Today's board game microreview is for "Wits and Wagers".


Wits and Wagers is a very clever mixture of trivia, betting, and social interaction.  It's fast to play, super easy for anyone, and easily supports 7 players or more with teams.

Gameplay works essentially like this:  On each round a trivia question is read that has a numerical answer.  All players (teams) write down their answer on a dry erase card, and then all answers are laid out in numerical order.  At this point, everyone can bet on which answers are correct.  In this way, even if you have no idea what the answer is, you have a chance to bet on the answers from people who you think might know.

The social element of seeing what answers others gave, and how confident they are, and the range of answers -- is all quite fun.  And the strategy and risk taking of betting your accumulated chips is very fun.

I've played this twice now with large groups -- the first time was fun but not magical; the second time -- playing with people i didn't know well, was extremely fun.

Highly recommended if you have a large group of adults.  There are special editions for families and kids (though i think it works better with adults).

Another party board game mini-review, this time for a game called "Telestrations".



Telestrations is a light-hearted drawing game that works similarly to the kids game of "Telephone".  Each player gets a secret word (or phrase), and tries to draw it.  They then pass along their pad clockwise to the next player who looks at the picture they drew, and tries to guess (in words) a description what it is a drawing of.  Then that player passes along the pad clockwise and the recipient draws a picture of the description that the previously player wrote.  So as each pad goes around the circle, it becomes a sequence of drawing, description, drawing, description, etc..

After each pad has gone around the circle, players take turns becoming the center of attention and showing off the sequence of drawings and descriptions in their pad while everyone else laughs at how wrong things went.

The best part of this game is that the worst artists create the most fun.  Children will especially enjoy being the center of attention as people enjoy the mayhem.

It's a pure fun game that should work well for any group, has tons of laughs, and is great for kids of all ages.  Highly recommended.

The normal edition supports up to 8 players; there is a "party pack" that goes up to 11 or 12.

If you feel brave enough, you can even try to completely replace the computer keyboard with a digital piano. All you need is to have some piece of software on the computer to translate MIDI messages into computer commands. It could be a user-mode driver, or you can create a plug-in for your favoride IDE to teach it new tricks.

Which we did. Just for fun, I developed Midichlorian, a Visual Studio extension that allows you to write code and automate VS using MIDI instruments. And, inspired by The Song of Pi, my colleague Lana composed a song which is both a melody in the key of C# minor and a valid C# computer program. Watch her in action!

Complete with sheet music, Hello World: a Suite for Visual Studio in C# Minor

http://elekslabs.com...-piano-keyboard.html[/center]

58 Cognitive Biases That Screw Up Everything We Do (via Business Insider)

We like to think we're rational human beings.
In fact, we are prone to hundreds of proven biases that cause us to think and act irrationally, and even thinking we're rational despite evidence of irrationality in others is known as blind spot bias.

The study of how often human beings do irrational things was enough for psychologists Daniel Kahneman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, and it opened the rapidly expanding field of behavioral economics. Similar insights are also reshaping everything from marketing to criminology.

Hoping to clue you — and ourselves — into the biases that frame our decisions, we've collected a long list of the most notable ones.

More at link.

I realized some of these... but not all.  And a very good reminder and article (with examples no less).

I wanted to post about a blog that I check out regularly, called "Overcoming Bias", that I thought might be of interest to some here.

It's a somewhat strange blog, written by an economics professor and futurist (Robin Hanson), that discusses human behavior and societal interactions and incentives.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/

It's a little hard to describe what I find interesting about the blog -- except that the tone of it is quite different (perhaps the author has Aspergers or is able to view issues unusually dispassionately) -- it's hard to put my finger on it.

The blog often comes across to me as matter-of-factly talking about things that seem slightly off-kilter, but in a very plain and logical way.  Like an alien analyzing human behavior without our normal social moorings.  Think "spock" from star trek.  I suppose this is the kind of approach you expect from an economist but the results when applied to human behavior can be quite interesting.  He's often talking about "signaling" -- like the signals that people give off to attract mates, and proposing unusual hypotheticals and thought experiments in order to make a point.

For example, from some recent excerpts:

"So my advice is to choose a focus for your honesty, a narrow enough focus to have a decent chance at achieving honesty. Make your focus more narrow the more dangerous is your focus area. Try to insulate beliefs on your focus topics from beliefs on risky topics like your own value, and try to arrange things so you will be penalized for dishonesty. Don’t persent yourself as a “rationalist” who is more honest on all topics, but instead as at best “rationalist on X.”

"There’s a simple signaling explanation here. We like to do big things, as they make us seem big. We don’t want to be obvious about this motive, so we pretend to have financial calculations to justify them. But we are purposely sloppy about those calculations, so that we can justify the big projects we want."

"Consider two possible work strategies. One strategy is just to try to do a good job. The other is to try to kiss ass and please your boss any way you can. Of course you can try either strategy, both, or neither. Which makes four different kinds of workers. Now ask yourself, of these four kinds of workers, which ones do you think achieve the most career success? Which ones have the most job and life satisfaction?"

Anyway, it's an interesting and unusual academic blog -- worth checking out if you like that kind of thing.

Title	sChecklist
Description	A simple checklist app focused on ad-hoc lists.
Supported OS	Windows XP/Vista/7.  Probably works, but not tested, on Windows 8
Website:	None yet
History	Changelog
Download	sChecklist.zip
Screenshot

Introduction
Like most of my apps, I wrote this because I couldn't find a simple checklist app that suited my needs.  What I'm talking about is off-the-cuff, ad hoc types of lists.  The ones that, in the course of your (work) day, you find yourself wanting a quick way to set up a checklist, especially one that can be easily used over and over.  Just rows of text entries and a checkbox for each.  No B.S., no time tracking, and no crazy wizzbang features.  In other words, this app is not a time tracker nor is it meant as a full-blown project tracker.  There are plenty of extremely well done apps that already do this.  Task Coach, MyLifeOrganized, & ToDoList are but three that I'd recommend.

Again, rows of text entries and a checkbox for each -- that's what this app strives to provide.