{"id":12388,"date":"2011-07-18T07:04:59","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T12:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=12388"},"modified":"2011-07-18T08:18:50","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T13:18:50","slug":"sherwood-showdown-winner-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=12388","title":{"rendered":"Sherwood Showdown: Winner Announced"},"content":{"rendered":"

The winner of the random drawing<\/a> has been chosen. Turns out it wasn’t you. I know. I’m disappointed too. I really thought you had it. The game should end up in the mail sometime today or tomorrow. <\/p>\n

Well, fortune has failed you. However, you can still obtain the game by means of commerce<\/a>. A brute-force solution, I admit, but it’s less labor-intensive than theft. <\/p>\n

For those of you who are curious about how the winner was selected, I will post these quasi-technical details:<\/p>\n

The first step is going into the database and tracking down all of the eligible comments. This is problematic because I use mySQL just rarely enough to forget what I’m doing each time. For example:<\/p>\n

SELECT FROM wp_comments comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_content WHERE comment_post_ID='12349' AND comment_content REGEXP ('gimmie');<\/pre>\n
I ALWAYS make this mistake.  And I always forget that I always make this mistake. And I’m always mystified that I’m getting an error after making this mistake.  Then I discover the error.  Then I remember making the error last time, and so on. It’s completely ridiculous, and wouldn’t happen at all if I used a database more often than once every nine months.  <\/p>\n
My wife gives directions like this, and it always leads to those sort of unintentional misunderstandings that keep sitcoms in business after all of these years. <\/p>\n
HEATHER: Would you get me something? I need a tiny blue container sitting on the…<\/p>\n
Me (to myself): Okay, she wants a container. Are we talking medicine, or food, or a container for one or the other that’s been re-purposed?  There’s a lot of nut tins around here holding screws and coins and…<\/em><\/p>\n
HEATHER: …on the left-hand side of the…<\/p>\n
Me (to myself): We’re dealing with the left side of something here, but what?  A room? A cupboard. A counter-top?<\/em><\/p>\n
HEATHER: …second shelf up…<\/p>\n
Me (to myself): Shelf! So we’re either talking about the bathroom, the kitchen, or the garage. Not the bedroom, living room, or…<\/em><\/p>\n
HEATHER: …of the big cabinet in the…<\/p>\n
Me (to myself): Big cabinet? So that means we’re talking about a room with more than one cabinet, and one is larger than the other…<\/em><\/p>\n
HEATHER: …kitchen.<\/p>\n
Me (to myself): Kitchen! Got it! So I need to go into the kitchen and get the… crap.  What color was the bottle again?<\/em> <\/p>\n
So it goes.  I always expect and give directions beginning with the most general and working to the most specific.  My wife (and mySQL) go from specific to to general. I suppose my wife’s way is better if the other person intuits what you’re talking about before you get to the end.  You can abort the information transfer and go get the thing directly.  It has the disadvantage that all directions are useless until the listener makes that connection, at which point they must play them back in reverse order.  Still, both methods have their uses, although it doesn’t explain why mySQL wants to know what fields I want before I tell it what table it should look in.<\/p>\n
The correct command is of course:<\/p>\n
SELECT comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_content FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID='12349' AND comment_content REGEXP ('gimmie');<\/pre>\n
This yields a list of 282 entries.  <\/p>\n
Now I need dice.  Yes, I could use mySQL, or a web-based random number generator, or any of the dozens of RNG’s at my disposal, but I promised to use dice for this and that’s what we’re doing.  This site is named TWENTY SIDED and I so rarely write about anything that might be remotely affiliated with things that might be remotely connected with that phrase.<\/p>\n
dice3.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n
This is either an extensive dice collection, or a good start, depending on how long you’ve been gaming.  As much as I’d like to throw a huge pile of 20-siders, I think this is a job for 10-siders.<\/p>\n
dice4.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n
Red will be the hundreds, green is the tens, blue is the ones. If I get a number greater than 282, I’ll modulo<\/a> the result with 282. <\/p>\n
I roll a 236.  I open up the results spewed by mySQL and check line #236 for our winner.  Done.<\/p>\n
Note that the results are final.  Even if I did something incorrect, foolish, or idiotic, it was at least randomly<\/em> so. <\/p>\n
I must say it’s very strange going through the Sherwood Showdown cards.  A lot of these were modeled by people we know, and several were based on sketches of guys from my gaming group.  Heather changed the age, haircut, and clothing, but I can still see the original poser showing through in expression and body language.  (You hear that, guys? You’re a bunch of posers! Just thought you should know.)<\/p>\n
If you’re looking to buy the game: Yes, most international orders are fine.  It’s actually cheaper to mail the game from Canada to the Netherlands than to mail from one part of Canada to another. No, I don’t understand why.  Once again, here is the order page<\/a> which, I hasten to remind you, is easier than theft.  Even for rogues.<\/p>\n
UPDATE: Three people have all pointed out this this was an uneven distribution of odds, no need to say the same thing.  The winner fell outside of the “favored” range anyway, so…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The winner of the random drawing has been chosen. Turns out it wasn’t you. I know. I’m disappointed too. I really thought you had it. The game should end up in the mail sometime today or tomorrow. Well, fortune has failed you. However, you can still obtain the game by means of commerce. A brute-force […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tabletop-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12388\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}