Dinner For...

Dinner for... Well, you decide!

Just as a note - If you haven't watched 'Dinner for Schmucks' (you should) and wish to be oblivious to the story of the film or any spoilers, stop right now just in case; though I have tried to cut most of it.

I recently watched the film "Dinner for Schmucks"; The basic storyline of the film being that a businessman has to bring an "idiot" guest to dinner for everyone to make fun of, and subsequently to secure his new promotion. Everyone does the same and the "winning" guest gets a trophy. of course the main character is stuck between morals and financial promotion.

The main character literally bumps into his guest accidentally - His name is Barry and is hobby is being a mouse taxidermist/artist. Basically, he creates art from road-kill.

The Movie put aside (though still recommended), I just thought I'd share his work - Understandably, it's the legendary Steve Carrel in a film; I don't imagine he made them, or either that it is 'real'... But whilst the concept is a bit messed up; it is really quite amazing in it's own right.

The Film starts with a series of these scenes; almost telling a story.

 When the film gets situated a little more; Barry shows some more works of art; all are based around famous works of art: recreated with mice. e.g. Mouse-a-lisa

 

 The as the film draws to a close, Barry finishes with an epic speech including some of his work;

---

"This is something I call 'The tower of dreamers'."

"One thousand years ago, the only people on earth were monkeys; and they said
'We'll never walk erectus, We'll never use tools, We'll never talk.'
and then one monkey said
'Oh yeah? Well I'm talking right now!'
That monkey was a dreamer."


"Fast forward 500 years; the Wright brothers decide to make themselves a flying machine.
'You fools! You idiots. What's your problem?' everyone shouted.
'That will never work; because plywood weighs more than air!'
to which the Wright brothers responded;
'No, it doesn't.'
The Wright Brothers were dreamers."


"The earl of Sandwhich, and sir Francis Bacon.
If it was not for them, the 'BLT' would simply be 'lettuce and tomato'.
They were dreamers... And sandwich makers..."


"Vincent van Gogh - Everyone told him:
'You only have one ear; you cannot be a great artist.'
And you know what he said?
'I can't hear you.'
Vincent van Gogh was a dreamer."


"Louis Pasteur turned cheese into medicine..."

"Benjamin Franklin.
People said:
'You can't fly a kite in a rain storm.'
And ben franklin said:
'Yes you can - If you have an electric kite.'"

"The man who broke more bones than any man in history: Evel Kenevil..."

"So dare to dream; dream your wildest dreams. You can climb the highest mountain.
You can drown in a teacup - If you find a big enough teacup;
And if somebody tells you you can't do something, you say;
'Yes I can - Because I'm doing it right now."
----

 

Hope you enjoyed it!

 

Just as a note - It is a comedy; I wouldn't try taking any of the 'history', 'facts' or 'quotes' above in any assignments you may have.

But... Why is the Rum Gone?!

I've always been a fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean series for one reason or another so it was a great incentive for me to start iterating a die game which was (apparently) played in the second film - 'Liars Dice' or 'Perudo'

After doing some research (as it has been a while that I've actually watched the films, I found (and instantly remembered) the section featuring it. HERE

The game itself is quite a simple, differing by game type or theme;
each player has a set equal  amount of die which are rolled and hidden from the view of all players. Each player can only see their own set of die.
Each player takes it in turns making bets on the total population of die, of a certain die number in play (including all of the die the player can't see). e.g. six threes, six fours, seven fours,
the bets must increase either by die population or die number each turn (as above).
If the player thinks the previous bet is too ridiculous to be possible they will challenge the previous bet - This is when everyone shows their die and checks to see if the player who placed the bet was wrong or right.
'Right' would be if the total population of die (of the number stated) is equal or more than the amount they bet there were.
'Wrong' would be when the opposite is true.

What happens on 'wrong' or 'right' really depends on how it is played - We played so that if the player is wrong, they will loose one of their die, and if the player is right the challenger will loose one of their die.
when this happens and the next round is played, the player with less die will be at a disadvantage because they can see less of the total number of die available; this creates a negative feedback loop. Our challenge was to try and lessen or remove that feedback loop.


Another mechanic in the game we played was that the number one was "wild" - It stood for any number which is called (and subsequently cannot be bet upon). - referenced in future as "wild ones'

This means there may technically only be four fives and three two's in total, BUT - If there are also three 'wild ones', the total is unexpectedly risen to a possible eight fives and six twos.

In the original rules, the 'wild ones' HAVE to be counted toward the final population of the number which is called - regardless. Unfortunately we didn't read the instructions word by word first time round, and so ended up iterating before playing the game. Are rule was that each player could individually choose whether to count any 'wild ones' they had into the final total when a player was challenged.

This subsequently gave light to a new mechanic - Tactical play.
by being able to choose whether to use your 'wild ones' or not meant that you could possibly raise or lower the population of dice called; this could be to give somebody a better chance, or get somebody to loose more die.
this worked well, but also led to certain members ganging up on each-other.

Then, of course, we played it 'properly' according to the rules we were given.

Our final iteration (because it takes a surprisingly long while playing through!) was having 'open die'
'Open die' were a selection of dice which were independently rolled which everyone could see - regardless.
(a bit like the cards in poker)
The idea of this was that even if players are losing (with perhaps one or two dice left), they can still see a higher percentage of all the dice and therefore make more reasonable bets.

Though we didn't get time to iterate this fully, it seemed to work pretty well (perhaps tweaks to 'open die' population could be made)

Another iteration was unofficial, but we had someone who did not hide their set if die from everyone - This meant that people were comparing two sets of die; theirs, and the unshielded person's die - This, surprisingly had very little effect on the unshielded persons dice-loss rate!

On another note - there will be a new Pirates of the Caribbean Film -  "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides"


Pirates of the Caribbean has got to be one of the only films I know which was based from a theme park ride of the same name - Rather than the other way around.

Entertainment:

I've got a Jar Of Dirt!
Why Is The Rum Gone?

Halloween

Firstly - Halloween is great - I've always loved it, end of story.
Unfortunately there is not much you can do at Halloween in the UK after the age of... Like... 10 or so without looking a bit weird, out of place or having lots of people stare in disapproval (or all three). That never usually puts me off anyway, but I think perhaps I draw enough attention to myself without making an designing an elaborate Halloween costume and scaring the S*** out of everyone in our town.
I've got to be honest, I was quite disappointed in the evening of Hallowen; Halloween comes once a year and I hadn't even left the house from playing games completing uni work all day. I had a quick think and decided to ask a few friends if they wanted to raid some supermarkets in the morning and haggle to get some pumpkins for stupidly cheap prices to be 'creative with'.

In the morning Ross turned up at my doorstep and we both cycled into Felixstowe. After previously getting a tip off that Tesco's had cheap pumpkins we walked in and had a rummage in the pumpkin box. Amazingly they were selling 'large' pumpkins at 50p a hit! I'll be perfectly honest, if the pumpkins that we picked up were large, I'd hate to see the so-called 'small pumpkins'. We decided we could get two each and proceeded to hug them to the self-service checkouts.

I'll be honest, The self-service staff members were not the only people who gave us confused looks, and I don't blame them.


After paying for the Pumpkins... We had a sudden realisation that we were so exited about the price of the pumpkins that we hadn't thought about how we were going to transport them. Luckily ross had brought a bag/satchel which (to my amazement) carried his two pumpkins, and I decided I would bag my pair up and strap one to each of my handlebars... Sounds like a great idea doesn't it?

We actually ended up making quite a few detours before arriving at Ross' house including town, library and Lidl - Lidl was for lunch and we decided on a pack of 8 sausages for 95p to put in sandwiches and a bag of crisps, so we were at about £2.00 each in teams of spending.

The route - A = Start B = End the random squiggle is backtracking, town and Lidl right at the bottom. This is the simplified version and  It is something stupid like 5 miles!

Anyway, I digress - We picked up some extremely old pumpkin carving tools from my house and eventually got to our destination.

Everyone knows how to carve pumpkins; first you cut out the top, and then you gut it. Of course we additionally made a mess to accompany it. We googled around  for a while and decided to get some black and white images we liked from google as a template and cut out either the black bits or the white bits instead of using a pre-determined pattern. We found a picture of a storm trooper and set to work; first taping it to the pumpkin, pricking through the paper into the pumpkin, removing the paper and cutting through the pricks like a dot-to-dot. evidently when reading this you will be able to tell I used to do this a lot when I was smaller.

 We ended up with this;

Which looked  a little bit like this in a dark room;

It's probbaly easier to see what it is, if you know what it is - If you know what I mean.

We were secretly impressed with what we had created and decided to upgrade our carving abilities to the next level with some harder pictures/templates.

I created an epic spider-man logo pumpkin - I'll be perfectly honest it would be a lot more epic if it didn't have a strip of tape to aid the support of the incredibly flimsy bottom leg pieces - but I like it.

Ross, being obsessed with all things Mario  decided to attempt a Mario pumpkin - I'll be perfectly honest it looks good but I'm not impressed because it was a design specially created for pumpkins....

We started to run out of time as the evening drew to a close and so I found a quick picture of a space-invader and tried to devise my own way of getting some eyes to float in the spaces of the face - whilst not realising I'd cut off one side of the tentacles.

And finally, This is all the pumpkins in their pumpkin-like glory

And that my friends was another day in the life of Sean and Ross.

The End.

(For Now)