Welcome Comrades to the 89th edition of the Dispatch
This issue's production coincided with Valentines. That Feast of Saint Valentines we love so much! As you all know Saint Valentine was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry. Before he was executed he sent a letter to the jailors daughter signing off "from your valentine"!! Moral of the story, if you are romantic then you will be remembered even if you do break all the rules! What a feast we have in store for you this issue!
Firstly, it's the big thumbs up to Gilligan! What a talent he was, what big shoes has has to fill, oh how he will be missed. Bless his cotton socks. We take a little time out to say thanks, say a few words, remember ... erk he only stood down already so you are allowed to say your piece too and he gets to read it ... yay! For those who need some background click here.
Secondly, Metsfanmax goes under the microscope. It covers everything from the Planck epock to nuclear fusion!
Thirdly, we have a bewildering array of articles. From the new (Ask Aunt Squishy), to the old (Meet the Tourney Winners - this week Junior Bee), to the borrowed (a multitude of clan updates), to the blue (all that work in the Foundry!). Now if that's not a marriage of talent then nothing is!!
Lastly, your chance to shine. We look forward to your feedback, comments, brick-bats and bouquets. Send your sweet Valentines to any of the newsletter editors. Better still, be their valentine and offer your *wink* assistance! Always looking for talent, providing you a chance to give something back, so share that budding writer inside of you! The chances of you being jailed and executed are not great
Enjoy the fruits of our labouring fingers!
[player]thehippo8[/player] Chief Executive
If you would like to apply to join the news team, please visit the thread below for more details!
Hello again Freestyle readers. I'd like to take this opportunity to recognize the many contributions that Gilligan tirelessly nurtured for the community. From both the immediately visible ones like special events to the day to day operations of managing a mod team, Gilligan approached all of them with class and tact. His work and dedication stand as an example of what it means to be a moderator on Conquer Club.
Gilligan will long be remembered for his tireless work in the Special Events. He was responsible for organizing and monitoring many of the special events for the last few years. From the map contest of Easter 2012 to the organization of the Halloween Mafia game for 2011, Gilligan has been the catalyst for Special Events and he ensured they all ran without a hitch.
Gilligan also contributed to the Entertainment team in a less visible but equally important way. He meticulously kept track of community interest and involvement in the special events and the other public projects of the Entertainment team. By providing and organizing the statistics of community interest, Gilligan allowed us to see which activities drew more interest and which were relatively less popular. His willingness to hunt and calculate these numbers help the Entertainment Team tailor its events to better appeal the community at large. His many contributions to the community can be represented by his 14 General Contribution medals (tied for 3rd all time!) which reflect his 4+ years of involvement as a moderator.
Q. When taking a vacation would you prefer to take a cruise or stay in a hotel and sight see?
Hotel and sight-seeing. I wouldn't like being locked on a boat for several days at a time.
Q. What is it like having to deal with Suggs?
It's a lot of fun; see the answer to the question four above. I get the opportunity to play around with different site ideas and communicate with the developers about their implementation, but I don't have to code anything (I have to do plenty of programming for my real job anyway) and I don't really have to be strict with any users because most people in Suggestions are quite civil.
Q. Do you get a lot of repeat thread that you have to merge?
There are tons of repeat threads, but I rarely merge them; most of us actually hate that process. Lately we only merge for the really dead suggestions (e.g. resign button).
Q. Which 3 Suggs would you like to first get implemented?
Q. What would you do if someone gave you a chocolate Easter egg and it turned out to be a hard boiled one instead?
I wouldn't eat that either.
Q. What's your opinion on Valentine's day?
Depends on whether I have a girlfriend at the time.
Q. What is astrophysics?
I tell everyone that I am a physicist whose area of expertise happens to be on subjects that happen on astronomical scales. The other astronomy grad students in my office ignore this.
Q. How good are you in chess?
Average. My ELO rating is around 1500 or something, last time I looked.
Q. Are you an ass or breast man?
Breasts.
Q. Why do the Mets suck so much?
Because they don't have Mike Piazza anymore.
Q. Which is your favorite Foamy rant?
5 More Minutes is definitely my favorite all-time Foamy video. Don't have a particular preference on the rants.
Q. How do you like the art/content since the reboot?
I actually don't still follow Foamy anymore, but I've had this avatar for many years. But from what I can tell, the art is better and the content is not.
Q. On a scale of 1-10, what letter is your favourite food?
2.71828
Q. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your embarrassment at talking to me (Ace Rimmer)?
3.14159
Q. On a scale of 1-10 how funny are Ace's questions?
7
Q. On a scale of 1-10 how funny do you think Ace's questions are for us since we don't have to answer them?
9
Q. Who is your favorite and least favorite Live Chat correspondee?
Favorite: Phatscotty Least favorite: maxfaraday (stealing my name)
Q. What Suggestion would you like to see be implemented the most?
Q. How well do you manage CC Time Volunteering vs RL?
Mostly I just stop doing CC work when RL conflicts. Sorry, but RL comes first.
Q. Who is your all-time favorite Met?
See above re: why the Mets suck.
Q. What is your favorite map on CC?
Arms Race!
Q. If you could create a map, what theme or idea would it be around?
Nuclear fusion
Q. Will you make a usergroup for astrophysicists?
Usergroups need at least 10 people to get started.
Q. What is your favorite candy bar?
Now that I am vegan I don't really eat candy bars. Prior to that it was Kit Kats.
Q. What is your favorite website other than CC?
YouTube
Q. What's worse, losing to a cook in the final game of a tournament, or being forced to watch the Bill Buckner play?
Seamus needs to brush up on his baseball history
Q. Do you admit that Keith Hernandez was at his best when he played for the Cardinals? Carlos Beltran?
I think a fair case could be made for Hernandez, although he and his mustache had better stay in NY forever. For Beltran, I don't think a serious case could be made for anything other than his time in NY.
Q. Do you think there are a lot better people on this site to interrogate rather than yourself?
Do you mean who are better people than me, or better to interrogate than me? Either way, yes.
I have no idea. I don't recall playing anyone enough times to have counted this.
Q. What is your most embarrassing moment in RL and on CC?
This question requires too much thinking and I have a poor memory.
Q. Your interests (Astrophysics, chess), how would you describe yourself on a dating website?
I've tried to think about clever ways to do this, and given up. The only way is to be straight up honest and hope that there are girls out there that like really nerdy guys.
Q. With astrophysics, what do you think is the greatest discovery within your field is?
Objectively, I think that the greatest discovery of recent times is that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. I work on understanding supernovae, which are the events that were used to first figure this out, so it's quite important.
But I also think that the results of the Kepler mission are amazing, and sometimes I regret not deciding to go into the field of exoplanets.
Q. Are we alone? Is their life on Europa?
No (see above). No.
Q. Are you a happy chap?
I am a crap chap.
Q. What are the chances of you getting any of the new medals?
Zero. I don't play enough games. I don't even rate people.
Q. What makes you come back day after day?
The intrinsic fulfillment I get from simply being part of a welcoming community.
Q. What other websites do you frequent? Any good porn out their? I only ask as you seem to not of had sex in months.
I play chess on gameknot.com. Other than that I don't spend much time in other communities, but I am often perusing the new papers on my field on the arXiv.
Q. Favourite cartoon?
South Park
Q. Favourite film?
The Shawshank Redemption
Q. Now using those two as a guide, which character would you like to be?
Cartman.
If I had been interviewed six months ago I might have chosen something different, for staff brownie points.
Q. How good are you at... catching questions? catching trains? catching colds? matching hats? thatching huts? cracking nuts?
Excellent.
Q. What's your favourite A-League (Australian) Soccer Team?
Where is Australia?
Q. Why don't you hang out with AoG?
He's too short.
Q. If you could be God, and arbitrarily set any value for h, and then be yourself, and live in this alternate physics world, what value would
you set?
We physicists routinely play God and set h = 1 to make the calculations simpler.[/spoiler]
Hello again my friends, and welcome to your favorite part of the Newsletter, "War Games", where you can find information about CC Tournaments!
I think we can start to be optimistic that the tournament world is at last regaining momentum. This is the first time in a long time that I have seen the Create/Join a Tournament forum go to two pages. The Ongoing Tournaments forum, which has been oscillating between 9 and 10 pages for a few months, seems to have solidly settled on 10. Mind you, this is still a long way from the 13 pages that it was when I joined CC, but I believe that the long-abused optimists of CC are seeing vindication.
We have plenty of interesting features for you in this issue. First, I speak to tournament winner Junior Bee. Then, I have a look back at the original tournament Hall of Fame, one of many projects that our recently-retired department head, Gilligan, worked on during his extraordinary career as a CC volunteer. Then, out of the sadness surrounding [player]flexmaster33[/player]'s retirement, Dave takes inspiration for another great installment of his tournament tips. Dave also updates the TPA situation.
Finally, we have Join This? Or Not!, the longest-running feature in the newsletter. Sadly, this is the last time that it will be authored by WorldCup4James. James has decided that the conflict between academic achievement and Conquer Club will be resolved in favour of academics, and in all good conscience I cannot disagree. I wish him well in his studies, and I will certainly miss him around here. It is always sad to lose a volunteer, but someone as good as James is a hard act to follow.
Meet the Tournament Winners: Junior Beeby Dukasaur
Tournament Tipsby DaveH [spoiler=League Tournaments - part 1]In this and a few of my next articles I want to pay tribute to flexmaster33 who has had to leave CC under very unfortunate circumstances. All of you that have played in one of his games series, such as 2012 NFL season, will know how detailed his tournaments were, following the schedule of game leagues and with professional looking graphics and quite complex scoring methods.
I have picked up the continuation of the above tournament of his and while I won't be able to continue it with the same level of sophistication as flex's, I hope that if I show you the system I use to simplify the running of such tournaments, it may encourage someone who does have these skills to run such tournaments in future.
The overview of his tournaments is as follows. In the usual way a set of teams is published and players assign themselves to one of the teams, either as individuals, as in the tournament I will describe, or as a team of players, and specify home map (or maps) and preferred settings.
The match-ups are formed according to the real league schedules and games published accordingly. The scoring on the tournament I will describe is according to the winning round, and then the results are published and the league tables updated with these results.
There are a number of elements that have to be linked; the league team to the player/s; the player/s to the games; the winning rounds to the score and the scores back to the team, via the player/s. For linking these I find the simplest function in Excel is the Vlookup function and the best tool in CC for completed games is the "Tour Stats" add-on that can by accessed by the tournament organiser in the game finder when the tournament is selected.
There are three screens obtained using this button; Tournament Summary; which links players to Number of wins and losses and any active games:
Tournament Results; which links game numbers to winning round and players; and Labels; which brings player data pertaining to the labels that the TO adds when creating the games.
All these forms can be copied and pasted (paste special/text) into Excel and then, using the VLookup function, all the necessary data for assisting the TO can be obtained.
I'll get into more details starting in the next issue.
(These "tips" started off as ones that I used to make it a bit easier in managing my own tournaments. Now, I am looking at other types of tournaments and scoring systems by all you innovative TO's out there. So, if you have a unique scoring system that you would like me to have a go at automating, please let me know and I'll be pleased to try and assist. Any queries on the above I'll be glad to respond to of course. Please note that I use Excel 2003, so there may be variation in the menu instructions if you have other versions of Excel)[/spoiler] TPA3 Wrapby DaveH
All things must come to an end. And so it has come to pass for the Beta Bounty. Congrats to [player]Ceetar[/player], [player]rousseau72[/player], [player]aad0906[/player] and [player]chapcrap[/player] for winning the three months of premium each. [player]random21[/player] has been asking, how is it possible to make maps better for 1v1 games in Making fair 1 v 1 maps. Have an idea or opinion, head on over.
This issue: We have new maps and old ones brought back to life in Maps in development for you whilst generalhead asks what you need before you start a map. Doomyoshi ran some awards earlier. The winner of the map one is below, but I just wanted to publish his letter. A wonderful thing it is as well. And finally, the contest is back. This issue, we have gone gilligan on you.
Welcome to another jam-packed issue of clans, with Swifte giving us a double-dose of action in 2 different tournaments while Icky & Qwert round out our section with info about progress from ACC2 & CL5.
The Highlight however, has to be Grifftrons Video Prediction on the winner of CC3! He ends up giving Swifte's literary update a run for it's money.
Stay Tuned for the next issue of the ConquerClub Dispatch for an interrogation of [player]b00060[/player]. Post any questions you may have for them here --> Interrogation with b00060
Submitting Your Own Articles
If you have a story you think the ConquerClub Community would find interesting, you can submit your articles to [player]thehippo8[/player] and you may just see your article published in the Newsletter!
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Wow, I can't believe how much I appeared in this issue. Did not see it coming.
That tournament hall of fame is something that I wish wouldn't stay deep in the depths of the tournament archives...a sticky in General Tournament forum I think would be fantastic - considering the amount of work that was put into it. Eventually I forced Lack to install the Tournaments tab because it was just too much - you can see by the Tournaments by Month that it was not slowing down anytime soon, but even picking up pace QUICKLY. If there were 99 finished tournaments in Nov '09, I can't imagine how many would be in Nov '12.
The map contest was quite fun too - there was one that took me a little bit to find.
which links players to Number of wins and losses and any active games:
which links game numbers to winning round and players;
which brings player data pertaining to the labels that the TO adds when creating the games.
Beta Maps
