My Blapril Is Over

We did it! We've reached the end of Blapril 2020! (Well, due to a technicality it actually runs to May 9th, but just to keep things consistent year by year I'm calling this the end for me.)

Within the month I posted twenty times  (if I count a few extra warm-up days on the start), and I even like quite a few of the things I wrote, so we're counting the whole thing as a resounding success. I've spent a lot of this month thinking about what to write about and looking forward to writing, and while that has mostly resulted in an over-large ideas folder rather than a whole bunch of posts, that also bodes well for the possibility of continuing to write into May and potentially on into the future (even if my track-record of keeping the place running outside of blog festivals leaves a little to be desired...come back in a week and see how that turns out?).

As we complete the month and the posts of appreciation, relief, and thanks roll in, it has left our noble leader Belghast pondering about the value of the challenge aspect of our little annual blogging festival; whether driving ourselves past our comfort zone to post more than we would normally in order to get special shinies to hang on our blogs is really worth the sense of burn-out that so often follows. I didn't think I really had a horse in this race, as I don't think I've ever displayed one of the Blaugust badges that I've won over the years. I am enough of a geek to appreciate gamifying any and every aspect of life that you can, but I take part for the sense of community and encouragement, not for the prizes. 

But perhaps that's the point, because it's clear that despite never going in for the shinies, Blaugust is undoubtedly the thing that gets me back to blogging. Let's take a look at the numbers:

2011: posted 38 times, 27 of them were in Blaugust, with the rest spread throughout the year.

2012: posted 29 times, 24 of them in Blarch, Blaugust and Blogtober.

2013: posted 3 times, all in Blaugust.

2014: posted 40 times, 34 in Blaugust, 1 in prep in July, 4 immediately afterwards in September.

2015: posted 35 times, 31 in Blaugust, 1 in prep in July, 3 immediately afterwards in September.

2016: posted 44 times, 40 in Blarch and Blaugust.

2017: posted 14 times, 3 in the lead-up in July, and 9 times in Blaugust.

2018: posted 18 times, 15 were Blaugust, with another 1 directly before and after

2019: posted 24 times, 18 were Blaugust, with another 1 directly before and after

2020: posted 24 times so far (if I count this one), and 20 of them are for Blapril.

In many ways, this is just a Blaugust site. 88% of my posts are a direct result of Blaugust! I return here every year to write and to rejoin the community, and then I disappear again to hibernate for the winter. I guess you could look at those numbers and say that blogging festivals obviously burn me out, and that if I didn't try to sprint I could jog for longer, but I think it's pretty clear that it's the exact opposite, every year the festival helps relight the spark. Perhaps Blaugust hasn't worked for me to develop a regular blogging habit as I continue to vainly hope, but the mere fact that for a month a year I am encouraged to come out of my shell and doff my writing cap again is a big deal. Thanks to this blog, I have a record, in my own words, of my life over the last decade that I just wouldn't have otherwise. Sure, it's mostly about the videogame bits, but it's a darn sight better than nothing.

So this time I'm going to celebrate the fabulous Blaugust shinies that I've gained over the years, and look forward to adding a third silver one for this year to my collection somewhere down the track.

PS. In the 2018 version of this post, I mentioned that going forward I was going to try to add more pictures of me wearing ties. Everything has changed so much since the start of the blog, ties aren't a part of my daily life any more, and haven't been for years. Heck, I haven't worn one since my friend's wedding back in August last year, but here's a good old fashioned blurry tiepic, just for the old time's sake.

Tying by Night

I've found myself with a long quiet night tonight, just me, my cameraphone, and my college tie, so since I had nothing better to do I thought it might be a good opportunity to teach myself how to tie the darn thing like an adult, instead of just subsisting on the old faithful four-hands knot that has gotten me this far in life.

It hardly seems like the kind of interesting reading worth resurrecting the blog for [especially now that I've tried to do it and realised how rubbish the photos are, even if you're somehow capable of ignoring my middle-of-the-night-dead-eyes stare], but history has taught me that my loyal readers are unusually susceptible to neckwear-based content, so here we are.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, there's a whole host of options available, even if I just limit myself to one site.

Half-Windsor - I used to use this back when I had to have meetings with people that were likely to actually look at my tie, because it's just slightly neater without that much extra work. I'm not sure that it's enough of an improvement on the four-hands knot to overcome the inconvenience of not being able to just rip it off at the end of the night without leaving a knot in my tie, though.

Windsor - Has the advantage of being able to just slide it right off in a very satisfying way, but the three downsides of never being able to remember how to tie it, not being able to tighten it from the front in a satisfying way, and constantly worrying that there's a small creature hanging around my throat waiting to strangle me mean it's not the knot for me.

Simple - It's kinda fun to start out inside-out and just throw that thing straight over and boom: done, but there's no way that I could keep this thing tied. I'd spend the whole day straightening and fixing it, and ain't nobody got time for that. Besides, it just looks kinda flat.

Kelvin - I've never really gotten the hang of any of the knots that basically just get their weight from going around again, as I find that they tend to slide down and start to look a bit messy as time goes on. This one seemed surprisingly okay, but I've been bitten before and I'm a little wary of this style of knot letting me down over time.

Pratt - The Pratt knot feels like an absolute mess from the back, but it's surprisingly satisfying to tie. It has that same disadvantage as the Half-Windsor in that it's a little strange to try and untangle at the end, too, but the fun little shallow shape is honestly tempting enough for me to overlook it. I suspect that it's not the sort of map that's designed for my body type, but I'm honestly tempted.

Price Albert - Here's one of those double loop ones that I was talking about that just never really seem to work for me. They always look like I've accidentally stuffed it up (and in this case I'm pretty sure that I did), but never look quite off-kilter enough to suggest that the effect might have been deliberate. To my mind, if you're going to go weird when it comes to ties, you gotta go a lot weirder than this.

Eldredge - It's one of those party knots that I would never want to attempt without a chart, but if I ever started wearing thin single-colour ties, and going to loud parties with other people that wear thin single-colour ties, and became the kind of guy that tried to assert dominance through my superior tie choices at loud parties, I could imagine wearing this and feeling insufferably smug doing it. Tying this knot was legitimately so enjoyable that I tried to get it right three times despite my limited late-night attention span. Only problem is now that I've done it I'm reluctant to ever undo it again, which is just as well as it's...quite the puzzle.

Van Wijk - So you take the worst part of the Prince Albert and you just double down on it again, and if you somehow manage to tie it right and actually have enough tie left you're still left with something that just looks like you don't know how to tie a tie. Which honestly, by this point, I'm willing to concede.

Trinity - Yeah. Nah. That felt like it was working, it really did, right up until the moment that I stuck it all together and realised that I'd missed something critical. No idea what, though, and the second attempt was even worse than the first, so this is one of the party knots that I'll be leaving for the party people, methinks.

Murrell - I admire someone who managed to sell this as a legitimate way to wear a tie outside of a fashion parade. It's patently ridiculous and yet, somehow, it works. It's fully adjustable from both ends and somehow manages to throw the rules out the window while looking supremely confident doing it. This isn't a knot that you could wear in your work tie, but I feel like it's the sort of thing that I could wear around the house to annoy the wife while still feeling dashing. The only way it could be more excellent is if it had somehow managed to invert the lines so they were going opposite ways on either end of the tie.

Balthus - So, this is a dumb way to wear a tie, with all the drawbacks of the Windsor and none of the advantages. I'm sure there's a way to make it look good if you have an enormous neck or something, but it's not doing anything for me.

Bow - Do not attempt without professional training and appropriate safety equipment.

Blaugust 31/31: 2015 Senate Elections

I was in two minds as to how to finish-up Blaugust, with a round-up style post or the long-awaited results on the tie election, but in the end the ties won the day. Let me just say how much fun it has been to be a part of the big blaugust thing again, and throw out a big thanks to everyone who dropped by becase of it. Now on with the show...

If you're not familiar with the back-story here, we've just run an election using the Australian single transferable vote system to appoint six ties from my somewhat eclectic collection to be the Leaflocker's reprsentatives in my suitcase as I go overseas, there being a limited amount of space given that I also need to take other less exciting things like underpants and shirts. Readers were asked to designate there preferences on which ties could represent them from a field of sixty-six, and today is the fateful day when we find out the results. If you're from a region that uses a less nuanced electoral system, sit back and enjoy the wonders of an STV system, the wonders of which I could natter on about until the cows come home if you gave me half a chance.

There were twenty-six ballots cast in the neck-and-neck election, and all were valid, so a big thumbs up to everyone for ticking all the boxes (or not, as appropriate). These ballots were spread relatively evenly between the original google form (11 ballots) and the later fancy voting application donated by the ever-brilliant Alecat (14 ballots) ,with one postal vote, and a majority of voters elected to cast their preferences for individual ties below-the-line (18) in preference to my quickly-assembles parties of ties above-the-line (8). Most notably, eight people filled in each and every position on the below-the-line ballot and three met only the minimum requirement of designating at least six preferences, whereas in the above-the-line ballot everyone designated full preferences, which interests me greatly and makes me keenly anticipate the more democratic results that should occur when we allow above-the-line preference voting in the near future (the Greens are tabling a bill here in South Australia next week, and undoubtedly the federal system will get there eventually once they get around to responding to the latest review of potential electoral reform).

Of the sixty-eight eligible ties, fourteen attracted at least one first-preference vote. Only the Christmas party failed to attract a vote, which I am going to take as a vote of confidence in the tie collection in general instead of taking it as criticism of the party system in general. Interestingly, not a single one of the second candidates on a party ticket got a look-in, but shout-outs go the Crimson Peacock, which despite not making the cut made the top five ties of almost every below-the-line voter, and undoubtedly would have been selected if we were using some kind of weighted voted system. The ties that got first-preferences are:

[CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene (5)

[DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo (3)

[DEM 1] The Travelator (3)

[LIB 1] Carribean Silk (2)

[LIB 3] Green Sakura (2)

[UNC 1] Australian Orienteer (2)

[CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin! (2)

[LIB 5] Crimson Tide (1)

[DAD 3] All Aboard (1)

[DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar (1)

[DOT 4] Fade to Blue (1)

[DOT 6] Prince of Persia (1)

[CAR 4] Mouses (1)

[PAI 1] Popular Penguins (1)

Since there were 26 valid ballots, the number of votes required to elect a tie to the suitcase (the quota) is 4.7 votes (Number of ballots divided by one more than the number of available spaces in the bag, plus one) [Note: Yes, I'm aware that we'd normally round the quota down to an integer, but we're dealing with a small number of ballots here, so I'm leaving it at one decimal point]. Since the leader of the conservative party, Polytetraflouroethtielene, attracted 5 first-preference votes, we already have a Senatie-elect. 

[CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene elected in position 1 with 5 ballots.

And of course, we have the joys of surplus-redistribution! Because every vote has to have the same value in an STV system, since more votes were collected than were required for the winning candidate, all of the votes are redistributed to their second preferences at a small percentage of their original value. This is where the maths gets fun.

0.18 votes (3 ballots at 0.06 transfer value) originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene distributed to [CON 2] The Gopher
0.06 votes (1 ballot at 0.06 transfer value) originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene distributed to [LIB 1] Carribean Silk
0.06 votes (1 ballot at 0.06 transfer value) originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene distributed to [LIB 4] Bad At Tetris

From here all the candidates that have attracted no preferences have been removed from the ballot. For ease of administration, I made up a ballot sheet with the sixteen top ties (the fourteen that attracted first-preferences and the two extra that attracted second-preference votes). If I was a clever programmer type I'd have written a program to do this, but there's something reassuring about having a big pile of ballot papers, isn't there? Now we begin that process of excluding those ties that have the fewest votes from the ballot and the redistributing the preferences. From this point on, preference numbers will describe preferences as distributed amongst this short-list of votes, not the total pool of candidates.

[DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo (3)

[DEM 1] The Travelator (3)

[LIB 1] Carribean Silk (2.06)

[LIB 3] Green Sakura (2)

[UNC 1] Australian Orienteer (2)

[CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin! (2)

[LIB 5] Crimson Tide (1)

[DAD 3] All Aboard (1)

[DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar (1)

[DOT 4] Fade to Blue (1)

[DOT 6] Prince of Persia (1)

[CAR 4] Mouses (1)

[PAI 1] Popular Penguins (1)

[CON 2] The Gopher (0.18)

[LIB 4] Bad At Tetris (0.06)

[LIB 4] Bad at Tetris excluded.
0.06 votes originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene distributed via 3rd preference to [LIB 5] Crimson Tide.

[CON 2] The Gopher excluded.
0.06 votes originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene distributed via 3rd preference to [LIB 5] The Travelator.
0.06 votes originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene distributed via 3rd preference to [LIB 1] Carribean Silk.
0.06 votes originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene distributed via 3rd preference to [DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar.

[DEM 1] The Travelator (3.06)

[DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo (3)

[LIB 1] Carribean Silk (2.12)

[LIB 3] Green Sakura (2)

[UNC 1] Australian Orienteer (2)

[CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin! (2)

[LIB 5] Crimson Tide (1.06)

[DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar (1.06)

[DAD 3] All Aboard (1)

[DOT 4] Fade to Blue (1)

[DOT 6] Prince of Persia (1)

[CAR 4] Mouses (1)

[PAI 1] Popular Penguins (1)

Now, someone unfamiliar with the system might wonder why we bothered distributing preferences to candidates that we then immediately excluded, but tracking the preference flow has had a couple of important effects. First of all it's given The Travelator the boost that it needed to become the outright leader, but more importantly it has shielded two of the bottom candidates, Crimson Tide and The Amicable Vicar, from potential exclusion until at least all the candidates that weren't so fortunate as to attract those surplus preferences.

In a normal Australian election, when the bottom candidates have the same number of votes who is ultimately eliminated relies on one being randomly selected from the worst-performing remaining candidates. However, since we're dealing with 26 votes instead of thousands, this is potentially a much more common event, and since it would be sad for random chance to influence the whole election at this early point (if at all), we require a system for selecting the least popular of the potential candidates for elimination. Thus I've implemented a count-back system for these tie situations (hurr hurr), relying on two additional numbers. First is the number of voters who included the candidate on their ballot, which should disadvantage ties which a larger percentage of the electorate chose not to nominate at all ,effectively voting no confidence in these candidates (it turns out that by some chance ordering exclusions by this number actually had no effect on the outcome of the election, but we did it anyway just in case). A second level of tiebreaker is the sum of the remaining preferences, but I don't feel like explaining that right now, so let's not even go there and hope that we don't need to.

Including the preference numbers so that we can progress further, the election looks like this:

[DEM 1] The Travelator (3.06) [21]

[DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo (3) [19]

[LIB 1] Carribean Silk (2.12) [20]

[LIB 3] Green Sakura (2) [18]

[UNC 1] Australian Orienteer (2) [20]

[CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin! (2) [21]

[LIB 5] Crimson Tide (1.06) [19]

[DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar (1.06) [18]

[DOT 6] Prince of Persia (1) [21]

[CAR 4] Mouses (1) [20]

[PAI 1] Popular Penguins (1) [19]

[DOT 4] Fade to Blue (1) [18]

[DAD 3] All Aboard (1) [17]

[DAD 3] All Aboard excluded.
1 vote originally from [DAD 3] All Aboard distributed via 2nd preference to [CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin!

[DOT 4] Fade to Blue excluded.
1 vote originally from [DOT 4] Fade to Blue distributed via 2nd preference to [DEM 1] The Travelator

[PAI 1] Popular Penguins excluded.
1 vote originally from [PAI 1] Popular Penguins distributed via 2nd preference to [DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar

[CAR 4] Mouses excluded.
1 vote originally from [CAR 4] Mouses distributed via 2nd preference to [UNC 1] Australian Orienteer

[DOT 6] Prince of Persia excluded.
1 vote originally from [DOT 6] Prince of Persia distributed via 4th preference to [CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin!

[LIB 5] Crimson Tide excluded.
1 vote originally from [LIB 5] Crimson Tide distributed via 4th preference to [CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin!
0.06 votes originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene distributed via 5th preference to [LIB 3] Green Sakura

[CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin! (5) [21]

[DEM 1] The Travelator (4.06) [21]

[DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo (3) [19]

[UNC 1] Australian Orienteer (3) [20]

[LIB 1] Carribean Silk (2.12) [20]

[DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar (2.06) [18]

[LIB 3] Green Sakura (2.06) [18]

[CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin! elected in position 2 with 5 ballots.

0.06 votes (1 ballot at 0.06 transfer value) originally from [CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin! distributed via 4th preference to [UNC 1] Australian Orienteer
0.06 votes (1 ballot at 0.06 transfer value) originally from [CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin! distributed via 4th preference to [LIB 1] Carribean Silk
0.06 votes (1 ballot at 0.06 transfer value) originally from [DAD 3] All Aboard distributed via 6th preference [LIB 3] Green Sakura
0.06 votes (1 ballot at 0.06 transfer value) originally from [DOT 6] Prince of Persia distributed via 5th preference to [DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo
0.06 votes (1 ballot at 0.06 transfer value) originally from [LIB 5] Crimson Tide distributed via 5th preference to [DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar

[DEM 1] The Travelator (4.06) [21] {127}

[UNC 1] Australian Orienteer (3.06) [20] {163}

[DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo (3.06) [19] {163}

[LIB 1] Carribean Silk (2.18) [20] {117}

[LIB 3] Green Sakura (2.12) [18] {116}

[DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar (2.12) [18] {156}

Unfortunately for democracy and my insufficient skill in explanation, we've now reached a situation where two ties are tied on 2.12 ballots each, and both measure equally on our first tie-breaker, as they were both preferenced by 18 voters. Thus we turn to our second-tiebreaker measure, the sum of the preferences (as distributed amongst the top 16 candidates), and find that on the whole Green Sakura was a significantly more popular tie amongst the majority of voters than The Amicable Vicar was, garnering a golf-score on 116 compared to a considerably inferior result of 156. (For any of you who object to this reasoning, let it be known that I tossed a coin and it ALSO came up this way, so if prefer your elections vanilla you should also be satisfied that justice was done in this case, and that I also ran a simulation excluding Green Sakura and it ended with the same ultimate result).

[DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar excluded.
1 vote originally from [DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar distributed via 3rd preference to [DEM 1] The Travelator
1 vote originally from [PAI 1] Popular Penguins distributed via 5th preference to [DEM 1] The Travelator
0.06 votes originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene distributed via 6th preference to [DEM 1] The Travelator
0.06 votes originally from [CAR 4] Mouses distributed via 7th preference to [DEM 1] The Travelator

In an impressive dsiplay of solidarity, every vote allocated to the Amiable Vicar went to The Travelator, so at least the voters got more-or-less what they wanted out of this sad exclusion.

[DEM 1] The Travelator (6.18)

[UNC 1] Australian Orienteer (3.06)

[DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo (3.06)

[LIB 1] Carribean Silk (2.18)

[LIB 3] Green Sakura (2.12)

[DEM 1] The Travelator elected in position 3 with 6.18 ballots.

0.23 votes (1 ballot at 0.23 transfer value) originally from [PAI 1] Popular Penguins distributed via 8th preference to [LIB 1] Carribean Silk
0.23 votes (1 ballot at 0.23 transfer value) originally from [DOT 4] Fade to Blue distributed via 4th preference to [LIB 1] Carribean Silk
0.23 votes (1 ballot at 0.23 transfer value) originally from [DEM 1] The Travelator distributed via 5th preference to [LIB 1] Carribean Silk
0.23 votes (1 ballot at 0.23 transfer value) originally from [CAR 1] Oh Tin Tin! My Tin Tin! distributed via 3rd preference to [UNC 1] Australian Orienteer
0.23 votes (1 ballot at 0.23 transfer value) originally from [DEM 1] The Travelator exhausted.
0.23 votes (1 ballot at 0.23 transfer value) originally from [DOT 1] The Amicable Vicar exhausted.
0.014 votes (1 ballot at 0.014 transfer value) originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene via 8th preference [LIB 1] Carribean Silk
0.014 votes (1 ballot at 0.014 transfer value) originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene distributed via 9th preference to [LIB 1] Carribean Silk
0.014 votes (1 ballot at 0.014 transfer value) originally from [LIB 5] Crimson Tide distributed via 8th preference to [UNC 1] Australian Orienteer

[UNC 1] Australian Orienteer (3.304)

[DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo (3.06)

[LIB 1] Carribean Silk (2.894)

[LIB 3] Green Sakura (2.12)

[LIB 3] Green Sakura excluded.
1 vote originally from [LIB 3] Green Sakura distributed via 2nd preference to [UNC 1] Australian Orienteer
1 vote originally from [LIB 3] Green Sakura distributed via 2nd preference to [LIB 1] Carribean Silk
0.06 votes originally from [DAD 3] All Aboard distributed via 14th preference to [LIB 1] Carribean Silk
0.06 votes originally from [CON 1] Polytetraflouroethtielene distributed via 6th preference to [DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo

[UNC 1] Australian Orienteer (4.304)

[LIB 1] Carribean Silk (3.854)

[DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo (3.12)

[UNC 1] Australian Orienteer elected in position 4 with 4.30 ballots.

[LIB 1] Carribean Silk elected in position 5 with 3.85 ballots.

[DAD 1] Electric Boogaloo elected in position 6 with 3.12 ballots.

Since we're dealing with a very small number of ballots here, that plus one in the quota formula, as well as the couple of exhausted ballots, make up a pretty significant proportion of the votes. Thus, the last candidates were elected with significantly fewer votes than the quota, definitely not a mandate, but at least we the people have our representatives. My suitcase will be happily packed this weekend, and I couldn't have done it without you.

Thanks for playing along with our silliness this Blaugust, everybody. I hope you'll stay tuned for Raptember and for whatever this blog turns into when we relocate to England next month.

Blaugust 14/31: Neck-and-Neck Election

This post is part of the Antipodean contribution to Blaugust East.

Last week we packed up our board games, and this week I hope that you'll help me pack up those most treasured of my possessions, my ties. Some major stakeholders have suggested that my complete collection of neck-ties doesn't need to travel to England, so we're doing a cull down to a more manageable six. In order to do so, I thought we'd hold an election, partly because it's much more fun to hold elections than it is to just pick, partly because we're into week two of Blaugust and we're looking increasingly hard-up for content, but mostly because I want to revel in the joys of the nuanced political system that we enjoy here in Australia in comparison to other jurisdictions.

Thus, we'll be running a little ballot. The system will closely imitate the partial-preferential voting system that has been proposed as a refinement of our current method for electing Australian Senators, bringing upper-house votes in line with lower-house ones by allowing individuals to direct their own preferences whether they choose to cast their votes for parties en masse "above the line", or for individual candidates "below the line".

The beauty of this Australian system is that you can choose to direct your preferences if desired, so that even if your preferred candidate is eliminated your second choice still gets the benefit of your vote, and if your second candidate is eliminated the third gets your vote, et cetera. This means that your vote, provided that it is valid, will always be counted, and if you choose to allocate full preferences, it can never be exhausted and thus wasted on a candidate with no chance to win. And since we're electing for multiple places here, even if your candidate isn't the most popular, they might still win a place in the suitcase.

People from first-past-the-post systems think this is weird. But just imagine the situation for a hypothetical conservative voter in the in the UK election in May. Instead of having to vote for the lesser of two evils between the Labour Party and the SNP, you could rank your actually preferences and have them count for something! In a theoretical year 2016 AD in a US where Donald Trump runs as an Independent, you could rank him first and then the Republicans, and thus not disadvantage either by splitting their vote when compared to the Democratic candidate! Amazing, I know! And we've been doing it like this since 1918! There's some details about quotas and single-transferable votes and all that nonsense, but like most Australians, you don't really care how it actually works, so, moving on...

To facilitate a vote, I have sorted my tie pile into a selection of "parties", then ranked the candidates in each party and placed them on the ballot form available here. You may choose to either rank the parties in order of your preference (or just pick one if you don't like any of the others!) or rank individual candidate in order of your preference (as long as you vote for at least as many ties as there is room for in the suitcase). In other words, you can be a snob like I always am at elections and spend forever picking your favourite ties, or you can just select your favourite category, get the whole thing finished, and rush outside to the sausage sizzle.

Meet the Candidates

The candidates for election have been collected below. The parties have been randomised, and the candidates in each party organised in order of party preference. (Yes, I know some eagle-eyed following will realise that some of my ties are missing, but I've collected all the ones that I can find!)

 The Liberty Party (LIB)

The Liberty Party consist of those ties that are bright enough to make me smile every time that I see them, but just a little too bright to be appropriate in an office environment. They're wedding ties, mostly. 

1. Carribean Silk

2. The Yellow Thai

3. Green Sakura

4. Bad at Tetris

5. Crimson Tide

The Conservative Party (CON)

The Conservative party are dependable, solid manager types. The kind of ties that never draw comment. This isn't to say that they're boring, they're just the sort of tie that Bill Shorten would wear. The party leader, Polytetrafluoroethtielene, is Mrs. Owl's favourite. I'm not sure what that says about her.

1. Polytetrafluoroethtielene 

2. The Gopher

3. The Straight and Narrow

4. Thin Blue Line

5. Thin Red Line

6. The Islander

7. Grandma's Couch

8. Flashy Suit

 The Dad Party (DAD)

The Dad party is made up of the kind of ties that your dad used to wear in those photos from when you were a little kid, but now sit rotting in the back of the wardrobe.

1. Electric Boogaloo

2. Grade Four Teacher

3. All Aboard

4. Rumanian Garden Party

5. Tiny Teddies

6. The Smiths

7. Tropical Clouds

8. The Father-in-Law

9. Dalmation Question

The Christmas Party (CHR)

The Christmas party split from the Cartoon party after a bit of a falling out over how funny Christmas crackers are. They're the only party with a catchy campaign song.

1. Tannenbaum

2. Elf 1

3. Ho Ho Oh No

4. Elf 2

The Democratic Party (DEM)

The Democratic Party are a the centrist party that forms the middle ground between the Liberals and the Conservatives. You can wear them to work but they're probably going to get comments/

1. The Travelator

2. The Crimson Peacock.

3. Binary State

4. Yellow River

5. Donkey Congo

6. The Tiesellator

7. Infinite Apartment

The Dotty Party  (DOT)

The Dotty party aren't really anybody's favourites, but they get a lot of support in rural areas. They've previously supported the Conservatives to form a government.

1. The Amicable Vicar

2. Invictus

3. The Mycroft

4. Fade to Blue

5. The Garbo

6. Prince of Persia

7. Eye of Saruman

8. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

The U.N.C.L.E. Alliance (UNC)

The U.N.C.L.E. alliance is made up of the kind of ties that appeal to those weird uncles. There's the Aussie Tie Uncle, the Bow Tie Uncle, and the Uncle That Still Wears His School Tie.

1. Australian Orienteer

2. Penny Black

3. Great and Small

4. Bitters

5. Penny Green

6. Tie-ota

7. The Classic Telecom

The Cartoonist's Party (CAR)

No-one messes with the Cartoonist's Party because they don't want to be the next target.

1. Oh Tintin, my Tintin

2. Oh Mickey, You're So Fine

3. Internet 1.0

4. Mouses

5. Send in Sinatra

6. Mister Hyde

7. Steak Sandwich

The Paisley Coalition (PAI)

The Paisley Coalition is an amalgam of the previous Paisley Party and the Diagonal Lines Party. This diversity works surprisingly well for them.

1. Popular Penguins

2. The Red Wedding

3. M.C. 4 Lyfe

4. Construction Site

5. Vintage Wallpaper

6. The Postman Delivers

7. Both Sides Now

8. Spud

9. Fibulae Jugulum

10. The Clone

11. Rot Stops Here

Since by visiting the site you've registered for voting, and in Australian elections all registered voters must do their democratic duty or risk a fine, you'd better consider your options and then go vote. This is the great moral challenge of our age, people.

Blaugust 7/31: Just My Schtick In A Box

When we set down our plans for Blaugust I listed Fridays as the day that I would describe the process of packing the important contents of Parliament House into three suitcases. Unfortunately, I've been so focused on the important things like posting every day in Blaugust, my actual packing has been somewhat stilted. Since the confirmation for flights came through yesterday and we have officially only 47 days remaining in the country, we'd better be getting a move on.

One thing that we have started packing away is our collection of board games. Our little collection might not be much by the standards of some of our friends, and even starting to look a little dated by modern carboard standards, but they're very dear to us, so we've decided to try and pack up a selection of the games we love to take with us. Unfortunately, this little collection of cardboard boxes could pretty much fill one of our suitcases all by itself, and we do need to take some clothing and similar items with us, so things need to be rationalisd somewhat.

The first thought was the creation of some kind of custom multi-purpose gaming set, but though it seemed to be potentially possible, since that seems like a big project for two busy people trying to pack up their lives we decided to just cut back on the unneeded pieces and see how small we could make the package. Here's the contents of those boxes that didn't make the grade.

Dixit

When we play Dixit, a beautiful art game that plays like a mix between Balderdash and Apples to Apples, and deservedly won the Speil Das Jahre award back in 2010 against some stiff opposition, it's generally because we're playing with a large number of people. We never use the rabbit tokens. And if you're not using the rabbits, you don't need the scoreboard either. The game works fine just writing your guesses on the the back on an envelope. We're just taking the cards, the rest can sit in the box for the next three years.

Fun Fact: We once stole the portfolio of an artist friend of ours (conveniently known as Flix) and made her a personalised version of this game.

Finca

It used to be that I knew nothing about Majorca, but now I gave a game about farming fruit there, so...now I guess it know that at least in some part of its history is had fruit on it? This one comes with a lot of space-filler cardboard that we don't need, but I couldn't possibly play it without all those gorgeous wooden fruit counters, so almost all of this stuff has to come.

Fun fact: It is possible in a very rare and probably contrived situation to break this game in such a way that no-one can ever move their meeples on the windmill, which makes it impossible to gain more than one type of fruit and near impossible to reach the end of the game. We consider "fruiting the moon" the Holy Grail of Finca, and will award a full victory with ivy leaves and a place in the history books should anyone ever manage to pull it off.

Seven Wonders

If you've never played the drafting card game that has taken over as the gold-standard game to beat, do yourself a favour and find a friend or a local board game club or cafe that owns it, and give it a try. It's a beautiful, well executed game that so often turns out surprising results, and I can never work out who is going to win except that it's not going to be me. Even when it is. Taking everything but the cards for two-player, because that ain't never going to happen. Even taking the score-sheet, because it's not big and it's just so darn handy.

Fun fact: We don't own any of them, but there are four expansions to the game, each of them adds something new and exciting, and you can combine them with excellent results. This is how you design a game, people.

Settlers of Catan

This one's an old family favourite that we've been playing since I was a kid. The older versions of Catan pack down a little nicer, but the modern versions with the large water tiles are kind of unwieldy to downsize...we could go without them and just use the land hexes and the movable ports they provide in this version, but it could get pretty confusing, so I guess we take it all. Leaving behind three of the purchase cost cards and just taking the one, if we're playing with new people that need them they'll just have to share.

Fun fact: There IS an expansion to Catan that doesn't suck. It's not the one you think it is.

Carcassonne

Introducting new people to board games that aren't monopoly, scrabble or trivial pursuit? Nine times out of ten, the classic tile-placing game Carcassonne is my go-to. The rules are simple enough to understand, you can play it friendly-like or go for the throat, depending on the company, and there's enough chance to ensure that you don't have to worry about having to find a way to deliberately throw the game to make sure that you don't win by a huge margin. Again, this is a game that you can play without the scoreboard, but it's just BETTER with it, so we're taking everything but the ludicrous cardboard space-fillers and the rules of Mayors and Abbeys, and expansion that we don't even own.

Fun fact: My nemesis and I once made a Carcassonne puzzle for the LoAP puzzle hunt, and I'm still pretty confident that it's the best one that we've ever made.

Ticket to Ride: Germany

I love Ticket to Ride, but we've pretty much played it out amongst our regulars, so I have fond hopes of finding some newbies to play against on the other side of the world. We have the superior Marklin German set, and in accordance with my long-held prejudices, we've never even popped those tokens out of the sprue, and we certainly won't be taking them with us. We will, however, be taking the passenger tokens, because they make fine stations if you want to steal a rule from the Europe map (they're from Europe, right?) to play a nice calm, friendly game.

Fun fact: I once won a five-player game on this map in which I was the only player to score a result in the positive numbers.

Ticket to Ride: Africa

Along with Germany, we also own the African expansion for TTR. If you've not played it, it's a vicious, vicious little bastard of a map with some different mechanics, and that gives more opportunities for tactical play than most of the others, but in which I always feel luck plays a greater part, as there is much less flexibility of route choice. There's not a whole lot in the box to leave behind.

Fun fact: We often try to use the Team Asia rules on the other maps (indeed, we were going so long before anyone we knew even owned a copy...), with varying levels of success. According to pretty much everyone, though, this is a terrible map for it. Just don't.

San Juan

San Juan is the card-game of the hit board game Puerto Rico. We have both, but if you were to ask us to pick between them then San Juan would win every time, which is why we're taking it with us and Puerto Rico will be staying home. It's a rare wonderful example of a game that preserves all the spirit and flavour of the original but strips out all of the clumsy mechanics right back to the bone. Beautiful and elegant, this has been a favourite of ours for a long time.

Fun fact: I'm leaving the scoresheet at home in the hope that people will forget to score points for the Palace. I hate the palace.

Veritas

As you'd expect from a Cheapass Game, this one doesn't come with anything you don't need. Unfortunately, as you'd expect from a Cheapass Game, it doesn't come with everything that you do need either. As I didn't have enough appropriate tokens, I've also got to pack this big bag of poker chips. Which will at least let me play poker if I ever had the strange compulsion, but does weigh quite a lot, and leaves my poor Raumschach set without all its pieces. One day I'll find the perfect set of tokens, Alice, one day.

Fun fact: Cheapass games has a lot of their older games available for free or donation on their website. They're not the best games ever made, but in my opinion there's a lot of amusement to be had in there. Take a look.

King of Tokyo

Some games are brilliant in their simplicity. This one basically boils down to a deck of cards, some dice and some score tokens, but it's all the gumpf that really makes it. Who doesn't want to play at being a rampaging monster and crush a city and some rival monsters every now and then? Unfortunately for packing purposes, all this peripheral gumpf is so good that we're going to have to take it all...

Fun fact: In most games, I don't care what colour or token I am, it's all the same to me, but there are three exceptions. In Tantrix, I play red (like everyone else that's ever read the rulebook cover to cover). In Monopoly, I play the boot. In King of Tokyo, I play the King. If the King wore boots and had bright red fur, I might never stop playing.

Samurai Sword

This is a remake of the classic western game BANG!, set in Japan. The sherrif is an emperor, the deputies are samurais, the renegade is a ronin and the outlaws are ninjas. It's very similar, except that nobody ever dies and gets forced to go make the tea. We play a lot of this, and shouts of MANCATO! often fill the air long into the night. As you'd imagine for a card game, there's not a whole lot of extra stuff here, but we'll leave behind the Italian rulebook.

Fun fact: Our copy of Samurai Sword features swapped portraits on two of the cards. Which is irrelevant if you're not familiar with Japanese folk tales, and incredibly unsettling if you do. I like to not tell new people and watch which ones squirm when they notice.

Playing Cards

For good measure, I figured I'd better stick some cards in as well. You can never have too many cards, right? A canasta deck seems logical. As does my much prized Mao deck. I can't leave my hideous bohemoth of a frankenstined Uno deck behind (I've never counted how many cards there are, and I hope never to have to), either. And of course, one of my patented 'custom' 500 decks. Maybe you can have too many cards after all?

Fun fact: The Chinese Gong-Fu Poker deck is staying behind. I intend to have it Creepily Sweep my storage shed while I'm away.

The result

Well, it all fits (or it did before I went rummaging...) in THIS handy box that we got with our soup pot, with just enough room left over for my folding chessboard if I can ever find it. All we'd need would be some little colour-coded cloth bags to allow us to have a slight chance of actually FINDING the pieces for any particular game. I suppose that we COULD put the whole thing in a suitcase...but maybe a more tightly controlled cull is going to be required if we're going to be able to pull this thing off....

Fun fact: I like big pots, and I cannot lie.


And finally, just for those of you that don't believe there can be a Blaugust Friday with a goofy picture of me in a tie, here's what I was wearing while packing that box. In case you can't quite see, the star attraction features technicolour Australian animals and landscapes drawn in indigenous-style dot and line art styles. I happen to think it's pretty rad.

A writing prompt or two for my fellow Blaugustinian gamers of both the cardboard and the electron variety short of an idea today:

1) Do you agree with my choices?

2) If you had to go away for a few years, what are the five games you'd have to take?

3) When was the last time you saw a brand-new mechanic in a game?

4) I value efficiency and flexibility in a game. What are your priorities in game design?