David Still (Viper007Bond) has come up with a solution and opened up a Trac entry on wordpress.org to add hooks to wp-login.php! As of right now, it’s scheduled to officially be added to the wordpress core files in version 2.6! I can’t wait to start testing it and here I am blogging about it already. I’m excited by strange things ’tis true!

My Dad got the first and second seasons of House on DVD on Black Friday (Actually, Ben Romeo and I did, but that’s another story) and I was excited to borrow the first season. I was sure that the special features would talk about how Holmes was an inspiration for this new show, but there was nothing! I figured I would never find out for sure.

The show did get me to break out my trusty book, The Complete Sherlock Holmes given to me by my Grandpa in 1996, and begin reading straight through it starting with the preface by: Christopher Morley and I was amazed when I saw this:

“The character of Holmes, Doyle has told us, was at any rate partly suggested by his student memories of Dr. Joseph Bell of the Edinburgh Infirmary, whose diagnostic intuitions used to startle his patients and pupils. But there was abundant evidence that the invention of the scientific detective conformed to a fundamental logic in Doyle’s own temper.”…”Of his humour, there is a pleasant income-tax story. In his first year of independent medical practice his earnings were 154 pounds, and the income-tax papers arrived he filled it up to show that he was not liable. The authorities returned the form with the words Most Unsatisfactory scrawled across it. He returned it again with the subscription I entirely agree. As many readers must have guessed, Round The Red Lamp and The Stark Munro Letters were very literally drawn from his own experiences in medicine.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Complete Sherlock Holmes
      Barnes & Noble Inc. 1992

For a while, I was content reading about Sherlock Holmes and watching Dr Gregory House who both had to be related somehow.

The writer’s strike slowed new episodes down, but we were hooked and catching up on all the older episodes on DVD. I then saw the first new episode since the strike, It’s a Wonderful Lie on January 29th. I know now that I was not the only one to catch one of the gifts given to House in that Christmas episode: “A second edition Doyle”! That’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle! Finally some proof!

I decided then I would have to let the world know on my blog (It’s taken me a while, I’ve been busy). I did have to do some preliminary searching to see if someone else had realized the connection and alas, as with most good ideas, I was too late. I found an interview of David Shore, the creator of House:

Anytime one says “puzzle” and “brilliant deduction” in the same sentence, one can’t help but think of the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick, Dr. Watson. And indeed, Holmes — and the real-life physician that inspired him, Dr. Joseph Bell — were very much inspirations for “House.”

Shore now has a whole new appreciation for Holmes’ creator. “My heart goes out to the late, great Arthur Conan Doyle. How’d he do that, and make him smart every time?”

Reminded that Doyle was himself a physician (which no doubt helped), Shore sighs. “He actually was.”

Shore also hopes to draw more parallels to Holmes by drawing House’s best, and likely only, friend, oncologist Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), into the Watson role.

“We’re looking for Wilson to step up in that regard, as House’s everyman, leaning over his shoulder and going, ‘How’d you do that?’ And more important, ‘Why’d you do that?’

I also found a page by an even more avid fan than I on Connections Between House and Holmes.

The mystery of the relationship of two brilliantly deductive minds is now over for me, but there are plenty of mysteries still left to read about and watch.

• Three year goals (January 2010)
  • Make $50,000 a year
  • Learn Spanish
  • Be a Journeyman electrician

Edit: Work hasn’t been slow lately, I just found this post in my drafts and couldn’t think of anything that needed to be added. For some reason, I thought it would post with the original date…silly me. It was written some time during the winter of ‘06-’07

Stevish also just made a new improved and secure Rail Baron destinator php script to save lots of time getting destinations and payoffs. It’s available for anyone to use, so check it out!

railgamefans.com’s Rail Baron FAQ has some good common sense answers to rule questions, but some differ from supposed Tournament rulings at the Train Gamers Association website


Draw Variation:

Drawing RR Deeds
A Variant for Rail Baron
by Mike Isom

We have a group of three who play regularly and have been playing for over ten years. Although we occasionally have more players we have added our own variations in the rules to make the game a little more interesting.

At the beginning of the game we remove all deeds that are under $10k and over $20k. The remaining deeds are put face down in a box and mixed up. Each player draws one card and keeps it secret. When someone goes on that line during the game you flip up your card and they pay you as normal. Now the rest of the deeds are mixed in face down. During the game whenever you hit a destination you may draw a card. Your choices are then to pay for it (if you have the cash), keep it until you can pay for it, or toss it back. You can only purchase or draw when you have made a destination. When you get to your next destination you may draw a card as long as you have paid for any you are holding. If you are holding a card to buy and are forced to sell a RR you must also toss the unpaid for one back in the box.

Another thing we added was the “one out insurance card”. It costs $10k and will add one movement point to your turn only if it makes you reach a destination. It can only be used once per turn and can be used on your “in” or “out” move. It can be real handy at the end of the game when you’ve hit a destination very close to home, declared, and are using your “out” to reach home.

Drawing your railroads adds some unexpected twists to the game as you may not connect well very often. Also, someone cannot buy out in front of you unless they happen to draw that line. Holding the secret railroads makes things treacherous from the beginning as several lines are owned but you don’t know which ones. You sometimes end up circling a destination trying to get a good roll to go in on only to find that nobody owned it after all. Since they weren’t in the draw, the very large and very small lines are safe to use. You also pay attention to what’s been drawn and thrown back as you know it’s safe. There is also trying to decide whether to keep a mediocre line or throw it back hoping for something better next draw. The good part is that the other players may well be getting as unbalanced a selection as you are. With 3 people playing I’ve ended up with as few as 4 lines and as many as 15 (I hold the record there). I’ve lost while owning all the good ones and won when I didn’t think I had a chance. It really comes down to the destinations everyone rolls.

Just for some added information- the box we draw the deeds from is commonly referred to as “The Box of Joy” and catching someone on your “secret” railroad is drawing “blood”.

Game start variations:

FIRST TRIP FIX

Fortunately, there is an easy fix via a simple house rule that I call Home Swapping. Here’s how it works: after a player has determined his first destination, but before he rolls to begin movement, he may state he is Home Swapping. This simply means his first destination becomes his home city, and his home city becomes his first destination. He freely teleports his engine to his new home city, then proceeds normally (rolls dice for movement, etc.). For use fee purposes, assume the player is established on whatever RRs serve his new home city. For victory purposes, he must return to his new home city.

GOING LAST FIX

There is a house rule you can implement to have create a more fairly balanced start of the match. I call it Pick First Region. Basically, it allows all players the option to pick the region of their first destination, and do so in reverse turn order. Specifically, here’s how:

1) After the turn order for the match has been determined, but before the first player rolls for his first destination, perform the following steps.

2) The player who goes last has the option to pick the region to which he wants to travel. He then rolls to determine the destination city within that region. This is his first destination.

3) Next, the player who goes next to last does the same thing, EXCEPT he may not choose the region of the first player’s first destination. He must choose one of the other regions.

4) Any player who doesn’t like the regions that remain available can, instead, simply roll the dice to obtain a region just like normal. This random method is the only way he can obtain a region already occupied by someone else’s first destination.

Short ending variation:

The worst part of the game is the ending. This says that you have to reach the point where you have $200,000 in cash and then succeed in getting it back to your original starting city. Moreover, you must tell the others when you are commencing this home run. They then interrupt the journeys they are on and try to intercept you. If one of them succeeds, you pay them $50,000 and have to head for an alternative destination. Only after you have done that and again got enough cash can you attempt another run for home. This game of tag can get pretty tedious as first one player and then another is hauled back from the winning post. The cash target is high enough and the game more than long enough without this piece of time consuming nonsense. Fortunately, there is a variant that does away with it. It is the suggestion of Gary Gygax, of D&D fame, and was part of an article on Rail Baron that he wrote for The Dragon. With this you play as normal until the last rail company is bought. You then roll an average die and play that number of complete turns more, ending with the player who bought the last company. Then you tally up: cash plus companies and trains at cost. Richest player wins. He also added in small cash bonuses for locks on various cities, but for that you need copies of the tables in his article and they don’t make enough difference to be worth the bother. Played this way you retain all the most interesting part of the game, but it is much shorter and you avoid the long, slow and dispiriting slide into bankruptcy that is otherwise the lot of those who aren’t doing well.

The Euro (debt) version:

* The 28 Railroad deeds are selected or auctioned and not purchased.

* All players start with an Express Train.

* A Super Chief upgrade costs $20,000.

* The PA has a new value of $38,000.

* The “Home-Swapping” variant is used (Basics: a player may opt to make his first destination his home city, and his previously determined home city his first destination. He freely teleports his engine to his new home city, then proceeds normally). Record the name of your home city as it is used at the end of the game.

* Deed Selection Rounds. A deed selection is required at the start of each player’s turn (before a player’s train movement or trip determination) and continues several game rounds until the following distribution is met:

o In 3 player games, each player selects 8 deeds and four are owned by the bank
o In 4 player games, each player selects 6 deeds and four are owned by the bank
o In 5 player games, each player selects 5 deeds and three are owned by the bank

* Choose a starting player (each player rolls two dice and the high number wins the starting position). During the initial RR deed selecting rounds, the starting position rotates clockwise to the next player from the last starting player after each round. Once the selecting rounds are complete, the player order changes to a normal clockwise rotation beginning with the player to the left of the last deed selecting player.

* Once the deed selection portion of the game is complete, each player should secretly count up his Railroad Network Cost (RRNC equals the total of the printed value on a player’s RR deeds).

* Players cannot auction or sell back to the bank any Railroad. If a player has insufficient money to pay usage fees, he is allowed to receive business loans in increments of $5,000 from the bank. Each $5,000 loan (plus a $2000 interest fee or a total of $7,000) is added to the player’s RRNC total. Loans cannot be asked for in order to pay auction bids or upgrade engines.

* After all players have reached their free required number of deeds, the remaining deeds that are owned by the bank are available for auction. When a player reaches a city and after they have chosen to upgrade their train (or not), that player can call for an auction. The player calling the auction selects a bank owned Railroad and begins the auction with a $500 bid. Once a high bidder has won and paid the bank, the winner takes the deed and adjusts his RRNC total accordingly. RR deeds that are owned by the bank (the ones remaining after all the player selection rounds) do not have to be auctioned and purchased. Some or all may remain owned by the bank for the entire game and usage fees are paid to the bank per the standard rules.

* When a player has accumulated enough money to pay his RRNC, he can declare at the start of his next trip his intention to go home instead of rolling for a new trip. There is no chasing to tax the caught player. The first player to get back to his home city with enough cash to pay the bank his RRNC is the winner.

That’s right, today is your lucky day! So why are you still reading this? Go to Philip and Jamie’s blog now. You’ll see the same erratic craziness and web design commentary you’re used to here, but now you’ll also receive Jamie’s wit, prose and get to see some color too (did I mention there are pictures?).

I’ll leave this blog here and may post from time to time, but don’t count on it.

It all started on a cold and blustery Thursday morning. The night before there had been a sudden, but fierce snowstorm which had made a mess of the streets in the sprawled out city of Colorado Springs. So bad that there were accidents all over town wrecking havoc on the morning commute.

Mrs. Jamie Mayor was due to be at the courthouse at 8:30am sharp to serve her civic duty as a potential Jury member. With her summons in hand and a small map to the courthouse with the roads she was to take to get there so lovingly highlighted in pink by her husband the night before, she grabbed her keys and settled into the driver’s seat of her 1995 Oldsmobile. Unfortunately, the morning had somehow slipped into fast forward and Jamie was late before she even put the key into the ignition. Cursing herself for not getting up earlier, she rolled down the driveway and into the muck, blissfully unaware of the dangers and traffic congestion that awaited her.

Taking her normal route to the interstate, it wasn’t long before Jamie realized that something was terribly wrong. A mile before the interstate entrance ramp, there began a string of immobile cars lined up like ants at a picnic. The frustrated drivers inside appeared to be focusing all their energy on mentally willing the cars in front of them to magically begin moving, or simply to disappear.

Glancing down at the digital clock on her dashboard, Jamie woefully closed her eyes and fought to keep the tension in her head from building to a boil. 8:15am. No way was she going to make it on time if she had to sit here all morning. Thinking furiously through her options, she snapped her right blinker on and maneuvered her car onto a side street silently hoping to use her knowledge of back streets to gain an advantage over her fellow commuters. No such luck. Apparently, there were a good number of other people who also knew about the back streets, and as a result these roads were just as crowded as the one leading to the interstate had been. The situation was beginning to look hopeless.

Frantically calling her husband on her cell phone, Jamie begged him to help her out of her own self-appointed misery.

“What am I going to do?” she pleaded. “Can you think of any other roads I can take? What will happen if I’m late?”

“Well, the last time I had jury duty there were a few people who were late. There was this one guy who was really late, and they chewed him out and told him he had to come back another time.”

“Lovely. Thanks for the reassurance, hon.”

Snapping her cell phone shut and tossing it away uselessly on the passenger seat, Jamie found an opening in the right hand lane and took it, gaining some ground. Resolving herself to whatever her fate might be, she continued plodding forward knowing that there was nothing more she could do to get to the courthouse on time.

30 minutes later, she pulled into the parking lot designated for Jurors and checked her clock. 8:50am.

“20 minutes isn’t so bad.” She reasoned. “After all, there was a snowstorm last night.”

20 minutes, however, quickly turned into 30 as Jamie clicked along in her high heels across the snow encrusted side walk towards the ominous courthouse building. Twice, she had her hand on an entrance door only to be stopped by a sign with an arrow that read, “Please enter using the door on the east side of the building.”

Finally arriving at what appeared to be the correct entrance, Jamie whisked open the door and plunged herself inside. Just 10 feet away, she could plainly see the large metal detectors she would need to walk through and the smug security guards grinning and passing over all who entered with fancy electronic wands. All she had to do was get through this last obstacle and she was home free! Taking a step forward, something stopped her. Glancing down, she noticed to her dismay that she was completely boxed in by the sort of black vinyl tape you see at airports and amusement parks designed to keep people lined up in an orderly fashion. Only here, there was no line. Studying the design, she noticed that the tape was arranged in a series of switchbacks winding its way back and forth all the way to the metal detectors, all set up as if the security guards were awaiting some mad rush of traffic offenders. It was plain to see the path she needed to take, but from her position there was no way to get there. Feeling like a rat in a maze, she looked back at the door she had just walked through. Slowly, she read the backwards letters as the blood rushed through her head…EXIT. At the end of her rope, Jamie stormed back through the doors and for a quick moment considered simply returning to her car and forgetting the whole mess. But, being the good citizen that she was, she persevered.

Now standing on the outside of the courthouse once again, she carefully examined each of the windowed, double doors.

“Exit….Exit….Exit….and yes, Exit.”

Turning to a hoodlum-looking dude standing outside smoking a cigarette, Jamie exclaimed in exasperation, “Do you have any idea how to get into this place??”

With a quick glance at the doors, the stranger shrugged and said, “I have no idea.”

Looking again to the line of doors, Jamie fought to remain calm and kept telling herself over and over again, “You are an intelligent person. You are smarter than a rat. There is just something you’re missing, that’s all.”

Striding confidently forward, she took her chances on one of the unmarked, middle doors, reasoning that these doors were the closest to where she had seen the beginning of the maze when she was on the inside. Breathing a sigh of relief, she realized she had chosen correctly. She was now standing on the inside of the black tape configuration. She proceeded to walk back and forth obediently through 4 parallel, empty lanes and successfully maneuvered her way through the metal-hungry machines and guards.

Meekly opening the large, heavy door that led to the Juror Assembly room, Jamie strode towards the front desk, feeling the eyes of all the jurors who had arrived before her. Expecting the worst, she calmly handed her jury summons to the official-looking, tired man at the counter. Thankfully, the man did nothing to demoralize her. He simply handed her a form to fill out and instructed her to sit with the other potential jurors and watch the video playing on the televisions.

Sitting down in a padded chair in the middle of the room, Jamie took a deep breath of relief. That relief however, quickly dissipated as she looked down at first line on the form which read, “Juror Number _______”

In her haste to get to the courthouse earlier that morning, Jamie realized that she had left the piece of paper with her juror number on it on the dashboard of her car! Sucking up every last ounce of will in her body, she arose and once again felt the eyes of the lot around her. Walking up the aisle towards the counter, the tired man saw her coming and looked up dully.

“Yes?” He muttered.

“I’m sorry,” Jamie said quickly, “But I’ve accidentally left that paper thingy with my juror number on it in my car. Do I need to go back and get it?”

“No, you don’t need it” was all he said.

For the next two hours everyone in the room sat around looking at each other as they all thought about the things they could be doing if they weren’t stuck there. Jamie passed the time by reading a short story by Alfred Hitchcock which, ironically, was about a cop who was being evaluated by a jury for shooting 6 men in the line of duty. Around 10:30, the tired man announced that none of the judges needed jurors today and that everyone could all go back to the business of living their lives. Their duty was done.

As she left the room and headed back out into the street, Jamie couldn’t help feeling like a prisoner who had just been released of her crimes. Pulling out of the parking lot and heading for work, she resolved to live an extra careful life so as to avoid ever, EVER having to return to that place again.

The End

Thankfully, I found out about PortableApps.com and my customized and open source environment is well on its way to being perfect. Right now, I’m at the library, running an extremely customized Firefox 2 and I can chat on Gaim FTP using FileZilla and have the whole OpenOffice.org suite as well as other programs at my disposal. The best part is it’s open source (that means free to you and me)!

Try it out yourself! You can download the applications individually, or start with one of their PortableApps Suites that includes Firefox and more with a handy launch menu and backup utility. Try it, you’ll like it….

I’ve been at my parents’ house working on harwoodcafe.com due to the lack of electrical work. I did my usual cringing check of my days work in IE and wouldn’t you know it, it was broken. You’re not surprised, are you? It seems that the good ol’ folks at “little software” decided to put out IE 7, a ridiculous attempt at mimicking Firefox. They also decided to fix some bugs while they were at it, which made my hacks not work. It wasn’t a horrible disaster because of conditional comments, but it was annoying. That, in case you’re wondering, is how I came to be staring at The Naked Green once again and had my Dad walk by and say, “Your last post was in September 2005.” Thanks for pointing that out!

There’s a lot that’s happened and lots of ideas and plans and maybe I’ll write some more in hear here to inform the awaiting masses and document the history of my interesting life, but it will have to wait.