Battlestar Galactica the Board Game

I bought the Battlestar Galactica Board Game, and I decided to play a round with myself today, decided for a 4 player game. I have just set up all the things I need to start playing, and I already feel like I want to take a break from it *sigh*

But it does look like a fun game so far. Now I think the only problem is to find people that want to play this game with me. People I know usually don't have the commitment and the motivation for games that are too complicated. My brother is probably interested, and maybe one of my friends.

Different from most games, where you play against one another and one player wins. In this games everyone cooperates too survive on the ship Galactica, and reach the end goal of the planet Kobol, which you achieve by doing a certain amount of jumps (going at speed of light). However, one or more people might secretly be a cylon and wants to ruin things along the journey. So I guess you can say there are two teams. Cylons and Humans, if you reach Kobol the game ends and the humans wins. Otherwise the cylons would win, destroying Galactica in any way.

Well, if I didn't get anything wrong. That is all I understand from the game so far. Setting up the game takes some time. And I am not used to these kinds of games. I have only played more simple games in the past. So this is the first time for me playing such a complicated game.

I have not seen the Battlestar Galactiva tv-series, and people do say that this is a game for people who are fans of the show. But I'm not completely sure about that. I do think you can enjoy this game anyway. But it might add a lot to the experience of playing if you are familiar with the tv-show.
I have tried watching the show a few times, but it never really caught my interest very much. I got bored of it very quickly.

I am a fan of a few Star Trek series, Next Generation I liked the most. And I am one of those odd people that really liked Voyager at the time when it was new. I tried watching Voyager again a few times, but then I didn't enjoy it as much. Hated those episodes where they got stuck in their own holodeck and a few other boring holodeck episodes. People always tells me to watch Deep Space 9, I tried doing that also, but never got into it enough to get stuck with it. Well, that was not what I was going to talk about here anyway.

I will start the first round now... Soon, or maybe play some Rocksmith. I don't know ;D

Rocksmith for PS3 and guitar

Yesterday I received this in the mail, I've been looking forward to it :D

I have never in my life played guitar or any other instrument. But I have always wanted to. I guess there are plenty of people out there that feels the same :D When I was a teenager, the people playing instruments was always the cool people. And with my nerdy and insecure personality, playing guitar was not something I "dared" to try, or show people that I was interested.

However, at music class in school, I showed off such a low self-esteem in playing, and had such a bad rhythm, that the teacher lost all motivation to even teach me. She told me I could go do something else if I wanted to. Which made me feel that music wasn't really for me, and kept that with me for the rest of my life. I do however love music.


Now anyway, I don't think any of that matters at all. I tried Rocksmith for the first time yesterday, and it was extremely fun! I kept repeating a part of the game where you learn to play a solo for a song, I did that over and over and over, probably 100's of times, getting better very very slowly. At first the track is really simple, the game looks similar to Guitar Hero where coloured dots comes rolling towards you, and you would need to hit the string at the right moment. Uhm, I'm not so familiar with guitar jargon, so I explaining is difficult. But I hope you get the point.

Each time I completed a track, the difficulty increased, I got up to 55% difficulty. And that was only playing on one single string, changing back and forth from position 3 to 5 (what are those positions called?). I could never get over 55%. I had problems hitting the right string or get my fingers in the correct position. I figured out some techniques to get better at it. But then there were other parts where I felt I needed longer fingers :)

Just changing to play on another string during a track was very difficult for me, but remember it was the first time in my life I played. And I played maybe for 2 hours. I guess, I forgot about time, because I had so much fun :)

I will play some more later today :D

Neato XV Signature pro vision blocked error

I got this robotic vacuum cleaner a while ago. Don't remember when I bought it. Maybe 4 months ago?

Two days ago it started having this annoying error, "My vision was blocked. Please press OKAY (4027)"

Just pressing OKAY will start it again, and it will run for 10 seconds and stop again. It can stop anywhere, no black or shiny objects nearby. At first I was afraid something was broken. But then I remember that I have never fully discharged my battery, as it says in the manual, you should do that sometimes but not too often.

As with almost every manual you read something like "Make sure the battery is fully discharged before charging it", "avoid quick, short charges" etc. A lot of people say that this is not true.

But I have a feeling that it might be true, well it should be true anyway. Lol, a "feeling" is not really proof of anything, but just my intuition. So I did fully discharge the battery by keeping it away from the charger and using spot-clean a few times until it complained on low batteries. Then I waited till it just shut down. And trying to start it again would just turn it off.

Then I let it charge over night and clean in the morning according to schedule. And it worked! It cleaned my entire apartment without any errors.

But then I messed up again, I read somewhere that it was better to shut the unit off completely when not using it. By switching off the power switch that is hidden in the dustbin compartment. I don't clean everyday, maybe just a few times a week, so what is the point having it in the charger all the time. But I think that it reset the memory and everything. It did reset the clock *grrr*.
And maybe it reset any memory it has on my apartment layout, which I guess it has. I started it again and then it wanted to charge the battery again, just like it was an empty battery. Although it was a fully charged battery. Overcharging is never good I thought. So I was a little bit afraid that I had f*ed it up.

I let it clean my apartment again. And it was going around randomly like it did the first few times. Getting the vision error I think once or twice. I decided to let the battery fully discharge once more and charge over night. So I was hopeful this morning that it would not get the vision error, but it did :( 5 or 6 times. But just pressing the button will make it go again.

I hate it when things brakes. Usually you're afraid it is completely broken and goes back with it to the store. When the error itself sometimes is just very easy.

I noticed that when it starts to get the vision error, the battery symbol shows a completly depleted battery. So therefore I think that this is a battery problem.

There is some battery calibration procedure in the Neato. I don't know if that is only for use when replacing the old battery with a completely new battery. I need to check what the manual says about that.

But I suspect that the program in the Neato "thinks" that there is more battery power left than there really is, resulting in lasers and the spinning thing it sits on doesn't get enough power. But I am just guessing. I'll read about battery calibration, If I keep getting this error I might buy a new battery. If that doesn't fix the problem. I will make use of the extra insurance I paid for it.

Chinatown

I can really recommend this game. It is probably my #1 favorite boardgames.  Even if I have only played it two times in my life so far :)

I was introduced to this game by some friends at school. I thought it was so fun I had to buy it. But it wasn't available anywhere. I finally found a copy that i bought and recieved a couple of weeks ago.

I played it with some friends at my place. And it was a long time I had so much fun at home :)

The game can easily be explained as being similiar to Monopoly, but it is actually more simple than monopoly I think. And the strategic part of the game, trading, is much much more fun. On the board there are streets and buildings. A difference from Monopoly and Chinatown is that Monopoly can go on and on almost forever. While Chinatown only has six rounds, or years in the game. This might seem short, but I think it is just enough to make it fun and not to tedious and long. Monopoly can get quite boring, while Chinatown is very lively and fun. The part of the game where there is trade is the most fun, and takes the most time.

Each round, or year, consists of a few steps. The first step is to give the players some buildings where they later can build stores and restaurants. On the board, each building has a number. Players get a certain amount of buildingcards depending on how many player and which year we are in. Each buildingcard has a number corresponding to a building on tje board. A number of buildingcards also has to be thrown in this step.

So now each player owns a few buildings and place their colored markers on the buildings they own and the buildingcards are tossed.

The next step is to pick business tiles. From a black bag each player picks a number of business tiles. Depending on how many players and which round we are in.

If I remember correctly now. I think this is the part where you place the tiles. Each tile has a number on it. So for example a restaurant with a number six, needs 6 restaurant tiles together on the board to make a complete restaurant. In the end of the year, you get your income. There is a chart describing how much an incomplete store gets, vs a complete one etc.

But the most fun part of the game is trading. I dont remember if trading comes before placing the tiles or after. Meaning the first round there would be no store tiles placed. Just owned buildings. Anyway, when trading anything goes. You can trade a building for money, some store tiles for a building, a building for a building, or whatever you need and what you have to trade with.

You want to own buildings close together to make your business larger. So if another player owns the building next to yours you might want to buy that. Or maybe he wants more of a certain business type, a fish store for instance, he/she might be willing to trade for 50,000 and a fish store.

Don't forget the two tiles, when they have a store tile placed on it will generate 20,000 income each year, but dont forget how many years we have left to play. Well, the trading discussions can go on for a while and it's very fun :)

After all trading is done, we move on to the next round. And the players get their income for the business that they have built.

Deep Dream

I have been experimenting with the Google deep dream neural network.

https://github.com/google/deepdream

These are some of my favorite results so far

Here is another result with an image from Eraserhead as guide

And this was the guide

A picture of a Cow

And some other cows outside my window

A picture of my cat.. Or dog? :)

And another random one.

Same image, just at different resolution.

Dogs, dogs, dogs and even more more dogs seems to be something that is trained into this network.

Lab upgrade, new projects and cancer

I have not updated my blog in a long time. I have had serious problems with my health. In 2010 I was cured from Nasopharynx cancer. However, I recieved a very strong dose of radiation therapy that has caused a new cancer, osteo sarcoma in my cheekbone. Half of my cheekbone has been removed surgically, but a tumour still remains. I have tried different types of chemo treatments, where all of them have resulted in seriuos blood infections (Sepsis). Currently, I am spending my time at home, without getting any type of treatment.

I have started to eat apricot seeds, hoping that might do anything. I'm not really the kind of person who believes in non proven alternative medecine. But it's really no harm in a few apricot seeds in this situation. All I can do is hope.

Next week I will test a small dose of radiation therapy, to see if it has any effect on the tumour. No guarantee it will work, but I can hope.

I am spending my time doing things that I love to do. Alot of the projects I have written about before on this blog have kind of died. That happens alot with projects, I guess for everyone. They grow too big, and then you get bored :/
The only way is to just keep working I guess. But I don't really feel like working on those right now.

I have used some saved up money to upgrade my home electronics lab. And there are plenty of things that I would like to do. I bought some new equipment, a Keysight 34465A multimeter, Keysight E3643A Lab Supply, HP 33120A Signal Generator and a Keysight 1733C LCR meter. Later I also installed an antistatic mat on my desk. I think it looks really great now :)

I have not really been doing anything useable yet. I have been trying a CP2102 USB to Serial chip, added a PIC18f26K80 and I am about to connect it to a BMI160 acceleration and gyro sensor. For no real purpose really, I just want to do it because it is fun. I might use the BMI160 for some project later. I have been thinking about building a quadcopter/drone. So I guess I need a acc/gyro sensor for control of the motors, sensing tilt and speed/acceleration etc...

I also want to do something with my Nixie Tubes that I bought, probably a clock with temperature and humidity sensors, outdoors and indoors. I have SHT25 for temperature and humidity and I bought some modules from Microchip for MiWi which I will try if I can get it working.

I have been thinking about maybe making an analog synthesizer if possible, or not too difficult. Also a tesla coil has been an old dream of mine :)

Here is a picture of the messy looking prototype board, and it works :)