The Cody Scale

My friend Cody has been pitching a replacement for the granular 10 point BGG rating scale:

1 - bad won’t ever play again
2 - didn’t care for it, won’t actively try and play it again
3 - liked it, would definitely play again, maybe even buy it
4 - actively want to play again and would like to buy so I can play as much as often as possible

Pedalboard Version 2

After I created my first pedalboard, I learned so much, and assembled a second board. Let me go over the contents of my second board, in signal chain order.

Pedalboard Lessons

After creating my first pedalboard and living it with it for a while, I had some lessons:

The BGG Rating Scale

There’s no single agreed upon rating system for all things. Sometime we use a 5 star scale. Sometimes a 10 point scale. Sometimes A-F letter grades (where maybe “S” is part of system). Sometimes thumbs up or thumbs down. Sometimes a heart vs. the absence of one.

Different rating systems may be preferred depending on how much time we spend with media. A song, averaging around 3 minutes long, probably doesn’t require a detailed 5 star scale; a simple “heart or not” system is plenty. Movies we spend a couple hours with, so they seem to warrant more. Video games may get a dozen or more hours, and that seems more likely to land a 10 point scale. But hey, each reviewer is going to do their own thing. And review aggregation sites are going to turn that into number soup. But there is some rhyme to which rating scales we pick for which things.

Journey to My First Pedalboard

My first electric guitar was a hand-me-down from my uncle, given a few years after I started playing guitar in elementary school. It was the era of grunge, and much of the music I was listening to was filled to the brim with distortion. A stark contrast with my modest electric setup. And yet, when I assembled my own money to buy my first ever guitar pedal… I hipstered myself. I could have bought a distortion pedal like the Boss DS-1, used prominently by Nirvana and so many others. Or a Big Muff Pi fuzz pedal, used heavily by the Smashing Pumpkins. Or I even could have bought a delay pedal to do my best impression of U2’s The Edge. But no… I decided at the last minute to get something quirky and “unique”: an octave pedal, the DOD Octoplus. It was immediately clear I had made a mistake. An octave pedal can have its uses, but as a first and only pedal? A dismal choice. And I had no money for a second pedal.

The end result? I spent the next 25 years primarily only playing acoustic guitar.

Performances in 2023

If I’m being honest, the majority of the reason I’m making this post is so I have an excuse to gush about Hadestown. But once I started thinking about it, 2023 was a real return to form for me for seeing musicals, theater shows, and concerts. So let’s talk about what I managed to experience this year.

Books in 2023

I don’t read books quickly. I have a hard time creating large blocks of time for reading, primarily because I have many competing hobbies and media types. The main hack to increase my “reading” has been audio books, as I can fit them alongside a walk or commute. It still means my progress is broken up into ~30 minute increments, so it’s slow going (If you’re looking at a 300+ page 10 hour novel… that’s 20 daily trips to get through, or like 4 weeks). Also there are many times when I can’t focus enough for that (I’ve learned that during my commute home my brain is too crowded to handle an audiobook). But I still make progress.

Movies in 2023

In 2023 apparently all the pent up energy needed to come out and it was time to go to the theater. It looks like I saw ten movies in the theater which is… a lot for me, and certainly coming out of the past few years. Partially I was ready to get out, but also there were just some great movies to go see. I got very tired of that AMC movie quotes intro. Please stop.

Television in 2023

This is a list of shows that I watched in 2023 that warranted commentary.

Board Games in 2023

The year 2023 was a return to big events. I attended GenCon and PAX Unplugged (as well as returning to PAX West), all as a normal attendee not trying to exhibit or pitch prototypes. As such I had time to try new games and play with friends at conventions. The following are games I played this year that warranted mentioning.

Video Games in 2023

Here in 2023, my video game playing has been heavily influenced by two things. The first is playing with my ten-year-old daughter, choosing games that are content-appropriate and within her interests. The second is having an engaged group of friends that are interested in playing games together or apart, but then discussing them afterwards. These both have kept my playing dynamic and social in a way that really has worked for me. The following is a list of video games I played in 2023 (potentially released earlier) that warranted a mention.