Busy weekend with Formula One race

Friday my wife and me travelled to my parents and left there our children, because we were ahead a quite busy weekend. It was a pleasent ~250km long drive.

We spent the Saturday morning with cleaning and cooking some cakes for the Arkham Horror boardgame party. These preparation was exhausting, but luckily we just finished with everything just in time. The Arkham Horror boardgame party (with four of my twitter-friends) had took almost 5 hours long. It was a very interesting and exciting cooperative game, but unfortunatelly Cthulhu defeat us at the end. I enjoyed very much my first cooperative boardgame experince, with fighting against strange demonic monster in the dark city of Arkham. I think I want to get this game, but unfornatelly it's a little bit expensive.

Sunday morning I had to get up early (6 a.m.) because I got a ticket for the Hungarian Formula One race from a friend of my wife. Thank you Adrienn!

Saturday evening was a big storm, which only calmed down to the next morning. The rain still spat, so after I had fueled my car I went to buy a raincoat. The way to the race track wasn't as crowded as I expected. I was lucky and found parking place easily. When Adrienn and me arrived the rain stopped... and the hot and deadly ray of the sun started to roast us to red. Unfortunately the path from the gate to our seat was very muddy and slippery, so it wasn't easy to go up and down downs around the track.

We found our seats just in time, so we could enjoy the first race event of the day, the GP3 race with one Hungarian driver. He was on the 14th place on the starting grid, but thanks for the wet race track and the well-timed change of tires he finished at the podium, at the 3rd position. Unfortunately it was the most exciting race of the day...

To the second race, with GP2 drivers, the race track was almost dry, so the racers didn't have to change tires during the race. Due to this the number of overtaking dropped drasticly and we saw a boring race.

Before the main event, the Formula 1 race, we saw a so-called Porsche Supercup race too, but this was also eventless. That followed by the parade of Formula 1 drivers. They travelled a whole lap on the platform of a truck. They were waving to the crowd and answering the questions of the interviewer.

45-30 minutes before the race the drivers were trying the start procedure. I made a short video about it with my phone.

The Formula 1 race stated at 14.00. The sound of the engines were incredible. Especially at the start! Alas the race was boring, due to the special characteristic of the race track. As many drivers said, "the Hungaroring is very similar to Monaco, but without houses". There is no good place to overtakings. Furthermore Schumacher, my personal favourite driver had a very bad luck that day.

The feeling of a Formula 1 race is indescribable. The racers, the cars, the sound of engines, the crowd, everything...

The driving back to the city was a quite long. The mass of the cars moved slowly on the road, but we luckily arrived to the Arena, when the concert of Bryan Adams started . I met there with my wife, handed over to her to my ticket (our F1 tickets are valid for this event too) and the keys of our car, and I went to the station of the underground. Then a quick storm, with heavy rain arrived... I was soaked though in an instant moment. Yes, I was lame and left my raincoat and umbrella at the car.

These made my day complete and put into a frame: soaked, burned and soaked again. But I enjoyed this weekend very much, and I hope I'll have oportunity to repeat it again soon.

An Croatian vacation

Last year we went to Senj, which is also in Croatia. This summer we chose a little bit distant destination, Pula. Senj was 5.5 hours travel by car (500km), while Pula is about 6.5 hours (600km), so it was a quite exhausting drive with a 3 and a 4.5 years old children.

Pula is a small city, but the biggest in the peninsula with nearly 60.000 inhabitants. The city is to be located on the south part of the Istrian peninsula, near to Italy. It wasn't hard to recognize the similarities with neighboring country. You can easily feel it from the air, the style of the streets and houses if you ever been Italy. And they have got a coliseum.

Our tiny but tidy apartment was an small holiday resort called Horizont. We went in the pre-season, because it was a little cheaper, and we had a feeling about the good weather. We were right, because we could go to the beach every day during our vacation. The days were usually sunny, the nights warm, except 1-2 occasion when there were a little storm. The beach of this holiday resort was rocky, but we found one bay which was pebbly and better for the children.

My 4.5 year old daughter enjoyed very much swimming in the pleasant seawater, while my son didn't like the salt in it. At the and of our vacation my daughter was able to swim without any assistance, so I'm very proud of her.

We cheated a little bit, because we spent most of our days near to a pools of the holiday resort. There we could easily look after the children, when we could read and rest a while. Moreover there were active programs at the poolside for kids, which they enjoyed very much. The last week of our vacation there were a 30 minutes Mini Disco for them, which was they favourite program.

On our active days we visited the downtown and some sights of Pula

and also visited some nearby town as Rovinj

and Fazzana,

Tito's favourite island and summer residence, Brijuni 

and an 'green' peninsula Premantura.

It was a long trip with the chlidren but enjoyable

and relaxing holiday.

Discworld: Ankh-Morpork - The Boardgame

I love fantasy genre, I love humour, I like Terry Pratchett books as well, which take place in the strange Discworld. These elements led me to buy Discworld: Ankh-Morpork - The Boardgame by Martin Wallace.

Background story

Lord Vetinari left the city, so the lords of Ankh-Morpork want to get the rule over the capital of Discworld. Our aim to lead one of them to reach his aim, against the others. Is it looks quite simple? Well, it isn't. Ankh-Morpork is the city of chaos, where everyday strange things happens.

Components

The components are quite good, and we have a feeling we got quallity product from our money. The cardboard map is awesome! The artwork on the cards are funny amazing, the wooden pieces (minions and buildings) are good. I have a little problem with the wooden coins and the inner storey, but it doesn't matter.

About the game

It's a 1 hour, 2-4 player game with many confrontation, backstabing and - as I mentioned before - with many chaotic element. I don't want to write much about the setup of board and this game, just only every player gets 5 card and $10. After we have choosen a personality card secretly, we can start the game.

The goal depends on the personality card we choose: we have to control x area, we have to x minions on the  board, we have to x troublemarker on the board, we have to collect x amount of money or we have to let play until the last card of drawing deck.

During our turn we play out cards, then drawing back 5 hand of cards. The played cards determine our actions: we can place a minion, we can build a building (this add some kind of bonus to your turns), we can remove a trouble marker, we can kill a minion, we can get money from the bank, we can interrupt an action, we can play another card or we can play an event card. Playing out random event cards means you start something chaos over city of Ankh-Morpork, and with these cards you can ruin the strategy of others... or yours. This add a funny part to the whole game, but sometimes it can be annoying as well.

Conclusion

I think it is a good, funny game with quallity components. If you like backstabing the others, and if you haven't got any problem with a little luck base then maybe it is your game. The interesting world of Terry Pratchett's Discworld adds lot to this game. If you didn't read any books from him, it's no problem and if you read... then you can met many familiar character from the books. You can quickly learn to love it, if you don't take it too seriously!

(source of the pictures: bgg)

Bye, bye, iGoogle!

I'm a big fan of Google. I love their apps/gadgets/sites like Google Docs, Google Maps, Blogger, Gtalk, Google Reader, etc. One of my favourite is the iGoogle.

Unfortunatelly Google announced they'll stop supporting this development at the future, and according the iGoogle page it will shut down 1st November 2013. I'm very-very sad, because this page, my startpage, is very usefull to me.

I can organize many things in one page. I have to push one (1!) F5 to refresh many important information to me like my incoming messages at GMail, the new Google Reader articles/posts, new twitter messages arrived to my account (TwitterGadget), some important bookmarks, shopping lists, etc. I think I'll have to find an alternative solution, an alternative page, where I can organize my important news sources.

Do you use iGoogle? Do you sad about the decision of Google? Or do you have alternative solution which can replace iGoogle?