Stuff I got for Christmas

So, for the past couple of years we’ve done this Christmas loot post thing. I planned on keeping it going this year, and I’m going to, even if it means posting about Christmas in the middle of January. I actually have two thousand words written about my holidays, but I’m not sure I want to inflict that upon the world. So I’ve extracted the loot table from that other post for your viewing pleasure.

Gifts received:

  • A rather nice lap desk
  • A bowl that is both round and wide for eating a mountain of cereal
  • Price-split on a 23", rotation-capable monitor
  • Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS)
  • Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection (PS3)
  • New winter hat with ear flaps
  • Razer Onza Tournament Edition controller
  • A bunch of cord management things as stocking stuffers
  • From my maternal grandparents, at my request: $100
  • A second pair of amazing thermal socks (the first of which I asked to have early)
  • A Freekey

Gifts given:

  • To Dad: Raspberry Pi and assorted extras, plus time required to turn it into a home theatre PC
  • To my brother: A D&D book (plus my recommendation to parents and others on what to give him)
  • To Mom: A small Bluetooth keyboard with a stand for tablets, hopefully allowing her Nexus 7 to replace her aging netbook
  • For Mom’s birthday: A Kobo Glo
  • For a friend in PEI: one Digispark and some assorted extras
  • For M-: An external battery for charging her phone (settled on at Sacha Chua’s recommendation after I initially tried to build a MintyBoost)
  • For my AP English teacher: A letter expressing my gratitude and how well things have gone for me at university thanks to all she taught us

Anyway, I may or may not inflict the full story of my winter break on the world. If I do, I won’t blame you for skipping it. If you wrote a 2000 word blog post about how you spent your break writing a 13 page essay (which was, ideally, going to be 20 pages) and submitted it just before midnight (by your supervisor’s time zone) and otherwise did boring family junk… I’d probably skip it too. I mean, maybe you can make that really interesting to read! But I don’t think I did. I might try to break it up into parts, but then I’m just making the boredom bite-sized. Decisions, decisions…

BCN Christmas Loot Mk II

BLAST FROM THE PAST

This year, my brother and I are with my dad for Christmas. My mom went home to spend Christmas with her family, but before she left we did half-a-Christmas. So my gifts from her, my grandparents, and one or two “from Santa”:

  • A pre-order for the limited edition of FF XIII-2 (once bitten, twice excited about the changes they’re making)
  • An IOU for a copy of Valkyria Chronicles 2 for PSP
  • How to Do Things with Videogames, by Ian Bogost (kindle)
  • Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal (kindle)
  • Punished by Rewards, by Alfie Kohn (kindle)
  • The Googlization of Everything (and why we should worry), by Siva Vaidhyanathan (kindle)
  • The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie (kindle, First Law #1)
  • Newsgames: Journalism at Play, by Ian Bogost (kindle)

Oh, and I picked out the Game of Thrones board game as a gift for my brother and we’ve had a lot of fun with it. Enough that I’d consider it partially a gift for me, which is the good thing about doing your own gift shopping. If you’ve got a group of people willing to sit down and play a really political game for 3+ hours, I’d definitely recommend it. Imagine Risk if there were no dice rolls, and manipulating people is a far better strategy than outright destroying them. You tell them you’ll guard their back as long as it suits you, and when it doesn’t…. well.

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For our second Christmas, which was on the proper date, I mainly got more books, but physical ones this time:

  • Valkyria Chronicles 2, for real
  • A Theory of Fun for Game Design, by Raph Koster
  • The Golden City, by John Twelve Hawks (Fourth Realm trilogy #3)
  • Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation, by Michael Zielenziger
  • Before They Are Hanged, by Joe Abercrombie (First Law #2)
  • Last Argument of Kings, by Joe Abercrombie (First Law #3)

My personal gift to my brother was Penny Arcade: Gamers vs Evil, another double-gift. We played it before going to bed, and I had fun with it. I can’t say how it compares to other deckbuilding games, but turns are very quick once you get used to it and the cards interact with each other in some pretty interesting ways. For example, I won the last game we played using the Carl hero, from the Automata strips. His ability makes the most expensive types of cards - Boss Loot - cheaper by one. There’s another card, Broodax In Disguise (not for the faint of heart - it’s an alien wearing a person’s body), that has a value of 1 when you play it, OR a value of 3 if you intend to put those points towards buying Boss Loot.

Whenever I failed to have enough to buy a Boss Loot, I bought more Broodax. Eventually, I got hands that - out of six cards - three of them are Broodax in Disguise.

Needless to say, I acquired a good chunk of phat lootz, which won me the game.

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Honourable mention goes to a couple of gifts I could only get shipped to the US, so my aunt brought them to my mother while she was visiting. So when she gets home, I’ll get two gifts that you may find very strange: a shell replacement for my DS Lite (a few hours of tinkering, which may ruin the machine!) and a bundle of empty cases for PSP games. Anyway, I’m weird like that. Both of those things were pretty cheap, and I’ll be happy to have them. I can replace the sticker-covered cases from PSP games I bought used, and if all goes well, be the owner of a non-broken red and black DS. Woo.

(also, does anyone still say woot? I have the strangest desire to start saying it, just because)

BCN Christmas loot: Now with less candy

I’m not going to include the things like candy, body wash, and socks that I received - know that I received at least two of each of those in addition to everything else.


  • A two-way bus ticket to Toronto and two concert tickets (an early gift)
  • A good (i.e. expensive) electric razor
  • The World Ends With You (DS)
  • Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (DS)
  • Folklore (PS3)
  • The Sly Cooper Collection (PS3)
  • Two pairs of slippers - one to keep at my mom’s, one to keep at my dad’s
  • New pyjama pants (timely given that my second pair just disappeared)

        The games and trip were all at my request, but the razor was a very nice surprise. My mom was buying things for my brother even yesterday to even out the spending - I couldn’t figure out why, because I thought the things I had already picked out for my brother were enough (Epic Mickey and Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and Rune Factory 3 for DS, Azumanga Daioh omnibus, Gunslinger Girl season 1, The Witcher + The Last Remnant + Super Meat Boy from Steam, a Lego boardgame thing, and a book) but I guess that was an expensive razor.

        Bonus: You now know what my brother got for Christmas. Also he got a pair of skates but that was one of those “you really didn’t need to” gifts.