Week in review: Week to 21 June
Jun. 22nd, 2025 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther. I think I've found a good balance with the journalling, where I'm keeping a useful amount of notes about things I want to talk about and not spending an off-putting amount of time on it.
. At board game club, we played Power Hungry Pets and Space Base.
Power Hungry Pets is basically Love Letter with a different theme and a few different power cards. I still prefer Love Letter, although that may just be because I'm more familiar with it. We played four rounds, and I won the last round. That round got off to a good start when I eliminated the player who'd won the most earlier rounds in my first turn, by guessing his card based on what he'd done in his turn, and the contents of my own hand. It also had a dramatic finish, when it was down to two players and a question of which had the higher-value card; my opponent revealed his card with a flourish, confident because he knew there was only one card in the deck with a higher value than the one he held - unfortunately for him, that was the card I had...
Space Base is a game that I didn't understand or enjoy the first time I played it, but I'm liking it better as I get the hang of it. (I think it helps that the last few times I've played have just been the base game, whereas the first time there was also an expansion in play that made it even more complicated.) This time, I got an early head start, but when I was halfway up the score track I started getting overtaken by people who had a better idea how to use the more complicated cards that let you do multiple things in a turn, and in the end another player won with a complicated engine that gave him over twenty victory points in a single turn.
. I spent an hour or two going through all my predictable recurring payments - membership fees, utilities, etc. - to see if there were any advantages to be gained by paying them at different frequencies. The thought I started out with was to see if I could pay a bunch of them annually, all at once, and not have to worry about finding that money for the rest of the year, but it turns out that nearly all the ones where paying annually is a benefit I'm already paying annually. Several of them I'm actually thinking about paying more frequently than I was - monthly or even weekly - because they don't offer any discount for large infrequent payments, so the advantage is in paying small amounts frequently to smooth out the hit. I was a bit surprised to find that over half the periodic payments were already on the most beneficial set-up: well done, past me. In a way, that means this wasn't a very useful exercise, but it's nice to have it in writing that I know what I'm doing.
I was reminded that years ago I used to have a computer programme where I could enter my income and my recurring payments and it would generate a graph predicting how my money would grow or shrink over time and highlighting sudden dips to be aware of. I feel like that would be a useful tool to have again, but I haven't been able to find anything like it.
. I'm continuing to listen to The Hidden Almanac on the anniversaries of each episode's original release date. This week marked a milestone: the first time that the regular presenter, Reverend Mord, was absent, and the introduction of his stand-in, Pastor Drom. She's very perky and relentlessly cheerful. My original attempt to listen to The Hidden Almanac didn't get much further than this, but I gather from what I've heard that this is the beginning of a significant change in the podcast; it was originally conceived as a format where a single voice speaks directly to the audience, but the introduction of a second character played by a second performer opens up new storytelling possibilities.
. I had a productive week at work, and learned some new things.
. I went to see the Rep Club's latest production, The Great Emu War. I'd chosen not to audition for this one, and I think I made the right choice, because I found enough in it to enjoy as an audience member that I was glad I went to see it, but I think if I'd been in the cast I'd have been tired of it by the time the rehearsal period was over. (It's a comedy inspired by an actual historical event, but it felt like the writer was just using it as an excuse for wacky shenanigans without having anything to say about the event or the issues surrounding it.) That's assuming I even made it into the cast; I have to say that all the actors did well in their parts and there aren't any that I think I would have fitted better. The set was good, and some of the props (including the emu puppets) were spectacular.
. I finished the jigsaw puzzle I was working on in around ten days, and left it sitting around to look at for a few more days before taking it apart and getting started on the other jigsaw puzzle I got for Christmas. This one is based on a Star Wars movie poster, and is proving challenging: large swathes of it are a backdrop of star-speckled blackness, and there's a strip at the bottom that's just plain black, with no guide to placement except for the shapes of the pieces. I was having real trouble with the bottom edge before I realised that I had the two indistinguishable bottom corners the wrong way around.
. At Parkrun, it rained a bit, but I wasn't bothered because I'd checked the weather forecast before I left the house and dressed accordingly. And we were rewarded afterward with a really good rainbow. I took a few photos of the rainbow, and tried to get a shot where the end of the rainbow was lined up with the hill that's the highest point of the course, but when I got to the necessary angle there was a tree blocking the view of the hill.
. At board game club, we played Power Hungry Pets and Space Base.
Power Hungry Pets is basically Love Letter with a different theme and a few different power cards. I still prefer Love Letter, although that may just be because I'm more familiar with it. We played four rounds, and I won the last round. That round got off to a good start when I eliminated the player who'd won the most earlier rounds in my first turn, by guessing his card based on what he'd done in his turn, and the contents of my own hand. It also had a dramatic finish, when it was down to two players and a question of which had the higher-value card; my opponent revealed his card with a flourish, confident because he knew there was only one card in the deck with a higher value than the one he held - unfortunately for him, that was the card I had...
Space Base is a game that I didn't understand or enjoy the first time I played it, but I'm liking it better as I get the hang of it. (I think it helps that the last few times I've played have just been the base game, whereas the first time there was also an expansion in play that made it even more complicated.) This time, I got an early head start, but when I was halfway up the score track I started getting overtaken by people who had a better idea how to use the more complicated cards that let you do multiple things in a turn, and in the end another player won with a complicated engine that gave him over twenty victory points in a single turn.
. I spent an hour or two going through all my predictable recurring payments - membership fees, utilities, etc. - to see if there were any advantages to be gained by paying them at different frequencies. The thought I started out with was to see if I could pay a bunch of them annually, all at once, and not have to worry about finding that money for the rest of the year, but it turns out that nearly all the ones where paying annually is a benefit I'm already paying annually. Several of them I'm actually thinking about paying more frequently than I was - monthly or even weekly - because they don't offer any discount for large infrequent payments, so the advantage is in paying small amounts frequently to smooth out the hit. I was a bit surprised to find that over half the periodic payments were already on the most beneficial set-up: well done, past me. In a way, that means this wasn't a very useful exercise, but it's nice to have it in writing that I know what I'm doing.
I was reminded that years ago I used to have a computer programme where I could enter my income and my recurring payments and it would generate a graph predicting how my money would grow or shrink over time and highlighting sudden dips to be aware of. I feel like that would be a useful tool to have again, but I haven't been able to find anything like it.
. I'm continuing to listen to The Hidden Almanac on the anniversaries of each episode's original release date. This week marked a milestone: the first time that the regular presenter, Reverend Mord, was absent, and the introduction of his stand-in, Pastor Drom. She's very perky and relentlessly cheerful. My original attempt to listen to The Hidden Almanac didn't get much further than this, but I gather from what I've heard that this is the beginning of a significant change in the podcast; it was originally conceived as a format where a single voice speaks directly to the audience, but the introduction of a second character played by a second performer opens up new storytelling possibilities.
. I had a productive week at work, and learned some new things.
. I went to see the Rep Club's latest production, The Great Emu War. I'd chosen not to audition for this one, and I think I made the right choice, because I found enough in it to enjoy as an audience member that I was glad I went to see it, but I think if I'd been in the cast I'd have been tired of it by the time the rehearsal period was over. (It's a comedy inspired by an actual historical event, but it felt like the writer was just using it as an excuse for wacky shenanigans without having anything to say about the event or the issues surrounding it.) That's assuming I even made it into the cast; I have to say that all the actors did well in their parts and there aren't any that I think I would have fitted better. The set was good, and some of the props (including the emu puppets) were spectacular.
. I finished the jigsaw puzzle I was working on in around ten days, and left it sitting around to look at for a few more days before taking it apart and getting started on the other jigsaw puzzle I got for Christmas. This one is based on a Star Wars movie poster, and is proving challenging: large swathes of it are a backdrop of star-speckled blackness, and there's a strip at the bottom that's just plain black, with no guide to placement except for the shapes of the pieces. I was having real trouble with the bottom edge before I realised that I had the two indistinguishable bottom corners the wrong way around.
. At Parkrun, it rained a bit, but I wasn't bothered because I'd checked the weather forecast before I left the house and dressed accordingly. And we were rewarded afterward with a really good rainbow. I took a few photos of the rainbow, and tried to get a shot where the end of the rainbow was lined up with the hill that's the highest point of the course, but when I got to the necessary angle there was a tree blocking the view of the hill.
