This is a Hawaiian game made, in this case, by native Hawaiians. The rules are etched on the back, which solves the problem of rules on a piece or two of paper. I'm not sure how traditional the laser etching is. The site shows a couple of other photographs. The board is taller than it looks here, a good slab of wood, with a tapered shape. Those are good white stones.

I don't talk much about konane, but I have a lot of respect for it. It's not a war game.

You would think photographing games is a matter of plunking down a board, tossing some pieces on it and snapping a picture. But it's more than that. In the beginning I had no idea about photography, particularly lighting, and, alas, there was nobody there to help me. It is tricky to get the bottom and top of the board to appear horizontal. Looking at the board at an angle solves that problem. You want to get a picture of a game in action. That requires actually playing a game, which is time-consuming work of a sort. After a picture is taken one often spots some annoying thing that went wrong, like an out-of-line piece or a dirty board. These guys messed up alternating black and white stones.

The konane look is so simple, and yet for many years I couldn't determine a crafty board design. I like having the same type of pieces for both players. That makes it easier to set up the game. I've been poking at a board that is all uniform ocean blue, with white pieces. Positions would be identifiable because the board is corrugated, like a checkerboard with alternating directions rather than colour. A less innovative approach is to have blue cells alternating with striped blue and white. No pits.

Early in the history of Oak Games I made a konane with a wood board like this, but the holes had straight walls, not curved. The black and white glass pieces were put in upside down. Functionally this was not too bad. But it had a slick look, with the flat bottoms of the 64 glass pieces up.

I wonder if konane is not sold commercially because it can be done with a checkerboard. Well, with extra pieces.

Do they teach this in Hawaiian schools? Probably, but I don't know. I wouldn't mind that class.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

This is all about nostalgia, and a slightly cute story. When I was a kid at a friend's house a lifetime ago there was a movie playing on television. It was one of those horrory films that involved being in a forest in the dark, and more being in a forest in the dark. There were guys who had been in a war, doctors as I remember it. At the end there was a head or two on a stake. I'm not claiming it's any good, but it always left a memory and there's the nostalgic connection. But I never knew which movie it is.

We were at a music instrument shop and somehow, God knows how, I got to talking to a man who worked there about this movie. He told me he had also seen this film and liked it. It turns out it was a Canadian film. He told me the title.

And I promptly forgot it.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Have you seen a video clip of a guy on a trampoline bouncing sky high? He bounces, and there is a ring of guys around him who also jump on the trampoline. They jump at the right time, adding to the bounce of the trampoline. If they jumped at the wrong time it would not work, because it would not be in sync with the central bouncer's bounces. That seems relevant to resonant frequency.