Build Date: Sun Jan 11 19:10:13 2026 UTC
Nature is a lazy Mother.
-- Anonymous
Fight board-game hegemony!
2001-11-04 16:47:48
52 cards and a copy of Hoyle can keep a handful of sex-starved shipmates docile for days on end before they degenerate to strip poker. With that in mind, the intellectual freedom posse give you the "piecepack" in the hopes that it will do for board games what the standard 52-card deck does for card games.
But it is not without some struggle! The current reigning champion in this arena is Looney Labs with their incredibly popular Icehouse Martian Chess Set These sixty colored pyramids (four colors, three sizes, five pieces per color/size combination) have been combined to make countless new games.
But the original game these pieces were designed for was granted a patent, threatening freely redistributable implementations of the game!
Fortunately for right-thinking individuals the world over, one stalwart Icehouse game developer has rebelled, and is designing his own freely redistributable and modifiable game set specification. As one fellow Icegamer explained:
...I have extensive notes from playtesting that I intend to incorporate into the next version of the IceGammon rules, but may not get around to it for a while, as I have been focusing less on Icehouse games and more on piecepack games <http://www.piecepack.org/>, as the Icehouse specification is patented, whereas the piecepack specification is in the public domain, and I am more interested in working with a free game system (free as in free speech, not free beer; see <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/>). Despite the currently small number of piecepack games, as opposed to the relatively large number of Icehouse games, more and more piecepack games are being released (one guy is writing a book of 100 piecepack games), and my belief is that the piecepack is at the cutting edge of game system development.
The good news on both fronts is that the Icehouse patent was never renewed after its initial 8-year period, so the piecepack may in future include Icehouse pyramids. Beaujolais to free software embracing and encorporating formerly proprietary technology! Our pointy-pyramid technology will bring pointy pyramids to those who could not otherwise participate in novel game development, and produce a community of like-minded game h@x0rz who will one day become the most sought-after personnel at board-game startups in the great boom years of 201x! THE IPOS WILL BE INCONCIEVABLE!
T O P S T O R I E S
The Crossroads are real and The Blues is a place; The enduring myth of Robert Johnson (More...)
California Glory Hole attracts huge crowds
A glory hole at Napa's Lake Berryessa is drawing huge crowds. According to Chris Lee, the general manager for the Solano County Water Agency, the glory hole hasn't been active since 2019, and only restarted operations on Feb 4. (More...)
Republican State Senator busted after soliciting a teenage girl
Republican State Senator Justin Eichorn of Minnesota was arrested for soliciting a teen girl on Monday just hours after he introduced a bill proposing "Trump derangement syndrome" (TDS) as a form of mental illness. (More...)
Parents claim measles is not that bad after having only one child die
The parents of a Texas girl who died from the measles are defending their decision not to vaccinate their daughter. "She says they would still say 'Don't do the shots,'" an unidentified translator for the parents said. "They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be." (More...)
Delusional rich man tries to fire town staff
"I'm mayor now" said write-in mayoral candidate and founder of Pirate’s Booty Snacks Robert Ehrlich after losing the election for Mayor of Sea Cliff, NY. Then he tried to take over the Village Hall and fire everyone. (More...)
Musk claims Xitter security is staffed by idiots
Earlier this month Xitter experienced a massive outage. In an interview, Musk told Fox Business that he believes the attack came from "IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area." (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
A Blast from the Past! Pao Tzu goes over and under the crucial variables in the production and consumption of Salvia Divinorum. A must read for psychonauts of all stripes. (More...)
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)
A Treatise Prepared for the Gallup Organization on the Symbolism of the Scarab
Well dahlings, the response to my new tarot column has been quite overwhelming. I got three whole pieces of mail requesting my arcane insight. One asked why blogs suck so much, and one was a completely incomprehensible tale of bears shitting random numbers in the woods — I am fairly certain it was a cryptographic allegory. Howsomever, only ONE of the inquiries was accompanied by a crisp ten-dollar bill, and so it's the Gallup Organization that will this week reap the benefit of my wicked pack of cards. (More...)
Skunk School -- Learn Why Not To Keep Skunks As Pets
There is an alarming trend in pet purchasing habits this fall. People inspired by the WWII film, "Life is Beautiful" -- the one with that annoying Italian guy -- are buying descented skunks by the millions. (More...)
Spock Went, Spock Wrote, Spock Kicked Ass
Every Labor Day weekend a large portion of the PDJ staff joins 30,000 other freaks at one of the biggest and strangest art festivals in the world - Burning Man - somewhere on the edge of the Black Rock Desert. Our base of operations is always the ultra swank Spock Mountain Research Labs - the World Leaders in Beverage Science and Leisure Technology. This year, we hauled up our computers, printers and a massive digital duplicator, determined to become Black Rock City's third daily newspaper. Even Spock was surprised by our success - news will never be viewed the same on the playa. Read all seven issues of the 2002 Spock Science Monitor for yourself and see why. (More...)
The Walken / Country Bear Conspiracy
As has been recently reported in the PDJ, Christopher Walken, evil s00per villain extraordinaire, will be appearing next month in Disney's newest release, The Country Bear Movie. Always playing some wicked and very disturbed badass in movies like Sleepy Hollow, Illuminata, The Prophecy I, II, III, Pulp Fiction, Batman Returns, The Milagro Beanfield War, A View to a Kill, The Dogs of War, Heaven's Gate, and The Deer Hunter, Walken is unsuprisingly a big favorite in the PDJ news room. (More...)
