How was your weekend? I was sneered at the by reception staff of the New York Athletic Club and directed to please get my plebian, denim-clad ass out of their very fancy lobby and into the freight elevator (via the rear entrance, naturally) before they succumbed to an attack of the vapors¹.

Duly reminded of my place in the world, I was finally permitted to make my way towards meeting space, where I participated in a roundtable discussion on the future direction of my alma mater, then met my wife so we could go kayaking on the Hudson while the sun went down and the city lit up. So you know — pretty cool except for Mister Sniffy behind the big desk there. Some things happened in the world of webcomickry, too.

• Not quite over the weekend, but what the heck: My evil twin introduced me via email to a very nice gentleman named Richard Bliss, who holds forth on boardgames and has been producing a podcast series of discussions regarding games vis-à-vis Kickstarter. Last week’s number-bothering caught his attention, and we had a nice discussion on Kickstarter, how it applies to the boardgames sphere as opposed to the webcomics sphere, and what it all means. Then we had a part of that discussion again and recorded it, which should be available sometime in the next 24 hours, here-ish.

  The most interesting thing that I learned is that the tendency for [web]comics projects to not succeed unless the creator is a known quantity with an established audience runs in large part counter to boardgames projects. It might be a crappy game from that unknown designer, or it might be really good, but if you’re only risking US$10-20, that could be better odds than hunting down a really expensive imported Eurogame and finding out it sucks anyway.

  The second most interesting thing I learned is that there’s a website that tracks current Kickstarter projects, complete with predictions as to final totals. I hadn’t heard of Kicktraq before, but if their predictions on, say, the Dylan Meconis library reprint project hold anywhere near true (their prediction as of this writing: 603% of goal, or about US$91,000), it was probably a good decision on her part to start drawing that bonus story that she promised at US$18K.

  Also, if you look near the bottom of the project page, below the “Backers Per Day graph, there’s a small link on the letter Π, which leads to experimental graphs. It’ll take some more time to get enough data to be really interesting, but you can see the prediction and actual converge, and eventually see a hurricane-prediction style cone of possibilities. This shit could keep me riveted for hours, no fooling.

  The third most interesting thing I learned is that my new wireless headset will, at random intervals, drop a faint, quarter-second delayed echo of my own voice into the earpiece for about 45 seconds at a time and it becomes really difficult to talk under those circumstances without repeating yourself. If I got redundant, don’t tell me, it’ll only break my heart.

• The world has by now learned about the wildly overreaching lawyers letter to Matthew Inman, and the utter inability of FunnyJunk’s lawyer to comprehend that it’s time to cut his losses. Seriously, counselor, there is no way you can win this except if you quit quickly enough that your name does not get attached to an object lesson in the vernacular. You’re pulling a Wilson in slow motion.

  At this point, I’m watching in rapt attention and no small amount of horror-musement as Charles Carreon digs deeper, and deeper, and deeper one mo’ ‘gin. I don’t feel like kicking a corpse, so barring any radical developments in the case, I’ll just direct you to Popehat for your news on the case, as they are actual lawyers and able to explain why Carreon is acting like an idiot in the application-of-law sense, whereas I can only comment on the dude-you’re-only-making-it-worse-on-yourself sense.

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¹ May I suggest, NYAC Trustees, that if you’re going to rent out meeting space on Saturdays, you might want to let your guests know in advance about your dress code? There’s a chance that the people who are paying for the privilege of being condescended to might find it less than entirely charming to be told at length what a favor you’re doing by letting them cross your hallowed halls in their obvious, undeserving state. Jerks.