PARKS – Board Game Review

PARKS is a 1-5 player set collection and worker placement game that has you hike the trails of some of the well- and lesser-known national parks in the United States. Its theme is readily apparent in the beautifully made components and artwork that is on display, taken from the Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series. Playing the game …

Playing your Piano Favorites while learning Sheet Music

A thing I've struggled with while learning the piano on my own, was deciding how much of my time I should spend dedicated to playing my favorite compositions, and how much time on what I call "boring" practice, such as practicing scales and finger techniques. Reading sheet music is thrown in there as well, and …

Managing your Credentials

In this age of countless usernames and passwords, it helps to organize things a bit. For quite a long time I used the same, or a variation of the same password, and often the same username as well, although that poses less of a security risk. Since I only had to remember perhaps 4-5 different …

Setting Up MongoDB on Windows 10 (2017)

This short guide is aimed at people wanting to get started using MongoDB, but are having problems on how install everything correctly on Windows. So without further ado, let's get started. Go to the download section of the MongoDB website and select the first version in the drop down. Download the installation package. To make things simpler, …

Board Game Mechanics, Pt. 3: Card Drafting

This post will focus on the drafting mechanic found in my card-heavy games. The mechanic essentially works by each player picking a card from a subset of cards. The drawing itself should not be random; the player must be able to make a strategic choice as to which advantage he or she wants. The most …

Board Game Mechanics, Pt. 2: Worker Placement

In this second post on board game mechanics, I will delve into the worker placement mechanic. Many games that make heavy use of this mechanic are often referred to as "Euro Games". Since its introduction around the year 1998, with the game Keydom, it has gained a lot of popularity and have been used in …

Board Game Mechanics, Pt. 1: Deck-Building

This is part 1 of a series of posts delving into different board game mechanics. In this post I will be looking at the deck or pool building mechanic, which is a very recent mechanic, introduced with the game Dominion in 2008. In games based on this mechanic, players usually start with a set of predetermined …

My Experience with Agricola

Agricola is a board game designed by Uwe Rosenberg. Since its release in 2007, it has gained quite a following and it is currently the 14th highest ranked game on BoardGameGeek.com. I recently acquired a copy of the game myself and I can now see where the appeal comes from. The theme might not seem …

Changing bad Habits

Everyone has bad habits and good habits. Most of us want to get rid of the bad habits and keep the good ones, but this rarely works out. Why is that? Why not just start going on that treadmill and start to lose those pounds, give up soda and ice cream and work on your …

“You Have One Identity”

The rise of social networks has had a profound effect on our sense of self, though you might not be aware of it. Most of western people today use one or more social networks, in which they've created a public image of themselves, the way they want others to view them. This has become the …