For fun, I dove into procedural text generation using Improv. It works well enough - the fact that grammars are JSON files is tedious but you can create some interesting bits of text at random. After getting the hang of it, I went down the rabbit hole to generate descriptions of monuments a party might encounter while traveling. Here are some examples, feel free to use and adapt them.

I like seeing how things come together in unexpected ways and hint at a deeper story. The difficult part is brainstorming enough details so you don't see the same ones over and over.

"A well-preserved fountain in an a ruined keep. It is covered by thick, woody vines. The fountain was designed by elves to study the night sky."

"A worn crystal in an a wooded clearing. It is inscribed with demonic faces and beings. The crystal was constructed by goblins to sacrifice their victims."

"A well-preserved stone surrounded by 4 statues. It is covered by burn marks. The stone was built by orcs to perform dark rituals."

"A cracked table upon a low rise. It appears to be made of marble. The table was built by humans to commemorate an important battle."

"A crumbling burial mound in an a wooded clearing. It appears to be made of slate. The burial mound was carved by dwarven masons to commemorate an important battle."

"A shadowy burial mound in an a small cave. It is covered by soot and ash. The burial mound was conjured by dark sorcery to perform dark rituals."

"A cracked table surrounded by standing torches. It is covered by burn marks. The table was made by drow to sacrifice their victims."

"A cracked arch upon a low rise. It is covered by thick, woody vines. The arch was built by humans to ward away evil spirits."

Many of us are stuck at home thanks to COVID-19 and while it's important to get outside for some exercise, board games are a great way to pass the time and keep anxiety at bay. Today, I saw via ArsTechnica that Amazon is running a buy-two-get-one-free sale and includes some good games in the selection. It's tricky to choose a good game without playing it first. Below, I'll give you my recommendations, in no particular order but with an eye towards ones that don't require too many players. I only picked the ones that A) I've played and B) are part of the sale.

Dungeons and Dragons Essentials Kit

Great way to get started playing D&D as it has pre-made characters and a sandbox-ish set of adventures to run through. You can even make your own characters based on the four core-classes (fighter, wizard, cleric, and rogue). If you're limited by the number of players, it has rules to use sidekicks to buff up your party. It's a great way to sneak some reading and math with kids too and can limit screen time. You can pair it with the Starter Set, but there's some content overlap so you don't really need both. Get it here.

Betrayal at House on the Hill

Betrayal is highly replayable and works well with four players, but probably no fewer. You start out as a group exploring a spooky mansion by uncovering and placing tiles. Eventually, someone triggers a haunt which changes the game as one person becomes the haunt and the other players have to figure out how to defeat them. More here.

Splendor

This semi-abstract game has you collecting different color gemstones, to build an engine to acquire more gems. Eventually, you want to curry the favor of nobles as you collect points to be the first to 15. It's straightforward to learn, plays well with just two people, and speeds up nicely towards the end. More here.

Seven Wonders

Seven Wonders is a fun, fast-paced card drafting game. Admittedly there are a lot of rules to digest at first, and if you've played before you can quietly amass a lot of points before everyone else realizes what your doing or learns how to stop you. The best part about this game is it scales up to 7 players without slowing down. Seven Wonders.

Exploding Kittens

This is a quick game about taking cards from a deck, avoiding the exploding kittens, and sabotaging the other players. Plays quick, fun artwork, and involves a fair bit of luck. Get it here.

Escape Room the Game

Three escape room puzzles in this box will keep you all busy for an hour as you find clues to identify the four keys you need to get out from one room to the next and eventually "escape." If you get stuck, you can get a clue or surreptitiously google the solution. Once you play a scenario, you can't really go back through it but still fun, especially if you like escape rooms. More here.

Honorable Mentions

• Codenames - fun party game, but you need a lot of players to really enjoy it.
• Unstable Unicorns - similar art style to Exploding Kittens, this one has you collecting unicorns. I haven't played it with fewer than five players but I think the fun in this one scales with more.
• Munchkin -

can be fun, lots of backstabbing.

I want to access a local docker development environment from outside the host computer. This comes in handy for viewing a site on another device or sharing it with a client. There seems to be a couple of ways to do this documented online, but of course, none exactly worked for me. I'm going to assume you already have ngrok installed for doing the actual tunnel. First, make sure nothing is using the port you want on the host machine. In my case, this means don't run apache on the host machine if you're docker container is using ports 80 or 443. Then, to setup the ngrok tunnel I use this command:

ngrok http -host-header=rewrite local.example.com:80

The key there being the host-header switch. Without it, apache couldn't match the configured virtual host to the random hostname assigned by the service. With it, the local site is accessible without having to change anything about its configuration.