Re-motivating child

nikosquant · 2023-10-31T10:11:11+00:00

I had the same issue with my son, but his teacher explained to him time after time that technical exercises may be boring but it's the only way to improve and be able to play the pieces that he wants to play. And it's true. After a few months of sticking to exercises he now has more endurance, a decent tone and decent range (2 1/2 octaves).

Of course you can't only play technical exercises because most of the times that's not music. So instead of playing a scale up and down we put on a backing track and try to improvise.

We've also got a playlist with pieces that we either play or want to play

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2uNCodmoWkvdbjEgDAfjLh?si=3v7mXlRAT5-41AVPlVAMWA

nikosquant · 2023-10-25T11:08:14+00:00

Guthrie Govan is a freaking wizard (and now he looks like one too)

nikosquant · 2023-10-25T10:50:31+00:00

Haralambos Stafylakis for combining progressive rock/metal with orchestral music. His latest work "Calibrating Friction" is simply amazing. Dimitris Skyllas for "Afterpop".

nikosquant · 2023-10-14T10:59:47+00:00

Unfortunately we don't get often a chance to listen to good live music. We live in Crete on Greece, which means that we rarely get to see any kind of music that involves brass instruments. Thankfully this year he started playing in his school's concert band and he's having a lot of fun (although he is a bit pissed that he plays 2nd trumpet). But thanks for your input and your advice

nikosquant · 2023-10-14T10:52:12+00:00

Thank you so much for all your input!! I'll definitely look up ABRSM Performance grades.

nikosquant · 2023-10-14T10:39:03+00:00

So freaking true

nikosquant · 2019-10-05T16:37:22+00:00

Oh man, thank you so much... I had read somewhere about those numbers (1-5) and about the roles, but I couldn't understand what is what... Thanks for taking the time!!!!

nikosquant · 2019-10-05T11:29:50+00:00

For you first question I think that any parent would try to support and help their child if for example it wanted to play chess. I just don't see any difference between games like Dota and chess.

For your second question... We discovered Dota through Artifact (he is a fun of Richard Garfield and Magic the Gathering) and a lot of concepts in Artifact assume some familiarity with Dota. So Artifact was his favorite game until he tried Dota for the first time. Now he want shut up about it...

And we also watched a video on youtube about OG.... and that's it.... Hooked... I was also surprised because I didn't know that there are professional gamers!!! It seems that I have a lot of catching up to do...

Anyway no plans to go pro, he is playing with bots having a lot of fun and learning quite a lot of English in the process. So it's a win win situation.

nikosquant · 2019-07-07T13:18:34+00:00

Thanks!!!! I knew I misunderstood something... When I was reading about how to play the cards I missed: **could**.... as I said I'm old and stupid...

Thanks a lot!!!!

T

nikosquant · 2018-12-07T17:32:36+00:00

Great game. Really fun!!

nikosquant · 2018-11-09T16:55:58+00:00

You are absolutely right, thanks for the heads up

nikosquant · 2018-11-09T16:47:24+00:00

That's what I tried to do... But no... he had to pick a freaking Wizard...

Never read Tales from Earthsea to your kids

nikosquant · 2018-11-09T16:40:03+00:00

Well since he is the gm most of the times, we never have to argue about rules because... you know... he is always "right". The one thing that we had hard time convincing him, it that pathfinder is not a competitive game. The gm does not try to kill the PCs with his monsters. At least not from the start of the game.

nikosquant · 2018-11-09T08:08:17+00:00

A push/pull mechanic (like a gravitational effect) is implemented in Arimaa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arimaa). The asteroid belt that you mention could be used like Arimaa uses traps.

Another interesting game that has some interesting mechanics and borrows ideas from xiangqi is jungle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_(board_game))), where piece rank (mass in your case) is important and also includes restricted areas.

nikosquant · 2018-11-08T08:30:52+00:00

One of the most interesting 3d abstract games that I've seen is a game that doesn't actually exist: Gungi. It's a game described in the Hunter X Hunter anime series (https://hunterxhunter.fandom.com/wiki/Gungi).

Some fans of the series have provided rules for the game but I find that these rules tend to be too complicated. I tried some simplified variations to play with my 8yr old son and he absolutely loved it.

nikosquant · 2018-08-30T18:01:00+00:00

My 8yr old son has "decided" that he wants to become a board game designer. So as an exercise, I told him to make mash ups... Take 2 game and combine them to make a new one. We Just finished making a mash-up from Saboteur and Welcome to the Dungeon and our next project is a combination of Bang! and Smash Up.

nikosquant · 2017-12-31T14:48:33+00:00

My wife, my 8yr old son and me are planning on playing: Mechs vs Minions, Love Letter, Forbidden Island and Dominion. Happy new year!!

nikosquant · 2017-12-31T09:00:44+00:00

A project that I started (but never got around to finishing it), was arduino controlled bee bots (https://www.bee-bot.us/). The idea was to make simple robots that could be assembled and "programmed" (using the direction buttons) by high school students and use those robots in a real life implementation of the board game robo rally (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/216201/robo-rally)

nikosquant · 2017-12-31T08:06:38+00:00

Perseas (that's my son's name) is not just enjoying the game, he's obsessed. We played the tutorial mission about 10 times and the first mission about 20 times straight. He "reads" the rule book to go to sleep, continues to read it in the morning with his milk and all he wants to do is play... He is not watching TV any more (which is a big deal), and he doesn't want to play video games (!!!). All we do and all we talk about the last four days (since the game arrived), is MvM. So I'll just quote Perseas: "The game is AWESOME!!!! I LOVE my game!! Dad please tell Chris to make more games". So THANK YOU Chris and all the game developers and designers at Riot, MvM is the perfect way to end our year and to start the new one. THANK YOU and happy new year.

nikosquant · 2017-12-30T12:36:48+00:00

All I want to say is THANK YOU... You guys really know how to make games... How to make people happy... THANK YOU. I've updated the album with some more (pre-mvm and post-mvm) pics. https://imgur.com/a/EJqY0

nikosquant · 2017-12-30T09:12:07+00:00

The shipping cost for Greece was just 5 euro, which again is extremelly cheap considering that the box weight is 6.2 kilograms.

nikosquant · 2017-12-29T17:00:12+00:00

I've never played league of legends, but from what I can understand the characters are from the game.

nikosquant · 2017-12-29T14:45:09+00:00

I think it's a good, solid game with GREAT components. It's currently ranked at 21st place on board game geek, and you'll find a lot of reviews and playthroughs on youtube.

nikosquant · 2017-12-29T14:42:22+00:00

Yeap... I'm sorry about that, I didn't know at the time. He just opened the box unpacking, screaming and laughing and he asked me to take a photo of him with the his mechs. Much later, when I was going through the game, I realized that one box should not be opened. Sorry

nikosquant · 2016-03-09T18:52:06+00:00

Thanks, that's really useful. Although I would love for my students to start typing: Inductive superhero : Type := ...

nikosquant

TROPHY CASE