I’ve been a big fan of Notepad++ for quite a while, but it wasn’t until I discovered the Ruby Blue theme that I totally fell in love.

Ruby Blue was originally designed for TextMate, the leading text editor for the Mac OS, and was modeled after the code sections of http://ruby-lang.org.

I’ve always had a thing for the color blue, and Ruby Blue’s combination of muted blue-tone colors and eye-catching highlights for reserved words and operators looked simply perfect to my eyes.

The latest versions of Notepad++ comes with a bunch of themes, and Ruby Blue is one of them. But the problem with the default theme is that the syntax highlighting is strangely missing for most of the popular languages (i.e. C/C++, Java, Perl, etc).

So I tweaked it around a bit to include these missing languages… and it’s looking good so far!

If you’d like to give it a try, you can download it here: Ruby New

Black Russian has always been my favorite cocktail.
There’s something about that perfect blend between the fragrantly sweet Kahlúa and the aggressively strong Vodka that I find irresistible.

Most of my friends and colleagues think of me as a non-drinker, but that’s only because I hate tasteless alcohol (like Soju, the national alcoholic drink in Korea) with a passion. On the other hand, I like to enjoy a glass of good wine, cocktail, or beers like Guinness Stout every once in a while.

The only downside about cocktails is that they tend to be rather expensive if you order them at a bar. A typical glass at a none-too-fancy bar will set you back at least 10,000 Korean Won (approximately $9).

This got me to thinking, “Why can’t I mix my own cocktail in the comfort of my home?”

Black Russian also happens to be one of the easiest cocktails to mix, so I went ahead with my plan.

I bought a 1-liter bottle of Smirnoff Red Label and a 400ml bottle of Kahlúa at Home Plus (a local discount store) on my way home, costing me 39,000 KRW (around $35).

And now to mix myself some Black Russian:

1. Put some ice cubes in an old-fashioned glass
2. Pour 50ml of Vodka onto the ice
3. Pour 20ml of Kahlúa on top
4. Give 2~3 brisk stirs

And that’s all there is to it! No wonder it’s called one of the simplest cocktails to mix!

Now let’s see how much I’ve saved…

I should be able to mix something like 20 glasses of Black Russian with these bottles of Vodka and Kahlúa. So the cost of each glass would come down to a mere 1,950 KRW, or a little less than $2!

Quite the deal, if I can say so myself

Even though I’ve already invested some time and effort in making hex tiles, I’m still kind of “on the fence” as to whether I want to fully commit myself to them.

So they’re more of an experiment for the time being, with my other alternatives being:

1. A single large (4 x 6 feet) terrain board
2. A large (4 x 6 feet) terrain board made up of smaller (1 x 1, 2 x 2, or 1 x 2 feet) square/rectangular terrain tiles
3. A single large (4 x 6 feet) foldable/rollable terrain mat

Option #1 is definitely unfeasible for me, given my space constraints. My wife will probably kill me if I attempt something like that in our small house

So I’ve got myself 30 pieces of laser-cut hex-shaped MDF boards from Warbases, and I’m planning to see how I like the overall effect of 30 hexes before investing in more.

I feel that the pros hex-based terrain tiles over square/rectangular ones are:

1. Small hexes somehow look better and more natural than small squares.
I highly suspect that this is just the wargamer in me. (I’ve been playing hex-based war games for almost as long as I can remember)
In my opinion, Square/Rectangular tiles need to be rather big (at least half a meter long per side) before they start looking good. A board made up of small square tiles remind me too much of a bathroom

2. Small tiles are much easier to make.
I’ve actually bought a few large MDF boards a long time ago, with a plan to cut them down to the required sizes and make rectangular tiles out of them. But each time I look at them, the task ahead of me felt just too daunting…
On the other hand, these small hexes don’t look so imposing and I can work on them whenever I have a bit of free time.

3. Hexes offer more versatility than squares when creating terrain
Or at least, they’re supposed to. I know that there are a number of arguments against that school of thought, but I’m with the school which believes that hex-based tiles can be used to re-create almost any type of terrain convincingly enough for wargaming purposes.

4. There are some hex-based rules I want to try out
I’ve been reading a number of fast-play rules that work on hex boards; something of a cross between board games and miniature games. They look very promising (especially for introducing wargames to non-playing friends), and will very probably allow for fun games that can be completed within an hour.
No fiddling with rulers or squinting your eyes to determine line-of-sight “from the eyes of the model”.
No “You’re only supposed to move 50cm, but you’ve just moved 51cm!!!” nonsense.

So there, these are the reasons behind my experiment with hex tiles. What do you think?