Working As Intended

Dave Peck runs a very slick email driven Go service. It lets you create a game, supplying only the name and email address of both players.

Here is what you see when you first arrive at the site.

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Simple and clean, like the game itself.

After you “Get Going” you have to supply a few pieces of information, setting up your game. At first, I didn’t notice that the list on the right was clickable. You can change the board size, handicap, and swap colors by clicking on the option that you wish to change.

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You don’t have to log in, nor can you. You receive an email when it is your turn, with a “secret” URL that contains a token for your game. When you click on the link, you are taken directly into your game. Place your stone, click “make this move” and you’re done.

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The source code for the site is also open source in case you’d like to help out or run your own server.

I squeaked over the line into 10k-land on KGS during the last week. Still played my live games on Sunday at 6 handicap against Josh 5k. I won both, so maybe if that continues I’ll move up to 5 stones against him soon.

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Bask in the ineptitude of my latest Go game. Poor decisions early, plus getting into 30 second byoyomi by move 127 made for a painful experience on my end.

Sensei Mathews 5k has kindly provided comments on this game.

If you had JavaScript enabled, you’d see the EidoGo SGF viewer here.

You can download the SGF file anyway.

I’m playing black, going by the name Bray on KGS.

Daylight Saving Time is soon upon us, and that means that the spring disc golf leagues are about to start. For reference, here’s the more-or-less official list, although it’s usually outdated.

One thing to note is that the term “league” is a bit misleading for new players. You don’t have to sign up ahead of time, like you would with a bowling league. Just show up on the days that you want to play and pay your entry fee. Some leagues do track stats and offer season-end prizes, so there’s some incentive to be a regular beyond hanging out with your friends once per week.

These are the leagues that I play in.

Westside Wednesdays

Wednesdays @ 5:30 in the west metro.

First week: March 11th at Lions Park in Shakopee.

This is the main league for me, and I rarely miss a week. It’s of moderate size, averaging around 40 players in June, less in the early spring and fall.

During the summer the courses rotate between Bryant Lake, Hyland Hills, and Elm Creek (new for 2009). In the early spring we use Lions park in Shakopee, and in the fall we use Rosland Park in Edina.

The level of play is decent, with some real pro players as regulars. Open and Advanced are offered every week, with other divisions like Intermediate (most every week) and Women (rarely) as demanded. Most of us playing in the open division are actually advanced amateur tournament players. This is partly because a lot of us have these courses so dialed in that we play way above our rating on them, and we don’t want to crush the amateur divisions and drive away newer players.

Vibe: Relaxed regulars having a very good time, competing for small stakes.

Tim Gill runs this show. He’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, and also one of the best players you could ever compete against.

Fees: Pro $6, Am $5. You also need to have a yearly ($30) or daily ($3) pass from the Three Rivers courses that we use (Bryant, Hyland, Elm).

Sundog

Tuesdays on a rotating series of courses around the east metro.

First week: Early April
The Sundog website hasn’t been updated yet for 2009, but the old one will give you an idea of the schedule and courses that are used.

This is the mother of all leagues for the state, and one of the largest leagues in the world. They draw 150+ players during the peak of summer. The level of play is very high. It’s essentially a tournament every Tuesday. I try to get to at least one of these per year.

Vibe: This is a tournament, but we’re still all here to have a good time.

Tim Gill and Matt Koerner do an excellent job of managing this beast of a league.

Fees: They haven’t been announced yet for 2009, but they should be something like $10/$8 for pro/am. Slightly higher fees and huge attendance make for some monster payouts.

The Solberg Leagues

John Solberg runs a series of leagues in the west metro. It’s a shorter season, which usually starts in April. His tee times are later, usually 6:30, which shortens the season due to daylight concerns. I try to make a couple of these per year.

This is a very laid back league. The level of play is good for amateurs, and not so great for pros. Advanced Am tournament players should be playing open here. This seems to be by design, as John caters very well to the newer players. His intermediate division is usually deep, and he draws the largest crowd of new players of any league in the area.

Vibe: Party time? That’s an overstatement, but I’d probably avoid bring kids to these.

Monday: Bassett Creek
Tuesday: (new for 2009) There’s a possibility that he’s starting a new league at Elm Creek.
Thursday: Plymouth Creek

Fees: In the past it’s been $5 to $7 depending on division. Should be roughly the same for 2009.

Feel free to send me any questions you have on leagues or disc golf in general.

Out of the blue I started getting the following error from TextMate’s test runner for Rails tests.

Rails requires RubyGems >= 1.1.1 (you have 1.0.1). Please `gem update --system` and try again.

On the command line, I’d see the following:

jdl ~ $ which gem
/opt/local/bin/gem
jdl ~ $ which ruby
/opt/local/bin/ruby
jdl ~ $ gem -v
1.3.1
jdl ~ $ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2008-03-03 patchlevel 114) [i686-darwin9.3.0]

Pretty clearly, TextMate was picking up the wrong Ruby installation on my system. With JRuby and at least one other “normal” Ruby installed, it didn’t seem impossible. But why now? I still don’t know the answer to that question, but I did fix the problem.

Digging through the TextMate Ruby bundles, I kept seeing a reference to “TM_RUBY”. In the advanced preferences I set this to have a value of my desired Ruby install, and everything was happy again.

Setting the TextMate TM_RUBY variable in advanced preferences

Every time I switch to a new branch in git, I ask the question, “Are my dev and test databases in a state that works with this branch?”  Rarely being able to remember the answer, I go through the ritual of dropping the tables, migrating, loading fixtures, and prepping the test database.  Annoying at best.

I hacked together a potential solution.  This is intended for your dev and test databases only.  This looks like an outstandingly stupid thing to do on your production server.  Although, who deploys their database.yml file from git anyway?

For months, I’ve been using this great shell hack that puts your current branch in your command line.  Thanks github.

jdl ~/hm(master) $ git co foo
Switched to branch "foo"
jdl ~/hm(foo) $

It finally dawned on me that my database.yml file could also use a similar treatment. Modifying the system call a bit, I ended up with this. Notice that I’m using an absolute path to git. That’s because the TextMate test runner wasn’t able to find git in whatever PATH it was picking up. If you’re just using rake or autotest, then you can simply specify ‘git’ there.

local_db: &local_db
  adapter: mysql
  username: root
  password: 
  host: localhost

<% branch_name = `/usr/local/git/bin/git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* (.*)/1/'`.strip.gsub(/[* ]/, '') %>

development:
  <<: *local_db
  database: <%= "project_dev_#{branch_name} "%>

test:
  <<: *local_db
  database: <%= "project_test_#{branch_name} "%>

Creating a new branch takes a bit more effort, but switching is now faster.

jdl ~/hm(master) $ git co -b foo
Switched to a new branch "foo"
jdl ~/hm(foo) $ rake db:create:all; rake db:migrate; rake db:fixtures:load; rake db:test:prepare

The downside to this is that it’s overkill when creating a branch that has no migrations in it. I’m going to try it for a while and see how it goes.

Update: After a week of using this, I have to say that it’s neither terrible nor great. I still think that there is a good idea buried in there, but it needs to be integrated with the git branch hooks to ease the pain a bit. Specifically, I need to figure out the following.

• Deleting a branch should automatically clean up the databases that were created.
• It would be great to have this be optional when creating a new branch. If I could decide to just use my base dev db on a branch, or to create a whole new set of local db’s at the time of branch creation that would be the killer feature for this idea.

Not dead, but back to the drawing board.

I played Goa last night with a couple of people who were newish to that game, but experienced gamers all around. It reminded me that not everyone understands the huge effect that opportunity cost has in that game.

Bidding is a once-around affair, where each player has a turn to offer up a new tile. The offerer hears the others’ bids, and then either accepts the high bid (taking the cash from the bidder) or outbids everyone else and pays his money to the bank. This means that buying your own auctions costs you more than double what the high bidder was willing you pay you.

For example, let’s say you offer a double-ginger plantation and the high bid is 6. If you pay the bank 7, you really just paid 13 (7 real ducats + 6 ducats you passed on). Not only that, but you’ve taken money out of the game economy, inflating the value of the money that’s left in circulation. Since it was your money being siphoned off, that’s probably not a great thing for you.

Bidding on the flag is interesting, because later in the game, not everyone’s actions are worth the same amount of money. If you buy the flag for 5, and you can perform the money action for 6, then at the very worst you can use the free action to make a profit. However, if you put the flag up for auction and the person to your right bid 4, then buying it for 5 in this situation would be a money loser. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t buy the flag, but you need to have a very good reason to justify its cost.