This Moon's Match
John Bartolomeo and I once played a 5 point match in a car while he was driving. Our game was interrupted by two police officers. What I'm about to tell you though was even more dangerous than that.
We go now to the weekend in Colombia. After watching a movie about people playing Catan, I challenged a few friends to a game of online Catan. Kyle and I were set to square off Sunday night, but we couldn't get the site to work on his computer, so we played some backgammon on Yahoo Games. A day later, I saw John online and challenged him to a game. We couldn't get Yahoo Games to work on his computer. "Is there another way?" he asked.
John: can we play gnu backgammon?
I remembered a spreadsheet.
Once upon a time, Alex Vittal and I were flying together from Spokane to Phoenix, and neither one of us had a backgammon board! Weird. I said, Alex, don't worry, I have GNU Gammon on my computer. But before I knew it, he was on Google Drive creating a board in a shared spreadsheet. Alex even added two cells that generate random numbers between 1-6 every time the spreadsheet is refreshed (which happens each time it is edited.) We tried writing some code to make a die, well actually we didn't, we just imagined that someone would be able to do that. Even though we were stuck with those random cells, they work!
Several months later, I finally put this beauty to use in a game with John. It has quirks for sure, when he moved his pieces, they often did not show up on my screen (Chrome on Windows 7 starter), but with the chat feature in the spreadsheet we worked it out.
And I won the game! A few doubles near the end sealed the deal for me. So I've got a 2-0 lead in the 2013 Spreadsheet Tournament.
[quote from our instant message where I challenge John.]
19:06 Yo: i challenge you to backgammon!!!
John: WHAT?!
19:07 OK!!!!!
I have no idea how!
19:08 Yo: k
moment
19:11 go to the seahorse grotto
19:12 John: oh no! do i need to make an account?
Yo: yes!
John: oh! crap! hold on!
19:13 Yo: K!
19:14 John: haha I am using my friend's old account from high school!
we played online pool!
alright!
Yo: hell yes!
John: can't believe i remembered the password!
it's been 10 years!!
19:15 Yo: haha amazing!
John: haha darn it! it says that since i had to reactivate it, I have to wait 24 hours!
hold on!
19:16 Yo: what the crap?!
19:19 John: almost there!
19:22 Yo: "Mom omg"
John: yep!
19:25 waiting for applet to load
i have filled out 5 passwords
Yo: hahah excellent
19:28 John: welp, it just installed a million shits on my computer and refuses to load!
what the heck!
19:29 is there another way we could play?
Yo: HAHAHA
ok, yes, probably!
hmmm,
19:30 try shutting off your browser and then starting it again
John: can we play gnu backgammon?
Yo: Gno
i don't think so
John: hahaha
Yo: WAIT
JOHN
I KNOW
John: YA?!
19:31 Yo: HAHAHA YES!
John: POST GAMMON!!! ?????
Yo: better!
19:32 ok check your google drive in like 15 seconds
https://docs.google.com/
spreadsheet/ccc?key=
0AjRDtc5aXrXKdFlvWmxrRWhlemdlV
E5FUllIWUpTYnc&usp=sharing
or just click that
John: NO WAY!
HOW DID YOU DO THAT?!?!
19:34 Yo: HAHAHAHAH
Well alex made it once when we were on the plane together
we didn't have a board
19:35 OK, so there are notes on the first sheet that you can read for an explanation
sample
19:36 hmm, neverminde, there are not notes. they were on the other spreadsheet i copied
but they didn't get copied
John: ok
so I just rolled a 6 as an opening roll
what did you roll?
19:38 hmm I am feeling very lucky today, I believe I will be rolling many double sixes
Yo: Wait, not yet. OK which page are you on?
19:39 also did you get that the "roll" button really doesn't work?
John: this virtual board is genius
at the bottom
Yo: and that anytime you edit the sheet the roll change
s
s
19:43 John: this is incredible!
20:15 http://fc08.deviantart.
net/fs70/f/2010/021/b/3/Angel_
Kitties_hugging_by_
KaminariKatsuya.jpg
No comments:
Post a Comment