Many people that have visited our house have been able to enjoy a relaxing game of Settlers of Catan, or two, or three, or more… For those of you that do not know about this game, it is a great turn based board game about building and exploration. Basically you collect resources, those resources are used to build roads and other settlements. You gain points by building settlements, cities, and a few other ways. You win by being the first to reach 10 points. There is a great Wikipedia article about the game here.

So why am I writing about it today, because I have heard that there is going to be a new Xbox360 game based on this game. Well I did not just hear, but I heard an update that it should be released in March or April. The game is going to be a Xbox360 Arcade game, this just means that it will be a little cheaper and you download it instead of buying it at the store. There are two great places to find out information about this new game, first is the official games website here, and there is also a Wikipedia article on it here.

We can not wait till it comes out…

How do we play??

So there are a few ways to play the game. First is the one that comes with the box, where all the tiles are placed in specific places and the numbers are placed on specific tiles and all the cities are placed. The goal behind this setup is that everyone has a fairly equal playing field. this is great for the first few times playing while you are learning about the game, but then it gets a little old. So the way that we play the game is that we start with all the tiles faced down. We go around the group each placing one settlement, then back around the opposite way to place the second settlement. After all the settlements are placed, we go around again turning over the tiles under a given settlement, then back around turning over the tiles under the second settlement. If a settlement is on all water, then the owner can move the settlement. At the same time, numbers get drawn randomly for all the lands, and ports rolled for on the water. All the other tiles remain face down, and can only be turned over when either a road is built along an edge or a boat is moved along an edge.

All in all, this is a fun game that changes every time that we play. If you have not heard of it, you should get it and get some friends together to play it. You need a minimum of 3 people to play, and if you want more than 4, you need to make sure to have the expansion pack. Just be prepared for the consequences, it is a very addictive game that is a lot of fun to play for all ages. Everyone in the family has won, even Katie.

-Matt

PS. I just came across a program for playing Catan, there is a local version and also a network version. Very interesting. I have played it a little bit, but there is no AI, so playing without anyone else is not too interesting. Check it out here.

So I have started working on a new version of this site. I have changed the look and navigation, hopefully to make it look better visually and easier to navigate. Also, when I am done creating this new site, I will upload it to the main site and start my photo gallery from scratch. After this summer (when Powweb decided to upgrade my web hosting server) I have had issues, and it has prevented me from updating the images as much as I would have liked to. Also it has caused some other issues that I have not decided the best way to address these issues… Namely the slow loading of the content.

So, without any more ado, feel free to check it out while I work on it. (Warning, everything does not work, there are things that I have to fix and other things that will just need to wait until I am ready to deploy. http://newsite.Learnfamily.com.

-Matt

Lego just announced a new program where you can design your own creation through some of their software, then actually order a kit so that you can build your design. Just imagine creating your own Lego set that could build your own house or something like that. Yeah, sure you could buy several lego kits so that you can get the peices that you need, but this is a lot more fun.

The site is called the Lego Design Factory. You can visit their site here. From there, you can download the software that you need to create your creation. Then after you are done, upload the design to their website and order away. You can also make your design public so other people can see your design and order it themselves… How cool is that?

-Matt

I found this site that offers a virtual Lite Brite that you can play with on-line. I started playing with it, and it is a lot of fun, go check it out yourself. The site is here

-Cindy

I just do not know what I would do without google, I would not have anything to do at work. To commemorate the anniversary the landing of man on the moon, they have a new site, moon.google.com. This site allows you to see a maps.google.com type map of the moon marking the various landing sites on the moon. They just need to integrate this with their 3d earth viewing software.

Cindy also found a link to a site that talks about creating your own movie of the google earth software. The instructions can be found here.

I can not wait to find more google fun stuff. I even have my own custom map for the wedding details, found here

-Matt