Malcolm Stielow

Games Done Quick Watch the stream with your best speedrun dinosaurs.

Things have stacked for me up this year, and I couldn't send one of my usual prize donations to #sgdq2025. I still donated what I could because I do believe in the work that @msf.ca does and the power of the @gamesdonequick.com community.

Still time to get your donation in this evening.

gdq.gg

You could take a fire hose to my whole library, but ever since I started grad school, nobody has seen me walking around and thought: "There's someone who gets a healthy amount of sunlight."

I was reading the back of my toothpaste while brushing, and the directions told me to "expectorate".

If I need to read the directions on the back of the toothpaste what makes you think I know what "expectorate" means.

I only know it because it's one of the things nobody does like Gaston.

panel 1 mattie running away from some tentacles m: WELL, THIS ISN'T GOOD. 2 the important pundit shows up TIP: hey this is just a distraction! stay focused! 3 mattie, getting eaten by something m: a distraction from what? tip: someone i’ve determined to be more important than you is having a problem, over there! 4 mattie, wailing m: oh no! i’m so sorry!

don’t get distracted! | patreon.com/lubchansky

A paradox for the digital age:

The more one is asked to verify their humanity, the less human they are.

Home Animated Knots is the world's leading site for learning how to tie knots of any kind. From Boating Knots, Fishing Knots and Climbing Knots to how to tie a Tie, or even Surgical Knots — we’ve got it co...

I always recommend starting with Animated Knots by Grog.

It doesn't have everything, but it's super easy to follow and a great way to lose an afternoon.

www.animatedknots.com

I haven't sold many of these through my website, but if anyone out there has one, feel free to weigh in. I'd be most curious how it stacks up to other stichless wallets people have seen or owned.

Personally, it's my favourite wallet I've ever made, but admittedly, that's not a very big pool.

Close-up of the interior spine of the wallet, where a crease has formed on the right side of the spine.

A fold deepened along the interior spine early on, but cutting that section away makes the wallet too floppy. Overall, I'm happy with this design and mostly want to try it in more leathers to see how it changes the fold. It can be unfolded for care and cleaning, but it doesn't seem to need it yet.

An overall view of the wallets interior with cards removed on one side to better show the card slots.

For a wallet with no stitches, everything seems to have stayed in place well. The center seems to lift more if a lot of bills are carried. There were 8 cards: one in each slot with 4 tucked away (see the green corner). The cards aren't showing unusual wear, hopefully meaning they have enough space.

Close up of the exterior of the wallet, showing the maker's mark and corners.

The leather has begun to patinate beautifully. While I feel the embossed logo I used is a little small for this wallet, the imprint is still deep and clear. The edges are holding up well and still sit square. The corners are not splayed, and there's no signs of unfolding: important with no stitches

A square brown leather wallet on a white surface. A small logo for the designer is embossed in the bottom right corner.

It's been about 6 months since I started carrying one of my Cadre wallets every day, and that's when I usually like to revisit my designs.

In an effort to be more active on social media, I'm going to write some of my thoughts from my design check-up on here as a thread.

#design #leatherwork

A bright red strawflower with a large yellow center. The purple, pink coleus leaves with bright green edges drape both over and behind it.

For anyone that is having a hard day, here's a pretty flower for you from my mom's greenhouse.

I don't think I have any unique obstacles, just things that are new to me. Such as what's the best way to show off a board game to a publisher when you live in north-central Alberta and can't afford to travel? Do I want to self-publish? At what point does a self-published game count as published?

I'm working on a second prototype that will look closer to how I imagine the final version. Acrylic dice, playmat board, 3d printed bikes of I can swing it. I'm refining the rules and finding people to playtest.

The design part makes sense to me. It's the stuff after that that gets a bit arcane.

Brightly colored rings around large blocky text that reads "Moto GO!". The exclamation point had been replaced with a checkered finish line.

After receiving some online encouragement, I've shown Moto GO! to a few people over the last few weeks. So far, the response has been really positive, and people have further pushed me to #publish.

I've never published a full physical copy of a #boardgame, so the question has to be asked... how?

Honestly, I wasn't sure at first, but I've gotten pretty good reactions across social platforms and in person.

I don't really know the first thing about board game publishing, but since people seem to like it, I'm certainly willing to try.

Mario Kart Whirled

Three hand-carved wooden motorcycle game pieces on a colourful track. Two of the pieces are standing on their tail to represent a wheelie.

A close-up of the game pieces I carved for Moto GO!. I'm really happy with this design, that I figured how to have them wheelie and lean so I could include that in the game.

A little rough, and in need of some colour, but there wasn't time for everything.

#boardgames #boardgamedesign
#gamedesign

Where was this post when I was writing my thesis about play and ambiguity?

A brightly-coloured race track game with hand-carved wooden motorcycle game pieces, wooden dice with shapes instead of numbers, a rulebook, and a packaging tube. Many components feature the name of the game: Moto GO!

Are you normal, or did you not have a gift for your niece's birthday, so you conceived, designed, prototyped, and packaged a board game from scratch in a week?

So anyway, let me introduce Moto GO! A #motorcycle #racing #game for 2-6 people.

#boardgames #boardgamedesign #boardgamesky #gamedesign

That would have probably worked well for these. Somehow, I always forget that stuff exists.

A piece of wood is being carved to resemble a motorcycle with a rider. The wood is clamped in a small antique vice, surrounded by wood shavings.

I need a better way to prototype game pieces than carving them by hand.

At the very least, I should have taken the extra time to find a piece of wood that wasn't oak.

#boardgames #boardgamedesign #gamedesign #boardgamesky #woodwork #woodcarving

Half the fun of learning a new program is relearning it every few weeks because you don't use it enough for the info to stick.

The other half is looking stuff up and realizing that everything that has stuck is all just "common rookie mistakes."

Interior closeup of a dark blue denim newsboy cap showing the light blue linen lining.

A dark blue denim newsboy cap with variegated yellow stitching. Has four yellow eyelet vents

Day 39 of avoiding a design project I'm really stuck on:

I made myself a new hat.

It's mostly hand sewn and fully lined, so that should give you some reference on how bad my creative block is right now.

Newsboy cap, cotton denim and thread, with poly thread in the linen liner.

A loaf of bread in an open bread machine. Text in foreground is the operations and buttons for the machine.

A very square loaf of bread on a cooling rack.

Day 36 of avoiding a design project that I'm stuck on:

I dusted off my grandma's old bread maker and made bread.

A pineapple plant growing in a large round pot. There is a ripe pineapple at the top of the plant.

I'm just going to hype my mom for a minute:

She grew a #pineapple in the middle of a north-central Alberta winter.

I don't think there's anything I else I need to say about that.

#greenhouse #gardening

Good evening to everyone who isn't the person who ripped the door handle off of my car.

That's not as bad as the word "milliliter" in that typeface.

I've had this happen twice, and neither one was an outdoor trash can.

Which is probably one of my better "two nickels" scenarios.

Since coming to this platform, I've noticed an uptick on visits to my website. It's small but consistent. Even something as small as one real person popping by a digital shop to browse matters to us.

That's something people forget about buying from small businesses: everything matters to us.