I know this is a family friendly, happy guy kind of page, but......

Politics. 

There is no reaching across the aisle.... there is mockery, harshness, cynacism.  I know, it's politics.  There is innuendo that blends with half-truths and quarter-stories to create a fictional truth.  Amazing.

The speech tonight was probably one of the most partisan speeches I've ever listened to that was not on talk radio.  You don't survive in politics by being friendly, but, man.... there are some angry people out there.  

Hopefully the saner ones will vote in November.  Emotions will run high and the fog of war is descending.  Hopefully people take stock of where we've gone in the last eight years and vote rationally - be it Democrat or Republican... not solely on the grounds of rhetoric.   

Another side project I've been tinkering with involves creating something like http://www.gnome.org/projects/tomboy/

Basically, it's a notetaking application for Gnome which amazingly does not have a Windows port.  Under the simulator, it works great... but I didn't want to have to open up Virtual Box to try this out.  So, over the last couple of nights I used their basic interface to create my own take on it.

See below for link.... latest fixes include:

0.4.2.2

- Fixed bug on Volcano event where if your city was 1AV and the volcano

 blew up, it stayed on the map.

- Added tip for Advancing Cities Phase.

- Fixed typo on button for one of the events.

- Fixed bug on Attacks where two equal cities with an equal number of 

 tribes would cause the game to freeze.

The latest release had a bug with Tribal War not letting you easily go on after selecting regions.  Seems to have been expecting one more region than what it was fessing up to.

Patch is here - simply unzip and replace the .exe.  This will only work if you have downloaded PocketCiv since 1AM EST last night.  :-)

Otherwise, the installers on the links to the right will lead you to all the goodness of the current version.

After about a week and a half of virtual silence, I have another release of PocketCiv ready for consumption.  This one is a slight version change because I moved the maps and save games to subfolders on the install.  If you have existing games, you can move them there.  All maps and save files you may have created already will work in this release.

The fixes are:

0.4.2.0
    - Fixed Astronomy again.
    - Fixed unhandled part of Diplomacy event involving trade with an
      established partner.
    - Fixed unhandled part of Bandit event where the selected region
      drawn does not border a desert.  Narrative now appears explaining
      this.
    - Added option to see tips or not in menu.
    - Added further history.
    - Added menu option to see history from main screen.
    - Added folders for save files, maps and logs in main application directory.
    - Fixed error where sea-bordering regions were not checking as thoroughly
      as they should have been.
    - Added bigger and better God screen so I can debug better.
    - Fixed bug where negative numbers weren't saving correctly.  This affected
      game saves.
    - Fixed bug where Trading Partners were saved, but not loaded.
    - Fixed Mining dialog verbage.
    - Fixed bug where you could acquire an advance from the same city more than
      once in a round.
    - Fixed bug where if you had a free city AV, the game would still make you
      pick a region.

 There are still some known issues, but this should knock out a couple rather nasty bugs that snuck in when I was moving a lot of the stuff out of dialogs.  Still investigating.

If you have a bug or issue, please email me or post to this blog or at Board Game Geek.  

Thanks!

J.

Well, despite a hurricane coming in, McCain picking up an Alaskan governor for a running mate who looks she could be more like his secretary and Russia trying out new nuclear technology, it's been pretty quiet.

Yesterday was good, kicking back with family and friends, heading up to Geneva-On-The-Lake and doing bumper boats and go-kart racing.  We had a sick kid, so Mom and her ended up going home, but the rest of us managed to make it to Old Mill Winery right in Geneva.  Came back to roast marshmellows and talk about old times.

No disc golf this weekend.... but that's okay.  I managed to get my first ever pro-par round of 54 at Lakeshore!  Granted, it was red tees and I really could have done better, but it finally felt good to at least get to that point.  I remember hitting 72's on the reds when I first got into the sport, so that's a good thing.  We'll see if I can do it on the white holes.  I had three dueces, including another improbable one on 6, and the regular 9 and 14.  I choked on about three putts and considering there was almost no wind to speak of, I'm not sure what wasn't working on those.  It was raining a little bit and pretty muggy.  All in all, though, a good way to spend Thursday night.  Earlier in the week I shot a 63 on the white tees, which is a personal best for me out there, too.  And I damn near forgot Sunday, heading out to Mentor, I got to play two of the new holes at Sims Park and I shot a 60 over there, which is another best.  A good week all around!

Mountain biking in October hopefully at Mohican, and I might try Atchison tomorrow if there is any time.  I'm not sure how dry it's going to be, but it would be nice to saddle up and hit it while I still have some energy.

Tried teaching Euchre to the girls today.  That lasted five minutes.  Mom was right.  :-)  Still maanged two games of Pirate's Cove and I actually did okay on those, too.  I usually get creamed by J-Love, but I managed to stay out of trouble most of the game.  Even Banana played which is a bit unusual and she's been a riot lately.

Anyhow, more later.

Busy removing wizards in PocketCiv.  Looking good, but I need more focus on what exactly is going on. Basically, the wizard approach does such a great job of wrenching your attention and working you through what needs done, it's harder to draw attention to the main board when you take 'em out.  

Five more events remain to be converted over.

Release this week at some point, probably Wednesday but maybe later.

I got bit by a stray backslash today that got caught by the community. Download via the side link.  Windows should work fine - Linux via Mono andmaybe via Mono might work - give her a try and let me know.

Here's the latest group of changes since the last blog entry:

0.4.0.5
      - Forced directory character selection by reading platform.  Bug in PathSeparator character in .Mono doesn't read it right away.
      - Fixed so it would run in Linux with Mono again.
      - Added scenarios 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, 13 and 15.
     
0.4.0.4
      - Further fixes/enhancements on main board city advancement.
      - Added scenarios 6 and 8.
      - Fixed Roadbuilding to exclude frontiers and sea from second city calculations.
      - Added support to maps for additional borders for regions if Roadbuilding/Equestrian is obtained.  (Required for some scenarios).
      - Added support to specify the minimum AV for a city.  (Required for some scenarios).
      - Added support for multiple goals to complete a scenario.  (Again, required for some scenarios).
     
0.4.0.3
      - Fixed bug in Epidemics where attacking force would get wiped out just for moving to another region.
      - Fixed bug where actions in Advancement phase that would reduce your empire's tribes to zero were allowed. 
        (Note:  The upkeep round does not have this restriction in the rules).
      - Indicated tribe placement a little better.
      - Moved basic city advancement out of dialog onto main screen.  (Note:  Capitol advancement has not been ported yet.)
      - Tinkered with region selection for attacks on Visitations and Bandits.