The Great International Paper Airplane Construction Kit

I found this book in a stack of computer manuals. It isn’t a game, but boy was it a lot of fun.

I don’t seem to have the disc, but as I recall it had clipart to customize the planes before printing.

My First Con

I found a brochure from my first con, from away back in 1977.

The Great Lakes Convention was presented by The Western New York Wargamers Association at the Sheraton-Lockport Inn.

Mint LXDE - What's Missing

I installed Mint LXDE 5 or six days ago. In a weeks time, I thought I would have a laundry list of software I absolutely must install. This is LXDE after all.

Surprisingly, that is not the case. LXDE is lightweight, but that doesn’t mean limited software. Right out the install box, Mint contains all of the software you might need for almost any task. For word processing Abiword is all you need; Spreadsheets are handled very well by Gnumeric; Gimp provides all of the photoediting capabilities one might need for almost any task.  Exaile is excellent for music and video is handled well by both MPlayer and VLC. Firefox is the go to web browser for any system and it did not require any updates with Mint LXDE 11, which was a nice touch. In fact with this version of Mint, I don’t believe I had more than a couple of updates.

So what did I HAVE to install? I selected Libre Office over Gnumeric and Abiword; however these to pieces of software are so handy that I decided to keep them. Considering all of the options in Libre Office, keeping them is high praise. For web browsers I needed something other than Firefox so I selected Opera and Epiphany-Browser. There is no beating Firefox in my book, but sometimes I need to look at websites in something else. Opera was selected because I last used this on my old Mac. Epiphany was snap decision, I wanted to take a drive with something new to me

The only lack I saw by way of software was a plain jane HTML editor and an ebook manager. Abiword could do it and there is nothing wrong with gedit, but Bluefish is my favourite. As for ebooks, I selected Calibre because it works so well and does so much more.

I hope to do a write up of my new software choices soon, so say tuned.

Why use Terminal? (GIMP Install)

Linux has come a long way over the years. Nearly every variant has a software manager, a graphical interface for adding software. Why bother with the Terminal any more?

First, the terminal will display everything it does. Second, there are many versions of Linux and all of them have Terminal as an option. No matter what version of Linux, Terminal experience will server you well.

Here is a quick example of how to install GIMP using the Terminal.

Install GIMP:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gimp

The && combos two commands, update and install. The first checks your repositories to make sure they are up to date and the second installs GIMP.

You can follow this with autoclean and clean:

sudo apt-get autoclean && sudo apt-get clean

These commands remove .deb files not used by your system. Autoclean removes the cache information. This is good for systems with low disk space, however the penalty is you will need to download these again if you need to update or install software.

Eye on the Pi

I have my eye on the Raspberry Pi. This little machine has a vibrant community and help is available all around the web.

This morning, I found The Errant Scientist blog; Matthew takes a walk through the set up process and installation of software via the LXTerminal.

ADB Inc. Calls in Some Friends

Amarillo Design Bureau has called in some friends. Facebook is now hosting several new fan pages for the great products by ADB, Inc.

Their main page is here.
The page for Star Fleet Battles is here.
Federation Commander has a page, as does A Call to Arms.
Task Force Games has an active fan base on Facebook, too.

Go ahead and friend them on the main page and look for new updates by Steven, Jean and all the good people at ADB.

Incompetech.com’s Graphpaper

One of my favorite websites is Incompetech. Not only do they have a great name, they have free graph paper. Perfect for a variety of gaming purposes.

For future reference – US Census Microdata

The other day, took the kids to the Niagara Aquarium.

On our way home, desperate for bathroom, we stopped at the Tuscarora Reservation. Inside, there is a tiny museum with awesome maps. 

Snapping pictures of them does no justice. They are gorgeous prints. I found out that they are from the 1892 Census.

Looking around online, I found this website with the actual images. The Integrated Public Use Microdata Series website is not just information on the US Census, it is data on individuals. What an excellent historical document.

I am pretty sure they didn’t think of someone pulling maps from the public documents, but what a wonderful resource for history and art.

Next → Stupid Saucy and XFCE Minecraft Trick

Installing Minecraft on a Chromebook is simple. Get Crouton, install Saucy and XFCE then get stuck. Why stuck?

You need to change the permissions of the Minecraft.jar to be an executable.

On many versions of Ubuntu, it is a simple matter of right clicking and checking the “make executable” check box. Using the standard Thunar XFCE file manager, that isn’t an option.

You have a couple of choices here. Installing a new file manager is a possibility, but if you are running XFCE or other light version of Linux, maybe you simply don’t want to do that.

This is a great chance to use the terminal to do what you want. The command needed is “sudo chmod +x”.


As you can see from the screenshot, I am using XFCE on a Chromebook, so my directory line is a little different.

Supporting the Story

Last month, TheseOldGames.com provided two raffle baskets to Boy Scout Troop 601. Each basket had a board game, a set of dice, decks of cards and two sets of Story Cubes. Funds raised allow the Troop to absorb some of the cost of outing and activities such as summer camp.

Rory’s Story Cubes are a great, family friendly way to break the ice.

Having given away 4 sets, I am dying to purchase one (or more) for myself. You can check out the story behind Rory’s Story Cubes over on Youtube or click the video below.

Hooked on Destiny

It is rather simple game, three classes, a couple of sub-classes and a bunch of armor and weapons. But the stories and different modes of play are really entertaining.

You are a guardian, your companions are a Ghost to provide details and wit and a lot of firepower. You must fight to free Earth, the Moon, Mars and Venus.

Right now I found the perfect farm location on the Moon. You can check out the details on this sweet farm right here.