I'm a fan of Eurogames - a style of approachable, yet thoughtful board games. I like them because you can usually learn and play one in an evening, yet they provide enough strategic interest to play many times. I sometimes get asked more about them and what and what my favorites are. So here is a short article explaining them and an interactive list of the games on my shelf.

Six of my favorite new music acquisitions in 2024

Six of my favorite new music acquisitions in 2022

Six of my favorite new music acquisitions in 2021

Doctor Who is a long-running TV series, but you don't have to invest too much time to start enjoying it. It's easy to cherry-pick excellent stand-alone episodes.

An engrossing mix of cartoons in a steampunk pocket universe, and informative footnotes about the pioneers of computing and their real Victorian world.

A short review of Coup 53: a documentary of the coup in Iran in 1953.

A misleading title to draw readers into an occasionally true story

Six of my favorites new music acquisitions in 2020

A while ago Cindy and I, together with a couple of neighbours, began a long quest that who knows if we will finish. The quest is to watch every play of Shakespeare, in every reasonably available video version. It's been a lot of fun, although we aren't able to cover as much as we'd like as I'm so often traveling. We are doing them in rough chronological order, and have just finished with A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Heavy Cardboard is a media channel dedicated to board games, run by Edward Uhler. I first ran into it when it was purely a podcast, enjoying it because it reviewed the kind of games I was interested in, and gave enough depth to the reviews that I could get a good picture of whether the game would interest me. It then added a video channel, streaming live games on Youtube. I rarely watch the live games, but often found watching a recording useful to see if I would like a game. I also find Edward's teaching of the rules, which he does before every stream, an effective way to learn how to play a game. I liked the show enough to become a patron, and enjoy the patron-only slack channel. It's a useful discussion forum and one of the most pleasant online groups I've been involved in.

The RIAA may say the world is ending, but despite my embrace of digital music with my Slimp3 I don't see my music budget getting any smaller. Indeed I think I need more of the stuff to keep my ipod's hunger satisfied.

My friends are all geeky, so many of them were looking forward to the day in November 2003 when the extended DVD of The Two Towers came out (and among my friends the extended DVD was the only one worth having.) But for me that day marked another release that was in many ways just as important, Sergio Leone's great western finally made it onto DVD.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked for recommended podcasts. It's taken me a while to answer, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to suggest what I like listening to.

The Singing Detective is a TV series (6 one hour episodes) produced by the BBC in the 1980's. Many people, including me, consider it the finest piece of television they've ever seen. It's a complex piece, possibly one of the most original pieces of art ever made for television. As such it isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I've watched it many times. It's most noticeably associated with the writer Dennis Potter, who made many challenging television programs. It's recently become available on DVD.