If questions are always important. It’s interesting to see What If questions actually being answered scientifically, whereas most of us just ask them because they’re amusing to ponder.

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Train That Brain!

Or, the free version of training it, anyhow. But I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s this program called Lumosity that had a whole bunch of ads going around a few years back, and, while I usually ignore ads with extreme prejudice, I eventually caved and downloaded it. I completely forgot that it existed for a couple years until it found its way into my Facebook feed, and I’ve since restarted the habit of using it. Like I said, I use the free version, so, while I’ll try to point out premium stuff, that’s not my focus.

Lumosity is a program that uses a plethora of games to train different aspects of your mind, namely Speed, Memory, Attention, Flexibility, Problem Solving, Math, and, more recently, Vocabulary. It does this by, each day, selecting games for you to play (free version – 3, Premium – 5). Each game has its own scoring methods, in which you attempt to beat your personal high scores. The scores of the games in each category are averaged for the score listed for each of those categories, except for Vocabulary, where they just count the unique words you’ve used, and the scores of all of the games are averaged to form your LPI, or Lumosity Performance Index, which is “a standardized scale calculated from all your game scores.” In the free version, you are able to see your Best LPI, Current LPI, and LPI’s for each “Cognitive Area,” which I usually just refer to as categories. They also track your mood and sleep trends based off of the questions at the beginning of the lesson, and average them.

In free version, you are able to go back and repeatedly play the three games you had that day as much as you would like, but in the Premium version, not only do you get 5 games, but you have access to all 60+ games. These aren’t the only Premium perks. You also get an algorithm that “generates workouts based on your training habits and preferences,” a more detailed training history, how you compare to other people, and a system called “Insights.”

Insights has a lot of subsets, presently 9. Four of these appear to be an overall program: Your Monthly Gains and Drops, Your Occupation Profile, Your Lumosity Community, and Your Game Strength Profile. The others are each based off of a different game, which is listed at the beginning of the title — Train of Thought: Your Planning Skills, Disillusion: Your Play Style, Lost in Migration: How You Filter Information, Ebb and Flow: Your Speed and Accuracy, and Word Bubbles: Your Writer Profile. What do each of these mean? For the most part, I have no clue.

The only one of these I have had the pleasure of trying (thanks e-mail promo codes!) was the Writer Profile. I enjoyed the game Word Bubbles already, which gives you two starter letters on the first round for you to make words out of (ex: PR), three for the first half of the second round and then two (TRI, then TR) and four for the first third of the third round, going down incrementally (you get the idea and I’m out of examples, so yeah). Your Writer Profile matches your vocabulary with the most unique and frequently used thousand or so words from famous writers, to compare your top six matches. Each time you play, this updates, so your matches may shift over time. Though the order of them varied, I spent my three days of Writer Profile with only one set of matches: J. K. Rowling, Agatha Christie, Stephen Hawking, Martin Luther King Jr., William Shakespeare, and Stephen Covey. I had to look up the last guy (it provided brief bios on each in case you didn’t know who they were), but I was pleased with my selection overall.

Lumosity has also recently added a side program called Mindfulness, which focuses on breathing and being in the moment. I was tentative about trying it, but determined that I should, if only to say that I had tried. I would best summarize it as poking the dot on the screen to sync with your breathing. When you inhaled, you held your finger on the screen (or clicked on the computer, I assume) and the little white circle got bigger, then watched it contract when you exhaled and let go. As amusing as it was, it was also surprisingly effective. This noted, I’ve only done the first three or so exercises on it, all in one day, and then forgotten about it until this post. Whoops.

 

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