PartThree

Angry

2012-02-02T18:16:00.002Z

I really should learn - absolutely any time a telesales person phones, no matter who it is or what the offer, I should just hang up. No mess, no listening out of politeness. The moment they mention a product, service, or whatever.... beeeeeep!

Tonight's offender are Virgin Media, from whom I've been getting my broadband for some years (and quite happily, too, I should add). On the 19th, I received a call from one of their agents - would I like to pay less for vastly upgraded bandwidth?

Well, yes, I thought, I would quite like that. But, on the other hand, the one thing I most certainly didn't want was any disruption to my service, so...

Anyway, he insisted on putting in an appointment for the installation, just to secure it. (Yeah, right.) And then we got to discussing things.

Then things went crazy, and I had to ask him to phone back. He agreed... and then didn't.

On Monday, I received a call from the engineer, wanting to come do an installation. At this point in time, I was feeling awful - I was actually at home, having taken the day off work, but I didn't want to bother. Besides, I'd not yet received the contract; no, he couldn't come.

They then rebooked me for the 8th, despite me telling them not to do so - I hadn't received the contract, so couldn't agree to an installation. Besides, by then I had decided to cancel, since I wasn't up for the hassle.

The contract arrived today, dated from the 19th (!). The prices on the contract were different from those quoted on the phone (!!). And the contract noted a 7-day cooling off period... from the date when the "order was placed" (that is, the 26th !!!).

Needless to say, I'm not happy about that. I've since phoned and cancelled. Slightly surprisingly, they didn't put up any fight. So, that's okay.

Of course, the next thing is that they'll switch off my existing broadband service. I can practically sense the instruction making its way over to BT OpenReach... (Which would be typical. The one thing that I absolutely did not want, and can't really handle at this stage...) Of course, I might be wrong.

The moral of the story: beeeep!

I Should Drive a Taxi

2012-02-02T12:16:00.001Z

Last night I was made aware of the stunning similarities between "having a blog" and "driving a taxi". It was something of an eye-opener, to say the least.

My absolute favourite, though, was when our driver said that he would make it a requirement for anyone coming here to live that they be able to speak "fluid English".

Ill

2012-02-02T10:12:00.000Z

Yes, I've been away. I've been feeling pretty rotten the last few days, and haven't really been able to muster much enthusiasm for blogging. I'm still not at my best, but am feeling considerably better.

Fred Goodwin

2012-02-02T09:21:00.000Z

Whenever there's a political or economic scandal, there's a game I quite like to play called "spot the scapegoat". In general, I've found that the powers-that-be will try really hard to identify a single individual, make them the villain of the piece, shift all of the public's anger onto that one person, and then try to "draw a line under the issue".

With the scandal over MPs expenses, the nominated scapegoat was Jacqui Smith. Because she was already very unpopular, and because her offenses made for a good story, she was thrown to the wolves. And fair enough - I'm not suggesting for a moment that she didn't do wrong. But was she really any worse than any other MP? And yet, can you name any other MP that was named and shamed as a result of this? The guy with the moat? The three MPs who were actually charged?

With the banking crisis, the nominated scapegoat is Fred Goodwin. Again, I'm not in any way defending his actions, or suggesting he should not have been stripped of his knighthood. But when the media is busy reporting on this shocking (and, frankly, irrelevant) event, and when we have another round of "why did he keep his pension" over the next few weeks, I have to ask: what are they using that media storm to conceal?

Kermit or Yoda: There Can Be Only One!

2012-01-29T14:11:00.002Z

Last time we went to the cinema, Lady Chocolat and I were treated to the trailer for "The Phantom Menace" in 3D. And I know it's a bad film. I know this. And yet, I really want to go and see it again. Grr.

However, TPM reaches cinemas on the 9th of February, and the new Muppets film hits on the 10th. And I definitely want to go see that.

But I probably can't go see both. What to do, what to do...?

Loss of Enthusiasm

2012-01-29T13:51:00.002Z

For the first couple of weeks since the announcement of 5th Edition, I was actually really quite enthusiastic as to what was happening. It seemed like they were avoiding making the same mistakes again, there was a definite sense that the community was coming together, and it was all good.

This weekend was the D&D Experience convention in the States when we got our first look at what the new game might actually hold... and suddenly I find myself cold on the idea. It's starting to look like they're in the process of making a whole new bunch of mistakes.

Part of the problem is that I have some very clear ideas on how the game should be structured, and while I'm not absolutely insistent that that is the way it must be, I do have good reasons for those opinions - when they go in the exact opposite directions, it doesn't give any confidence that I'll like the destination.

Plus, they're in the difficult position that I have a game that does 90% of what I want already, in 3rd Edition. There are sufficient glaring weaknesses (and those weaknesses are sufficiently bad) for me to be interested in a new edition. But any new edition needs to be significantly better than what I have for me to consider switching. It's not enough for it to just fix the problems, if in doing so it introduces a new batch of flaws.

Shame. I was having fun looking forward to the new game, too.

Sanctum, and Building a Better Adventure

2012-01-26T14:05:00.001Z

Fresh from not watching "Birdsong", I instead watched the film "Sanctum" on Tuesday (and "Star Wars" yesterday, but that's not important right now). It was a good film, far better than I had expected, although not as good as "The Descent".

What particularly interested me about the film, though, was its application to D&D, and in particular to dungeon adventures.

The basic concept of a D&D adventure is pretty simple: a group of adventurers head down into a dungeon (or cave system, or ruined castle, or whatever), kill a bunch of monsters, and take their stuff. (There's more to it than that, of course, or I wouldn't still be playing after nearly 23 years, but that's the basic form.)

And, as far as the location is concerned, that's about it - it's a 'dungeon', or 'some caves', or 'a ruined castle', or 'whatever'. Basically, it's just a place, just as 'a school' is a place, 'Tesco' is a place, or 'a football stadium' is a place. That is, it's entirely mundane, a necessary setting for more important things, but largely trivial itself.

But in both "The Descent" and "Sanctum" (also the generally-poor "Vertical Limit", and indeed much of "Lord of the Rings"), there's a lot more to it than that. It's not just a location, it's an alien and hostile location, full of many dangers and snares, and that is utterly unforgiving to those who aren't prepared and/or skilled. If you mess around down there, you are going to die.

That's something I've been musing on quite a lot recently, and something I think the game is lacking in it's most recent incarnations (and perhaps all incarnations).

Several years ago, I went to visit CJ in the States, and while there I took the opportunity to head over to Arkansas to visit an old friend. While I was there, said friend's father-in-law took us out to a cave system. (Where I bought my t-shirt with frogs on.)

The experience was something of an eye-opener. It was incredibly dark. What light there was played tricks on us, such that perspectives were useless. The colours were amazing, and bizarre, and alien. It was oddly warm, and there was very little movement in the air. And there were bats.

And that was a safe dungeon-crawl. Throw in some tight tunnels, flooding water, sheer climbs, and the like, and you've already got an adventure. Heck, you don't even really need monsters!

I don't really have a fix for this. Except perhaps to note that I'm becoming increasingly convinced that D&D adventures, by default, should be set in actively hostile environments. This ties into the "Mythic Underworld" that I discussed some days ago - the characters haven't just ventured into 'some caves' - they've stepped into a realm possessed of a malign spirit that will do them harm if it can.

And all that from an okay-but-not-great film.

No Birdsong

2012-01-26T13:47:00.001Z

I was rather annoyed with myself on Sunday when I realised that I'd forgotten to record the first episode of "Birdsong".

No matter, I thought, I would just catch it when it was repeated. But no such luck - apparently, it's not going to be repeated any time soon. I can watch it on iPlayer if I want (provided I don't mind the constant...

... buffering ...

... buffering ...

... buffering ...

delays while it buffers the next bit), for the next 10 days. But the BBC are too busy making sure "Eastenders" is repeated sufficiently. Never mind that "Birdsong" cost them many times as much to make.

Grr.

Oh, and one more thing. I learned in the Radio Times that "Birdsong" is a set text in schools, not just English (which is entirely sensible), but also in History.

Are they insane?

Here's a handy clue: "Birdsong" is fiction. It's well-written fiction, and well-researched fiction, but it is fiction nonetheless. And, indeed, while some fictions may well be of historic significance, the reason for this is that they were written at, or close to, the time by people who were actually there.

"Birdsong" has no more place being taught in a History class than Creationism does being taught in a Science class.

A very short rant (and then a longer one)

2012-01-25T11:31:00.000Z

Apparently, the majority of recipients of housing benefit* are actually already in work. This leads me to a very short rant:

If rents are such that people can be working full-time and still require housing benefit, this means that either wages are too low, or rents are too high, or (most likely) both.

(That was the very short rant. And now, here's a slightly longer one...)

Honestly, a benefits cap per family is a good thing. And placing the cap at the average household earnings is, if anything, overly generous. But it doesn't work in isolation if (as is the case) people who need to live in London for their jobs cannot afford to live in London without those benefits.

(In fact, I'm inclined to think that there should be no such thing as housing benefit. Instead, those who aren't working, for whatever reason, should be given a much higher general benefit (and expected to live on that), while wages and rents/mortgages should be placed so that those in work don't need benefits to top up. As things stand, the government is essentially subsidising lots of landlords who are charging too-high rents.)

* Or whatever it's actually called.

Ouch!

2012-01-24T10:41:00.000Z

I twisted my neck this morning, and now it hurts. Not the best possible start to the day.

Still, things are actually a lot better now than they have been. The honeymoon is booked and paid for (as mentioned previously). There was a small issue with getting one of their special offers, but it turned out to be a communications problem, and is now resolved. (But you did not want to be around me on Saturday morning while that problem was ongoing. My poor cactus had to suffer some spectacularly bad language.)

I confirmed last night that the bag on my bagpipes is indeed burst, this being the eighth (or more) time this has happened. The band have been trying out a new bag design, but it's obviously not suitable for my use. I'm not sure why. Anyway, although this may seem like a bad thing, it is actually rather a relief, since it explains the problems I was having last week.

The day invitations for the wedding are now written (with one exception), and should be going out very soon. This leaves the evening invitations as the largest outstanding task, and then there are a bunch of details that need locked down. But, suddenly, it looks like things are coming together, and I may actually be able to enjoy the next 80ish days.

My D&D campaign "The Eberron Code" is on hiatus until after the wedding. I rather miss playing, although I knew I didn't have time to run it during these months. This does give me some time to marshall my thoughts for the next section of the campaign. Additionally, I have a one-off game coming up next month: "Star Wars: Through a Glass Darkly". That should be fun.

The Saturday game hasn't resumed since Christmas. All being well, we'll be meeting up on Saturday, although this is looking increasingly unlikely. I'm still estimating two more sessions between now and the start of April.

In order to reach 999 posts by the 11th of April, I will need to write two posts a day, pretty much every day. This seems extremely unlikely. Surely I don't have enough nonsense to talk about between now and then?

Awesome! or Ridiculous!

2012-01-21T11:12:00.002Z

For Christmas I got a copy of the Haynes Technical Manual for the "Millennium Falcon", and I honestly can't decide if this is awesome or ridiculous. On the one hand, it's a technical manual for an entirely fictional spaceship. On the other hand, it's perhaps the single greatest thing since they released the original Transformers series on DVD. (Because Optimus Prime trumps even Star Wars...)

Anyway, I've since read it. It was fun.

#5: "Millennium Falcon Owner's Workshop Manual", by Ryder Windham, Chris Reiff, and Chris Trevas

Mexico!

2012-01-21T11:06:00.002Z

Well, the honeymoon is booked. As the title of this post implies, we're off to Mexico for two weeks. Hopefully, it should be a good (and especially relaxing) time. Huzzah!

I did have a small bone to pick with First Choice, though. While booking on their site, it declared we could pay a low deposit of only £150 per person. This was excellent - with all the bills coming up, being able to stagger the payments was a big plus.

Until we got past that screen, and discovered that the balance needed to be paid by today! I must admit to being at something of a loss on the benefits of this - how does it benefit me to pay a low deposit on Wednesday, when I then have to pay the rest of the money four days later? Surely, on that timescale I either have the money or I don't, so might as well just pay everything all at once?

But other than that, everything's great. Now we just need to get ourselves down to Manchester to catch our plane out...

The Cuts Get Personal

2012-01-19T12:51:00.001Z

I find the concept of the leap second quite interesting. It's a small adjustment, similar to the extra day in a leap year, used to adjust the time, as calculated by watching the sun rise, so it matches the time, calculated using an atomic measure.

Apparently, there's a discussion underway about abolishing the leap second entirely. The US (amongst others) want this done because every time there's a leap second they have to adjust the clocks on all their radio masts and the like. (Presumably, the assumption is that they're exactly and entirely accurate otherwise... perhaps someone should have spoken to an engineer before bringing that one up.)

Honestly, it really doesn't matter all that much. A second here or there? Who cares? Apparently, in about 550 years, the drift between the two will be about an hour, but that's far enough away that we'll have moved to the stars by then anyway. Or, more likely, wiped ourselves out. Either way, only the atomic time will matter.

But...

The next leap second is scheduled to occur on the 30th of June.

Clearly, this must be stopped! The government are trying to steal part of my birthday!

Lego Star Wars, Puzzles, and Game Styles

2012-01-18T16:36:00.001Z

Since getting the Playstation 3, I've used it for playing music files, for playing DVDs and Blu-rays. Oh, and we've even used it for playing a game. Once.

The game in question is "Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars", which may potentially tell you something about me, since it's a game aimed at kids. Doesn't matter - I really enjoy all the Lego games. The truth is, I find most modern games really frustrating. Over time, they've added more and more to the interfaces used, so that playing the games becomes ever harder, and you need hundreds of hours of practice to become halfway decent... and I don't have hundreds of hours to dedicate to something like that (not to mention the risk of addiction, which for me is very real). Lego Star Wars is nice and simple, and I can just about handle it.

But one of the fascinating things about playing this game is the different approaches that LC and I take to the game. She likes racing through the levels, completing the 'story' part of the game fairly quickly, and calling it done. Me, I quite like taking my time, seeing the sights, and maybe completing some of the other challenges in the game.

What is particularly excellent about the Lego games is that they support both approaches. There are a few puzzles that you need to solve to complete the various levels, but these are fairly simple. Then there are more advanced puzzles you need to solve to unlock some of the other objectives in the level - these are often much more complex. And then there's one higher level of puzzle, used to unlock the little "Easter Eggs" hidden throughout the game that aren't part of any formal objective.

Basically, you can invest as much into the game as you want, and it will support you. I find that excellent.

(That my thoughts have also been straying towards the issues involved in creating a really good RPG adventure is not entirely incidental...)

Clean Slate

2012-01-18T11:07:00.001Z

Last night I finished my fourth book of the year, the Pathfinder "GameMastery Guide", which was a surprisingly excellent book about designing adventures, building worlds, and the like. I was impressed - I had expected basically the same stuff that every "second DM's guide" has given us since 2nd Edition's "Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide" (which is still to be beaten, in my opinion). But this one genuinely did provide a different take on quite a lot of the material, which was nice.

But I don't really want to talk about that, but rather about what it represents.

See, at the start of the year I had three outstanding tasks. I was mid-way through "Great Expecations", mid-way through the "GameMastery Guide", and in the midst of writing "The Goblin Bride", that 4th Edition adventure I mentioned a while back. Three tasks away from hitting a 'clean slate' for the year.

Well, I finished "Great Expectations" some time ago. And, with the announcement of 5th Edition the writing task fell by the wayside (no longer serving any point). And so, last night, I completed the third and final task that was outstanding from the start of the year. Huzzah!

Of course, I immediately move forward with another set of outstanding tasks. The cleaning has fallen behind (by a whole day!), there is a new stack of books to read, there are seven things sitting on the Sky+ box waiting to be watched, and of course there is the wedding to plan.

Still, at least I can start on 2012 now...

#4: "Pathfinder: GameMastery Guide", from Paizo Publishing

Tales of the Bankrupted Future

2012-01-17T20:38:00.002Z

And, since I'm on the topic of settings for storytelling, I'll just note in passing that my other setting (which is suited more for short stories than RPGs) is titled "Tales of the Bankrupted Future". As the name implies, it is set in a future gone to ruin, where the endgame of our current madnesses are played out.

As was noted to me once before, the Cyberpunk writers of old weren't really writing about the future, they were writing about the (then) present. The same applies here, if I ever actually put pen to paper that is.

Three World-Building Concepts

2012-01-17T20:25:00.002Z

I'm working on a new fantasy setting. At the moment, I'm not sure whether to use it for role-playing campaigns (possibly in the upcoming D&D 5th Edition), or as a setting for short stories. Perhaps both. Anyway, the banner under which I'm working is "Life Under the Wheel", which makes perfect sense if you know what "The Wheel" is, though I'm keen not to reveal that detail too soon.

At the heart of the setting are three world-building concepts, each of which I lifted from somewhere else. But that's fine - it's the way the concepts are put together, rather than the concepts themselves, which would make the setting unique.

Points of Light

The first of the concepts was first named, as far as I'm aware, in the run up to the release of D&D 4th Edition. The concept itself is pretty simple: civilisation is threatened on all sides, and all that remain are isolated pockets - a "Point of Light" if you will. Of course, whether or not they are truly 'light', or indeed 'civilised' is an open question!

This concept should be familiar from pretty much any post-apocalyptic story. The world has fallen into ruin, and all that remains are the few survivors.

The World Malevolent

One of the differences between the "Lord of the Rings" films and the books surrounds what happens on the mount of Caradhras. In the films, the way is blocked by Saruman, who is controlling the weather. He and Gandalf contest wills, and Gandalf is beaten; the Fellowship must turn back. In the books, it is the mountain itself that opposes their way.

Similarly, in Fangorn Forest, it is noted that the trees are old and angry. They actively try to do harm to those who venture within.

That is the concept of the World Malevolent. Nature is not a passive, neutral thing. Nor, indeed, is it "red in tooth and claw", but ultimately just operating on instinct. Instead, the world itself has turned against man, perhaps as vengeance for our many wrongs...

The Mythic Underworld

And thirdly, and finally, we have the mythic underworld. One of the key features of "Dungeons & Dragons" are, of course, the dungeons. For a long time (decades in fact), there has been a move in adventure design to a very 'realistic' style of dungeon design - the monsters need places to store food and water, they have societies and comprehensible aims. And the dungeons themselves are, broadly speaking, just buildings.

Not so in the model of the Mythic Underworld. Instead, the dungeons represent a gateway to some other, and as such are a realm where the laws of our reality don't really apply. As with the World Malevolent, the dungeons are not just a neutral location; they actively conspire against man, and seek to destroy his works. A foul cancer gnaws at the world, and the dungeons are the vector by which it spreads.

And so, there it is. Those are the three concepts that are sitting at the heart of my setting. Now all I need to do is write it. Or not.

Does anyone know...

2012-01-15T12:47:00.002Z

Does anyone know a good way to remove congealed vegetable oil from a worktop?

My fryer spilled over the last-but-one time I used it, and the spill congealed into a horrible sticky mess. All efforts to remove it have, thus far, proven unsuccessful. Even Cillit Bang failed to shift it.

I did discover on Friday that if the fryer overflows again, the hot oil seems to act as a really good solvent. However, I'm reluctant to go down that route, as it seems fraught with the distinct possibility of burning Falkirk down...

Stressed

2012-01-15T12:37:00.003Z

I'm feeling a bit (well, very) stressed at the moment.

The wedding preparations are reaching a point where we've either got, or are about to have, a lot of tasks that need done fairly urgently. And there's not going to be any more time available for doing all these things. Plus, all the bills are going to come due close to the same time, so money's something of a worry, too.

Money worries are plaguing the band, also. We had a fantastic December, and raised a lot of money for relatively little effort, and yet... We actually made less than last December, we made much less in Oct and Nov, we have fewer paid events coming up, and we have some additional costs we didn't have last year. Plus, some of the kit we bought last year has turned out to be junk and needs replaced. We should be okay, but it's worrying.

And, at work, I've reached a task that is simple in theory, and would be simple in practice if I actually understood the code I'm modifying. Unfortunately, the guy who does understand it is away until next month, and I need to get it done by then.

And it really doesn't help that people keep having a go at me for being stressed, or telling me to calm down. I'm stressed out for a reason. Telling me to calm down, while that underlying reason remains, just stresses me out still further!

Referendum Woes

2012-01-12T10:38:00.001Z

I find myself more than a little infuriated at all the politicking that has broken out over the Independence Referendum. Prior to the election, all three unionist parties were adamant that the people of Scotland shouldn't be given the right to choose. Then, just as the SNP win a majority, suddenly they're all in favour of an immediate referendum?

This is the most important political decision that voters in Scotland will make, ever*. It is really important that it be done right - we should have the debate, have the arguments, have a lengthy period for sober reflection, and then determine the settled will of the people. This bickering over timing, because of the fashions of the hour, is not only undignified, but it shows a disrespect to the electorate.

* There are two possible exceptions - it's just about possible there may be an in-or-out referendum on the EU, and it's also just about possible that there may be one on the formal dissolution of the individual nation states in favour of an EU superstate. I don't think either is likely.

Here's what should be done:

- The referendum should be held in 2014. That's what the SNP campaigned for, and that's the only timing any party campaigned for. Moreover, having won the victory the SNP should be entitled to set the timing. This also gives us plenty of time to have the required debates and come to a settled conclusion. It's the right time.

- The referendum should include all the options. At the very least, it should include Independence, Demo Max and the Status Quo. There may yet be more options that haven't been considered - if there are any, they should also be included. (That said, don't weigh it down with trivial adjustments - there shouldn't be a "Devo Max, but without X Y and Z", for instance!) Whether this takes the form of multiple questions or a single question with multiple choices is irrelevant - people can handle both!

- The vote should not be given to 16 and 17 year olds. They don't get to vote in General Elections and they don't get to vote in Holyrood elections; they shouldn't get the vote here. (That said, there is a wider debate to be had about the "ages at which you can do things". It is insane that you can be a parent and/or join the army, but can't vote or take a drink. It is actually wrong that you can be required to pay taxes but can't vote. But that's a wider argument to be had separately - unless this gets properly rationalised by the time of the election, they shouldn't vote - there should be no exception from the norm for this one vote.)

- The vote should be overseen by an impartial body. It doesn't matter if that's the UK body or the Scottish equivalent - they're both impartial, and there's no concept of "one being more impartial than the other".

And that's it. The other parties are right to have a robust "No" campaign. The SNP, in turn, will have a robust "Yes" campaign. I expect the debates will be fierce. But that's the way it should be. Bitter arguments about whether Scotland get to have their say, and the terms and conditions thereof, are just wrong. We're the electorate - let us have our say!

More on PIP implants

2012-01-11T15:57:00.001Z

The scandal of the fault fake breasts rumbles on. I must admit, I find myself incredibly concerned by it all - that a private company would so casually endanger the lives of so many is quite scary. And while the operation in question is mostly a matter of choice (some might say vanity), that doesn't in any way mitigate this - the women involved still had a right not to have their lives put at risk.

I still don't understand why there's so much hassle in getting this sorted out. As far as I can see, it should be pretty straightforward:

If the clinic that performed the surgery is still around, then any woman who has had the PIP implants should be free to have them removed (and, if desired, replaced) free of charge. There should be no debate over this, and no questions over whether or not there is thought to be any danger. At its most basic, they've been sold faulty goods, a recall should be underway, and so they should be contacting their supplier. And, as I noted before, those suppliers have to carry hefty insurances in case something goes wrong; something has gone wrong, and it's time to act.

The key exception to this is the case where there is an urgent threat to the health of women affected. Because arranging the required surgery privately will take time, the NHS will need to step in to remove the offending implants. It may (or may not) be appropriate for the NHS to also arrange replacements - that's a medical decision I'm not equipped to make, though my inclination would be "not". In any event, there should also be a mechanism for the NHS to get appropriate compensation from those same clinics for cleaning up their mess.

In the case where the clinics are not still around, it falls to the NHS to pick up the pieces. And here, my feeling is that the women affected should be able to have the implants removed if desired. Again, it may or may not be appropriate for them to also have the implants replaced. (In this case, there might be an argument for requiring proof of an actual danger before proceeding... but in general I'm a believer in preventative medicine, which suggests going ahead.)

As I noted in my previous post, if there is any hassle dealing with the clinics, there should be legal recourse to compel them to do the right thing. In cases where the clinics have disappeared, there should be recourse against the shareholders.

Finally, we need to tighten up the regulations to ensure that something like this cannot happen again. Further, we need to track down all those involved in making the switch (from the guy who actually did it, all the way up the chain to the guy who first made the call). They need to be found, prosecuted, and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

(Incidentally, this failure, in itself, is not an argument against privatisation in the NHS. The argument against privatisation in the NHS is that it's an incredibly stupid idea. But this is a failure of regulation, and could have hit the NHS just as it has private clinics. Indeed, given that not all such surgeries are cosmetic, it is possible that there are some women who have received the offending PIP implants on the NHS.)

#3: "Loving Against the Odds", by Rob Parsons

Two Thoughts From Yesterday

2012-01-10T10:26:00.000Z

The third part of "Great Expectations" was no better than the first two. In fact, it was considerably worse. And the ending just doesn't bear thinking about. (The next paragraph contains spoilers for the series and the novel. If you don't want to know, feel free to skip to the paragraph beyond, which will be spoiler free.)

Now, here's the thing: Pip does not love Estella. He does not even know Estella. He is in love with the idea of Estella, and that really is no basis for them being happy together. The mega-happy ending of the TV adaptation is completely wrong. Dickens understood this, hence the notion that they would "remain friends apart".

The other major thing that happened yesterday was that Wizards of the Coast announced that they are developing a 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and are having an open playtest of the rules as they develop. Their stated goal is to reunify the fanbase, which was badly fractured as a result of 4th Edition.

I was a bit surprised, not by the announcement, but rather in that I thought I would be more excited. Instead, there was just the relief that a long-awaited announcement had finally come.

I wish WotC well in this endeavour. But I am hopeful rather than confident. I suspect that the goals they have set themselves are simply too large for them to succeed - the very things that people liked about 3rd Edition (and its descendant, Pathfinder) are the very things that many 4th Edition fans don't like. I don't see how they can satisfy both groups, and I fear that in trying to compromise they will fail to satisfy anyone.

A shame, really. I really did used to love that game.

Disappointing

2012-01-09T09:46:00.000Z

In a slightly unfortunate coincidence of timing, I had just started "Great Expectations" when I heard about the BBC adaptation. As there was significant hype surrounding it, I made sure to record the three parts, but didn't start watching until after I had completed the novel. I therefore watched the first part on Saturday night, and the second yesterday morning. I should find time to watch the third part today.

Sadly, it does not live up to the hype.

The first part was actually okay. There were a couple of the characters that were 'off', with Joe being the most significant - and given that his character is absolutely central to the story, that was a problem. There were a few scenes that were moved around, including one that had its tone entirely changed. And, there was a slightly bizarre change to the contents of the pie (mutton instead of pork). Honestly, I wouldn't have noticed had it not been brought to my attention... but having had that done, it's very strange.

But the second part was mince. Very, very poor. The changes to the characters continued to cascade, rendering much of the core of the story unintelligible. The dialogue just didn't work in several places. Characters who should have been friendly were instead indifferent, while characters who should have been unfriendly were instead monstrous. And the scene in the brothel was almost unforgivable.

The third part should be an interesting experience, but I'm not hoping for much. The damage done to the story is too deep.

The thing is, this is very well made, from a technical point of view. The production is absolutely glorious, and the cast is mostly good (Gillian Anderson is the wrong person for Miss Havesham, but her performance is otherwise fine). And for someone who hasn't read the book, or read it a long time ago but not terribly closely, I guess it's close enough.

But having just read the novel, watching the TV version is really quite jarring. Overall, a poor effort.

Rage!

2012-01-08T10:36:00.004Z

I don't know why, but this year's "Celebrity Big Brother" fills me with an inexplicable rage. I mean, the anger should have been directed at it last year, when Channel 5 resurrected a deservedly-dead show.

(Actually, it would be a much better show if it truly was undead. Imagine, a zombie attack on the house. Imagine the hilarity as the zombies become increasingly desperate in their hunt for brains...)

Anyway, I think my big issue with the show this year is the nature of the 'stars'. Of the women, four are described as 'glamour' models, while one is only famous for being the other woman to have an affair with Ryan Giggs. (And, shockingly, hers is the more unpleasant story, despite Imogen Thomas being yet another 'glamour' model.) And another is a woman who had a brief career in the soaps, but is mostly known for "Loose Women", the worst show on the entirety of TV.

I don't suppose the men are any better. But, with the exception of Madsen and Cocozza, my immediate response is 'who?', even after I've read their bios. At least I know what a 'glamour' model is (porn star, albeit in the softest end of that spectrum). But for most of the men, is that a band? A TV show? Some sort of hat?

Honestly, though, it's the coverage that gets to me. I don't agree with super-injunctions, but Ryan Giggs was right to want to avoid publicity for this mess. Mrs Giggs has no business seeking to trade on her ill-gotten 'fame', and her 'need' to rehabilitate her reputation is as nothing to allowing the families involved to heal - which requires her staying out of the limelight. And don't get me started on the spectacle of Imogen Thomas attacking her on Twitter, as if she were somehow the wronged woman in all of this...

There is a very small group of celebrities that I don't merely dislike, but actively detest. Celebrity Big Brother seems to have managed to collect most of them together in one place this year. And shameful as it is, I can't help but wish that Michael Madsen would have a flashback to his "Reservoir Dogs" persona...

(Edit: No, I don't watch CBB, although I might watch either the Zombie or Reservoir Dogs versions. Nor do I really seek out news on the subject. But somehow gossip about the show has become 'news', so when I'm driving around listening to the radio, I tend to pick up just enough about the show to get a taste of the annoyance.)

Oh no!

2012-01-08T10:21:00.002Z

I discovered last night that one of my posts was only a draft, and had been superseded by the 'real' version of the post. Therefore, I had to delete it, and so reduce the post count on the blog.

Disaster!

Fortunately, I get to blog about it, thus restoring the post count. This time.

#2: "Pathfinder: Bestiary 3", by Paizo Publishing

Men and Shopping

2012-01-07T20:09:00.003Z

Right, brace yourself for a rant.

Yesterday morning (and afternoon), Lady Chocolat and I set up our wedding list. This involved trailing around a store looking at many many items, selecting some, and scanning them with a handheld device. It was not fun.

Now, LC and I have a standing joke about shopping not being allowed to last more than "one hour and seven minutes". That is actually a reference to a study that was done that showed that men get progressively more uncomfortable doing shopping, with the average tolerance being about 1:07. I'm not sure what the methodology here was, but there's certainly some truth in their findings (if not the number itself); certainly, as we moved into the third hour of looking at stuff, I was getting rather tetchy.

Now, here's the thing: I do not inherently dislike shopping. Further, I understand that it's often necessary, and also that sometimes a shopping task may well take a fairly long time. That's all fair enough. But, at the same time, I do not find shopping pleasurable. At best, it is a necessary task, much like doing the laundry, or washing the car.

It's also worth considering that, like most people who work, I have limited free time, and that time is valuable. And, of course, not all free time is equally valuable - longer blocks are worth more than a snatched minute. And the most valuable time of all is Saturday morning and afternoon. This is where I have both the combination of the most free time and the most energy to do something with it.

This should, perhaps go some way to explaining why giving up that time for a necessary task, rather than something more enjoyable, meets with a certain resistance. And when we cross over from 'spending' time doing that task to 'wasting' time doing that task, the frustration readily builds.

(Where the 'tolerance' thing from the study done comes in is that there is no outlet for that frustration. You just have to endure. But swallowing that frustration, and continuing to do so, gets really quite difficult.)

The problem is not actually one of going around picking things. It's not even particularly an issue of having to assess lots of options before making a decision (at least in my case). That's fair enough - it's important to get the right things.

The problem, by and large, is other people, which is generally compounded by the stores themselves. Basically, the whole thing seems deliberately designed to eat your life, all in the name of selling you things that you only sort-of want.

The problem with other people is not that they're individually being unreasonable. People walk at different rates. Mothers, by and large, have to take time looking after their children. The guy at the checkout is not unreasonable to want to pay by cash, nor to count out the exact change. None of this is unreasonable, or a valid cause for complaint, or a big issue.

The problem is the cumulative effect of all these reasonable delays is utterly unreasonable. When you get stuck behind a mother with pushchair for the five hundredth time, she is no more unreasonable than the first one... but you still want to scream. It's a tiny little frustration, but it's on top of a million other tiny little frustrations, with absolutely no let-out.

And then there are the stores. These have been very carefully designed to have some quick paths through the store, to take you quickly to the department you want, plus an awful lot of slow paths to force you to take your time in that department. That's actually quite a fascinating subject - and some bright spark was paid an obscene amount of money to very carefully research and design it.

Except that in reality, once you reach Saturday afternoon, the 'quick' paths are clogged with huge numbers of people all fighting through the rush. They come to a virtual standstill. And so, you're forced to take the marginally quicker 'slow' paths, dodge around the stands at great speed (and risk to life and limb), all to save half a second from your day but, much more importantly, to save another tiny fraction of your soul from dying. Because if this goes on much longer, you are going to snap.

Then there's the question of staffing levels in the stores. Especially in these times of austerity, stores want to employ the minimum number of people, and that means that they will always have as few assistants on hand as they can get away with, as few people on the tills, and as many away doing other, more productive things. By and large, they manage to do this pretty efficiently. And they're actually quite flexible, so they draft in more people as they need them.

But it does mean that queues are a fact of life in stores, more now than before, and that means waiting, when you're already frazzled. But, worse, it means that sometimes things go wrong. And so, you get the guy a the top of the queue who absolutely must be trading in old games for credit, complete with forms to fill out and a call to the manager. That's fine, since they'll just put another guy on. Oh, wait, the woman who was second is making a complaint, and also needs to speak to the manager. Yay! And so the queue stands still for several minutes, while the blood pressure rises, the frustration grows... and you're stuck.

The "one hour and seven minutes" thing is a joke. But the principle behind it is not a joke. There really is a limit to how long I can stand being stuck shopping. And the more people there are around, and the hotter it gets, the shorter that limit becomes.

There's a lot here that sounds like hyperbole: "eat your life", "want to scream", etc. It is not hyperbole; it really was that bad. I was in considerable discomfort, and by the end I couldn't give the job the attention it required, because I really was fighting back the urge to explode in rage. And once it was finally over, and we got home, we both collapsed in a heap and did nothing meaningful for the rest of the day. That job basically destroyed our entire Saturday, which is a really bitter pill to swallow.

So, I'm sorry I was tetchy. Honestly, I am. And I'm glad that the task is basically done. But it was still a fightful ordeal.

The First Book of 2012

2012-01-07T20:06:00.003Z

This afternoon, I finished "Great Expectations", my first book of 2012. According to the back cover, this is regarded as Dickens' finest novel. Sadly, I can't agree; it was good, but I preferred "Tale of Two Cities", which remains the best novel I have ever read.

Still, it was a very good book indeed, although I didn't think either of the two endings was terribly strong. I felt it could have done with another hundred pages or so to tie things up more neatly.

Anyway, having finished the book, I can now start watching the recent BBC adaptation, which I saved over the Christmas break. I've heard mixed reviews, so it will be interesting to find out for myself.

#1: "Great Expectations", by Charles Dickens (a book from The List)

Dear Terry...

2012-01-06T15:35:00.002Z

Last night I tapped and unwrapped the first of my Christmas chocolate oranges, and I must admit to being rather disappointed, for three reasons:

1) The orange seems decidedly smaller than last year.

2) The segments are extremely prone to collapse. What good is "tap and unwrap", if the result is a pile of chocolate dust?

But, mostly,

3) The chocolate really didn't taste very chocolate-y. It was all very bland and unsatisfying.

Fortunately, the German regular orange that I ate immediately thereafter was considerably better. Please pass my thanks on to the German Santa when next you see him!

Mug Anecdotes

2012-01-06T14:12:00.000Z

I have many mugs. Some might say I have a plethora of mugs, although I tend to prefer the word 'myriad'. At least one person might say I have too many mugs, but that depends on the definition of 'too many'.

In truth, most of these mugs has a story behind it, a tale of where I got it, and under what circumstances. Some others are defined by the purpose to which they are put.

On my most recent adventure, while returning from Stuttgart, I picked up a mug in the airport in Amsterdam, signifying that it is from Holland. (I don't, at present, have a mug from Germany; I didn't really think that one through.) Similarly, I have a mug from Rome with the Colliseum on it, a mug from Barcelona with some Guadi architecture, and a mug from Portugal with a big cock on it. (No, really...) And at least three mugs from France, one of which is my default mug.

Conversely, there's the Transformers mug that is only used for hot chocolate. And Lady Chocolat's mug which has a pirate ninja on it, which only she uses. Then there's the Frog mug, which is used for measuring rice, for reasons that should be obvious. Recently, I've also added a mug specifically for use at work, which is rather usefully marked with the company name.

(You do know I meant a cockerel, didn't you?)

It's worth noting that I don't collect mugs. Please don't take the above as license to buy me endless mugs as souvenirs whenver you travel - I'd much rather you instead spent the money on enjoying your holiday more.

What I collect are adventures. The mugs are merely the physical manifestation of those adventures. They're like the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, but for software engineering rather than archaeology.

Taking Down the Decoration

2012-01-05T14:48:00.001Z

Although it's not quite traditional, I am in the habit of taking down the Christmas decoration just before leaving the house for the final time on the 31st of December. This therefore symbolises the passing of the year, and the entry to a new year with a clean slate. Plus, it's quick and easy to do so.

You'll note that I said decoration, singular.

For the past several years, since I moved out of home actually, it has been my approach that I have a single decoration at Christmas. This is just enough to set the festive scene, without requiring any significant amount of effort or planning. Since I'm the only person who lives there, and since I very seldom have guests, this was entirely sufficient, I thought. (I also display those few Christmas cards I receive appropriately, from whenever I receive them until the 31st.)

Lady Chocolat has made it clear that this approach to Christmas is not going to survive the wedding. And my initial compromise position, that we could perhaps have a decoration each was met with a Look. (I thought it was entirely reasonable, to be honest. I mean, that represents an increase in festive cheer by a full 100%, which is quite a lot, really.)

In truth, though, I'm not even remotely bothered by the proliferation of decorations. I'm not actually anti-decoration at all, and nor do I object to festive cheer.

What I object to, and this ties in somewhat to the previous post, is when something that should bring pleasure and joy (in this case Christmas) becomes so bound up in all manner of things that you 'must' do that it all becomes extremely stressful and loses its meaning. Especially if you're only doing these things out of some misplaced sense that you have to do them, and double especially if the only person who is aware of what you've done is yourself.

Basically, I don't like make-work tasks.

If you want to put up loads of decorations, if you enjoy having those decorations, and if you feel they add to the season, then more power to you. Have fun with that. But if, instead, it's actually a job you hate doing, and you only do it "because it's Christmas" and because you've always done it... you're doing it wrong. Trust me, there isn't a minimum number of decorations required for it to be Christmas. Santa doesn't give marks out of ten for tinsel arrangements.

You may now proceed to call me Scrooge in the comments.

The Good China

2012-01-05T14:23:00.000Z

I'm going to be a little presumptious here, and talk about wedding gifts. Specifically, the notion of "the good china".

Simply put, I don't subscribe to the notion of keeping things for "best" or for "company", or whatever else. The problem is that after the stuff gets put aside, you then spend a significant amount of effort debating about whether to bring it out because so-and-so is coming around. Is this set of guests the ones that are important enough to warrant the good china? And if so, why them and not the people you had round last week?

The longer you wait before bringing out the good china, the greater the importance that becomes attached to it in your mind. Leave it long enough, and the good china becomes an almost mystical artifact, an heirloom of your kingdom, and to be treated with the utmost reverence.

Which means that when you finally do bring out the good china, presumably because the Queen has decided to pop round, you then get to spend the entire time terrified that it might get damaged.

In effect, what should have been a great blessing, and a source of joy and pleasure, instead becomes a source of stress and division, and then a terrifying ordeal.

I exaggerate, of course. But only somewhat.

My approach is the opposite - that these things are intended to give joy, and that they do that by being put to their intended use. That way, you can be reminded of the wonderful gift that your friend/relative/random stranger has given you. And when, as is sadly inevitable, it gets damaged/lost/worn out, well, at least you have the memories of having used the item well and properly. And not kept it carefully kept it "for best" for several years, finally brought it out of storage, and then dropped it at an inopportune time.

Ultimately, what I'm trying to get at is this: If you should find yourself giving us a nice gift, and you later find that we are busily using said gift, rather than laying it aside "for best", please don't be offended. It is not that we don't value and esteem you and your generous gift to us. On the contrary, it is precisely because we do.

Oh, for goodness sake!

2012-01-05T09:19:00.002Z

Michele Bachmann has not failed in her bid to be President of the United States due to some horrific sexist agenda. Sarah Palin did not fail in her not-quite-bid to be President of the United States due to some horrific sexist agenda.

They failed because they were lousy candidates.

In all seriousness, Obama has turned out to be a huge let down as president. He's there for the beating, and if the Republicans put forward a decent candidate, they would win. But if Palin and Bachmann are representative of the quality of Republican candidates, Obama might as well not bother campaigning; his opponents will do the job for him.

(Incidentally, that's not to say that there aren't horrific sexist agendas at work. But Bachmann and Palin aren't good evidence of them, since there are so many non-sexist reasons for rejecting them as candidates.)

Sleeping Beauty

2012-01-04T19:37:00.002Z

Forgot to post this before Christmas...

The ballet of the year was "Sleeping Beauty". It was okay, a bit better than last year's effort, and perhaps on a par with the squirrels of the year before.

However, there was one thing that I could really have managed without: a couple of the female dancers seemed to be little more the skin stretched over bone.

Now, in fairness, it is just about possible that they were just naturally thin. But it really didn't look that way, and they really didn't look healthy. It most definitely looked to me like eating disorders were at work (or, since we're insisting that eating disorders are actually diseases, perhaps they were simply following an unhealthy diet).

It is possible that those involved in ballet will say that such thing dancers are a necessity. After all, they have to perform all manner of lifts that require significant strength, and the less the dancers weigh the easier those lifts are to perform. Indeed, some of the lifts may simply be impossible with dancers of a more normal weight.

But, on the other hand, if an art form requires a significant proportion of practitioners risk their health in order to perform, perhaps it is time for that art form to go the same way as the castrati.

Roar of the Monomyth

2012-01-04T14:23:00.000Z

Lady Chocolat and I watched "The Lion King" yesterday. This may well have been the first time I've seen it since it was in the cinema (the first time); it is certainly the first time for quite some time. It was also considerably better than I remembered.

Of course, the story of "The Lion King" isn't at all original. There are bits of "Hamlet" in there, and there are more than a few similarities with "Star Wars" as well (son of Darth Vader grows up in exile, is taught by some bizarre mystic, and then goes to fight the evil empire and bring balance to the For, er, Pride Lands). And, of course, there's "Kimba, the White Lion"...

That's not very surprising. After all, there are apparently only seven stories in the whole of literature. (Incidentally, one of which is "American Pie". Be afraid. Be very afraid.) And, moreover, "The Lion King" seems to map pretty closely to what Joseph Campbell termed the 'Monomyth' in his book, "Hero With a Thousand Faces".

In said book, Campbell studies a large number of mythic tales throughout history, and finds a great deal of similarity in the structure of those tales. Indeed, he identifies certain key stages in the journey, events which crop up again and again in these stories.

And so, "Lord of the Rings" has much in common with "Star Wars", which shares a great deal with "The Matrix", which mirrors "The Lion King". Plus, usefully, it's almost exactly the same pattern that is built into the career of every D&D character ever. (What? How else did you figure I knew this stuff?)

Campbell's conclusion was that the reason this story resonates so well with people (especially men) was to do with an expression of Jung's notion of the Collective Unconscious - we've told those stories so often that they're now just part of our cultural gestalt. Or something.

Tolkien's explanation of the same was the notion of 'sub-creation' - that as created works, Man has been imprinted with universal truth by God, and cannot help but express that truth in his own stories. This also has the convenient effect of explaining the similarities between various religions.

Sadly, my own explanation for this is rather simpler. The stages of the hero's journey as found in the monomyth also crop up in another place, and it happens to be in an experience that every single adult on the planet shares. Specifically, it is the story, over and over, of a child growing up.

100 Days

2012-01-03T10:57:00.002Z

On the 12th of April this year, exactly 100 days from today, Part Four begins. On that day, I will be married. Huzzah!

Right on cue, last night I had a particularly bizarre dream, about a ninja attack on our wedding day. Obviously, this is an expression of my anxiety about the wedding. (Not about getting married to LC, you understand, but rather the organisation of the day itself.)

Anyway, in the dream I was wearing a suit, so it clearly wasn't a realistic dream...

When Boobs Go Bad

2012-01-03T10:49:00.003Z

At the tail end of last year, I was of course horrified at the story of the faulty breast implants. Apparently, some supplier had switched from the approved silicone compound to a slightly different industrial compound. The health risks appear to be fairly minor, but I daresay they're pretty horrifying for the women involved, who will no doubt be keen to have the implants removed and/or replaced as soon as possible.

One thing I don't understand, though, is why it is expected that the NHS will be picking up the bill for this. The clinics that performed the operations are, ultimately, responsible for checking their suppliers. They also carry insurance to protect themselves in case of a botched surgery. This most certainly counts.

It would seem to me, therefore, that it should be a matter for these private businesses to be arranging to correct their mistake. If they are at all slow in doing so, the full force of the law should be applied in making them fulfil their obligations.

Oh, and then we should be going after the company who supplied the faulty implants as well.

(Questions over whether it is actually healthy for so many women to seek such an enhancement in the first place is a question for another time.)

Uncertain

2011-12-31T11:11:00.003Z

For the first time since 2003/2004, I go into the New Year without a clear idea of what to expect. I know that the next few months will be pretty stressful, and hard work. And I know that April will bring the wedding, which will be awesome.

But after that...?

Well, I don't know. Hence the uncertainty, really. Things will change, but which things, and to what extent?

Oh well. It will be fun finding out!

My Year in 2011

2011-12-31T10:34:00.002Z

With a view to clearing my to-do list as far as is possible before the bells (and also to put off some of the day's less pleasant tasks), I thought I'd do my review of the year a little early.

2011 has been a strangely mixed year. In some ways, it has been the best year ever, while in others it has been pretty horrible. My overall impression of the year, though, has been one of abiding and deep tiredness.

My Year in... Work

2011 has not been the best of years in work. Things for the company have been going well, but for myself... not so much. August and September were particularly hard, and things have only recovered somewhat. I'm not looking forward to going back, while at the same time determined to do better again in 2012.

My Year in... Gaming

2011 was probably the best year for gaming since I left university. The RPG Meetup has moved across to Groupspaces, and continues to go well. We seem to have settled at around 25 people, with about a dozen people in the "core group". There are several games ongoing at any time, so people can usually find a game when they want to play.

This year I ran the first section in a new campaign "The Eberron Code", which will continue in 2012 (some time after the wedding). That went exceptionally well, and has joined my legendary "big three" as one of the campaigns I'm most proud of.

I also ran three one-off games. The first was a "Star Wars Saga Edition" game with a bit of an A-team vibe. This went exceptionally well, with everyone involved having a really good time. However, it was very quickly eclipsed by "Ultraviolet: Code-500", which was the single best game I have run in many years. And then, this week, I ran my second annual Christmas Game, which was once again "Serenity". Despite two late call-offs, the game remained a lot of fun, and was rather more satisfying than last year's effort.

In addition to running some good games, I got some opportunity to play, with the occasional game of "The Laundry", "Deadlands" and "Dark Sun". Good times.

The Saturday Game has largely come to a halt. I finished off the "Company of the Black Hand" campaign, and we've since played a couple of sessions of "Dark Heresy". However, I explained that the wedding marks the end of my availability for this game. I think we will have no more than one or two more sessions between now and then.

In 2012, I am hoping to run a handful of one-off games, and am also hoping that my schedule will allow me to continue "The Eberron Code". Obviously, we'll need to see about both these things.

My Year in... Band

As with so many other things, 2011 was a mixed year for the band. Early in the year, we were promoted to Grade 4A. We went into the season in high spirits, and actually won prizes at the first competition of the year, a Minor contest but traditionally a tough one. Spirits were high... and then quickly crushed.

The rest of the season was largely a sequence of disappointments. We failed to qualify at the Worlds, we didn't win any prizes of note, and we got some really hard criticism for our efforts.

We did set up the Development Band, which competed four times. Again, they won prizes on their first outing, which was remarkable. But, again, they didn't qualify at either the Worlds or at Cowal.

Financially, the band did extremely well, easing my fears for the future somewhat. However, at the end of the year we lost our lead drummer, and the pipe major of the Development Band. These were both painful losses that we haven't really recovered from.

It looks like 2012 is likely to be another year of consolidation. We'll see how we get on in Grade 4A, but the standard is really high and it's not clear we'll make it. I'll be leading the Development Band out, which could be... interesting. We'll see how it goes.

My Year in... Love

Super Secret Goal #3 was completed in June, and was awesome of course.

The preparations for the wedding have been a bit of a shock to the system, as there's so much more to do than I had expected. And, especially difficult, much of it is stuff that gets put in motion but can't be finished off until April... this leaves a huge pile of things unresolved, which is just stressful.

Anyway, things are either well in hand, or we've forgotten something important. I'll let you know in April!

My Year in... Resolutions

Six done, three failed, and one in progress. That's a 'B' grade performance, which is okay but not stellar.

For 2012, there is precisely one goal, and it will be resolved in 2012 (barring a disaster, of course).

My Year in... Travel

The annual trip to Ireland with the band went well enough. This year, we were joined by Lady Chocolat, which was nice. Recently, work took several of us out to Stuttgart for a training day, a trip that also went very well.

And, finally, the big trip of the year was to Rome, which was awesome.

Next year might well have a big trip in the offing...

My Year in... Faith

There's not really a lot to report here. All remains well, for now.

My Year in Painting

Over the course of the year, I gradually painted up that Ork Warband I mentioned last year. It is now done, and glaring menacingly across the living room. I have decided against getting any more figures to paint, at least for the time being.

My Year... Overall

2011 was a very mixed year. The trip to Rome was awesome, and the gaming front has been very good. On the other hand, the band's season was extremely disappointing, and work has been extremely stressful. August, in particular, was an horrible month.

2012 beckons. The high point is pretty obvious, but the rest...

Books of the Year 2011

2011-12-31T10:17:00.002Z

As I noted in my update on goals, I'm currently in progress on two books, but extremely unlikely to finish either today. That being the case, here's the roundup of the books that I have completed this year:

"AD&D: Monster Manual", by Gary Gygax
"AD&D: Player's Handbook", by E. Gary Gygax
"Pathfinder: Vaults of Madness", by Greg A. Vaughan
"Pathfinder: The Thousand Fangs Below", by Graeme Davis
"Pathfinder: Sanctum of the Serpent God", by Neil Spicer
"Les Miserables Volume One", by Victor Hugo *
"Serenity: Out in the Black", by Tracy and Laura Hickman
"Serenity: Adventures", by James Davenport, Ted Reed, James M. Ward, Alana Abbot and Billy Aguiar
"Pathfinder: The Haunting of Harrowstone", by Michael Kortes
"Serenity: Spaceships and Six Shooters", by Lynn Blackson and Jason Durall
"Serenity: Big Damn Heroes Handbook", from Margaret Weis Productions
"At the Gates of Darkness", by Raymond E. Feist
"Pathfinder: Trial of the Beast", by Richard Pett
"Les Miserables, Volume Two", by Victor Hugo *
"Pathfinder: Broken Moon", by Tim Hitchcock
"Cloud Atlas", by David Mitchell *
"The Fort", by Bernard Cornwell
"Pathfinder: Wake of the Watcher", by Greg A. Vaughan
"Watcher of the Dead", by J.V. Jones
"AD&D: Dungeon Master's Guide", by Gary Gygax
"AD&D: Legends & Lore", by James M. Ward and Robert Kuntz
"AD&D: Fiend Folio", edited by Don Turnbull
"AD&D: Monster Manual II", by Gary Gygax
"Pathfinder: Shadows of Gallowspire", by Brandon Hodge
"Pathfinder: The Brinewall Legacy", by James Jacobs
"Pathfinder: Bestiary 2", by Paizo Publishing
"I Shall Wear Midnight", by Terry Pratchett
"Pathfinder: Night of Frozen Shadows", by Greg A. Vaughan
"Empire of Silver", by Conn Iggulden
"War and Peace", by Leo Tolstoy *
"Black Crusade", by Fantasy Flight Games
"The Books of the South", by Glen Cook
"Pathfinder: The Hungry Storm", by Jason Nelson
"Pathfinder: Forest of Spirits", by Richard Pett
"The Gathering Storm", by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
"Pathfinder: Advanced Player's Guide", from Paizo Publishing
"Renegade's Magic", by Robin Hobb

There are four books from The List, marked with asterisks. (Note that "Les Miserables" counts twice, per my "one set of covers = one book" rule.) Twenty-five of the books are RPG-related, mostly from the Pathfinder line. There were no work-related books, nor were there any re-reads.

It's hard to pick out the best books of the year, as there weren't any that stood out. I think perhaps "Les Miserables" edges out the competition as being the most satisfying read (although that's two books, and so cheating...). The worst was "Renegade's Magic", which was not a fun read - I only read it to finish up the trilogy, and the best thing I can say about it is that it is done!

For 2012, I currently have 25 books picked out, plus the two that are currently in progress. This includes two from The List - "Great Expectations" and "A Town Like Alice". I would expect to get through all of these without any difficulty. Beyond that, I'm not setting any reading goal, but will continue to note books as I finish them.

End of Year Update on Goals

2011-12-31T09:57:00.002Z

The end of the year beckons, and I'm unlikely to make any more progress on any of my goals, so here's the year-end update:

Super Secret Goal #3 - Complete.
Blog more - This is post 818 on the blog, well short of the 900-post mini-target for the end of the year. On the other hand, I did manage to "blog more", so the goal as stated at the start of the year, is a success.
Lose weight - Fail. Christmas has not done me any favours this year.
The band got promoted last year, which meant that our goal for 2011 was to attain promotion again. This proved to be far too ambitious, and so this goal is failed.
The Saturday Game - Complete.
Write something - Fail. I had intended to finish off the writing task during the month of December, which then became an effort to finish it in my week off, but I never did. Shame.
Relax more - Complete.
Books - The goal as stated is complete. Of the five books other books I wanted to tackle, I have finished three and am in progress on both of the other two. I should finish those in the next few days, but won't get them done today.
Painting - Complete.
Wedding Preparations - Ongoing. The next major task is sending out the invitations, but there have been some unforseen delays...

So, that gives a total of six goals completed, three failed, and one that will remain ongoing for the next three and a half months. That's not a bad showing, but not a particularly good one, either. Still, given that I wanted to avoid a "tyranny of goals", it's not too bad I suppose.

#36: "Pathfinder: Advanced Player's Guide", from Paizo Publishing
#37: "Renegade's Magic", by Robin Hobb

On the other hand...

2011-12-08T19:24:00.002Z

Turns out that almost immediately after I published my last post, the road opened up again and I was able to go. I promptly left the office and had a really quick ride home. I'm now 36 minutes short of where I 'should' be for the week, but that's okay. I'll make up the time tomorrow.

With the extra time I have been given, I was able to finish up the most recent novel, which was the twelve volume of the Wheel of Time. And, having said that, I can almost hear Chris bracing himself for the big rant...

Well, it turned out that the book did indeed live up to expectations, being a big turgid mess of words with nothing actually happening. For the first twenty-seven chapters, anyway. After that, suddenly, the plot sprang to life, and it was actually quite exciting. Almost reminded me of why I got so far into the series in the first place.

Apparently, Robert Jordan had the book partially written before he died. It's probably unkind, but I think I can pinpoint just where he got to.

#35: "The Gathering Storm", by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

There's no place like home...

2011-12-08T15:35:00.001Z

Today, Scotland is being battered by high winds. This is not the usual run-of-the-mill winds we sometimes get, nor indeed is it the absurdly anti-climactic non-winds I expected when I heard they'd put out a Red Alert about the winds. (I mean, honestly, what was I supposed to expect? They declare extreme weather warnings at the first hint of weather these days.)

So, I developed a cunning plan. My plan was to stick around in the office for the minimum possible amount of time, attend the meeting I had booked, then copy some stuff onto a disk (so I could work at home), and then, well, go home.

This was an excellent and inventive plan, which proved to have only one small flaw.

About one hour before I was able to leave the office, a lorry overturned on the motorway, right where I needed to join it. And, consequently, the entire road system near the office has ground to a halt for the foreseeable future. In a cruel reversal of last year's Snow Days, this year I have become trapped in the office.

Strike!

2011-11-30T10:48:00.000Z

So, the strike...

On the one hand:

- I'm really not a fan of the various union leaders. In fact, they seem to go out of their way to make sure I don't like them. And I can't help but think that a large part of their motivation is political; if the Labour party were in office doing exactly the same things, I daresay they wouldn't be as active.

- It is true that much of our public services just aren't fit for purpose (with the House of Commons being the most obvious example). It is true that there is a very strong case for some cuts. It is true that we're just not getting good value for money in a lot of areas. It is true that there are entire functions that various organisations are providing that they really shouldn't be. It is true that the bureaucracy has gotten badly out of hand, and is now serving the bureaucracy more than it should (and, sometimes, more than it does us). And it is likely true that there are entire layers of middle management that could simply be eliminated that would not only not reduce services, but which would actually improve them.

- If we were setting up public sector pay and pension arrangements from a blank slate, it is almost certainly the case that we wouldn't offer anything like the current arrangement, and even the revised arrangement on offer is probably more generous than what would be tabled.

However...

We're not setting up public sector pay and pension arrangements from a blank slate. A particular set of pay and conditions were agreed, including the current pension arrangements. And simply trying to change those unilaterally is wrong.

(And, actually, it's exactly the same argument as I made with the banker bonuses at the start of the year - the contracts say that particular payments should be made; those payments should be made. Despite most of the banks being in public ownership, the government haven't insisted on a mass renegotiation of banker pay, and they haven't even insisted that the banks only pay out the minimum contractually-required bonuses. That they are instead going after public sector workers is a rather shocking double standard.)

The government tabled an initial ridiculous offer. They had it rejected, and came back with another "generous" offer that was still unacceptable. They seem strongly disinclined to further negotiations. That being the case, striking is certainly justified.

(At the moment, the government are asking public sector workers to accept a multi-year pay freeze followed by a two-year 1% increase while inflation is around 5% (effectively, a big pay cut), and to pay more into their pension, and to work longer, and to get a smaller pension at the end. And in return they'll... well, nothing really. Some negotiation. Any one of these, or maybe the combination of "pay freeze" and "work longer", might be acceptable, but all together? Yeah, right.)

As far as I can see, the only thing wrong with the strike is that it's a one-day stoppage. This will probably hurt the workers more than it does the government. Still, this is probably just the opening shot - I can foresee worse to come.

It's going to be an interesting few months.

One More Update on Goals

2011-11-29T10:53:00.001Z

As we move into December, I think there's time for one last update on goals, before the end-of-year wash-up:

Super Secret Goal #3 - Complete.
Blog more - Ongoing. The blog passed 800 posts quite recently, but in order to reach the target of 999 by April 11th it probably needs to hit 900 by the end of this year, which isn't happening.
Lose weight - Ongoing. As with the blog target, I haven't done as much as I would have liked, and won't have done as much as I would like by the end of the year, but I'm not too unhappy about the actual progress to date.
The band got promoted last year, which meant that our goal for 2011 was to attain promotion again. This proved to be far too ambitious, and so this goal is failed.
The Saturday Game - Complete. It seems doubtful that we'll get together again this year, and we'll probably only get together a couple of times in the new year. A shame, but there it is.
Write something - Ongoing. I had hoped to get this done for Lady Chocolat returning, but that proved over-ambitious. My revised deadline was the end of this month, but wasn't able to find the time. I intend to have it done by the end of the year.
Relax more - Complete-ish. As discussed last time, I let things slide a bit and created problems for myself. Better to just stay on top of things!
Books - I have finished "War and Peace", completing the reading I set out at the start of the year. Further, I have now reached 34 books for the year. There are five more books I would like to read, including one from The List. This should be possible, but I'm not going to press too hard.
Painting - Complete. For now, I have no intention of investing in any more miniatures. I should probably find a good home for the left-over paint and brushes!
Wedding Preparations - Ongoing. These remain well in hand. The wedding cars are booked, we had another meeting with the photographer on Saturday, and we sorted out the bulk of the Guest List on Friday. (That last was absolutely brutal. It's really no fun deciding which of your friends not to invite, since you can't invite everyone.)

Five complete, one failed, and four ongoing. Not a bad position to be in at this stage.

#34: "Pathfinder: Forest of Spirits", by Richard Pett

Both barrels...

2011-11-28T16:49:00.000Z

George Osborne has decided to start building infrastructure projects to create jobs, and get the economy moving. He's finally realised that that's the sort of thing that really needs to be done to help fix things.

I was absolutely delighted at this... for all of five seconds. And then it was explained how he was going to pay for it all: yet more cuts. Cuts that don't help at all, that just demoralise everyone, that destroy confidence, and that therefore act as a massive drag on the economy.

He was so close. But he might as well not have bothered. Gutted.

Meanwhile, on the yellow side of our disaster of a government, Nick Clegg has finally realised that people hate the Lib Dems. So, he's going to take action to fix that, right?

Well, no. He's called in his marketing experts to help rebrand the party.

Because of course, when people hate you for your actions, and don't trust you because of your lies, the thing to do is carry on with the same actions but find ways to lie more effectively!

If the Lib Dems want to avoid the annihilation that awaits them at the next election, I recommend the following:

1) Withdraw from the coalition immediately. Abstain from all future votes, thus avoiding bringing down the government, but under no circumstances support any government policy.

2) Replace Nick Clegg as leader, and then throw him, and any other person who held office in this government, out of the party.

That is the minimum required to have a chance. Even that will probably not be enough. But anything less will leave the party tainted with the poisonous stink of supporting the current hated government, and leave intact their deserved reputation for mendacity.

We can rebuild it. We have the technology

2011-11-27T14:58:00.002Z

I have fixed my bookshelves, at least for a little while. The problem seems to be that they were overloaded, with the books forcing the sides apart, tearing the nails out of place, and causing the whole thing to sag.

I took it out of place, tightened the holding screws, re-did the nails, added some new nails... and it seems nice and solid. I have since re-stacked the shelves, being careful not to force so many books in. This has the benefit that the shelves are now back together, but has the disadvantage that there really isn't enough space for all the books. It seems I need to get some more bookshelves.

And that's before even considering all the hundreds of books LC will be bringing with her...

There's only one way to find out!

2011-11-25T15:17:00.002Z

Here's a question: who is the greatest heroine in Sci-fi? I'm pretty sure it's either Sarah Connor or Ripley, but which?

There are actually some marked similarities. In the first film, each is relatively defenceless against a far superior threat. In the second film, each reaches a point where she takes a stand against the foe ("Get away from her, you bitch!" being one of the greatest lines in all of sci-fi).

And in each case, you hear occasional tales of a further sequel or two, but nothing seems to come of it...

Now, I like Sarah Connor, but then I also like Ripley. But which is better?

On the Horns of a Dilemma

2011-11-24T11:17:00.001Z

I have always had mixed feelings about the Harry Potter films. "Philosopher's Stone" is very distinctly a kids film, and frankly an over-long one at that. "Chamber of Secrets", on the other hand, is fantastic - definitely my favourite of the series. "Prisoner..." is probably a really good film, but I found the change in tone to be rather jarring after what had gone before, and unlike others I didn't really welcome it.

"Goblet of Fire" is the last one I own on DVD. For the first time, I found that the film was really too short - the need to compress the story to fit the allotted time really compromised the narrative. "Order of the Phoenix" is my second-favourite film, largely because of the portrayal of Dolores Umbridge (for my mind, the best and most unique villain in Harry Potter). But "Half-blood Prince" again suffered from being too compressed, which was a shame as it's probably the best of the novels.

And then they decided to split "Deathly Hallows" into two films. I am really not a fan of that approach - IMO, only "Kill Bill" has managed to pull off that little trick. Still, I suppose it meant that they didn't need to compress as much. It's just a shame that DH is one of the few books that would benefit from some serious compression - Harry just spends far too long wandering around on the periphery of the action. And so, Part One is largely spent setting things up for Part Two (and so is a rather wasted film), and while Part Two is considerably better (third best in the series, IMO), the climax is rather to pyrotechnic for my tastes - quite at odds with the final showdown in the book.

Why is this relevant?

Well, due to combination of factors. While I am not personally a huge fan, Lady Chocolat is. "Deathly Hallows, Part Two" is about to be released on DVD. However, in a Disney-esque move, the publishers have decided to release it for all of a month, before withdrawing all the DVDs from sale.

All of which leads to a slightly tricky dilemma. I'm inclined to think we should own a set of the movies, and if they're going to be available for only a short time, it should probably be now. That's fair enough - a boxed set of all eight can be had for a very reasonable price.

But... do we go for the DVD set, or a combined DVD/Blu-ray set? At the moment, I have a Standard Def TV and DVD player, but I also happen to know that I'll be being upgraded to a High Def TV in the nearish future, after which a Playstation 3 becomes a very likely purchase. And that suggests the Blu-ray set.

It's a tricky one. Normally, the answer would be "get DVD now, and maybe upgrade later", but with the rapid deletion...

Not Ready for eBooks

2011-11-23T16:39:00.001Z

I'm finding the idea of getting a Kindle and/or iPad (or equivalents) increasingly tempting as time goes on. However, I am as yet resisting, for five reasons:

Despite the oddities inherent in this position given my choice of careers, I'm actually something of a Luddite when it comes to all this newfangled technology. I only got a mobile phone when I was going to visit CJ in the States, and needed some way to be in contact while on the move. I've avoided getting any sort of smartphone, don't bother with Faceboo, and have skipped the delights of MMORPGs entirely. So, to some extent, it's just a matter of principle. (That said, I was an "early adopter" of DVD. Probably one of my best moves, that.)
Can't use a Kindle on an airplane whilst taking off or landing (although you should be able to - those things are hardened against lightning strikes; they can handle passengers reading Dan Brown's latest excretions).
If I'm away somewhere and my £8 book gets lost/stolen/damaged, it's annoying but no big deal. The occasional £8 is below my threshold of notice, so I'll just get a new copy and move on. However, if my £100 Kindle is lost/stolen/damaged, that's quite another thing. Especially since it would also mean the loss (at least temporarily) of the entire library of books contained within, including the three or four other novels I've taken on holiday with me.
This one is specific to the iPad. The one use I have for this device is as storage for my many RPG books. But, in order to be really useful it would need to contain all my RPG books, including the ones currently littering the floor in the Purple Room (due to a broken bookshelf). Many of those books simply aren't legally available in PDF, and in any case buying new copies is too expensive to consider. So the one immediate use I actually have for such a device is also not something I can legally do.
Books aren't subject to VAT. Computer files, including eBooks, are.

#33: "Pathfinder: The Hungry Storm", by Jason Nelson

The Return of Lady Chocolat

2011-11-22T10:17:00.001Z

Lady Chocolat returned from Kenya on Saturday, and I was able to unveil my latest surprise by meeting her at Heathrow. This proved to be a particularly wise move, as the flight up on Sunday was delayed, but more on that later.

Originally, my plan for her return had been to take the day off work and meet her at Glasgow airport. That was pretty much the best I could do. However, quite close to her departure there was a change of dates, which meant that her return would be on a weekend. And so a plan was born... The day after she left, once I had confirmed details of her return flights and hotel, everything was ready.

The last week was pretty dire, actually. Whereas previous weeks had been a case of just getting on with things, this last week was like the countdown to Christmas or to the school holidays - I just wanted it done, was excessively conscious of the clock, and so it dragged out. But, finally, I got to Friday, which was spent on an epic painting session, and then in to Saturday, and I was off.

The flight down was fine. I checked in online, didn't have a bag to drop, sailed through security (who made me put my boat away. Spoil-sports!), waited a while with a coffee, got on the plane, read for a while, and got off the plane. Pretty standard, really. I was amused that they quite often showed our journey's progress on a big map of europe, where the plane icon they were using was bigger than the distance we were travelling on the map!

On arrival, I made my way from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3. This proved to be a mistake - for all its faults, Terminal 5 is a much more modern facility and generally more pleasant. I should probably have waited there until the last minute before transferring. But no matter. In Terminal 3 I got a couple of sandwiches, spent a couple of hours reading, and then spent an hour impatiently bouncing from foot to foot while LC made her way off the plane, through customs, collected her bag, and into Arrivals.

Surprise!

We stayed in the Premier Inn. This is the second time we've stayed in one of their hotels (the first being in Belfast), and I must admit to being impressed. The staff were helpful and welcoming, the room was spacious, and the bed was comfortable. Basically, I couldn't fault it.

Now, I'm not claiming that it is the best hotel I've ever stayed in. However, I have now stayed in most of the budget chains, and this one is definitely the best of those. And the facilities put a lot of other, more expensive, hotels to shame - indeed, in terms of the room itself, it even beats out some much higher-starred hotels. So, that's good.

(Probably the best thing, though, is that PI Heathrow seemed pretty much identical to PI Belfast. That consistency is itself a boon, since it allows one to book with confidence with what you're getting. I've had generally good results by picking at random, but there have been some stinkers, one particular hotel in Paris being notable...)

We went for the full breakfast, and stocked up on all manner of foods. Good thing we did, really. (The breakfast was a most welcome start to the day - the range was good, the quality was okay if not exceptional, and the price wasn't too steep.)

We then made our way back to Terminal 5. There was fog, which meant delays...

LC had to check-in and drop a bag off. Fortunately, when checking in, she found that the seat next to mine was still free. (I had checked in online previously - for some reason I had to do both flights together.) We then proceeded through security again, grabbed a seat, and waited.

Our flight was delayed, but we were told that it was expected to leave at 12:45 instead of 12. As a result of this, we decided that it wasn't quite time for lunch, so waited. And, fair play to them, they seemed to be running roughly to-time, albeit offset by about 45 minutes. So, they got us onto the plane at about the right time for a 12:45 departure...

Pretty much as soon as we were all on the plane, and stuck there, the captain informed us that there was going to be another hour to wait before take-off. We had no choice but to wait, stuck in our seats.

It's fair to say I was more than a little annoyed about that. Firstly, I don't think they should have had us board the plane in that case. Terminal 5 has its faults, but it is much more comfortable than being stuck in a plane unnecessarily. However, I think that decision is forgivable.

But they should have made it clear to us what the delays were going to be. Had we known, we would have made sure to get some lunch before boarding. That way, the additional wait and the flight would have been much more comfortable. Instead, we had to go hungry. And, of course, there wasn't any meaningful food on the plane. Polo mints do not make a good lunch.

Anyway, eventually the flight took off. I read for quite a while, finished my book, started the next one, and then we landed. And all was well - Lady Chocolat was home.

#32: "The Books of the South", by Glen Cook

Waaaagh!

2011-11-19T11:36:00.002Z

After a truly epic painting session lasting more than two whole "Indiana Jones" soundtracks, I finished the last of my Orks last night. The varnish was applied this morning, and they have now joined the rest of the horde (or "Waaagh") on top of my DVD shelves.

I have now completed all but one of the things from my "to do" list for before Lady Chocolat returns from Kenya, and all but one from my "nice to do" list. In both cases, the remaining task was just one step too far, and I have no chance of finishing it off in time.

Anyway, when the last coat went on to the last Ork yesterday I felt suddenly, immensely, happy. Actually, 'happy' isn't quite the right word. Relieved? Free? Something like that.

Given that, why do I now feel a strong urge to rush out and buy a whole bunch more?

Disaster!

2011-11-15T12:15:00.000Z

To my horror, I discovered that one of my bookshelves had collapsed on Saturday. This was terrible, not because of the loss of the shelves (they're cheap and nasty £30 efforts from Argos), but rather because of the books that live on the shelves.

This discovery prompted a hasty round of lifting the books from the shelves, and checking that they were okay. Fortunately, no harm was done. My books had survived.

This is extremely fortunate. The shelf in question contained about half of my RPG books, many of which are now irreplacable (being long out of print, and only having a few copies printed ever), and others of which would be extremely expensive to replace (for the same reason). Not to mention that this is a collection assembled over two decades of play...

Of course, I find it mightily coincidental that Lady Chocolat made her anti-RPG agenda quite clear, then arranged for herself a water-tight alibi, a scant few weeks before the shelves containing my RPG books collapsed... I can only presume her agents are at work in her absence.

Anyway, I now have an additional task for the list, one that won't be finished before Lady Chocolat returns (and therefore, she will be forced to bear witness to the horrors) - the replacement or repair of the bookshelves. My inclination at this time is to go for a repair, rather than to invest in another set of low-quality Argos shelves. I'll need to see, though - the shelves will need to be pulled out of position before I can determine if a repair is possible. My belief is that a good round of nails should do the trick, but one can never know. (Unfortunately, at this time it is not practical to invest in some good shelves, so the only question is whether to repair the existing dodgy shelves or to buy some new, equally dodgy shelves. Since the repair is considerably less hassle, it is preferable.)

#31: "Black Crusade", by Fantasy Flight Games

My Best Friend vs Man's Best Friend

2011-11-08T22:03:00.003Z

Over on the Chrlog, Chris has raised the question of who is to be my best man. Now, naturally, Chris was the second person I thought of (after Optimus Prime, of course, but it turns out that he's fictional and so unlikely to make it). However, there has been a development...

Inspired by the glorious example of Kim Kardashian, I decided to see if I could use the wonders of TV to fund the wedding. Therefore, I pitched an idea for a TV show to Sky: "My Best Friend vs Man's Best Friend" - a reality TV contest where several random blokes would be pitted against dogs in a bid to become my best man. Contestants would be judged on many 'best man' duties, such as the ability to bring me alcohol, willingness to chase after pretty girls, and ability to give a drunken and embarrassing speech on cue.

(Naturally, the balance of tasks would be important, to avoid skewing the contest too far one way or the other. For example, the St Bernard would have a clear advantage in the "bringing alcohol" contest, while the human contestants would have a clear edge in speech-giving over all dogs, except K-9 and the dogs from "Up", of course.)

Anyway, I figured there would be no way that a TV channel would go for such a ridiculous and outlandish concept, but that was because I haven't watched any reality TV lately. Apparently, Sky Living already have a very similar show, but with less intelligent contestants.

So they've commissioned the show.

Naturally, the big decision that needed to be taken was: who would be the judges. Obviously, I would have to be the head judge, but who else would be suitable?

Well, it obviously had to be a mixed panel, so as not to give the human or canine contestants an unfair advantage. And I think we've done a really good job. Playing the role of "the nasty judge", we have Kelsey Grammar who, having been married several times, knows a thing or two about best men. Our celebrity dog judge is none other than the legend that is Bouncer from Neighbours. And our final 'wild card' judge is that paragon of advertising: Churchill. (Although, to be fair, I think he may have agreed just a little too quickly...)

Anyway, look for my show coming this winter!

(Of course, there isn't a single thing in this post that is actually true. Although a big part of me really wishes it was!)

A Fascinating Fact

2011-11-05T21:42:00.004Z

There is only one wedding in the Star Wars saga, which takes place at the end of "Attack of the Clones". This is between Anakin Skywalker and Padme.

What is less obvious is the role of the other characters present. See, the marriage takes place in secret, so only five characters are present: Anakin and Amidala, C-3P0 and R2-D2, and an unnamed official. Obviously, the official conducts the wedding, so that makes sense, but the droids...

Well, it turns out that R2-D2 is the maid of honour, presumably in a Patrick Dempsey style (with all the horror that that entails). See, at that point of time he still belongs to the court of Naboo (canonically, Padme gives him to Anakin as a gift when he becomes a full Jedi Knight, in the Clone Wars cartoon). That clearly means that he's on the bride's side, and since he's clearly neither the mother nor father of the bride, the next most important role...

And C-3P0 must be the best man. Much the same logic applies - he belongs to Anakin, and that's the role that most needs filled.

I'll just repeat that for effect: C-3P0 is Darth Vader's best man.

Anyway, this explains why Darth Vader expresses no surprise at C-3P0's condition when they meet up in Cloud City (in "Empire Strikes Back"). Presumably, he's used to seeing him legless...

A Matter of Succession

2011-11-05T12:31:00.002Z

So, the government have quietly announced that from now on, daughters of the monarch will have the same rights of succession as sons. That is, if William and Catherine's first-born is a daughter, she will become queen ahead of any younger brothers she has.

As a matter of principle, this is something that is long overdue, even if it doesn't really affect anyone currently living. (Depending on how it is worded, it may mean that Anne and her children move up the list, while Edward and his children move down... but barring a major event, neither of these two were ever going to be crowned monarch anyway.) So, on the face of it, this is a good move.

However...

It does rather beg the question of why the eldest child should become monarch anyway. Why Charles, and not Andrew, or Anne, or Edward? After all, the sex of a child is essentially just a matter of probability, and the birth order is likewise just a matter of probability. The eldest child is not automatically in any way a better as a candidate as monarch. If we're eliminating one accident of birth as a criterion for becoming monarch, why not another?

So perhaps when the monarch dies, the surviving children should draw lots to determine who becomes the next king or queen. Or, indeed, perhaps we should have an election.

But, of course, it's actually a very short jump from that to the ultimate step along this path - the elimination of the monarchy entirely. After all, being born a prince rather than a pauper is just a matter of an accident of birth. Being born to a rich family does not automatically make you a better candidate for monarch than anyone else.

(And I say all this despite not actually being anti-monarchy. In principle, I would prefer a republic. But in practice, I can't see any better solution, especially given the caliber of politicians we have currently.)

It's a very dangerous game, adjusting the rules for succession. Because as soon as you make any change, you open the door for making any change.

War and Peace

2011-11-04T09:13:00.002Z

In a mammoth reading session, I managed to reach the end of "War and Peace" last night, a little ahead of schedule. In all, it has taken just under 100 days to get through.

It was an interesting novel, not least because it had a very clear agenda - Tolstoy wanted to argue that history was not a result of the actions of Great Men, but rather an inevitable procession of events that just aren't under anyone's control.

I disagree, mostly. While history is not just the story of Great Men, and while looking for a single ultimate cause of any historical event is rather foolish, this does not by itself negate free will, nor does it make history inevitable.

Tolstoy's argument is rather flawed, in a number of ways. In particular, he makes the assumption that the universe is infinite (it isn't) and that time is infinite (it isn't, in either direction). He also argues that historical events are inevitable, based on the fact that once you've done something you cannot take them back and do them differently. The faulty logical leap here is obvious - just because you cannot now go back and change things doesn't mean that at the time you couldn't have acted differently.

He also attacks historians based on their search for an ultimate cause of historical events. His argument here is that every cause is, itself, the result of some other cause, and so on back in time. This is correct, as far as it goes. However, what he neglects to consider is the possibility of 'windowing' history - when studying the causes of the Second World War, historians won't go back to the Roman Empire and work from there, but rather will go back just a few decades. Having doen this, they'll note the starting conditions, and work from those. In effect, this means that all studies of history are at best a simplification of reality... but that's inevitable. The only totally accurate map of history would be identical to the events themselves!

I think he's also wrong to discount the actions of Great Men entirely. Indeed, he argues that such figureheads are actually the least free figures in history, as they have to act in accordance with the inevitable path of events. But this just isn't true, either.

Arguably, the course of events will be directed by the sum of the will of the seven billion people on Earth. That makes sense (although even that is a simplification, since it neglects factors we do not control, such as the weather). However, it is also true that some people have a greater or lesser impact than others - if Barack Obama decides we're going to attack Iran, that counts for rather more than if I decide we won't!

Tolstoy's counter-argument here is that any movement of armies is dependent on the many people in the army - if the men and women of our armed forces refused to attack Iran, then the will of our politicians is moot. This is true, as far as it goes. However, it depends on many thousands of people exercising their will to countermand the will of one other, and it depends on them doing so even when they're strongly incentivised not to do so. They could refuse to fight, but they won't - if only a few refuse, they will be punished harshly, and a mass refusal is highly unlikely in anything but the most extreme circumstances.

Anyway.

If the purpose of literature is to make us think, then this was a great book, even if I disagree. If the purpose is simply to entertain, then I'm afraid it was little better than okay. I'm glad I read it... but I won't be reading it again in a hurry!

#30: "War and Peace", by Leo Tolstoy (a book from The List)

Fourth Season Syndrome

2011-11-03T15:53:00.000Z

It is an almost univeral law that for any TV series you care to name, the second and third seasons are the very best the show has to offer. (It's not absolutely universal, before you start citing exceptions...)

The reasons for this are quite simple, actually. In the first season, the creators are working without feedback, and so they have to take their best guess at what the audience will like. So, some ideas will work, some will fail, and others will do okay. In the second season, then, they are able to refine the concept. Ideas that didn't work out are dropped, while others that worked well are expanded. And so things are great for a year or two.

Problem is, after three years or so, they will have used up all of their best material. At this point, they will go one of two ways - either they start expanding on lesser ideas (resulting in an inevitable loss of quality), or they will try to take the show in new directions by shaking it up (almost certainly resulting in a loss of quality).

The latest casualty of this law has been "Fringe", which ended its third season extremely strongly. Unfortunately, they've started the fourth season by introducing a major paradox that has dramatically shaken up the world and the characters. The reasoning between these changes makes no sense (in order to fix a broken universe, some of the characters deliberately caused a time paradox?). And, worst of all, they've retconned the previous three seasons. Effectively, it's like jumping into an entirely different show four seasons in, but only after someone managed to destroy all of the DVDs of the previous three series.

Basically, it's not a good situation. As things stand, "Fringe" will be joining "Torchwood", "Bones" and "House" on the reject pile, which is a shame.

Meanwhile, "Merlin" is continuing to be quite good, although it, too, is suffering from Fourth Season Syndrome. (I would say more, but Lady Chocolat hasn't seen it yet... spoilers!) "Strikeback: Project Dawn" has ended, but was at least good fun, if not particularly high art. "Carnivale" remains good, but is nearly finished. And "Terra Nova" remains... okay, I guess.

Finally, two annoyances. It looks like Sky have taken the decision over the last season of "Chuck" out of my hands - they've decided not to bother showing the last thirteen episodes. I'm marginally annoyed at this, since I had decided to see it out. And it's still not clear when (or if) "Clone Wars" will be returning. But then, that's going into its fourth season as well...

As things stand, it looks like I'll be down to "Fringe" and, maybe, "Terra Nova" by the end of the year (with "Nikita" returning in April-ish). Given that neither of these is currently very good, that may finally be the time to drop the Sky subscription - it's been a long time coming.

800th post!

2011-11-02T08:42:00.000Z

This is the 800th post on this blog.

There are 162 days to the 12th of April (I'm not counting down, I just did the calculation). That means, in order to reach 999 posts before the wedding (and thus Part Four), I would need to post a little more than once per day for the next five months.

Which isn't impossible, but I'm not sure I have a sufficient supply of inane waffle and tedious rants to fill up all that space!

Just a Thought

2011-11-02T08:37:00.000Z

I find it very interesting reading much of the comment on the Guardian's website about the interaction between the Occupy protestors and the administration at St Paul's.

The Guardian and its readership is pretty strongly anti-Christian. At any other time, they would be quite keen to wipe St Paul's off the map, to destroy Christianity, and to forget it ever existed. Likewise, very few of the Occupy protestors would normally have anything whatsoever to do with Christianity, and a good number would normally be hostile to the church.

Which is fair enough. I don't agree, but they're entitled to their beliefs. (And, for what it's worth, I'm less than impressed by the actions of the administrators at St Paul's - there's a reason I've been referring to them as 'administrators' rather than 'clergy'.)

But I have to ask: if you're so virulently anti-Christian, what exactly gives you the right to lecture the church for not supporting your pet cause? Especially since the Occupy movement haven't actually told us what they want, only what they're against - and hating the 1% is not a Christian attitude.

Getting Rid of the Kardashians

2011-11-01T16:49:00.001Z

Every so often, some extremely worthy band of folk propose some sort of new legislation for our own good. A smoking ban. A fat tax. A carbon tax. Whatever. It's really quite infuriating, especially since these measures will almost certainly not actually fix the problems, but will just make like that little bit more miserable.

Well, if they are determined to 'help' us in this manner, here's one for them:

I would like to see a total ban on reporting 'lifestyle' stories about celebrities. It should be illegal to report of whatever Jordan is currently doing, on the sex lives of footballers, on Kate Middleton's latest fashion choices (or, worse, whatever her sister's bum is doing these days), on the irreconcilable differences that have caused Kim Kardashian's marriage to break down after 72 days, or any of this rubbish.

They should do it for environmental reasons. Think of all the trees that won't need to be pulped (note that recycled paper is better than non-recycled paper... but not using the paper at all is far better still). Think of all the energy saved because of all those TVs being switched off!

They should do it for feminist reasons. These lifestyle stories are put in magazines to sell to women. The entire industry (along with the fashion, cosmetics and diet industries) bases its business model on reducing the self-esteem of women. (And, worse, they hit you at both sides - firstly, they build these people up, provoking the sense that "I'll never be as good as her", and then they tear them down, encouraging their readers to mock the celebrities... only for the guilt to hit you, leaving you feeling even worse.)

But, most of all, they should do it because these stories, and the celebrities who thrive on them, are just bloody annoying. We should starve them of the publicity they need, so they are forced to either develop actual talent or, more likely, just go away.

The Books of 2012

2011-10-31T09:44:00.001Z

It has been a slightly odd year for books. Thus far I have read 28 books, and with a bit of luck I should finish another 10 or so by the end of the year. This gives a grand total of 38ish. Given that I read 56 books two years ago, and 100 books last year, this seems a rather paltry total. On the other hand, since this year will include both "Les Miserables" and "War and Peace", I don't feel it's too poor a showing. (I should finish "War and Peace" next Monday at the current rate - two days on public transport significantly accelerated my progress there.)

Next year will probably be quite an odd year in many ways, and I'm rather inclined to avoid setting goals at all - I suspect it will probably be best approached with a view to taking it as it comes and just muddling through. Which means that there won't be any reading target for the year.

Which isn't to say I don't have some notion as to how it will look!

I've now reached a point where I've almost completely stopped buying RPG books, and since I tend to read them as I buy them (or, in the past, sometimes not at all), there isn't really any great stack of books waiting to be read. That said, I will need to find an opportunity to read through the "Mutants & Masterminds" rulebook, as I'm planning on running that game briefly next summer. And there will be the usual trickle of "Pathfinder" books. Otherwise, I don't expect many RPG books to appear on the list.

But for the bulk of the year, I expect to be either catching up on, or simply reading the latest novels from, various authors and series.

The most significant of these is probably the "Wheel of Time" series, originally by Robert Jordan. Since Jordan's death, this has now been taken over by Brandon Sanderson, who has been writing the final volume - although that itself has been split into a trilogy of very thick novels (don't ask me how that works!). I currently have the first of these on my to-read pile, while the second was released in paperback earlier this month. The final volume is scheduled for a hardback release at the end of next year, so I won't finish the series until 2013 at the latest.

Next on my list is the "Soldier Son" trilogy by Robin Hobb. Truth is, I didn't particularly enjoy book one of the trilogy, but did enjoy it just enough to read volume two, which was marginally better. Since I hate leaving things partially done (especially trilogies after two volumes!), I have the third volume sitting in my to-read pile. (Actually, there's a decent chance that I'll read this by the end of this year; if not, it will be the first novel I start in 2012.)

And the third and final series that I want to get caught up on is the "Black Company" series by Glen Cook. This is a series I came to fairly recently, and has the advantage of being essentially complete - the author keeps talking about writing more, but never actually seems to do so. There are a total of seven novels remaining, but these days they are only available in compiled volumes - there are therefore three books remaining. The first of these is on my to-read pile (and scheduled to be read immediately after "War and Peace"); the remaining two are waiting for 2012.

Then there are the authors and series I'm caught up on, but who should be publishing new books in the next year. In most cases, they have already published the next volume in hardback, so it's just a case of waiting for the paperback. And so, in 2012 I should read through the next novel in the "Song of Ice and Fire" series, and the "Krondor" series by Raymond E. Feist, and the next novel from Bernard Cornwell, from Conn Iggulden, and from Terry Pratchett. (The other author I follow is J.V. Jones, but apparently the fifth and final volume in her "Sword of Shadows" trilogy won't be released in hardback until 2012, so I'll need to wait for 2013 for the paperback. And, no, don't ask me how that one works, either!)

That accounts for between 20 and 25 of my books for the year, depending on how many I get through this year. The remainder of my reading for next year, if any, will probably be from The List.

Funding Education

2011-10-28T11:57:00.001+01:00

I don't think the provision of free education in Scotland can last.

Under EU law, it is illegal for a member state to charge students from another member state higher fees than they charge their own students. What this means is that students from France, Germany, Greece, and anywhere else can apply to a Scottish university, and receive a free education. (Students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland, however, are charged fees, because the law does not say that you can't charge students from a different part of the same member state higher fees. I suspect this will be successfully challenged in the EU courts - in any case, it's a moral wrong.)

Scotland cannot afford to pay for free education for the whole of Europe. Even though it is right that education should be free, there is just no way this can last. (And, if the UK government were ever to see sense, and reverse their disastrous policy of fees, the same would apply - although education should be free, I don't see how it can be.)

So, what is to be done?

I think we should take a look at the way pensions work.

In theory, what happens is that people (and employers, and government) pay contributions into a pension fund throughout their working lives. These contributions then get invested by (in theory) very clever people, where they accumulate value over time. Then, when the person retires, they gradually withdraw that money over the remainder of their lives, giving them a decent standard of living.

(Now, it's worth noting that this system has been utterly broken by various forms of idiocy. People haven't been investing enough, those investments have been in truly hideous places, and the government has had a nasty habit of stealing the money that should have paid for tomorrow's pensions in order to pay for the budget of today. However, the principle at work is sound.)

In theory, then, a similar mechanism could be adopted to pay for education:

At birth, the government should set aside a fund for each child, as Labour actually did with the "Child Trust Funds" idea.
Over the next several years, a portion of National Insurance (or general taxation) income should likewise be taken and invested in these same funds.
Over the 16-18 years that the child is growing and attending school, therefore, a nice little pot of money should be growing, invested in their name.
When the student leaves school and proceeds on to university, college, an apprenticeship, or whatever other studies/training they do (including education abroad, if that is what they choose to do), the money that has been invested in their name is used to pay the fees for their education. (The money in the pot can only be spent on education of various sorts.)
When the person reaches the age of 25, any money that remains unspent is re-absorbed into the general pot, and invested for the next generation of students.
Universities (and colleges, and apprenticeships, and so on) should charge fees, at a level set by the government. That level should be set so that the 'Educational Fund' available to the average student is sufficient to pay for at least five years of further education, counted from the time at which it is needed.
When people (under the age of 25) enter the country as permanent residents, whether from EU member states, as immigrants, or as asylum seekers, they should immediately be assigned their own 'Educational Fund', which would start to grow, from £0, as indicated in points 1-3. This would then probably pay for part of a training course, meets our obligations under EU law, but doesn't require us to fund free education for all-comers.
It is likely that we should also bring in various educational grants as well, providing some sort of cost-of-living help for students from poorer backgrounds, to enable successful asylum seekers to afford an appropriate education, and so on.

And that's it. That way, universities (and other training facilities) are able to charge the fees that they say they need to in order to survive, our young people don't have to pay massive fees or take on huge debts, the system is properly funded, and we meet our obligations under EU law.

The major weakness in the system, of course, comes if the money indicated in points 1-3 is in fact not invested, but rather is used in the short term for tax breaks or to balance the budget - as has happened with pensions. Sadly, I don't know how to solve the problem of people!

Work is Obsolete

2011-10-28T11:29:00.000+01:00

Back in the day, the shows that predicted the future would generally present to us a vision of the future where people would have to work for only a few hours, a few days a week.

What they neglected to tell us was that this future was no dream of a more leisurely society; it is in fact a nightmare. The fundamental problem: no company is going to pay people to not work. The model presented therefore only worked if the people who were then working for companies owned a share in that company, so that when the company automated the process, and they no longer needed to work, they would still benefit from the prosperity of the company. This was not the case, it is not the case now.

We now live in a world much like that described. In a great many industries, automation has rendered a lot of workers unnecessary. When cars are manufactured, there are still people involved in designing the cars, there are people involved in tooling up the robots to build the cars, and there are people involved in testing the cars. But what there are not are large numbers of people on an assembly line building cars - instead, you have a few people monitoring the robots as they do that.

In other jobs, the work is exported to countries where it can be done more cheaply.

And so, where are unskilled and semi-skilled people supposed to work? Tesco? McDonalds? Or are they supposed to remain permanently unemployed, and live off the state?

The problems with all three 'solutions' is money. The wages offered by the employers listed are pretty low, meaning that actually living on that income is difficult to impossible. Likewise, subsisting on benefits is no way to live long-term.

But the state can't afford to vastly increase the level of unemployment benefits. On the contrary, we really need to get that bill down, because we already can't afford it.

And make no mistake - if Tesco or McDonalds were required to pay their employees much more, they would promptly respond by automating those jobs and getting rid of the staff. In fact, this is already happening - in Tesco, witness the rise of self-service checkouts; in McDonalds, the cook processes are now so carefully specified that a robot could easily do them. The only reason things like shelf-stacking and cooking in McDonalds isn't automated is that it is still (just barely) cheaper to pay a kid minumum wage to do it.

(Likewise, the only reason Nike employ large numbers of people in sweatshops in Asia is that doing so is cheaper than automating the process. If they were forced to pay those workers UK-level, or even US-level, wages for their work, they would get rid of those jobs entirely, and automate the process instead.)

It's a rough situation, and it's only going to get tougher as automation becomes more powerful (we already have robot orderlies in hospitals - how long until every checkout assistant, every waiter, every flight attendant, and so on get replaced with robots?). And, of course, it's even tougher for that segment of our society who cannot readily elevate themselves from 'unskilled' to 'skilled' - and that's not to mention the likelihood that some skilled jobs are likely to become obselete with time (as with miners).

I don't really have any great point to make here, except perhaps to say this: make damn sure your kids get a good education because, unless the revolution comes, they're going to need it!

Adventures in Public Transport

2011-10-27T12:23:00.001+01:00

My car died on me on the way to work this morning. Actually, this was really quite scary - I was pulling out into traffic at the time, when I suddenly found I had no acceleration available. Fortunately, there was nobody behind me, and I was able to reverse back out of the way of the oncoming vehicles. The consequence of this was that I was left without a car, and still needing to get into work.

And so, I was finally forced to do something I've long felt I should do, but never actually wanted to do - I used public transport to get to work.

The argument for public transport is undeniable. Man-made climate change is almost certainly a reality (I'm not 100% convinced, but definitely in the upper 90s), and even if it is not fuel prices are forever escalating. Plus, a decent public transport link stands a chance of turning the dead time spent driving into time I can spend reading, or otherwise use, at least to an extent.

And I live a mile from both a bus station and a rail station, and I work a couple of miles from an airport. One is in a medium-sized town, the other on the outskirts of Scotland's second-largest city. Surely there must be a decent public transport option?

Well, actually, no. I've investigated this before, and there is a link that is adequate for emergencies, but nothing else. It turns out to be a bit better than I thought (at least things seem to run mostly on time), but still...

The best way from home to work is by bus. There are lots of different arrangements, most requiring the use of at least two buses. The direct option is a pretty long and roundabout route, taking a bit more than an hour from getting on the bus to getting off. In theory, the indirect options are much faster... but unfortunately they require the interaction of multiple buses, which inevitably drags things out (as you get off one bus and wait for another).

The net effect is that the best route is actually to walk the mile to the bus station, get the X38, wait an hour, and then walk half a mile to the office. Unfortunately, the bus itself is extremely rattly and takes a very roundabout route (as noted previously) - the net effect was that reading was quite difficult, and I managed to get travel sick. All in all, not the best.

To their credit, the service is reasonably frequent. Between 5:30 and 6:30 (pm), there are almost 7 buses heading home. In the morning, there's a similar flurry of activity at the peak hours (which I missed this morning). So that's not too bad - I can basically travel pretty much when I would want to.

And the price is... well, the price is okay, I guess. A return ticket costs £8.10. Travelling by car probably costs about £6 each day, maybe a little more. I daresay there are cheaper tickets or passes available for folks who travel every day.

So, on two of the three counts that matter to me, the service is actually okay. I could live with the price (although it would be annoying to have to pay more), and the service is frequent enough.

But the duration of the trip is not good enough. Including the walk at each end, the journey probably takes an hour and a half. That's okay occasionally, but it's not going work on a regular basis - it would effectively mean giving up the band and the game, which is not something I'm willing to consider. It would mean extending my working day from 7:00 - 17:30 (wake up to returning home) to 6:00 - 18:30, which isn't acceptable - I refuse to live for the weekends.

So there it is. I'm actually quite glad that I was forced into taking the bus today, since it has forced me to seriously investigate the pros and cons. But it has merely confirmed what I was pretty sure of previously - that the public transport options aren't good enough to use regularly. To correct it, they will really need to put on a bus that runs from Falkirk Bus Station, along the M9 and then the A8, probably to Edinburgh Airport, and certainly to the centre of town. Basically, make the X38 an actual express service, rather than the same service as the 38 but with 'X' in front of the name!

Update on Goals

2011-10-26T10:41:00.001+01:00

It's hard to believe that we're already nearing the end of October. It seems only yesterday that I was moaning that July was lasting forever! (Unfortunately, July was followed by two woeful months in August and September. October, by contrast, has been reasonably okay, except for one thing.)

Anyway, it's long past time that I did another update on my goals for the year:

Super Secret Goal #3 - This is done. Thus far, I haven't annoyed Lady Chocolat enough for her to reverse her decision, which is good!
Blog more - This is well in hand. However, I would like to get to 999 posts by April 11th next year, just in time for Part Four, but that looks over-ambitious.
Lose weight. This is well in hand.
The band got promoted last year, which meant that our goal for 2011 was to attain promotion again. This proved to be far too ambitious, and so this goal is failed.
The situation with the Saturday game is now basically resolved - we're going to try to get together for as many games as possible between now and the end of March, after which we're calling it a day. We might try to get together for the occasional game after that, but it won't be a regular gathering (or attempt at the same).
Write something - this is in progress, although not in the manner that I expected. (Curiously, I find myself in the process of writing a D&D 4e adventure... which is odd.) Due to the nature of the writing project, I won't be able to link to it or post it here. Still, that's a goal achieved.
Relax more - This is done, and proved problematic. The issue was that as I relaxed, I took my eye off the ball in a number of areas, which meant that the problems in August/September were magnified by many other things going wrong at the same time. This leads to the bizarre situation that I am now working harder to keep track of everything, and yet at the same time am actually more relaxed than I was when I was allegedly relaxing!
On books: I'm now in the last 200 pages of "War and Peace", and should be finished that by the time Lady Chocolat returns from Kenya. I'm up-to-date on the Pathfinder books. I have, however, abandoned my read-through of the 1st Edition hardbacks, as they proved not to be terribly interesting.
I have now painted three out of four batches of Orks, and have put the first coat on the fourth batch. Additionally, I have painted all but one of the other figures that were waiting to be done. I need to find some time to apply varnish to several figures that are otherwise complete, need to re-undercoat the one remaining "miscellaneous" figure, and then need to actually paint that one! All being well, I should finish all of these around the end of November.
On the wedding preparations: These are either well in hand, or we've forgotten something important. As far as I'm aware, the biggest thing that is yet to be done is for me to book the wedding cars, which I'm intending to get done by the time LC returns.

And that's it. Three done, one failed, and six ongoing.

Who do you work for, again?

2011-10-25T13:24:00.001+01:00

Yesterday, the House of Commons were obliged to debate the question of whether or not we should have a referendum on pulling out of the EU. And, in the course of doing so, they very neatly displayed one of the major things that is wrong with politics in this country.

For the record, I'm not in favour of leaving the EU, and nor do I think having a referendum is actually a good idea, but that's another post for another day.

However, the government have put in place this ePetition system, where if people get enough electronic signatures on an issue, the HoC are required to debate it. Enough signatures were gathered, and so debate it they did. Sort of.

The thing is, what actually happened is that the three party leaders each used a "three-line whip" to instruct the various MPs on how to vote. Thus, the MPs went through the motions, had the debate, and then duly went and voted against the referendum. Done.

(As I understand it, the 'whips' work like this - each MP is issued with a schedule of the events for the day/week, including the various votes to be taken. The whips will indicate their party's position on the various measures, and then underline the issues based on how important they are. The more times something is underlined, the more important it is, with three lines being the most important. Hence, a "three line whip" means "you will vote this way, and we really, really mean it.")

And so, the net effect from yesterday is that it mattered not a jot what the people of this country want - David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and Ed Miliband have collectively decided we can't have a referendum, and that's that.

But I never voted for Dave, Nick or Ed. In fact, I was never given the opportunity to vote for any of those three. My MP is Eric Joyce. (Okay, I didn't vote for him either, but that's not the point.)

His job is to represent me, and the other people living in my constituency. His job is most definitely not to meekly accept the dictates of Ed Miliband and vote for whatever he says.

(Now, that doesn't necessarily mean he should always do what the majority of his constituents want. That's not how a representative democracy works. However, it does mean that he should represent us and our interests, regardless of what Ed may want.)

And the same is true of all the other MPs up and down the country, of all parties. Dave, Nick and Ed are not running a dictatorship.

I think this is one of the most fundamental things wrong with our democracy - the central parties have acquired too much power and do not properly represent the will of the people. And people sense this, hence the growing disillusionment with politics in this country.

I think three things need to change:

It needs to be written into law that an MP must maintain his or her primary residence within the boundaries of the constituency for three years prior to the election. (A grandfather clause is probably required for the incumbents, both for when this law is brought in, and also in the event of boundary change. But it should apply only to the incumbent, and only if they maintain the same primary residence.) Note that this, at a stroke, eliminates one of the worst excessive of the expenses scandal as well - the practice of 'flipping' the primary residence for tax reasons becomes impossible.

(It does, however, create problems for MP-couples, such as Balls/Cooper or Harman/Dromey. Frankly, I have no problem with that - too many of our MPs live lives completely isolated from the real world. Anything that cuts down on that is a good thing.)
The selection of candidates must be done by the local party without interference from the central party. This practice of parachuting in favoured candidates to safe seats is a disgrace and must be stopped. Likewise, Labour's policy of all-women shortlists is undemocratic and unacceptable. The local party should draw up their shortlist, and then nominate their candidate. (And it must be illegal for the central party to block campaign funds for a candidate they don't like - otherwise, the central party will retain too much influence.)

(Unfortunately, this is likely to set back the process of making parliament more diverse by several steps, as the loss of all-women shortlists reduces the number of women candidates, at least in the short term. This is extremely unfortunate. However, we can either have an undemocratically-appointed diverse parliament or we can have a democratically-elected parliament with no guarantee of any diversity. We can have one of these. I choose democracy.)
Within parliament, the whips must be stripped of any sanction. They can continue to indicate the preferred vote of their respective party leadership, but they should not be able to do anything about so-called rebels. Remember, MPs work for us and should be representing our interests, not those of Dave, Nick, and Ed, so who exactly are they rebelling against?

(We should also probably have some legal way of removing our MP if he ceases to represent us properly. However, in practice I suspect such a thing would be unworkable - either recalls would be so common as to prevent parliament from operating, or the required conditions would be so strong that they could never actually be used.)

That's what I think, anyway.

A New Song

2011-10-22T15:49:00.003+01:00

This should amuse Welshy...

At band last Thursday, the Pipe Major presented us with some new music. Apparently, we'll be learning a new 'song', one more complex than the norm. Instead of all playing together, we'll be learning this in four parts, which get put together...

Yes, the band are going to be learning Pachelbel's 'Canon', or at least the rather poor approximation that is possible when you only have 9 notes available.

Okay Alex, you win

2011-10-21T09:16:00.000+01:00

I have changed my mind on Independence.

For me, there were always two arguments against independence. The first was the matter of my family ties to England. Naturally, this argument remains unchanged.

However, the second argument was economic - I didn't see how an independent Scotland would be at all better off, especially in the current global environment. And given the nature of my job, it seemed likely that I would have to move to England to find work. While I have nothing in principle against living in England again, I didn't want to be forced into doing so.

Unfortunately, I have gradually become disillusioned with the government in Westminster to a point where the economic argument can no longer hold. George Osborne is quite clearly incompetent - although the argument for cuts was extremely strong, he's managed to implemented them in exactly the worst way possible, hurting a lot of people for no benefit, and he now clearly has no Plan B.

Meanwhile, we've had the government launch yet another interventionist war in Libya (that seems to have gone okay... but how long until the civil war?), and we've had yet another betrayal on tuition fees for students.

That in itself wouldn't be a deal-breaker, if I saw any hope on the other side of the house. But Ed Milliband is a lightweight, of no more substance than David Cameron. Worse, he's surrounded by most of the same people who were so disasterous in the last years of the Labour government. Their record on the economy was equally horrible, their record on civil liberties was nothing short of a disgrace... and don't get me started on Harriet Harman.

And, of course, it was the Labour government who took the almost unforgivable steps of first introducing tuition fees, and then adding top-up fees (this latter passed only with support of Scottish MPs, when it was properly an England-only matter). Basically, they opened the door for the current government to devastate our future.

So, given that I would rather not vote than vote for any of the Big Three parties, given that the current government have turned out to be a complete disaster, and given that the current arrangement is still the best available option of a really bad bunch, and given that I see no hope for change... the argument for independence has become overwhelming.

And frankly, England should be joining us.

(I will note, however, that I reserve the right to change my mind again, should circumstances change. In politics, making a U-turn is regarded as a bad thing. In real life, it's called rational thinking.)

#29: "Empire of Silver", by Conn Iggulden

Dear Hollywood

2011-10-15T21:39:00.002+01:00

Next time you want to do a "Three Musketeers" movie, please could you have someone actually read the novel and then adapt that? Don't just have someone watch the old film versions and then steal the 'best bits'.

To be honest, "The Three Musketeers" is actually rather amusing in places. Other places are just stupid, and then there are bits that are worse. And it's really very noticable - the closer the film is to the novel, the better it is. The further it gets from the novel, the stupider it becomes.

But the thing that was really annoying was that they were clearly stealing large bits of the film from the Keifer Sutherland/Charlie Sheen version of the movie. Now that's also quite an enjoyable, if stupid, movie, but it's certainly no adaptation of the novel. In fact, in several places it's actually closer to "Star Wars" than anything else - to the extent that I was able to predict several parts of dialogue on my first viewing of that film.

"The Three Musketeers" is a great novel, one of the best I've read. (I'm not so fond of the sequel, though!) And it probably is ripe for a proper remake - although the Michael York version is pretty definitive, it is also very old, and now largely forgotten. So a new adaptation could be good, without the need for lots of invention by inferior writers.

Still, I did enjoy the bit in Versailles. Firstly because it reinforced the notion of the "Versailles Triangle", but also because the film is set in the reign of Louis XIII, and Versailles was build by his son, Louis XIV.

Ah, the Incompetent Man

2011-10-14T13:44:00.001+01:00

We're three episodes into "Terra Nova" now. I'm giving it six before I decide whether to stick with it or not. Thus far, the signs do not look good. The first episode was quite good, the second less good, and the third worse. It seems they've spent their entire budget on (fairly poor) CGI dinosaurs, leaving them nothing for script, cast or any of the other things that would make the show good.

But the third episode also featured a scene that really got on my nerves.

The two main characters in the show are a husband and wife team. As per standard TV rules, the wife is a hyper-intelligent driven career woman/perfect mother. The husband is a cop. Now, meaning no disrespect to cops, that pairing of 'superwoman' with 'ordinary guy' is pretty overdone, and frankly annoying as hell.

Still, I suppose it wasn't too bad. In that first episode they did establish that he really wasn't any ordinary cop, as he broke out of one max-security facility and then broke into another, all within the first twenty minutes of the show. So, fair enough, I guess.

Anyway, 'ordinary guy' is fair enough. Nothing wrong with 'ordinary guy'. Just as long as they don't make him incompetent...

So, we get to the third episode, where the superwoman wife has to work late at night, leaving her husband to cook dinner and look after their three kids.

Can you guess where this is going?

Yep, sure enough, he proved to be incompetent. This guy who can effortlessly break out of, and then into, max-security facilities found himself bamboozled by the impossible task of cooking dinner for four while handling the needs of three kids. Apparently, he is trained in the use of a frying pan, but only as a means of defence against cartoon creatures.

In the end, his (again, hyper-smart) daughter took pity on his panicked state, and cooked dinner for the family.

Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure which is the more offensive lesson there: "men are incompetent", or "women, despite whatever skills or intelligence you have, your place is in the kitchen - because men can't".

Either way, it's pathetic.

No, you don't need more information

2011-10-14T10:48:00.001+01:00

Whenever the powers that be ask the people what they need to solve some vast an unsolveable problem, the top answer that always comes back is "we need more information".

How do we cut down on teenage pregnancy? Kids need better sex education to give them the information they need to make informed choices.

How do we cut down on obesity? Parents need more information about what goes into products, so they can make informed choices.

No. Rubbish.

People in the UK in 2011 have easier access to more and better information than at any previous time in history. Kids today know more about sex than Casanova and Lucrezia Borgia combined. Parents need only look at the packaging of food to gain a wealth of information about what is in it - all the ingredients are listed and there's a breakdown of calorific and nutrition information. And if there's anything you don't know, Google makes every question an easy question.

"We don't have enough information," is an excuse, and it just is not true.

The issue with teenage pregnancy is not that kids don't know they shouldn't be having unprotected sex. They know, but when the time comes they choose to take the risk rather than not have sex at all. Or they just don't think at all. Or whatever. It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't think.

For the overwhelming majority of people, the solution to obesity is simply a matter of "eat less, move more". That's it. There is no magic bullet, there's no special combination of foods that will do the job better. (And where there are foods we should eat more or less, that's well known too - nobody can reasonably claim not to know about "5 a day".)

These are hard problems to fix, either because there's no simple solution or because the simple solution requires time, dedication and discipline (and, frankly, is really quite painful).

But "we don't have enough information" is a lie, and it's a lie that is told to avoid taking responsibility for actually dealing with the problem.

Twitter Woes

2011-10-14T10:08:00.000+01:00

I have next to no time whatsoever for Twitter. Frankly, I consider it a medium fit only for rabble-rousing, inanity, and fawning over celebrities.

Even Twitter's great 'success' is really nothing of the sort: Stephen Fry was able to get action taken about an injustice that was about to be perpetrated, but not because it was an injustice but because he is Stephen Fry. The storm that was kicked up was not from people who had been aware of the issue and took action. In the best case, it was from people who didn't know about it, learned about it, and then took action. In the more common case, it was from people who didn't care to know about the issue until Stephen Fry told them, then they (maybe) learned about it, and took action. But in the distressingly common case, it was taken by people who didn't know or care about the issue, but who took action because Stephen Fry told them to. Had a random Joe Bloggs twittered about the same thing, there would be absolutely no chance of action being taken unless some celebrity just happened to learn about it and re-tweet, and that applies regardless of the rights or wrongs of the issue at hand.

In other words, this was a case where two wrongs just happened to make a right.

Unfortunately, I have just inherited the role of webmaster for the pipe band, and one of the key duties that this entails is maintaining the Twitter feed, so I'm stuck. I guess I have no choice but to regularly inform the world that I had a sandwich for lunch, or something.

Or at least, that's the plan. In order to confirm that I've taken over the account, I need to log in. But I can't log in because I'm not registered. And I can't register because I have an account associated with my email address already! I can't confirm that the band's account is now associated with my email address, because the band's account is now associated with my email address.

And all this for a service that I really don't want to use!

Redecorating the Fortress of Solitude

2011-10-13T10:46:00.001+01:00

It's fair to say that the standard of the decoration in the flat is somewhat basic. Other than a couple of paintings hung in the kitchen and one in the spare bedroom, the walls are generally painted a plain and neutral colour. And that suits me fine; I don't exactly spend my time staring at the walls.

However, over the last few months I've had to face the prospect that this is going to change. After all, fair's fair; once Lady Chocolat lives there, she does indeed have a right to redecorate. Within reason, of course.

It's that "within reason" that's important. What does it mean? Well, in list form:

No spending money, since we don't have any.
No potpourri.
No cushions.
No potpourri.
Whatever other entirely unreasonable and arbitrary things I think up next.

But other than that, and provided nothing actually changes, it's all good.

Oh yeah, and we will redo the bathroom, just as soon as we can. "Barely adequate" is about the right description there.

(There are many obvious disadvantages to LC being in Kenya for the next month. One of the few advantages is that I can quietly negotiate the new status quo without risk. Tee hee!)

Tyranny of the To-do List

2011-10-10T12:24:00.000+01:00

Lady Chocolat is currently in Kenya, in what represents possibly the single worst wrong turn in the whole history of bad directions. Apparently, it's likely to take her some six weeks to find her way home.

In the meantime, I have a little quiet time to catch up with a little light reading. And other tasks.

Actually, LC has left me with a list of things that need to be done, some with more urgency than others. Much of this is wedding-related, and fairly unimportant. We dealt with almost all of the big issues before she left, leaving the booking of the wedding cars as the biggest remaining task undone.

I have finally dared to venture into a hairdressers and made an appointment to get my hair cut. Frankly, I'm dreading Friday.

I have finished Volume Two of "War and Peace", which is good. At this point I am taking a short break to read Conn Iggulden's latest novel, "Empire of Silver", which is a great read thus far. And then I'll get back to the third and final volume of WaP.

The third batch of Orks is proceeding apace. This weekend I finished applying the shading and highlights to the flesh, and started on the major blocks of colour in their clothing. This batch should be finished in a couple of weeks, and then I can start on the final batch. I'm now very stronly leaning towards stopping painting again once these figures are all finished - I'm not enjoying these last batches as much as the previous ones.

A couple of months back I rather foolishly agreed to do some writing for an online project. I'm not sure that project is going anywhere, as a couple of people have already dropped out, but in any event it is my intention to finish my part of it, and then quietly drop off the radar there. It seemed a good idea at the time, but has turned out to be just another diversion I don't really need.

And the next thing that I'll probably need to tackle is the task of updating the band's website. Our previous lead drummer set up the site, and did a good job of maintaining it, but with his leaving it makes sense for us to bring the maintenance in-house, which of course means me doing it. (Although we'll be discussing that at the committee meeting tomorrow - there's a possibility we'll instead decide to contract with him to continue maintaining the site.)

I'm sure I was supposed to have some free time around about now?

How (not) to write a good mystery adventure

2011-10-10T11:58:00.001+01:00

The group for the Saturday game managed to actually get together this week. We had The Talk at which it was discussed that as of April the group is essentially done. We discussed possibly ways forward, but I don't think anything will come of it.

Anyway, that's by the way.

The game on Saturday wasn't great. Our characters were agents of the Inquisition, seeking out signs of heresy on a far-flung outpost of the Empire. So, we arrived, made our introductions, and started investigating the strange goings-on.

The investigations didn't go well. We spent several hours absolutely convinced we were missing something desperately important, because there seemed to be absolutely no connection between events. There was a sense that we urgently needed to put the mystery together... and absolutely no clues as to how we should do that.

At length, we found the heretic and dealt with him, but we did this via the cunning expedient of just waiting around until things got out of control, and then just mopping up.

It turned out that we hadn't carefully avoided all the clues that would have helped us solve the mystery sooner. It turned out that there was no pattern to events, and that it was just a bunch of stuff that happened. And, to be honest, we caught the bad guy more because we were just itching to cause some trouble, rather than because he actually hame himself away.

Still, success!

The key problem here is in the way the adventure was written (it was a pre-gen adventure, so not the GM's fault). And the crux of the problem lies in one of the key differences between fiction and a game.

When Sherlock Holmes investigates as crime, he walks into the room, finds all the clues that the author wants him to find, comes to the conclusions the author wants him to come to, goes to the next location, and repeat... Because the author controls everything, he knows both who committed the murder, why and how, but he also controls all of Holmes' thought processes, the steps of his investigation, and so on. Moreover, he can give Holmes as many or as few clues as needed, include red herrings or irrelevancies, or whatever else, safe in the knowledge that Holmes can just jump to whatever conclusion is needed, no matter how flimsy the evidence was.

In an RPG, this just isn't the case. There's no guarantee that the PCs will even look for the clues, much less that they'll look for them in the right place. Even if they do think to look where clues are to be found, there's no guarantee that the dice will be kind enough for them to actually find the clues.

Even once the PCs have found clues, it is by no means certain that they will have all the information they need to work things out. And there's no guarantee that the players will come to the conclusions that were expected, especially given the penchant of players for latching on to irrelevant details, and especially if there is a red herring in their somewhere.

Unfortunately, while most adventure writers realise these crucial differences between fiction and games, they tend not to be very good at adapting for them. Too often, adventures can become stuck because a single vital clue is missed, or because the author expects the players to follow a particular chain just as Holmes would, or because the author decided to be clever and put a false trail in the adventure.

I don't have a lot more to add here, not least because most people who read this blog have little interest in writing mystery adventures for RPGs (but also because most of what I know I've lifted from the work of other people on the subject). Still, here are some handy rules of thunb:

Make clues easy to find. Generally, if the PCs look in the right place, they should find the clues.
Have a number of 'floating clues' - if the PCs just generally investigate, or "ask around" or whatever, let the roll, and on a success give them a clue.
Give at least three clues for each conclusion you want to PCs to reach. This assumes they'll miss one, not realise the significance of a second, but finally 'get it' on the third.
Don't build your mystery as a chain of events for characters to follow. But then, that should really be true of every adventure!
Don't include red herrings. The PCs will find their own irrelevant details to obsess over, will come to all sorts of wrong conclusions, and will generally do this bit for you. There's no need to muddy the waters further.
Provide some sort of 'escape hatch' for the GM to use for those cases where things just go horribly wrong. Otherwise, the players are likely to get really bored once they find they simply can't solve the puzzle.

And that's pretty much that.

Cutting Precisely the Wrong Amount

2011-10-04T12:06:00.001+01:00

The UK has major economic problems. That's not exactly news. We have a very large and growing debt, with ever-growing interest payments that need to be made. We also have a very nasty deficit - we're collectively spending more money than we're bringing in.

So, those bright sparks in the government have hit on a solution. They've decided that the way to improve things is to cut everything in sight. Every department will take a cut, loads of jobs will be cut, services will be cut. That way, we'll spend less money, and everything will be well.

Well, fair enough, I suppose. Of course, it will be absolutely awful for people who rely on those departments, and jobs, and services, but the truth is that we just can't afford them. And if it fixes the long-term problem...

Well, except...

It turns out that the cuts aren't reducing the debt, which we knew, but they aren't even reducing the deficit. All they done is reduced the rate at which the deficit is increasing. The problem is getting worse, just slightly more slowly than before. (We're still heading over a cliff, and can't steer away. Rather than actually use the brakes, they've just eased off on the accelerator a bit.)

In other words, our oh-so-wonderful government has managed to hit on precisely the wrong level of cuts to impose. They've managed to make life much harder for a great many people, without actually doing anything to fix the problems.

Muppets.

Either cut enough to actually fix the problem or, if that is judged too painful (since people do, after all have to live here), then cut nothing and just content yourselves with whatever minor efficiency savings you can make.

But cutting just enough to really hurt people, and make them really hate you, without actually doing anything to fix the problem? That's utter madness.

#28: "Pathfinder: Night of Frozen Shadows", by Greg A. Vaughan

My Conversion to Energy Saver Light Bulbs

2011-09-28T14:52:00.001+01:00

According to Google, I have never discussed Energy Saver lightbulbs on this blog before. I am more than a little surprised about that, since I was sure I would have noted my disgust with them at some point.

Oh well, this makes my conversion all the less spectacular.

My problems with Energy Saver bulbs have traditionally been two-fold. The first is that they give out a vastly inferior quality of light, making it impossible to read by these bulbs. The second is that they take forever to warm up, during which time the inferior light level is even more inferior. Yes, it's inferior to an inferior thing. That's pretty bad.

However...

The light bulb in my bedroom blew some months back, and given the EU's decision to ban effective lightbulbs, I was rather stuck. And so I headed out to Homebase, rather than the more traditional Tesco, in search of a new bulb.

It took some time, but eventually I identified the brightest Energy Saver bulb they had on offer, and proceeded to spend an absurd amount of money on two of them. These were promptly installed in both the bedroom and the spare bedroom, leaving only the living room with a traditional bulb. (The rooms I don't use were fitted with Energy Savers some time ago, if for no other reason than that I don't use them. The spare bedroom had had an Energy Saver fitted, but the bulb was faulty and so needed replaced.)

The upshot is that these new bulbs are just barely less effective than the 100W bulb that was fitted (they claim to be equivalent to 90W), and they heat up in less than 30 seconds, rather than the six hours that is traditional for Energy Savers. I find this to be an adequate substitution for the traditional bulbs that are now banned.

Of course, I've only had these bulbs installed for a few months. I have no idea how well they'll last, and degredation has also been a problem with Energy Saver bulks in the past. Still, for now they're good enough.

In conclusion: provided you are willing to spend absurd amounts of money on the highest quality Energy Saver bulbs you can find, Energy Savers are an adequate substitute for, and almost as good as, the traditional bulbs they have replaced.

Truly, I have been converted.

Update: TV

2011-09-28T13:37:00.001+01:00

TV is a bit of a mixed bag at the moment. "Torchwood" was awful, and has now joined "Bones" and "House" on the list of shows I'm giving up on ("Chuck" would also be on that list, but it is entering its last half-season, so I might as well stick it out).

"Doctor Who", by contrast, is great. Although I have no idea how they're going to wrap it all up in a satisfactory manner. Frankly, I'm a bit concerned about that. "Fringe" returns this week, and promises to be good, and I believe "Merlin" is due to return next week. I don't know when "Clone Wars" and "Nikita" return, but I'll be watching them.

Rather supririsingly, "Strikeback: Project Dawn" has proven to be extremely entertaining. It's not high art, to be sure, but it's good fun all the same.

"The Borgias" has been largely disappointing. I had been hoping for something like "The Tudors", but it has proven lacking. As with "The Tudors", the major problem is that absence of many sympathetic characters - they're all busy lying and scheming and seducing, but why should we care? (And the lying and scheming and seducing has, frankly, been rather tame. And they got Machiavelli totally wrong.)

There aren't many new shows that seem all that interesting. I'm going to give "Terra Nova" a chance, although it may well be awful (and if it isn't, it will probably be cancelled).

Finally, although it's not a new show, "Carnivale" is something I hadn't seen previously, and has proven to be very good.

All in all, TV does seem to be hitting a happy medium - I'm not watching anything that's just awful, I'm not watching too much at all, but there are several shows that I am watching. So I'm quite happy with that.

War, Peace, and other books

2011-09-28T13:02:00.000+01:00

I am now 500 pages into "War and Peace", well over halfway through. It has been fairly tough going, but it's also interesting seeing how all the various plot threads are interwoven and how the book as a whole is constructed. I've concluded that I don't agree with Tolstoy's primary argument, that kings and generals are basically history's slaves, but that's a discussion for another day, I think.

In a couple of weeks, I'll reach the end of Volume Two, at which time I will take a short break to instead read "Empire of Silver", Conn Iggulden's latest novel. With "Les Miserables", and again with "War and Peace", I've found that building in a break like that helps me avoid gettting bogged down.

I have decided to abandon my read through of the 1st Edition "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" hardbacks. In all honesty, they're just not all that interesting, with the exception of the "Dungeon Master's Guide", and there is a marked decrease in quality as they go. Besides, I've decided I have no actual intention of running the game, ever, so wading through the rulebooks seems rather pointless. Perhaps in the years to come, when I'm really bored, I'll get back to them.

Otherwise, it's just a matter of working down the stack of books. I have more than enough reading material to last me until the end of the year. Next year could be quite interesting, though, as there will be an influx of new books arriving...

That last post...

2011-09-25T09:59:00.003+01:00

As should be obvious, that last post was not actually composed by me. The nefarious Lady Chocolat gained access to my PC, and posted at will. I have left the post in place as a testament to her villainy.

I mean, to suggest that I'd get rid of books! The very thought!

Sorry Lady Chocolat...

2011-09-24T12:17:00.008+01:00

Dear Lady Chocolat,

I'm sorry, of course I will throw out all my D&D books - the space could be much more useful if it were filled with all your books. And yes, I will buy new duvet covers, and maybe some cushions as well...And yes you can have 70% of the wardrobe space. Plus, we'll go on a big shopping trip and get some new clothes for me. And of course we'll redecorate the bathroom. In the words of that great hero: "As you wish." Also, I admit that there is no such thing as a sock conspiracy and that you don't scare small children.

And when I come to writing the epic blog of our wedding, I shall endeavour to describe your lovely dress in more intricate detail than "it was white". Finally, none of the above shall be mentioned in my speech...

I don't believe it!

2011-09-22T21:42:00.002+01:00

Two weeks ago, I got a letter from the council informing me that they would be resurfacing my road soon, and that on that day there would be no street parking available. I don't recall them giving a date, but I must confess to not paying much attention as I was going to be at work, with my car, on whatever day it was.

A few weeks ago, my car started giving me grief. I took it in, and they thought they'd resolved the issue, but yesterday the car got really bad, really quickly. It's booked in for more work tomorrow, but I decided that it wasn't really safe to drive to work today. So, I borrowed my Dad's car today, and left mine here.

Today was the only day between now and Christmas when my car was left in the street during the day, and I wasn't around to move it.

Today was the day they chose to resurface the street. I arrived back to find a glorious new surface all along the street, except for the one single strip where my car was parked all day. And mine was the only car that was left on the street today.

Sometimes, I'm sure God is having a laugh at me. That's the only explanation I can think of for the sequence of events working out just so precisely. I just hope I'm giving good amusement.

Ultraviolet: Code-500

2011-09-20T11:57:00.001+01:00

On Saturday I ran the one-shot game that I mentioned in a previous post, and it was excellent. A strong group of players who were engaged with the plot and their characters, one of my better performances as Game Master, and a good time had by all.

One of the great things about these games is that the GM usually has a story in mind when writing the thing, but that story never quite survives first contact with the players. Saturday was no exception.

The team arrived on-site late on Thursday night. At this point, I expected them to very quickly turn in, and start their investigations in the morning. After all, I made a point of noting just how late it was...

However, the party elected to get to work right away. This was fine, except that the plot also had certain events going on on the Thursday night that the PCs were expected to miss... Thus, they were able to short-circuit a big piece of the plot, and cut out a lot of the investigations that were to follow.

Still, simply because it was unexpected didn't mean it was bad. Fortunately, the plot wasn't so fragile that those events had to work out just so, and I was able therefore the re-plot.

Anyway, it was all really good fun, and probably the best game I've been involved in this year. And given how good this year has been for gaming, that is high praise indeed.

Meanwhile, it looks like one of the guys in the other gaming group is now permanently working on Saturdays. If this is correct, I guess that definitively wraps that up.

The Band AGM 2011

2011-09-16T11:58:00.000+01:00

I didn't realise until today that I hadn't blogged about the band's AGM last year. Either I was just too busy, or it was too depressing to talk about.

(The AGM last year was almost derailed by two issues. The second was a lengthy discussion about the introduction of membership dues, which was eventually passed. The first was a complaint about a lack of relevant documentation, which caused issues.)

Anyway, this year's AGM occurred last night, and went off without a hitch. It was long and boring but ultimately successful. We made sure to have all our documentation in place well in advance, proceeded through the agenda, and basically got things done. (I'll need to note down what we did as part of our "good practice" guidelines.)

The one major disappointment of the AGM is that both our leading drummer and the pipe major of our Development Band have elected to leave the band to pursue newer challenges. A big loss for us, though probably the right decisions for them. Anyway, we wish them the best of luck.

Otherwise, the committee remains largely unchanged, with most people in the same roles. Obviously, we have a new lead drummer in the role, and we have a new Parent's Rep (replacing the old rep who quit when we set up the Development Band). The positions of Piper's and Drummer's Rep have been eliminated, and replaced with a Pipe Major and Lead Drummer for the Development Band; the previous Piper's Rep is therefore now serving in a new capacity, while there is a new face on the drumming side. This gave us the required 10 people for the committee without any great fuss.

The band have been asked to play at the festival in Guingamp (France) again next year, and the travel arrangements are going to be a lot more formalised than this year. The organisers have offered to subsidise the trip to 75% of travel, plus food and lodging; the point was made that those travelling would have to make up the shortfall (as the band, being a charity, cannot).

The band have also been asked, provisionally, to play at an event in Cuba in June. This would be fully subsidised. However, it remains to be seen whether this will actually happen or not. Sadly, it seems unlikely that I would be able to attend either of these trips.

The dates of the major competitions next year have been announced. There are no real surprises here, except that the British Championships are being held on the 30th of June.

Finally, there has been a slight adjustment in my own role. I remain the Chairman of the committee. However, the Development Band are not going to have one Pipe Major this year, but rather two co-Pipe Majors, of whom I am one. This will mostly mean I'll be involved in the teaching; I will need to work out some arrangement with the other co-PM as to how we're going to split the competitions.

Anyway, interesting times ahead...

Yet more alcohol nonsense

2011-09-15T11:35:00.001+01:00

So, Alcohol Focus Scotland and Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems have today produced a joint report urging further measures to tackle Scotland's supposed alcohol problem. In addition to the SNP's minimum pricing idiocy (which I remain convinced will immediately fall foul of EU competition law), they want the government to:

- introduce special alcohol-only lanes in supermarkets
- further restrict the off-license hours from 10pm to 8pm.

I can't help but feel that they are directly out to get me with these measures. See, I don't have any issue with alcohol, but I do occasionally like to take a drink, and so occasionally buy a few beers, a bottle of wine, or whatever. And, for reasons of convenience, I do my weekly shop at 9pm on Monday evening, on my way home from band.

So, they now expect me to do a special mini-shop just to buy a couple of beers, and they expect me to re-arrange my week to do it? Sod that. It's already bad enough when I find I arrive at the checkouts at 9:56 and so cannot buy those few beers I wanted (or, in the worst instance, I wanted to buy one beer to put in a steak-and-ale casserole, but couldn't because it was only 9:30 in the morning).

The most infuriating this about this idiocy is that there is a really simple measure that would at a stroke have the desired effects: simply revoke the licenses of all supermarkets, newsagents, and the like. Basically, if it is not the primary purpose of a business to sell alcohol, then disallow them from selling alcohol.

Doing so would immediately and dramatically increase the price of alcohol (as supermarkets would no longer use it as a loss-leader to pull people into the store), it would immediately make buying alcohol much less convenient (since you'd need to go to a specialist store), and it would immediately improve the health of an awful lot of small traders (as all those off-licenses would suddenly get a boost in sales, and our pubs would see an increase in sales). Plus, overall consumption would probably massively decrease, which would quickly eliminate a lot of our public order problems.

It's a really simple measure. It would have all the effects desired, and several other good effects.

But it isn't done, and why not? Well, because the government don't really want to fix the problem or to significantly reduce sales, they just want to look like they're taking tough action. After all, if they really reduced sales, they would also drastically reduce the revenue that they get from alcohol duties. They would sorely damage the whisky industry. And, of course, they'd really annoy the supermarkets.

And so we have measures like those suggested in the report, and the nonsense of minimum pricing, and people unable to buy sensible amounts of alcohol at sensible times that are just outside the arbitrary government mandates. They nibble around the edges, constantly adjusting things and talking tough, and never actually taking the single, simple step that would deal decisively with the problem.

Too many games, not enough time

2011-09-14T14:05:00.001+01:00

At the weekend I'm running yet another game. This one is "Hunter: the Vigil", one of the 'new' World of Darkness games. The adventure is titled "Ultraviolet: Code-500", and is based on the old Channel 4 show Ultraviolet.

Anyway, last night I was busy creating the characters for this game, and I was reminded just how much I used to love the old World of Darkness games. There's just something really smooth and elegant about the way the characters are put together. It's just fun, in a way that D&D no longer seems to be. And while I got really burned out on the "Vampire" iteration of the games, and have no intention of going back, running a game for hunters (the flip side, if you will) is extremely attractive.

The only problem with that is that I just don't have enough time. I'm currently busily running my latest D&D campaign, "The Eberron Code", which may have as much as two years still to go. Additionally, I have at least one "Star Wars Saga Edition" campaign I want to run ("Through a Glass Darkly"), I've sort-of promised myself that I'm going to run a "Serenity" campaign, and then there's the "Emergent Reason" campaign I've been thinking about for the last five years... And as soon as I started up "The Eberron Code" I immediately came up with two other D&D campaigns I want to run!

So, once again I find myself with a whole bunch of campaign ideas, and a total lack of time in which to run them. Woe is me!

Nadir

2011-09-14T13:31:00.001+01:00

June was one of the best months of my life. July, for all that it seemed to go on forever, was not a bad month. August and September rank amongst the worst months of my life.

Monday was the single worst day I have had in my current job, ever. It marked the point where the job went from merely being extremely frustrating at times to actively hurting me. Monday was not a good day.

Since then, things have improved marginally, but there's still a long way to go.

#26: "Pathfinder: Bestiary 2", by Paizo Publishing
#27: "I Shall Wear Midnight", by Terry Pratchett

Mourning the Friendship

2011-09-08T10:57:00.000+01:00

The Saturday game has been on hiatus for several months, due to the pipe band competition season. It was due to restart last weekend, but that fell through. Then, it was due to restart this weekend, but that has now fallen through. It can't restart next weekend, due to another commitment on my part, so is now rescheduled for the 24th. We'll see if that happens.

The truth is, I really need to put an end to this one. I don't really have time for everything that I'm involved with, so something has to go. And Saturday afternoon is 'premium time' - it's the time that is most useful for other things, and the time that is least suitable to just being wasted. I really can't afford to tie up every single Saturday afternoon for a game that is almost always cancelled, especially with a wedding to plan, and double especially after the wedding.

(That said, Lady Chocolat is flying off to Kenya in a few weeks and for a couple of months. So, the time between now and the end of November is slightly more flexible...)

So, this spell between now and the end of March was always going to be the last hurrah for this game group. After that, we were going to have to adopt an entirely different pattern, or simply stop getting together for the game at all. It's starting to look like I have to call a halt six months early.

So, I know what I need to do, but why the reluctance? Well, this group has been together (in one form or another) for sixteen years, since my second year at university. Two of my three "greatest ever" campaigns have been with this group (being the "Rivers of Time" chronicle for Vampire, and the "Shackled City" campaign in D&D). We've had a lot of good times.

But we're not 20 any more. We're not even 28 any more, which was probably the last time we really had the numbers for reliable gaming. Martin left to move to the States. Andreas left to return to Sweden. Johannes left to move to various places to continue his studies. Molly just left. Craig's work schedule meant that he could no longer attend. Andy's ever-growing family likewise meant he could no longer attend... Gradually, we went from having too many players down to a group of four. And since the game really has a quorum of four, that created the major problems that I've been posting about on and off for the last two years.

Killing the group probably means cutting ties with the remainder of the group. We only really get together for the game, and although we might well say we'd continue to get together at times for other things, the truth is that it just wouldn't happen.

It also means cutting the last link to my university days. Since leaving, I've basically lost touch with everyone I met at university (again, some immediately and others over the years). So, ending this group means finally closing that chapter.

But then, this isn't the first time. I had a game group during school, and it ended when I left school. Over the years, I've gradually lost touch with every friend I made at high school (although, oddly, there are a couple of people who are now friends who weren't when we were at school together).

It's time to pull the plug. I just wish it wasn't so hard.

The Scottish Conservative Party

2011-09-07T09:40:00.001+01:00

The Tories are finished in Scotland. They've been finished in Scotland since 1997 (actually, before that, but that was the election where we kicked them out). And there's really no way back - at every election they'll always be "the same old Tories".

So Murdo Fraser is absolutely right when he says that the best way forward is actually to dissolve the party. Where he goes wrong is that he then suggests they should reform with a different name... but as essentially the same party. Do that, and they're still "the same old Tories", whether they call themselves "Conservatives", "Unionists", "Progressives" or whatever else. And it's especially the case if, as is expected, they will formally ally with the Conservatives in England and take the Tory whip while serving in Westminster.

No, what they need to do is dissolve the party, and then reform several smaller parties each reflecting different aspects of the centre-right agenda. Then, over the next few years, gradually merge some of these new parties into a single entity with a new centre-right agenda. Also (and this is the important bit), they absolutely must not have anything to do with the Tories in England. They have to operate within Scotland (only) for the people of Scotland (only). And even if their MPs in London could prove the difference between a Tory majority forming there or not, they must resist that temptation, because the moment they form that alliance, they're "the same old Tories" once again.

The funny thing is, it doesn't actually make all that much difference to me, since I wouldn't vote for such a party anyway. On my prioritised list of parties to vote for, they actually come after "don't bother voting at all". (Along with Labour, the Lib Dems, and a great many 'minor' parties. At the moment, the SNP have my vote. Failing that, I might just be persuaded to vote Green.)

But the reason it's important is that there is a large group of voters who are rather more right wing in outlook than the SNP, Labour or Lib Dems (or, actually, the modern Tory party), but who cannot bring themselves to vote for "Thatcher's Party", and who are not the racist caricature of the BNP. And those people are currently left without anyone to represent them, and that is wrong.

So, yeah, I hope Murdo Fraser gets his way. I hope the Scottish Conservative Party winds up, and soon. But not because I want it gone; because it's important to have it back.

Dear cyclist...

2011-09-06T09:09:00.001+01:00

Look, I respect your right to be on the road. And I will do my utmost to drive safely and with consideration. I'll leave plenty of stopping distance behind you until I am able to pass safely. When passing, I will allow plenty of space to the side (and if the road doesn't allow that, then I won't pass). And, lest you get the wrong impression, that's not some major sacrifice on my part, and I don't expect thanks, or hailed as a hero, or whatever - that's just your right as a fellow road user.

However...

If you decide to cycle along an unlit country road at night, while wearing dark clothes, and on a bike that has neither lights nor reflectors, you will eventually be hit. And when you do, you will come off considerably worse on your flimsy bike than I do in my large and heavy car. That's just a fact, unfortunate as it is.

If I do not have the ability to see you, I do not have the ability to avoid you.

#25: "Pathfinder: The Brinewall Legacy", by James Jacobs

Competition Season 2011 Wash-up

2011-08-29T13:57:00.001+01:00

It's been a hard season, and a fairly disappointing one at that. Our initial optimism, bolstered by a strong winter and an early success at Dunbar, quickly gave way to increasing despondency as the season wore on. We thought perhaps the Scottish Championships were a blip, caused by bad weather, but then the British Championships proved a repeat, and so it went.

Still, it wasn't all bad. The result at Annan's "Riding of the Marches" was fantastic. And the Development Band was the major success of the year, starting as just an idea, meeting some fairly nasty resistance, and finally being able to take the field. Them winning a prize on that first outing was a great achievement, far better than could reasonably have been hoped.

Ultimately, the big outcome of this season is positive. Although we did poorly in terms of the championship, we did record a solid, mid-table result. Perhaps more importantly, we got a sense of what the judges are actually looking for, and should hopefully have some idea on what we need to do in order to do better next year. I have some thoughts in that regard, but at this point they are premature - there are some significant issues that need to be cleared up before we can move on.

Cowal Highland Gathering 2011

2011-08-29T09:36:00.000+01:00

So, the last competition of the season. Could it possibly be any worse than the last two years?

This time out, the bus left slightly later than normal. I didn't leave the house until 6:30, which I suppose wasn't too bad. The journey to the competition was likewise fairly quick, getting us there about 9.

At this point we were given some significant freedom. The bus had to travel early because the Development band were playing at 11:50, but the 4A band weren't playing until 3:50, so there was a long wait. I spent the time reading, and then headed down to watch the Development band play in their qualifier.

I thought they were pretty good, to be honest. Frankly, the Development band are a bit better now than the whole band were two years ago, when we recorded our best ever result at Cowal. So, that seemed okay.

Sadly, they didn't qualify, but that was to come later. First, there was the matter of yet more waiting. Again, I spent the bulk of the time reading. And then, just as the 4A band were getting ready to play, we learned the Development band results.

They failed to qualify, coming 12th in their heat: 11th and 10th for piping, 10th for drumming, and 13th for ensemble. I guess the judges just didn't rate them after all.

So, the 4A band went on, and played as well as we have all year. The issues with the reel that we had had at the Worlds and the Europeans seemed to be sorted out, and we came off feeling pretty okay about things.

There was then yet more waiting. I took the opportunity to wander into town to get some food, and then did some more reading. The rest of the band took the opportunity to drink large amounts of alcohol.

The march past was okay. The chieftain was Blythe Duff, who I recall as the rookie cop from Taggart, which I last watched when I was back in school. Surprisingly, she proved a better chieftain than Sylvester McCoy last year.

We didn't win a prize. In fact, we did rather poorly in the contest, coming 12th overall. In piping we came 17th (last) and 10th, 5th in drumming, and 11th in ensemble. All in all, a very disappointing result. Still, I was determined not to get too disheartened by this: we knew, regardless of the result, that the season was basically done, so it was important just to be happy with the performance. We'd achieved that, so who cares about the result, right?

So far, so good. It had actually been a fairly enjoyable day, an oddity for Cowal. Perhaps we might actually get away with it?

We got back to the bus. There were some few rumblings about marching down the street, but I think it's now accepted that we just won't be doing that until we win something at the event. Fair enough, I guess, although I would prefer to do the parade on principle. (That said, some members of the band were in no fit state to do the parade.)

We got on the bus, and waited for the police to clear us to move out. And waited, and waited. We could have done the parade twice over in the time we had to wait. Still, no matter. Eventually, we were off.

And that's when it all kicked off. There was an incident (which I'm not going to recount here; it was that bad!), and then there was almost a fight as a result of the incident (aggravated by alcohol). As the pipe major moved to deal with it, there was then an awful lot of shouting from other people, a lot of pushing and shoving...

As we came off the ferry, there was a strong suspicion that the bus driver would pull over and call the police. Frankly, I would have supported that call; what happened was an absolute disgrace. At length, though, we got everyone sat down, separated the people who needed separated, and made it home.

I got home at 11:45.

As a result of this, I will be surprised if that bus company will accept our business next year. Honestly, I wouldn't blame them if they did not. I will also not be surprised if several people leave the band as a result, including several members of the committee. As things stand, I will not be competing with this band next year (since I'm not travelling on a bus where this can happen, and I'm not paying a monthly sub to cover the bus and then taking my car to competitions).

Frankly, I'm just disgusted with the whole thing. I hate Cowal.

#24: "Pathfinder: Shadows of Gallowspire", by Brandon Hodge

Getting Back On Top

2011-08-19T13:54:00.000+01:00

The last few weeks have been pretty grim, and the less said about them the better. Suffice to say, things have been rough, and I haven't exactly covered myself in glory. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

But part of the problem, I think, is that I've gradually let things slide, neglecting one thing because another was pressing, then neglecting that because of the first, and then...

And so, since the start of this week, and for the next couple of weeks, I'm going through the steps of getting back on top of everything. The apartment needs a clean, I need to get back to the painting, and the blogging, I need to get on top of my preparations for the game, I need to restock the freezer with lots of yummy food, I need to get back on the diet, the Sky+ box needs emptied again (and my subscription probably cancelled - but that's hard when the box is full of things to watch!), there's a wedding to plan...

So, it's going to be crazy busy for a while here. But, really, that's the way I like it. Relaxation isn't really my thing.

World Pipe Band Championships 2011

2011-08-19T13:51:00.000+01:00

Oh dear.

This contest started badly, requiring a 4:30 start in order to get to the contest grounds before they closed down the car parking. Worse was to follow soon, when the bus we had ordered failed to materialise, being replaced with one that was only just big enough for everyone - I had visions of having to nominate someone to get off in Cumbernauld! (Actually, I would have nominated myself and Lady Chocolat, as I was suffering with a nasty cold.)

Anyway, we went, and we struggled through the morning. It wasn't a pleasant time, grim and grey, but you just get on with it. We started to get ready, bid good luck to the Development Band, and waited...

The World Championships are the only contest this year where there's a pre-qualification round in our grade. This made it a huge challenge just to get to compete, and after Ireland hopes were not terribly high.

We went on, and played as well as we could. Unfortunately, as with Ireland, the first three tunes were excellent, but the last one was really poor. It really lost us our chance. (Spoiler alert!)

We then scattered to the four winds while awaiting the results. One of the major benefits of the Worlds is the easy access to Glasgow City Centre, and all the joys that affords.

We didn't qualify. Nor did the Development Band. (In the end, we scored 15th and 16th for piping, 6th for drumming, and 15th for drumming, coming 14th overall, falling far short of the 6th needed to qualify. The Development Band scored 12th and 8th for piping, 12th for drumming and 12th for ensemble, thus scoring 13th overall, where they needed 4th or better.)

So, by lunchtime we were finished. On the plus side, the weather had vastly improved; it was actually a nice sunny day.

At this point, a lot of people left. Given my cold, I also felt strongly that I just wanted to go home. So, I went looking for the Pipe Major to try to let him know, but found no sign. Instead, I checked that there would be enough people left for the march past, sent a text informing him that we were off, and caught a train.

Bad move. There was later a text from the pipe major, sent to all members, expressing some outrage that people elected to leave in this manner. I haven't seen him since, as he's currently in France.

Oh well. It can't now be helped. And I remain convinced that leaving was the right choice; I really didn't feel well. In fact, I probably shouldn't have gone at all, but didn't want to leave the band in the lurch.

Anyway, there is now one more contest left in the season, at Cowal. It cannot be over soon enough.

Bridge of Allan Highland Games 2011

2011-08-19T13:41:00.000+01:00

I wasn't actually able to make it, but while I was away the band attended the Bridge of Allan Highland Games, where they competed at both Grade 4 and Grade 4A level. I'm not certain, but I believe it was the 4A band that competed at both, rather than the development band.

Anyway, in Grade 4 we scored 12th for piping, 10th for drumming, and thus 13th overall. In Grade 4A, we scored 5th for piping, 3rd for drumming, and so 4th overall, which would have placed us in the prize-winning positions at a slightly larger contest.

European Pipe Band Championships 2011

2011-08-19T13:23:00.000+01:00

The band's annual trip to Ireland saw us leaving on the Friday at about 5pm. Following a delay on the ferry and the inevitable bout of being lost in Belfast, we finally reached the hotel around 1 am. Fortunately, we weren't playing until late in the afternoon, so that wasn't a problem.

The hotel itself was fine, and the breakfast was really quite nice. It turns out that the Premier Inn actually is a pretty decent place to stay, in Belfast at least.

The Saturday was hot and sunny, something of a change for this season. It was a fairly enjoyable day all around, until the time came to actually get ready to play. Unfortunately, this was badly rushed, as the Pipe Major was playing with another band just before, and they were a bit delayed. Moreover, there were several problems with pipes that should have been resolved earlier but which needed attention.

Anyway, we did manage to get ready, and went on and played. The first three tunes were excellent; the best we had played them. Unfortunately, the last tune was pretty dire, and cost us badly.

We were one of the last bands to perform, and so the prize giving followed pretty soon thereafter. Sadly, we knew we weren't actually in with a realistic chance at a prize, but hope springs eternal. In the end, we scored 8th and 17th for piping, 15th for drumming, 6th for ensemble, and 11th overall. A poor showing, but actually better than the previous two majors of the year.

The rest of the night was spent resting, and then the journey home the next day was largely uneventuful, barring one bout of travel sickness.

Onward to the Worlds!

How Was This Game Ever Popular?

2011-07-26T10:22:00.000+01:00

As I noted in the blog in January, and as I've continued to note in the ongoing list of books, I have been gradually reading through the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks for the first edition. I've been doing this mostly out of interest in the roots of the game; although my very first game was under first edition rules, I've never read the rulebooks before, nor have I ever run that edition.

Having read the 'core' rulebooks for the game (the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual), I am completely at a loss to understand why this game was ever popular. The rules are complex and badly laid out, the books are extremely dense, and there's no real sense of organisation.

The Dungeon Master's Guide, in particular, was rather shocking. I have occasionally heard this hailed as a work of genius, and that may be so. But if so, it was one of those crazy geniuses that you know is brilliant, but can't follow at all. The book was a nightmare!

Having read this I can say confidently that, had I started with this edition, I would not now play these games. And, in fact, as nearly-heretical as it is, I have to say that the much-maligned second edition is actually the better game, if only because it is significantly more approachable.

As for the popularity of the game, I can only posit three explanations:

Most people actually started playing under the earlier 'original' D&D or the various 'basic' D&D sets, which had much shorter and more compact rulesets. When they moved to first edition they didn't read most of the new rules, but just continued using the old rules with the new monsters, spells and classes.
Most people actually started playing under the tutelage of existing players. As such, they never read the rules, but instead just went with the flow. This is basically the 'Monopoly' approach.
There was a fairly small corps of DMs in those days who had read the rules, and who served as the 'rule masters' for their respective groups. Most people just played under the aegis of these people. (This is similar to, but not quite the same as, #2 - in #2 people would gradually pick up some form of the rules; #3 posits a small, closed circle of 'expert users'.)

Or maybe I'm just old, and jaded, and tired. But a year ago, when I started picking up the first edition rulebooks, I had a notion of running a few games under the system to see how it compares. Having now read through half the books, I'm disinclined so to do. Oh well.

Thornton Highland Games 2011

2011-07-26T09:56:00.001+01:00

The Thornton Highland Games took place a week ago on Sunday, and represented the first outing of our new Development Band. In fact, the 4A band, with which I play, were not competing at this contest. Nonetheless, several members of the 4A band travelled across to the Kingdom of Fife to support the younger members of our band.

It was a bright and sunny day, at least in the East. This was something of a surprise, as I had almost not left the house that morning, due to the heavy rain. Still, good weather makes for a better performance, so that was an advantage.

The Development Band went on, and they played very well. In fact, they actually played twice; once in the Grade 4 contest, and again in the Grade 3 contest. Both performances were good.

In the event, they came second out of three in the Grade 4, but came fourth out of four in the Grade 3 contest. This latter was entirely expected, since the other bands were all 'naturally' of a higher grade. The former was, of course, a fantastic result, not least because it was the band's first outing.

Watching from the sidelines was an interesting experience. Playing is definitely preferable! Still, I must admit to a certain pride. A few months ago, the Development Band was just an idea. It cost us a lot to get it going (in terms of finance, of course, but also in terms of the effort involved, and also in the loss of several promising young players). So, to finally see it all come together was a great feeling.

The 4A band next play at the European Championships in Ireland this weekend. The Development Band next play at the Dundonald Highland Games. Then, both bands will compete (in different grades) at the World Pipe Band Championships. Each band has three more contests before the season draws to its close.

Interminable

2011-07-26T09:30:00.001+01:00

Is it just me, or is July lasting forever? I mean, it's not as if I necessarily want to rush through it, since we're only just getting what passes for summer up here, but June is a distant memory, and there's still almost a week to go!

#19: "Watcher of the Dead", by J.V. Jones
#20: "AD&D: Dungeon Master's Guide", by Gary Gygax
#21: "AD&D: Legends & Lore", by James M. Ward and Robert Kuntz
#22: "AD&D: Fiend Folio", edited by Don Turnbull
#23: "AD&D: Monster Manual II", by Gary Gygax

The Riding of the Marches 2011

2011-07-04T11:51:00.000+01:00

As was the case last year, the week after the British Championships, the band returned to Annan for "The Riding of the Marches", their version of the Highland Games.

It was a fantastic day - hot and sunny with just a hint of wind. I was very glad I took the last-minute decision to apply sunblock before leaving the house - the first time I have done so at a competition this year, and the first time it was necessary.

Unlike the British Championships, the bus to Annan didn't leave until just after 10, which meant that I woke at a somewhat civilised hour.

We went, we played, and it was good. Once again, we put in our best performance of the season, surpassing last week's effort. It is, however, worth noting that this week we played only our 4B set, not the somewhat harder MSR.

The rest of the day was spent in waiting. Not the best use of time, it must be admitted. And then there was the parade.

In truth, I quite admire the ingenuity of the organisers at Annan. They've found a way to get loads of bands to their gala day without having to pay them - run a competition with a big(-ish) prize, then have a street parade [i]before[/i] the prize-giving.

The band came second in our grade, having come second in piping, and first for both the drums and the bass section. A really good result, and marginally better than last year.

And then there was the journey home, which was fine but too long. There was some discussion of a stag weekend, which is apparently not to take place in Amsterdam as this is now too expensive. It sounds the sort of event that legends are made of. I wonder if I can persuade them to go without me...

#18: "Pathfinder: Wake of the Watcher", by Greg A. Vaughan