A few decades ago, I remember, probably incorrectly, a court case where the police wanted to (or did) track people using GPS units that they stuck in the suspects’ cars. The case boiled down to this: a court order is needed to place a GPS unit on someone’s…
Continue readingWith the mechanism in the image, there are three sliding connectors affecting link 1 (on the left). This is an interesting mechanism to simulate. In this situations, the calculations are easy because D and E both have the same slide radius. With the same slide radius, we can…
Continue readingI have a Mac App Store “page” for the Linkage app. “Linkage” was a taken name so I opted for “Linkage CAD”. let me know if that’s a bad name. You can’t see the app yet because it needs to be releasable before I can submit to Apple…
Continue readingMany modern board games incorporate card-based mechanics to introduce variety, surprise players, or offer small bonuses that can impact gameplay. Often, these cards give the impression of receiving something extra—an unexpected perk or tactical edge that breaks from the standard flow of the game. In Galactic Cruise, players…
Continue readingMany tabletop games devolve into a race to get points before the game ends. SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is a unique game that, like many others, devolves into a point collection process with little or no theme left by the end of the game. I won’t be…
Continue readingIn the interest of full disclosure, ChatGPT wrote the title of this post and helped with grammar issues in this and other posts. I was watching a movie review, or rather a review about movies, and it struck me that board games don’t receive the deep analysis that…
Continue readingI think I have an installable version of the 3D Lander game: https://www.rectorsquid.com/Lander/Lander.msi This is a Windows installer file that is digitally signed by me with my code signing certificate. If You encounter this Linage.msi file and installing it doesn’t show my name as the publisher, run away….
Continue readingYou can download a copy here: https://www.rectorsquid.com/Lander/Lander.zip It’s not code-signed so you might get warnings. I’ll work on code-signing it later. You would need to connected a game controller your computer to have it work well.
Continue readingI was listening to an interview on NPR with author Daniel Pink, who wrote an article for the Washington Post titled “Why Not Get Rid of Grades?” I apologize that the article is behind a paywall and the link is to a podcast. But you won’t need to see…
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