I’ve been holding back as best I could, but it is finally time for me to post! I’m sitting around waiting for my laundry to finish and contemplating taking a shower before I fly home for Christmas break and I am playing kdice. What is kdice you may ask? It is an ingenious little multiplayer game you can play in your browser! But what is it? First, we must discuss Dice Wars.

Dice Wars is a Flash game similar to Risk. There are many territories and you must conquer the entire board. Your armies are little dice. When you attack another territory, all of your dice are rolled and all of their dice are rolled and whoever has the greatest sum wins! It is an addicting little game and you should go play it now. The beauty is in its simplicity and speed of play.

Once you have the hang of that and are ready for more, then you can move onto kdice. kdice is a multiplayer clone of Dice Wars. For more information, check out its Wikipedia page.

I’ve been playing kdice quite a bit and my score has climbed. Yes, it keeps track of points using a system similar to that of Chess. You can view my profile here. Go sign up now!

I just finished reading A Storm of Swords the third in the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin. This is the series that inspired A Game of Thrones one of my favorite wargames, named after the first book. I must say that after finishing the third book that this is one of the best series I have read. I rank it up there against the Enders series and Lord of the Rings. In the middle of the book several of the main characters die and I was so depressed I had to stop reading. GRRM is brilliant in how he tells the story. Each book follows a number of characters in third person limited point of view, a chapter at a time. The chapters rotate telling the story of each character as events happen somewhere in the large world. You come to care and love certain characters and can not wait until another chapter about them comes up.

Never before have I read a story where there are so many main characters, and none are clearly defined as “good” or “bad” guys. Even characters you despise in the first book, you learn to sympathise with in later books when you get to follow their lives.

I was going to purchase A Feast for Crows today, but it was $30 and only in hardcover. Instead I will buy the paperback when it comes out and I picked it up at the library. I highly recommend this book if you enjoy epic novels with a bit of fantasy in them. Magic exists, but it doesn’t hit you over the head like it does in other fantasies, such as LotR. If you do not believe me, I have included a good list of pros and cons of the series.

Warning: This is an adult series and involves violence, language, and sexuality. I do not recommend these books for children.

And so my second quarter at Rose is coming to an end. I have three finals coming up and I have quite a bit of studying to do. And now, when I have so much work to do, I have incredible patient and creativity in finding other things to do. If only I was this creative all the time, I could come up with so many things. I won’t list every way that I distract myself, but I will detail one. Full Metal Planete is a very rare, very valuable board game. It is currently selling on ebay for around $300. I have been looking up information on it online and seeing if I can make my own. I have already found pictures of the modular board pieces, all I need are some plastic pieces to replace the original pewter. Unfortunately I can’t find any plastic pieces to buy online. I seem to remember finding a website that sells them, but I can’t find it now. So I spent time looking.

I am also spending more time looking up random humorous junk online. This is something I tend to do when I am really busy. It is a way of dealing with the pressure I think. It is not very productive though.

I am really looking forward to my classes next quarter. I can’t wait for this one to end, have a break, and then start the next.