Atlantis

For the past week or so, I kept seeing adverts for this show, and kept meaning to set the digibox to record it. I think promptly forgot to do so on Saturday. Still, thanks to the magic of iPlayer, that wasn't really an issue.

To a certain extent, I pity any new fantasy TV series. They inevitably get compared to "Game of Thrones", and the comparison is inevitably "not as good as". This despite the fact that they're very different shows doing very different things... and also that "Game of Thrones" really isn't quite the work of genius that it's made out to be.

As for "Atlantis", I enjoyed it... mostly. It's certainly better than "Robin Hood", though not yet as good as "Merlin" was at its best. (In particular, "Merlin" really benefitted from Anthony Head and Richard Wilson giving it some much-needed gravitas, in the same way that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan elevated the "X-Men" movies above standard comic-book fare.)

It is true that they've really mangled Greek myth, to the extent that the show is less authentic than "Hercules: the Legendary Journeys". It's also true that, some few trappings aside, the characters have a far too modern sensibility. And there's too much of the "manly men save the day" about it - though it's just possible that that might change a bit down the way.

But I liked their take on Hercules (despite mis-spelling his name again). It actually makes sense that, if his strength comes from being the son of a god, he doesn't need to be the ripped titan we usually see. And I liked most of the chemisty between the cast - the three leads in particular go well together.

All that said, there's one thing that really bothers me about the show. In fact, one single word... Pythagoras.

There are three reasons I object to his inclusion, two of which would have been trivially fixed. In most respects, the answer to "what's in a name?" really is "the difference between an enjoyable show and a hugely annoying one."

My first objection to them using this character is that, unlike Minos, Hercules, and the rest, Pythagoras actually was a real person. And so, where you can basically do whatever you want with the other characters, settings, and events (such as giving Jason Theseus' job of killing the Minotaur, moving the whole thing to Atlantis, or mis-spelling Heracles). But, with Pythagoras, you don't get to do that. If you're going to use real people, you've got to get them right. (And, incidentally, the reason it's different when Doctor Who uses Churchill or other figures is this: such characters are always guest stars appearing in the occasional episode; here, it's a major character due to appear in every episode.)

My second objection is that it's evident that the writers know roughly one thing about Pythagoras: he's "the triangle guy". After all, that's literally the first thing Jason says on learning his name, and it's something that they gets repeated several times in the episode.

But Pythagoras was no more "the triangle guy" than Archimedes was "that bath guy" or Newton was "that apple guy". In each case, that's the thing they're most famous for... but in each case it was a comparitively tiny aspect of a lifetime's work. Constantly repeating it as some sort of joke was really irritating.

(And it was all so unnecessary. Just change the name, drop the triangle 'jokes' and you've got a much better show, and actually lose nothing in the process.)

My third objection, though, was something that couldn't be fixed just by changing the name. As noted, that "triangle guy" thing was repeated several times. At least one of these took the form of Hercules suggesting that Pythagoras bore the minotaur to death by telling it about triangles. And similarly, when Jason takes Pythagoras' place in the labyrinth, his justification is that Pythagoras great legacy is that millions of school-children will be bored learning his theory. It's a joke, see?

Well, ha. Bloody. Ha.

Yes, I get it. Maths is hard. Chuckle. Maths is boring. LOL. Oh, it's so funny. Indeed, I fear my sides have split.

So, what we have here is a show where manly men go off and have adventures, where women exist (it would seem) to look good, to be rescued, and if they're very lucky, to give the hero some magic token that preserves his life. Sort of. A bit. Oh, and where we once again get to play "let's laugh at the geek!"

Dear BBC, thank you so very much for that new and interesting bit of banter. I've never seen that done before! (And never mind that "Pythagoras' legacy" includes the computer on which this script was written, the building in which it was written, and any and all food that the writer consumed when doing so. See, that's the thing about foundations of mathematics - they affect everything that comes after. And even that's ignoring the significant impact that Pythagorean philosophy had on Plato, and consequently on Western thought as a whole.)

As I said, it's mostly a reasonably entertaining bit of fluff entertainment, the very thing to hold down the "Doctor Who" slot until DW is back. Except for that one blemish that just ruins it. It's such a shame.

#45: "Johnny and the Dead", by Terry Pratchett
#46: "Johnny and the Bomb", by Terry Pratchett

Experimental Cookery 2013: Quick Chicken Pilau

This was the first meal I cooked from the Hairy Bikers' "Great Curries", a book I got some time ago but never quite got around to using. As the name implies, it was a quick dish made with chicken and rice.

There wasn't really anything to making the dish, with the most difficult bit being sourcing the required curry paste (where most of the local supermarkets had every other paste in the range except for the one that was needed). Beyond that, there was a small amount of chopping, and then a series of steps consisting pretty much of "add this to the pan now". Half an hour later, and it was done.

And very nice it was, too. In hindsight, I think the quantities are over-generous - the recipe says it will serve four, but I'm inclined to think that the meal I did would have served five easily. Indeed, had I used the full amount of chicken listed, six would not have been a difficult stretch. But the meal was easy to make, it was full of flavour... basically, it was a winner all around.

We'll definitely be having this again, and not just to use up the remaining two servings. A success!

Incidentally, I've decided not to bother doing "Experimental Cookery..." posts about any more soups, unless there happens to be something of particular note. They'd reached a point where they came to "we made this; it was easy; it was okay", and that's pretty dull. The cookbook I've been using is a good one, although I doubt I'd ever use more than 10% of the recipes, but it's not worth posting, or reading, about every little thing.

#42: "Liar's Blade" by Tim Pratt
#43: "The Thirteen-Gun Salute", by Patrick O'Brian

And Two Other Updates

1. I didn't get to be Doctor Who. Obviously, I'm gutted at this - I was sure I'd argued my case to perfection.
   
2. As you know, my mobile phone died on me. At the time, I was undecided whether to go for a cheap-and-nasty phone as a stop-gap, or to take the plunge and buy a smartphone. In the end, I concluded that I really needed a phone now, so went for the cheap option. Mobile phone #3 then lasted for all of 4 weeks, before it was discovered that it wouldn't work in the US, and I really needed a phone to take. And so, mobile phone #4 was bought - also a cheaper option, although this one actually has a camera and other functions. Actually, it's much like mobile phone #2, so I expect to be using this one for some time.

Update on Goals

It's not been too long since the last update, but since we're now two-thirds of the way through the year, I figured it that now would be as good a time as any.

• Health: This is a very mixed one. There's some good news, some not so good news, and the likelihood of a way forward. I'm not so keen on sharing all the details here. Sorry.
  
• Weight: No movement. Actually, that's not true. When I was in the US, I put on somewhere between 4 and 6 pounds. Those have since come off, leaving me back where I started the year. This is going to need some work.
  
• Work: The last couple of months have been some of the best ever. So, that's good. Actually, part of the reason I'm posting now is that things have reached something of a lull (in a good way). But that won't last long... and that's good too.
  
• Books: I've read 41 books, and hopeful of getting to 45 by the end of this month, putting me back on track. I'm also up to date on three of the five series, and only one behind on a fourth. There's now no chance that I'll read twelve books from The List in the remainder of this year, but I'm not too dismayed about that.
  
• Debt: Paying off the bathroom took slightly longer than anticipated, due solely to that great evil: compound interest. But it's done now, and that was an amazingly great weight from my shoulders. Next!
  
• Games: "The Ebrrron Code" came to its planned end, and that end went as well as I could have hoped. That campaign really justifies its place in my "Big Four" great campaigns. The next campaign, "Imperial Fist", is due to start on the 1st of next month. I'm looking forward to it, although I really need to get some prep-work done. Since the last update, I haven't managed to fit in another one-shot, so remain at 2 out of the hoped-for 5. It seems likely that that count will end the year at 4. That said, I'm hopefully going to be playing in a one-shot in a couple of weeks, so think I might count that. All in all, that's pretty good. However, there are two small flies in the ointment. The first is that I've basically let the Imaginarium slide into inactivity, much as happened to this blog; I'm hoping to restart that one fairly soon. The second is that I concluded I have basically no interest whatsoever in 5th Edition of D&D - and indeed won't be too unhappy if I don't run or play any version of D&D for quite some time.

And that's that.

Experimental Cookery 2013: My Dad’s Really Very Good Lasagne

Well, not my Dad's, of course... This one comes from Lorraine Pascale's "Home Cooking Made Easy", so it's presumably her Dad's lasagne.

Anyway, I do like lasagne. But thus far, making lasagne has meant getting two jars of Dolmio sauces from Tesco, and then browning some mince and vegetables. Which is fine, of course, though it does now mean working from memory - so extreme is LC's rage against the mushroom that she threw out my lasagne recipe! I did try Jamie's lasagne recipe, from his "Ministry of Food", and while it was okay, it wasn't better enough than the Dolmio jars to justify the much greater effort involved. So, could Lorraine do any better?

Well, the short answer is "yes". The slightly longer answer is, "yes, but not enough to completely supplant the Dolmio version."

The lasagne that resulted from following Lorraine's Dad's recipe was very nice, no question about that. And, like Jamie's before it, it was indeed better than the Dolmio version. However, it also takes more than twice as long, and so while it's the best to date, it probably isn't the version I'm going to use regularly. I'll probably keep it for special occasions.

(It's much like pizza in this regard - the homemade ones are better than Tesco's alternative, but they're not better enough to justify the much greater effort involved in making them. So, that's three things: pizza, lasagne, and fajitas.)

One last thing. Lorraine's recipe was time-consuming, but it wasn't particularly difficult to follow. However, there was one thing worth noting: the book doesn't include the over temperature to use, which is a fairly crucial omission. Fortunately, I was able to track this down using the wonders of Google, finding a blog by someone who noted that she'd asked LP herself and received a response... and then didn't include said response on her site! (The answer is 180 degrees.) It's been a long time since I wrote in a book. It still feels wrong somehow.

Anyway, that's that.

#40: "Pathfinder: The Worldwound Incursion", by Amber E. Scott
#41: "The Wasp Factory", by Iain Banks (a book from The List)

Experimental Cookery Disaster!

Lady Chocolat and I are having some friends over for dinner tonight, so in honour of the occasion I thought it would be a good idea to bake some bread... and also a good opportunity to get some use from my latest cookbook, "Bread" by Paul Hollywood (sadly, not a great book).

So, the plan was to cook up some garlic bread, and the method started off easily enough - stick the ingredients in the mixer, start mixing slowly, add the liquids, and then mix at a higher speed for 10 minutes. Easy!

At this point, I set an alarm and went away to let the mixer do its thing.

A few short minutes later, there was a loud crash from the kitchen, and then the noise of the mixer trying, but struggling, to run its motor.

I rushed back into the kitchen, only to discover that the mixer had, lemming-like, hurled itself off of the counter, and smashed itself into pieces on the floor. The dough was splattered across said floor, and whole thing was a mess.

Gah!

So, no garlic bread for tonight, although we may buy some from Tesco. I spent the next twenty minutes cleaning up the mess, getting the kitchen back into some semblance of order. Fortunately, it looks like the mixer actually wasn't damaged - the various bits are designed to come apart, and although quite a lot of dough got into the motors I was able to brush it out.

Still, a definite disaster to add to my tally. At least I didn't end up wounded this time!

#37: "Pathfinder: The Dragon's Demand", by Mike Shel
#38: "Heart of Darkness and Other Stories", by Joseph Conrad
#39: "Catching Fire", by Suzanne Collins

Dear American TV...

Just some thoughts:

1. It's quite annoying when our channels break films up with adverts. Still, at least we have a good half-hour of film for 5 minutes of adverts. Showing ten minutes of film and then ten minutes of adverts is annoying in the extreme. Please stop it.
2. At 11pm at night, it is probably okay to show the occasional bared breast, and/or not to censor expletives. If it really, truly, is not, perhaps you should consider not showing "Deuce Bigelo: European Gigolo"?
3. Speaking of censorship, you should perhaps be consistent. In "The Ugly Truth", there's a scene where KH complains that men "prefer women in slutty clothes who suck lots of ****". This is then followed by a five minute exchange in which KH and GB repeatedly declare "cock". "Cock, cock, cock." Can you perhaps see the absurdity of censoring the first of these, but not the rest? And yet, that's exactly what happened. (And yes, I watched a bunch of crap when I was in the US. Unfortunately, the choice of channels was extremely limited, and I had no DVDs with me. Plus, with the amount of work I was doing, by the time the TV went on, I wanted something suitably mind-numbing.)
4. Anything on the Fox Network that isn't explicitly marked as fiction really should be removed from TV. Seriously, I get annoyed enough at Question Time, but this was a whole new level of nonsense. I particularly enjoyed the comments by the rich white guy who declared that fast food employees shouldn't assume that their work gave them the right to expect to have somewhere to live. No, he really said that. (It was particularly annoying because they often had discussion topics that actually sounded like interesting subjects. But then they actually got started.)

The Adventures of Steph/ven: #3: The Wedding of Katie and Bex

Okay, right at the outset I'm going to say this: I'm aware that there are potentially discussions to have about the question of gay marriage. One day, I might actually post on that topic. But the time for that was not last weekend, and it's not really now either. This was, and is, about my cousin's day, so I'm going to respect it as such. To that end, while I'm not realy a fan of censorship, I've disabled comments on this post. Sorry.

So, I got back to the UK on Friday morning, at about 10:30. On Sunday, at about 2:30, I was parted from LC once again, got into a car with my parents, and travelled down to the wedding. We were the only three members of the Scottish branch of the family to attend; unfortunately, the schools up here go back earlier than down South, which impacted on most other people. (Indeed, I missed LC's first day of work as a result, which wasn't ideal, but there it is.)

The journey down was... interesting. According to Google Maps, it was a journey of 4 hours and 38 minutes. We got there about 8:30. Still, it was okay, I suppose. We did stop to eat along the way, then abandoned our first choice of services, stopped again later, regretted that we hadn't stayed at the first place, and reluctantly dined at Burger King. It wasn't the best - especially when we reached the hotel, Dad saw the menu, and commented that he felt the hotel restaurant would have been a good choice, looking both good quality and not bad price. (Yes, I know. I was shocked too.)

We stayed in the Premier Inn at Harmer Hill, which I think was once a family hotel that has since been bought over/converted to become a PI. Which was fine - it was pretty much as expected from the chain, complete with the Good Night's Sleep guarantee. I had no complaints, and even my parents were duly impressed. (Yes, I know. I was shocked too.)

During the journey down, it occurred to me that I didn't recall putting my cufflinks in my bag. I knew I'd put them beside the bag to go in, but didn't recall them actually being packed. LC then confirmed that they had been left behind, and so alternate arrangements had to be made (which reminds me - must send the borrowed ones back to M). However, this proved to be the less embarrassing wardrobe issue, as a certain person had to rush off to buy a new suit due to a trouser shortfall...

So, Dad returned to the hotel, dressed in about five minutes, and then we piled into the car. He then set off at high speed - so fast, in fact, that I didn't have the time to get the directions aligned and we missed the vital turn. Oops. Fortunately, I had somehow remembered my book of maps, and was thus able to navigate us to the appropriate place. Which was lucky, really.

The weeding took place at Rowton Castle:

It was a lovely, sunny day, so there was a gathering of the family in the grounds outside, and then again just within the castle. And then came the time for the ceremony.

At this point I wasn't sure what to expect. This was, after all, the first civil partnership I had attended, so what was it to be? What would they wear? What was the terminology? I mean, I didn't want to ask, but I was understandably curious.

Well, it turned out that, regardless of the technicalities, it was basically a wedding. So, there were several bridesmaids, each of the couple had two "best persons" (Katie had two best women, while Bex had a best woman and best man), and so forth. Also, the couple were referred to, almost exclusively, as "Katie and Bex" (or "Katie and Rebecca" where appropriate), which was a good choice.

For their part, Bex wore a fairly traditional dress, being a bluish silver and strapless, while Katie wore a pantsuit with a huge velvet jacket festooned with buttons in a nautical style. It suited her entirely, conveying exactly the whimsy that we've come to expect from Katie:

(Sorry, not the best photo, just the best that I took. I was using my phone, and hadn't quite got to grips with how best to use it.)

The ceremony was short and sweet, and then it was outside for mingling, for photos, and for the single greatest idea in the history if ice creams:

Yes, it's true - the ice creams were both larger than the entire wedding party, and they had the ability to turn you into a giant so that they were smaller than your thumb! Isn't that amazing?

The rest of the day was more or less as would be expected - there was some mingling, then the meal (chicken, or maybe turkey, and potato salad to start, roast beef for main, and then a brownie and cream for dessert), and then the first dance and disco.

During the afternoon, I was asked if I would pipe the couple in to the top table. I was, of course, delighted to do so, although I was initially a little concerned - I didn't want to force myself into their day, but my Dad had mentioned to Katie's Dad, and then Katie asked me. But I checked, and they were absolutely delighted that I play, so... huzzah!

Amusingly, while I was tuning up, it was noted that the cows in the field stopped what they were doing and appeared intrigued. Actully, while I was in the car park, I noticed this was the case, and had been a bit concerned lest they suddenly stampede. But all was well. In fact, I'm sure I noticed a few cows with cameras, so I can only conclude that I've now been tagged on photos on the cow social network, Facemoo. (Actually, that would be my second appearance on Facemoo, as I'm also the genius behind that famed mini-game "Is the Grass Always Greener?")

(For the record, LC laughed at both those jokes, so I'm taking that as authorisation to use them.)

And that was more or less it. We left the hotel about 11:30, after Grandma turned in for the night. And we travelled home the next day, just in time to attend young nephew P's birthday party. Because, of course, the adventure never really ends.

The Adventures of Steph/ven: #2: Minneapolis

The day before I departed on my holiday to Sardinia, there was raised the question of a team going out to see our customer, to help them with the next phase of our project. (I can say no more than that - see my "no work talk" rule.) I was adjudged to be the most likely candidate, probably to go out with one other person. So, I left my details behind, and went off on holiday.

I was therefore back in the country for less than four and a half days before I was jetting off once more, this time to Iceland and then to Minneapolis.

The journey out was not terribly pleasant. The flights both ways were absolutely packed, so there really wasn't enough room. Plus, there was only a single drinks service, and absolutely nothing complimentary. I guess that's the price of travelling economy class. Still, that's also worse than I've enjoyed on any previous trans-Atlantic flights.

Incidentally, I saw neither my Mum nor LC's while in Iceland. Nor Kerry Katona for that matter.

While over there, I was staying in the Hilton. But I should probably clarify that - this wasn't one of their top-end signature hotels, but rather one of their more modest budget locations. Really, it was more like a Premier Inn. Still I had a comparitively huge room (they were packed when I arrived, so I ended up with a handicap-access room, hence the larger proportions; I didn't complain), and it was everything it really needed to be.

Most of the rest of the trip consisted of work. I was there for fifteen days, and I worked fourteen of those. I did take the second Saturday off, mostly because there's a limit to how much you can do. But that was fine - as I see it, I was there for a particular purpose, and if I can better achieve that purpose by working very long hours for a short period, then so be it. It wasn't like I was over-endowed with options - if the choice is 'work' or 'sit round the hotel room', it's not a difficult choice.

(I actually did quite a lot of my work while sitting around my hotel room, and actually that was often more convenient than working from the office, but that was purely incidental.)

On my day off, I raced around various place. In the morning, I went to see the cathedral in St Paul (named for a different St Paul). Here's a couple of pictures:

I also went to see Fort Snelling, which was constructed at the joining of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers in 1820, and which was at that time the furthest outpost of 'civilisation' in the US. While there, I saw demonstrations of musket- and cannon-fire, which were extremely interesting. I actually had never seen a 'real' gun fired before.

Actually, that was probably the high point of my day. I'm just a little annoyed at myself that I never took any pictures. Oh well.

After that, my host and I had lunch, and then I made sure to go and purchase LC a nice present, to make up for being absent for so long.

Speaking of LC, we were quite fortunate that we were able to communicate using Skype while I was out there. I made sure to set this up before I left, and it made a huge difference - especially on those days when I was working out of the hotel, when we could use the video function.

And that's mostly that. One evening I went to see "The Wolverine", which was okay, though I missed the first five minutes due to going to the wrong cinema. And it was hot and humid out there, though I'm told it was unseasonably cool, and that things are about to head into winter quite fast.

Oh yes, and there's the ice cream. On my day off, my host took me to an ice cream parlour, where I had a huge chocolate-dipped cone filled with two nice flavours (one of which was banana and chocolate; I think the other was strawberry, but I forget). Anyway, that was nice, right up until I tried to bite into the cone itself. At this point, the non-chocolate-y bit twisted and collapsed in my hand. Thereafter, the whole adventure was something of a scramble - could I finish the ice cream before it melted all over my hand? (The answer, unsurprisingly, was "no".)

Actually, my diet there was pretty terrible. Meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, lots of soda, coffee, and huge amounts of beer. Very little fruit or veg... and yet, somehow, it seemed to do me a huge amount of good. I really don't understand these things sometimes. Oh well. (Plus, no Irn Bru! The sacrifices I make sometimes...)

The flight back was much better than going out. Because I'd needed a flexible return date, I'd been booked into Economy Comfort class, which had the same seats as Saga (First) Class, albeit without the fancy meal and the champagne before takeoff (seriously). So, I had loads of room, loads of comfort... and was too tired to really appreciate it. I spent my time watching crap sitcoms, while lamenting that the light wasn't good enough to read by. Of course, I was too tired to read anyway, but it's the principle of the thing.

(I still didn't see any relevant Mums in Iceland on the way back, but I was only there for about 45 minutes - just long enough to buy a wonderful mug with Vikings on, and to visit the toilet. Still, I fear the adverts may have been lying.)

And that was my second adventure.

The Adventures of Steph/ven: #1: Sardinia

It seems hard to believe, but a mere five weeks ago I was on the first full day of my holiday in Sardinia. We were on holiday with LC's family (hereafter known as Les Chocolates!), having flown out with Jet2 on a non-stop flight from Edinburgh, via Leeds (not sure how that works - don't ask), to Olbia.

Sardinia is a lovely island, with fabulous beaches, lots of sun, and good food. It's also very expensive, being the only place I've yet seen where fuel is more expensive than in the UK, but not absurdly so, I guess. The week was marked with a whole lot of resting, a lot of reading (hence the list of books read in my previous post), some sight-seeing, and a total lack of stress. Well, for me at least.

We had rented a villa near the sea. Here's a picture of the view from our balcony:

Good, isn't it?

The villa was very nice, although it was a struggle to keep cool - the power was a little ropey, such that if we ran the Air Con in all the rooms at once, the breakers would trip. So, we had to be careful not to overload the system. Other than that, though, it had everything we needed and, crucially, didn't have some things that we were better without - specifically, an internet connection.

The view at night was rather spectacular. Because we were so far south, and also because of the sea on the horizon, when the moon rose at night it was a distinctive blood red. Naturally, that was difficult to photograph well, but it was spectacular to behold.

The food was also rather agreeable - lots of fresh fruit and veg, fresh bread, and pizza. Lots of pizza. (Of course, Sardinia is known for its fish, being an island, but that was mostly not for me.) Of course, many of the menus were in Italian only, which proved a touch tricky since I don't speak any Italian (though I did manage to order some ice creams on a couple of occasions - and no, I didn't just speak English loudly and slowly). Still, my habit of just ordering at random served me well... apart from that one time my pizza came with anchovies.

My one major culinary adventure came at a restaurant where the menu was in English. However, under my "try something new" policy, I felt obliged to try something I hadn't seen on a menu before:

In case you're not sure what you're looking at, that's octopus, with a tomato and lettuce salad. It's fair to say that it's not what I expected - I had expected it to be similar to squid (which I like), but it proved to be much more like tuna (which I don't so much). Still, I ate it... and then was glad to move onto my main course!

The other amusing anecdote from that same restaurant comes from our last night there. As is our wont, LC and I decided to dress up and go out for a meal alone together on the last night. Lord Chocolat gave us a lift down to the restaurant, and no sooner had he departed than we were greeted by the news that they'd had a power cut, that their oven had just stopped working, and that as such they could offer us anything except pizza. Which, given most of the alternatives were seafood, was a bit of a weakness.

So, anyway, we dined in their garden as the sun went down. LC had mussels again, while I tried the ravioli (which was okay, but not stellar). In time, they lit the candles. It was all rather nice.

And then they kicked us out. This wasn't surprising, really - by that point they'd had to turn people away (it was too dark), and we were by then the last customers. So, we paid, we left, and then we walked home. My only regret was that we couldn't have the long-awaited ice creams as we went - the same power cut had affected the whole street, including the ice cream parlour. Such a shame.

Still, there were soon to be other adventures featuring ice cream in all its glories...

Getting back into it...

Sorry I've been away. For the past several months I've been oppressed by two factors: Firstly, I've just been too busy to blog regularly. I would frequently get a post together, not have time to edit it properly, and abandon it half-finished. Secondly, for most of that time the most interesting thing in my life has been work, which has been in very high gear. However, with my "no work talk" rule in place, that didn't leave me much to blog about.

Still, I'm hoping now to do a better job, and will indeed try to commit to posting something at least once a week. We'll see how that goes!

#27: "Pathfinder: Rasputin Must Die!", by Brandon Hodge
#28: "The Reverse of the Medal", by Patrick O'Brian
#29: "The Folklore of Discworld", by Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson
#30: "Queen of Thorns", by Dave Gross
#31: "Persuasion", by Jane Austen (A Book from The List)
#32: "The Hunger Games", by Suzanne Collins
#33: "The Letter of Marque", by Patrick O'Brian
#34: "The White Company", by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#35: "Pathfinder: The Witch Queen's Revenge", by Greg A. Vaughan
#36: "Called to Darkness", by Richard Lee Byers

Experimental Cookery 2013: Hungarian Goulash

My not-quite-newest toy is a slow cooker. Today was the first time I got a chance to actually use it, using the recipe for Hungarian Goulash that was found in the leaflet that came with the cooker.

Apparently, a lot of people consider the best feature of a slow cooker that many of the recipes consist of "put everything in the pot; switch on; leave for 5 hours; eat". That is not the case here. Instead, there was a certain amount of chopping of veg, then softening these in the pot, searing the meat, and only then adding the liquid and leaving it for 6 hours.

Still, I managed to perform all of the preparation tasks while my soup was roasting, so it wasn't exactly tough!

When the cooking was done, I must confess to being somewhat dubious at first. It definitely looked like there was a bit of a skin on the meal, and it didn't look too appetising. However, this proved to be a false impression - what had appeared to be a skin was in fact just a consequence of the condensation on the underside of the glass lid. A quick stir showed that this was actually a very well-cooked meal.

And it tasted good too - the beef was cooked perfectly, the veg were soft without being slimy, and the sauce was tasty without being overpowering. Success!

The one change I would probably make for next time is to switch the wine for something a bit less fruity. I had selected a Garnacha from Tesco's "Simply" range, and the flavour came through really quite strongly in the end meal. (On the other hand, I now suspect that this wine may be rather better to drink than previous "Simply" wines, so I might just have hit on something. Or perhaps not... (Edit: Nope.))

I don't doubt that I'll be making this again. And I'll no doubt be making some use of this toy again, too. Though I'll need to get some good recipes to use with it too.

Experimental Cookery 2013: Slow Roasted Tomato & Basil Soup

This recipe came from "A Soup For Every Day", by the New Covent Garden Food Company. It's the soup for the 7th of July, so I was at least somewhat close this time.

This soup required a bit of cooking time, what with the whole slow-roast part of the task, but required only a small amount of hands-on time: the tomatoes and other veg need sliced and arranged, and then roasted, and then the whole thing needs put in a blender for a little while. Then there's a reheat step, and that's it. So, it was pretty easy.

In hindsight, two things are clear to me. Firstly, it was a really good idea to make sure I used a variety of tomatoes in the cooking - this led to a more varied flavour which helped the resulting soup. However, and secondly, it was not such a good idea to include cherry tomatoes amoungst the selection - they just don't roast very well!

Still, the soup was easy to prepare, it was flavourful, and I'd certainly have it again. It's also the first soup I've made from this book that I've felt 100% happy with, so that's good.

And that was lunch...

#25: "The Far Side of the World", by Patrick O'Brian
#26: "1356", by Bernard Cornwell (For 200 pages or so, this looked like a new candidate for "book of the year". Alas, it's a bit rushed towards the end. Still excellent, as always from BC, but not quite good enough to topple the current leader.)

The End of the Line

Well, that's it. As of this morning, mobile phone #2 is done.

(For anyone who needs to get in touch - it still works for text messages either way, but the microphone is busted so it won't work for calls. My desk phone here is the office is also not working, so if it's really important then send me a text asking me to call you back.)

Unfortunately, this raises something of a quandary: should I buy another very basic mobile phone, on the grounds that I only ever use it for texts and a very occasional call; or has the time come to investigate and then invest in a smartphone, on the grounds that I'd almost certainly use more if it was available?

I'll update once I have a new phone, which should be soon.

#23: "Blood of the City", by Robin D. Laws
#24: "The Long Earth", by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

An Interesting Find

Last week, LC and I went to the wrong Tesco. This shocking lapse was responsible for many woes, not least that I forgot to reclaim my pound from the trolley, but it also led to an interesting discovery: a novel called "The City" by Stella Gemmell.

My immediate response to this was "excellent!" See, for many years my favourite author was David Gemmell. Sadly, he died, leaving his latest trilogy unfinished. However, his wife Stella picked up the baton, and brought the final novel, and thus the trilogy, to a very fitting end.

And that was the end of that, I thought. Since then, I have identified a couple of other favourite authors (being Bernard Cornwell and Conn Iggulden. Oh, and Terry Pratchett, of course).

So, when I saw that Stella Gemmell had written her own first novel, and seen also that it seems to fit into a similar niche as her husband's writings, I found myself looking foward to it.

But...

Having given the matter just a little thought, it became pretty obvious that this was a somewhat foolish reaction. Because, of course, just because her husband was a favourite of mine, it by no means indicate that she can do an equivalently good job. She might; she might even be better, but there is no guarantee that this will be the case.

Anyway, the book is only available in hardcover, so I've got a year to wait for the paperback, and will have a chance to read the reviews. Still, I thought it was blog-worthy.

#22: "Pathfinder: The Frozen Stars", by Matthew Goodall

Why I Should Be the Next Doctor...

Dear Mr Moffat...

I know you're busily searching for the next Doctor, and that you must therefore be very busy. Fortunately, I can help you solve that problem for you. Clearly, and for reasons that shall soon become obvious, I am precisely the right person to be the next Doctor.

"But why?", I hear you ask. Well, allow me to present my case. I'm sure you'll find the logic is irrefutable...

Really, it's a simply matter of elimination. See, until recently, every single Doctor has been older than I am. But that ended with Matt Smith, where for the first time the actor to portray our hero was younger than I am. There is now only one option that has not been explored: the next Doctor must be exactly the same age as I am! It's the only possibility.

Now, of course, you could try seeking out an actor who happens to be exactly the same age as I am. I suppose that would make sense. But why bother? Why not just go straight to the source, and pick the person who most undeniably fills that criterion?

Plus, of course, my sense of whimsy is almost legendary amongst all three readers of my blog (although, granted, one of these is my wife, who is practically required to read it and say "yes dear" at appropriate intervals and with rising levels of long-sufferingness, so she might not count). And I can easily carry on some of the trends started by Mr Smith, as every new Doctor has incorporated mannerisms of the last - I can supply my own bow tie; indeed, I can supply either a clip-on as sported by Mr Smith or a tied one... though my ability to actually tie the latter is best described as comical. Likewise, Mr Smith had a fez; I've always wanted a fez, because fezzes (fezes? fezi?) are cool.

See? My logic is quite simply unassailable. So, when can I start?

Geronimo!

#20: "The Ionian Mission", by Patrick O'Brian
#21: "Treason's Harbour", by Patrick O'Brian

Update on Goals

It's hard to believe that we're already so far through the year. It barely seems a few short weeks ago that snow was falling and winter was in full swing.

Oh, wait...

Anyway, it's time for an update on the goals I set at the start of the year. So, here we go...

• Health: Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the underlying cause of most of my health issues has been explained. The other good news is that I have an appointment to see a physio on Thursday, so there should be some movement on my neck. The bad news, sadly, is that the underlying issue isn't going away; I'll just have to manage it. Which is less than ideal, but it could be worse.
• Weight: No movement.
• Work: This has been another case of good news and bad news. Three weeks ago, things were pretty much awful, but this week has been much better. I'm monitoring the situation.
• Books: I've read 19 books so far, putting me quite some way behind target. That said, I'm on track with most of the 'series' I set, and am gradually catching up, so it may not be impossible to reach the goal. Maybe.
• Debt: So far, so good. The last payment for the bathroom should be made a month from now. It will be good to be free of that.
• Games: This has been going well. "The Eberron Code" campaign is now two sessions from completion. In addition, I have run two of the five one-shots I hope to get through. "Firefly: Furiously Fast" was well received, while "Star Wars: Imperial Fist" was the second-best game I have run in about a decade. So that's good.

Experimental Cookery 2013: Carrot & Coriander Soup

Last one of these for a while, I promise!

This was the second soup taken from "A Soup for Every Day". It was a quick and easy soup to put together, and was nice and tasty. One thing I found surprising was the way that the nutmeg in the recipe came through in the end result. All in all, it was very much a success, and I expect to be doing this again.

Experimental Cookery 2013: Perfect New Potatoes

Purely for completeness...

These were taken from "Jamie's Ministry of Food", we had them with some piri piri chicken and a nice salad. They were fine.

And that's about all there is to say about that!

Experimental Cookery 2013: Butternut Squash, Orange & Ginger Soup

For our anniversary, LC got me a new cookbook: "A Soup for Every Day" from the New Covent Garden Food Co. (I got her two tickets to go see "Sleeping Beauty on Ice", and a bundle of all the newspapers from our wedding day (as I alluded to in my post about the wedding)) This was the first soup taken from the book.

It did not go well.

I gathered the ingredients, chopped them up, started the cooking, and got to the simmer stage. So far, so good. I then made the mistake of leaving it alone to simmer. And when I returned after the appropriate time, it had boiled dry and burnt on to the pan. Oops.

At this point, LC noted that she married me for my cooking, and declared she was leaving. Oh no!

Needless to say, I begged for another chance. I was sure I could do better.

Fortunately, the second attempt was much more successful. I cut the simmer stage down, and watched it like a hawk... and it all came out very well.

The resulting soup was really quite nice, with the stronger flavours of the ginger and the orange giving a nice complement to the otherwise rather bland squash. So that was good.

So, that was good.

#17: "The Surgeon's Mate", by Patrick O'Brien
#18: "Pathfinder: Maiden, Mother, and Crone", by Tim Hitchcock
#19: "Nightglass", by Liane Merciel

We Found Them! They're Here!

Rather shockingly, the week before last saw LC and I reaching the epic milestone of one year married. Truly, such a feat is deserving of being immortalised in song.

Anyway, we decided to spend a few days away. And LC selected Alnwick as our destination, although I'm sure that had absolutely nothing to do with the poison garden... So, we found a suitable B&B, made a reservation, and off we went.

We drove down on the Thursday, a journey that was largely uneventful, although I did note the existence of a disputed zone at the border, with both England and Scotland laying claim to a thin strip of ground. Which I'm sure the "Better Together" campaign will promptly declare to be one of the unresolved issues that the SNP absolutely, positively must answer. But I digress.

We stayed in "Aln House", a rather nice B&B with some six rooms. We didn't see any of the other rooms, but ours was very nice, with everything you might expect - a bed, a TV, several chairs, more cushions than any self-respecting gent can bear, and an en suite bathroom. Very nice. One nice touch was that there was also a common sitting room where people could, in theory, socialise while staying there. And the proprietors were very nice also.

For dinner we ate in a sit-down fish and chip (not fish supper) restaurant, which was rather nice. I had chicken. And then bed.

Friday was the day of the anniversary, and so we spent some time opening the various cards and presents that we had either arranged for one another, or brought down with us. LC got me a rather nice book of soup recipes, while I gave her a package containing all the newspapers from our wedding day (which I referred to in the blog post about the wedding, lo those many months ago). Oh, and tickets to go see "Sleeping Beauty on Ice" (which was very good also).

We then spent the day seeing Alnwick Gardens and Castle, including the poison garden (which I survived), the haunted cellars (which I survived), and the Quiddich demonstration (which was wierd). We had a rather indifferent lunch in the gardens (which I survived - no oranges anywhere!). And, at some length, we returned to the B&B to change for dinner.

Dinner was at "The Treehouse", which is exactly what the name implies. Alas, my hopes that we might be served by Ewoks came to naught, although since Ewoks are cannibalistic that's probably a good thing. The meal was absolutely fantastic, which was fortunate as it was priced to match.

On Saturday, we went to Barter Books, a huge second-hand bookstore. And, incidentally, the place where that "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster was found, thus causing that dratted meme. LC bought some books; I decided against.

In the afternoon, we went to Banburgh Castle. Which I didn't realise until we got there was once 'Bebbanburg', one of the key locations in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before going to the castle, we went for a walk along the beach. And in the course of getting to said beach we encountered these little guys...

Yes, it's true. We now know the answer to the question "Where are the frogs?"!!

We then went to the castle, which was absolutely fascinating, because I kept seeing just what Cornwell meant when he kept commenting that that place couldn't be taken. It's going to be fascinating to see how (or if) he resolves that particular issue. And then we walked around the town for a bit, and then we went home.

That evening, we watched "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", which was interesting enough, although I found Maggie Smith's character somewhat hard to bear - it was a good performance of someone rather unlikeable.

And on Sunday we came home, stopping along the way at Lindisfarne to see another castle. Which was interesting, although it seems that the castle would have been absolutely ideal some centuries before it was built, but rather redundant by the time it was actually built. Still, interesting enough. (The players in my various games may have noticed a sudden increase in frog- and poison-related matters in games recently. They may well find that there's an increase in castles and monasteries shortly, too.)

And that was our holiday. I actually really enjoyed it, being a good opportunity to just leave things behind and have a few days of stress-free relaxation. Given that the start of that week had been a rerun of the disaster that was Christmas (LC was busy with an essay; I was ill), this was a really good thing. Of course, we came back and were immediately caught up in a week of madness. But never mind...

Dear Tesco...

I appreciate what you're trying to do with your "Price Promise". I quite like the fact that you care enough to check whether my shopping would be cheaper elsewhere, and give me a voucher back for the difference.

However, there's a small problem.

See, what you're actually doing is reminding me, week after week, that I would be better off shopping elsewhere. It hasn't escaped my attention that I have received several vouchers for money back and very few indicating that I actually saved. And while it doesn't matter so much as long as the Price Promise holds (since we get the vouchers), there will no doubt come a day when you'll stop this promotion. Knowing that, and putting those two facts together, what do you think I'll do?

So I'm sorry, but this particular move was not your best. You've gone and shone a great big spotlight on one of your key weaknesses, and in doing so have created discontent where before there was none.

Of course, there is a way out. And it's probably your only way out at this point. Basically, you need to lower your prices, right across the board of your "comparable items". That way, where just now I get a voucher back almost every week, instead I'll get more and more notifications that I've saved.

But good luck with that - Asda are rightly proud of their "lowest priced supermarket" tag, and I'd wager they will fight to keep them.

Experimental Cookery 2013: "I Can't Believe You Made That" Cake

Well, yes I did. I even have a picture to prove it.

It was LC's birthday on Friday, and the plan was that various family members would come around to celebrate it. In preparation for this event, then, I asked LC what sort of birthday cake she would prefer. At which point she declared that she would like the "home-made sort", and then specified that it was this cake that she would like. Alright-y then.

So, I dug out Lorraine Pascale's "Baking Made Easy", read through the recipe, gathered the ingredients and then, on Thursday, proceeded to start on the cake.

I actually did this in two parts. On Thursday evening I made up the chocolate sponge that was the core of the cake, and then on Friday I decorated the thing, starting as soon as I got home, and then completing it once we'd been to Tesco and picked up the requisite strawberries. (Incidentally, I used Matchmakers for the outer ring; the mint ones, though if I were doing this again I would probably use the orange ones instead.)

I think this is the first time I have ever tackled an actual birthday cake; I am similarly reasonably sure that I haven't actually made anything with "cake" in the title since high school, though it's possible I've forgotten something. So I made sure to buy a backup cake, just in case.

Anyway, it came out like this:

And, yes, it tasted as good as it looked. Although the last two slices weren't quite so good when we ate them on Sunday.

Would I make this again? Perhaps, but it would need to be a special occasion. In truth, I felt that the cake was actually a bit sickly-sweet to me - if it were a cake for my own use, I suspect I would have gone for a vanilla sponge or similar instead. But it wasn't for me, so that's fine.

#14: "A Crown Imperiled", by Raymond E. Feist
#15: "City of the Fallen Sky", by Tim Pratt
#16: "Last of the Gadarene", by Mark Gatiss

Experimental Coolery 2013: Custard-based Vanilla Ice Cream

I'm adding this post for completeness; the truth is that these posts about ice cream are largely redundant because there's not much to say - mix the ingredients, use the ice cream maker, and the results are very nice. So, feel free to insert all the appropriate text here if you wish. I'll even leave a gap for you...

Anyway, there is perhaps one thing of note about this particular ice cream: when I first mentioned it to Lady Chocolat, her immediate response was that I shouldn't bother, but should do some other type instead. Basically, she objected to the "custard-based" part of the description. I chose to go ahead anyway... and it turns out that I was right to do so. This is the best of the ice creams that I have done to date, and by quite a long way.

Did He Miss By A Day?

Ages ago, I suggested that the best thing for Scottish Football would, in fact, be to simply wrap the whole thing up and to lobby for an amalgamation of the Scottish, Welsh, and English leagues (and national sides) into a single British setup. I still fear that that represents almost our only chance of seeing a major tournament in the next decade.

(Incidentally, if I get around to it, there may be a post forthcoming about league reconstruction. But that's for another day.)

In addition, a few weeks back it occurred to me that the UK government have a couple of cards to play in the fight against Scottish independence (not that I think they actually need them): specifically, I expected their first gambit would be to offer Devo-plus, then perhaps Devo-max. And if things got really desperate they would persuade the FA to offer Celtic and Rangers entry to the English leagues. But I didn't bother mentioning that as I felt it was rather too absurd.

And then, yesterday, David Cameron came out with a statement almost exactly to that effect. It must really suck to be a political satirist these days - the reality is so absurd that it's hard to tell the difference.

Experimental Coolery 2013: Strawberry Ice Cream

Yes, I'm back. I know things have been a bit quiet on the blog front, with rumours of a fruit-related demise being circulated in some quarters. Fortunately, though, I've learned to communicate from the other side, and have finally managed to train our hamster to type. So, we're back in business!

Having finally managed to source some decent strawberries from Tesco, I was able to attempt a second recipe from those that came with our ice cream maker. And, as with the previous effort it was almost ridiculously simple - simply puree the strawberries, mix with the other ingredients, and then pour into the ice cream maker.

The resulting ice cream was excellent. However, my previous caveats apply - the ingredients are more expensive than even the 'good' ice creams on sale from the supermarket, and the quality is comparable. So, this is another thing we probably won't make again unless we happen to come by some strawberries and/or cream that we need to use up. Which isn't terribly likely.

Anyway, must dash - I have a kitchen to haunt.

#11: "Song of the Serpent", by Hugh Matthews (sadly, the weakest book of the year to date)
#12: "The Bromeliad", by Terry Pratchett
#13: "Pathfinder: the Shackled Hut", by Jim Groves

(Regarding my 'books' goal: it's already looking unlikely that I'll get through 60 books this year. Additionally, the '5 series' part of the goal has pretty much fallen by the wayside. But we'll see.)

The Orange Peel Incident

In a bid to hasten the return of The Doctor, and also due to general boredom, I elected to avoid my traditional and daily apple for this week. Instead, since Tesco had some nice-looking oranges, I elected to buy some of those instead. Today was the second day in which an orange made its presence felt in my lunch.

Now, for anyone whose only exposure to oranges has been in chocolate form, one of the key features of the fruit is the presence of a peel, which has a distinctive orange colour and which must be removed before consumption of the delicious fruit within can be contemplated.

It was this that highlighted the ultimate folly of my choice, for it transpired that my usual technique for removing the peel was just rubbish, both yesterday and today. It seems that some wag, probably part of a conspiracy by apple-growers, had taken to supergluing the peel to the oranges in Tesco. And so, the pierce-and-rip technique turned into an ordeal of picking, and stretching, and getting covered in orange juice. (And yes, I used the same technique twice. I assumed that yesterday was just a glitch in the Matrix, but it turned out not to be the case.)

Anyway, luckily, Google is your friend, and so a quick search for "how to peel an orange" later, and I am now armed with a new technique, one that I shall try tomorrow.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Wolves Forecast

It's been a strange winter, weather-wise. See, it hasn't actually been at all bad, and yet we've been constantly bombarded with warnings. Particularly annoying are those roadside signs, declaring "Snow Forecast" - if they have a genuine concern for the environment then unless they have something worthwhile to communicate now they should be switching those off.

But it's not just those signs. We've been bombarded with weather warnings at the first hint of a breeze, and the forecasts have been positively apocalyptic. And all for... pretty much nothing.

Until last weekend, that is, when it actually snowed, and the snow actually lay where it fell. And, somehow, amazingly, the powers-that-be were somehow taken entirely by surprise, and so weren't ready to clear and then grit the roads. And so, despite the snow falling on and off on Sunday, traffic chaos ensued on Monday.

I was rather glad I had the day off. I picked that one well.

Anyway, the motorway signs are back to it - "Snow Forecast" once again wasted energy across the land. Huzzah!

I can't think why, but when I put together the near-apocalyptic forecasts, the general lack of bad weather, and the failed response when we actually had snow, somehow I'm reminded of the tale of the boy who cried "Wolf!" Maybe, just maybe, our councils recognised that the forecasters were routinely exaggerating, so that when there actually was a chance of snow, they just didn't believe them.

Maybe our weather forecasters could tone down their fervour for the end of the world just a tad, and just give us their best appraisal of what they expect to actually happen? And while they're at it, it would be quite good if our TV stations could perhaps stop treating the News and the Weather as entertainment, and instead go back to actually informing us? Or is that just a crazy thought?

Experimental Cookery 2013: Singapore-style Noodles

It's been a while since I did one of these on a Tuesday. However, I've been feeling rather uninspired of late, and so felt that it would be good to make the effort to cook something new, and so here is the result.

This one came from Ching-he Huang's "Chinese Food Made Easy", which is a book I rather enjoy, but one that I make relatively little use of. I find it quite hard to work from, as the food cooks so very fast that it's necessary to have everything ready before the first ingredient hits the wok. This also means that these meals have quite a long prep time that I never seem to account for properly.

The Singapore-style noodles are something that has been enticing me to try them for some time, but because of the prawns I have held off thus far. Still, the time had come, and so...

As with other receipes in this book, this one does indeed require quite a lot of preparation, and that must be done before starting on the cooking - once you start it's basically a race to the end. In particular, it is crucial that the chicken be cooked before you start, because there is no chance of doing so in the midst of the rest of it.

However, that warning aside, this was all quite easy to get through. Basically, once all the (easy) prep stages are done, it was just a matter of queuing up all the ingredients and then throwing them in, leaving about a minute between each stage. A few minutes later, and it's done.

And it was very nice indeed. Pretty much thermonuclear in taste, but very nice. I'm sure we'll be having that again.

#10: "The Snows of Summer", by Neil Spicer

Mysteries of the Ages

Throughout history, there have always been great mysteries, puzzles to vex the greatest of minds. For centuries, mathematicians would attempt to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Even today, now it has been proven, they search still, this time for an 'elegant' solution - Fermat could not possibly have come to the proof that was finally used, so does there exist an easier way, or was he just lucky?

There are other mysteries as well. Why is it that, no matter how carefully you check, there is always one item you forget to buy in the weekly shop? Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies? Why does "Question of Sport" go on forever, while "Firefly" didn't even get a full season? Was Morris truly so bad at dancing that the mockery is yet to desist?

But these all pale into insignificance next to the most important of all questions: why is it that the three flavours of Mars Planets are caramel, nougat, and crisp? Especially since the one that is by far the weakest is also the flavour not associated with the Mars bar?

Any ideas? The best suggestion will have the honour of being the best.

#9: "The Fortune of War" by Patrick O'Brian

A Bad Film Called Die Hard

Yesterday over dinner, LC noted that she had a lot of work to do. Consequently, I found myself at a loose end. That being the case, given that cinema tickets are cheap on a Tuesday, and also given that I rather wanted to see the film but LC did not, I decided to go see "A Good Day to Die Hard".

My short-version review: this is a terrible, terrible film. It is the worst of the "Die Hard" films by a long way, is worse than at least four of the "Fast & Furious" films (I've never seen "2 Fast 2 Furious"), it's worse than all three "Transformers" films, and is even worse than virtually everything starring Jason Statham. Indeed, it's offensively bad, in the same manner as "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" or "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull". In fact, the only good thing about this film is that the running time is 98 minutes, which is blessedly short.

I'm about to delve into spoilers, so if you're still inclined to go see the film and want to avoid them, you should skip the rest of this post.

The plot of the film is at once quite simple and yet unnecessarily complex. John McClane's son has been arrested in Moscow, and will be lucky to get a life sentence. John therefore travels out there to go see his son, only to get caught up in another really bad day. Meanwhile, there's some business about a file of damning evidence, that ultimately turns out to be a front for yet another simple heist, this time of weapons-grade uranium. And there are the usual inevitable betrayals, the quips, and the catchphrases.

Unfortunately, the big problem with the film is that while the characters have understandable goals, the means they use to achieve those goals are utterly nonsensical - either they take actions that by rights should be of no help at all or, worse, those actions only make sense provided the character magically knows that some other character is going to take action first.

But, fair enough. Let's simply accept that the plot is nonsensical, treat it as a big, dumb action movie, and go from there. Switch off the brane, and we should be able to have fun with it, no?

Well, no, actually.

The problem is that the film has two great big action set-pieces, one a chase scene and the other the climactic confrontation at the end. I don't have any great criticism of the second of these, though largely because I'd long since given up on the film - and that was because of the utter failure of the first.

See, there's this chase scene. Jack McClane and an escaped prisoner are in a van, being chased by the bad guy's minions in an armoured truck, and they in turn are being chased by John McClane in a variety of weapons. So far, so good.

The problem is that, like "Bad Boys 2" and the first "Transformers" film, the quick cuts in the film, coupled with the badly-used shakycam, coupled with the director's penchant for moving quickly across the scene with the camera out of focus meant that it wasn't actually possible to make out what was actually happening - it really wasn't clear where the three vehicles were in relation to one another. In fact, there was one bit where I found myself surprised to find they had turned into oncoming traffic!

Now, while bad, even that's not unrecoverable. A chase is a very dynamic scene, with all sorts of potential for injury and death occurring. There's lots of tension in there, which is why films use them: they're an easy way to build excitement.

Unfortunately, by this point the film has already long-since established that the characters are made of rubber. Jack McClane has already survived a huge explosion, protected only by his equivalent of the nuclear fridge, while John has survived a bone-pulping car crash and then been hit by a Chelsea tractor.

The combination of these two things mean that that chase scene is just ten minutes of bright lights and loud noises, and nothing more.

So, even as a big, dumb action film, this one fails.

But actually, I don't think that just being a "big, dumb action film" is acceptable for this film, anyway. See, this isn't "Crank 2", where we know going in that it's going to be utterly stupid. This is a "Die Hard" film. The reason people bother going to see it is because "Die Hard" was good. By trading on the name, they've given rise to reasonable expectations about the film.

And there's the rub. Despite the then-cutting-edge action, the original "Die Hard" wasn't just a big, dumb action movie. It, like the first "Lethal Weapon" film, "The Terminator", "Predator", the first "Rambo" and the first "Rocky" had rather more to them than that. Sure, the action was solid... but so too were other aspects of the film. That's why those films are still amongst the best in their field, and that's why people will go to the sequels - in the hope that a new film featuring the same characters may capture some of the same magic.

Of course, almost all the time, that hope is going to be dashed. And if it were inevitable that that were the case, the rational response would be simple - don't go to see them. But it's not inevitable that new sequels will suck. We know this, because there is one (and thus far, only one) example of a good modern sequel - in "Rocky Balboa", once you get past the absurdity of the premise, you actually have a film that deals rather more with character, and actually addresses its themes, than you might expect. (Actually, "Rocky Balboa" is the film that "Rocky 5" tried very hard, and unfortunately failed, to be. If you haven't seen it, it's recommended - as is the first, and only the first, "Rocky".) That film proves that a good modern sequel actually is possible for one of these films, which just makes it worse when all the others fail.

'Course, the down-side of that is that when "Die Hard 6" inevitably comes to the cinema, it's pretty certain that I'll make sure to go see it. And then write a blog post complaining about it.

Nothing To Say

Just thought I'd post a quick update. Truth is, there's not much to report - I go to work, I come home from work, I sit around for much of the time... I do have a game on tomorrow, which should be good. This is the "Christmas Game" that got cancelled due to poor scheduling, and which is now happening. I'm looking forward to it.

Other than that, there's not really anything to report. My goals are just sitting there, not really progressing but not really suffering any impossible setbacks either. All in all, things are pretty good, if a little dull. But given some of the alternatives, I'll accept dull!

#8: "Death's Heretic", by James L. Sutter (another surprisingly good book in the "Pathfinder Tales" line. It's not going to be book of the year, but I enjoyed it rather more than I expected.)

If You Have Nothing to Say... Say It With Big Words!

I finished "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" last night. I'm afraid to say that I really didn't enjoy it too much - my big issue with it being that while I don't doubt it was an accurate depiction of society at that time, I didn't much like the depiction of society's reaction to Tess. Which I suppose is a good thing, as I rather suspect that was Hardy's point, exactly.

Anyway...

After having finished the novel, I then skimmed through the "bonus features" in the novel, which in this case included some deleted scenes, some discussion of the landscapes in the novel... and an introduction. And, as with "Jane Eyre", I found myself less than pleased with the introduction, although for rather different reasons.

For the most part, my issue with the introduction was that it didn't add anything to the text. The thing is, a good introduction really should be teasing out things that are probably not immediately obvious from a read-through, but which on being pointed out highlight deeper meanings to the text. And, actually, there is one good example of this in the introduction: it points out some elements that were analogous to the fairy tales of the time, which Hardy then subverted. And that's good.

But the introduction spent a very significant amount of text in a discussion of ambiguity in the text, when actually what it actually says about ambiguity could be covered in a single paragraph. Essentially, the introduction is stalling for word-count.

What I found particularly amusing (and also irritating) about the introduction, though, was the use of language. Because where the writer was on strong ground and making solid points, the introduction was quite clear, and written in nice easy language. It had a point, it made it, job done. But where the introduction was struggling for a point, the language used changed quite significantly - suddenly, it was peppered with "hundred-dollar words", words that most people don't know, and so would either look up or, more likely, would simply nod along with and accept the writer's erudition.

Now, I have absolutely no problem with the use of "hundred-dollar words". Sometimes, an obscure word is absolutely the right word for the job, and should be used. And anyway, one of the best features of the English language is precisely the range of words available, giving rise to all sorts of shades of meaning, and allowing great expressiveness to those who can use those words.

However, what we have here is the difference between "Star Trek: the Next Generation" and "Star Trek: Voyager" - in both cases, there are spells in which the characters (usually the chief engineer or resident Vulcan/Android) is busy explaining what he's doing, and resorts to technobabble. In TNG, though, the show made sure to employ science/technology advisors, and so the technobabble more or less makes sense, especially in relation to the science of the day. And so, when the transporters go wrong, it's an issue with the "pattern buffers" or the "Heisenberg Compensator". In Voyager, by contrast, they've decided they don't care any more, and so they just "reverse the polarity" of the "wibbly-doodad" to generate a "bibblytron" pulse. Or something. It's not real science in either case... but one shows an attention to detail that the other lacks.

The introduction to "Tess...", then, makes uses of literary-technobabble. When struggling for a point, it throws together a whole slew of fancy words which sound really good... but don't actually mean anything. (I don't have the novel to hand, but there's one particular sentence that was particularly egregious - it was assembled of nothing but those "hundred dollar words", but didn't actually say anything at all.)

Anyway, that was that. My next book is a Pathfinder Tale, which I suspect is unlikely to make use of many big words... and which almost certainly not bear anything like the same analysis as "Tess...". But that's good, too.

#6: "Strata", by Terry Pratchett
#7: "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", by Thomas Hardy (a book from The List)

Experimental Cookery 2013: Valentine's Day

Once again, this Valentine's Day was marked by my constructing an elaborate three-course meal, as is my wont. This year, all three courses were experimental, and all three came from Lorraine Pascale's "Fast, Fresh and Easy Food". Rather than blog about each course individually, I have decided to deal with all three together.

Starter: Red Pepper, Tomato & Basil Gazpacho with Salt & Pepper Croutons

Ah, Gazpacho soup...

Memories of Red Dwarf aside, this was a very quick and easy soup to prepare. It consisted of roughly cutting up all the ingredients, stuffing them into a food processor, blitzing until fairly smooth, then transferring them to the liquidiser and finishing off. From there, it was a simple matter of chilling in the fridge overnight, and then making the croutons before serving.

Note: I originally tried to liquidise the soup using the liquidiser from the start, thinking that was an obvious step. However, it turned out that the blades hacked through the low-level ingredients, and then couldn't get any traction on the higher ones - the additional step of using the food processor was required.

Eating this was a bit of an odd experience, what with it being a soup, but served cold. But it was nice - lots of flavour, a nice texture, and the croutons were great. Huzzah!

Main: Five-spice Roasted Duck Breasts with Cherry & Shiraz Sauce & Sesame Noodles

I'm a little confused by this one: if the duck is cooked entirely in the frying pan, in what sense is it 'roasted'?

In the event, I found this course to be rather difficult to handle. There was a lot going on all at once, and everything seemed to take longer than it should. In particular, I found I just didn't trust the duck when it first came from the pan - I felt it needed chopped up and then given several more minutes. And even so, I wasn't 100% convinced (although we seem to be okay...).

All in all, I wasn't terribly happy with this course, although LC really liked it. Every time I've had duck, I've found it to be quite fatty, and that really put me off of the crunchy skins, and thus I lost a lot of the flavour.

On the other hand, the sauce was absolutely brilliant, and the noodles were quite nice too.

Dessert: Chocolate Mousse with Raspberries

Like the Gazpacho, these were put together on Wednesday and chilled overnight. And they were pretty spectacular. Huzzah!

I did have a couple of issues putting these together. Firstly, my mixer singularly failed to properly beat the eggs - I had to complete this task by hand (which wasn't entirely easy!). Then, I misread one of the instructions, and so added the chocolate and cream to the egg white, and then added the egg yolks to the egg whites, and only then realised that I should instead have added the yolks to the cream... the next step was to gradually add these mixed ingredients to the whites.

Doh!

Still, it all came together well, and everything was fine. So that's good.

Overall...

Two successes out of three is pretty good.

I've had a lot of success with Lorraine's various books, and they're quickly coming to rival Hugh's "River Cottage Every Day" as my go-to cookbooks. Though quite often I do find that they don't come out looking much like they do in the book - sometimes, more pictures of the dish as it is prepared would be very useful.

#5 "Pathfinder: The Dead Heart of Xin", by Brandon Hodge

Wreck-It Ralph

After several failed attempts (no, really), LC and I made it out to see Disney's latest on Monday.

Basically, if you take the concept of "Toy Story", but with video games instead of toys, and cross it with the "bad guy tries to reform" plotline from "Megamind", you get this film.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The thing is, originality is wildly overrated. After all, there are only a handful of plots in literature, and the film industry tends to stick with only a subset of those anyway. So, chances are that everything is reminiscent of something else.

But what we have here is a fairly simple story told well. Plus, the characters are likeable, they have actual motivations for what they're doing, and even for the means they use to do it.

And then there are the references, and this was where the fun really came. Because while on the surface the story is enjoyable, if you know your video games it's even more enjoyable. And if you really know your video games, then there's a whole new level of fun to be had. So, yeah, although Ralph and Felix are entirely new characters, the game portrayed feels exactly like games that I played way back when. And when Ralph goes to Bad-anon (the support group shown in the trailers), a great many of the characters present were immediately recognisable.

So, yeah, a good stroy well told, just enough nostalgia to hit me just right, and a lot of good fun. As I said, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

One more thing to note: a few years ago, it wasn't worth bothering with Disney movies unless they were, in fact, Pixar movies. Apparently, Disney recognised this also, because they proceeded to buy Pixar and then, in a stunningly wise move, they basically put the Pixar guys in charge of their animation studios.

We're now starting to see the benefits of this. As we know, Pixar films are usually preceded by a short film, which while entertaining in their own right, are also used by Pixar to develop the technology for their new films, to let staff learn new techniques, and to tell stories just for the joy of it. "Wreck-It Ralph" was preceded by "Paperman", a short film that does exactly the same thing. Likewise, it definitely looks like WiR started with a good story and then built from there, rather than the recent Disney approach of developing toys to sell and then trying to craft a film.

All of which can only bode well for the future. Because Pixar make good films, and if this now means that we're going to get more good films (even if they're supposedly "kid's films"), then I'm all in favour. I wonder what they'll come up with next?

The "Pancake Day" Double Rant

Yesterday, I noted that Tesco's "seasonal goods" aisle included pancake mix, on account of it being Pancake Day today. Which is not only wrong, but is in fact doubly wrong:

1. Firstly, pancake mix has no business being a thing. Get a bowl, and a coffee mug (clean). Fill the mug with flour, and tip it into the bowl. Refill the mug with milk, and tip it into the bowl. Crack an egg into the mug, make sure there's no bits of shell, and then tip it into the bowl. Add a pinch of salt if you're feeling adventurous. Mix all these things together. And that's it - there aren't even any special techniques for the mixing, or rules for making sure you've got enough air in there, or anything of the sort. If you can't manage that, then step away from the frying pan - you don't deserve pancakes!
   
2. The reason we have "Pancake Day" is that tomorrow is the first day in Lent, and the tradition was for people not to consume various things (notably fat) during the run-up to Easter. And so, on the last day before this fast started, they would have a massive blow-out, getting rid of all the things they had left over from the winter. Which, since that generally included some fat and some eggs (plus milk and flour, of course), meant that they'd make batter - and from batter they would make pancakes. So, really, Pancake Day should actually be "whatever's in your fridge" day. My point, such as it is, is this: going out and buying pancake mix, or even the ingredients for pancakes, rather defeats the notion of using up the leftover luxuries.

Incidentally, in case you're wondering, I'm not doing the whole "Extreme Lent" thing I talked about last year. The reason for this is pretty simple - it is my wont to cook a special dinner for V-Day, which this year is going to include a chocolate mousse for dessert. Kinda tricky to do that while also observing the fast. So, maybe next year. (I will, however, be giving up Irn Bru, and indeed other drinks in the "sugar water" genre for the duration. Which could prove difficult in itself, since Tesco forced me to buy four bottles yesterday.)

Experimental Coolery 2013: Bananananana Ice Cream

For Christmas, my parents-in-law bought us an ice cream maker. Which is itself a somewhat interesting story - when I opened it, I had the box held so I couldn't actually tell what it was, and so looked somewhat uncertain, in turn prompting them to be concerned that I didn't like it. Of course, when I used the secret Jedi technique of "turn it round so you can see", all became clear.

Anyway, we made our first use of the new toy on Sunday, making one of the suggested recipes. (Originally, we were going to make strawberry ice cream, but of course strawberries are way out of season. The only ones Tesco had were both very expensive and also rather manky-looking - they'd been 'ripened' under a sun lounger, and so were red in the middle but green at both ends. So we passed.)

Making the ice cream is a really easy process, with one caveat: you need to freeze the bowl first, requiring 24 hours of notice. The instructions recommend keeping it permanently in the freezer, but that's really not an option - our freezer is usually heaving with good food.

And the result? Well, it tasted bananananana-y, and it felt ice-cream-y, so that's pretty much ideal.

The only real issue I have is that it's not much cheaper than just buying ice cream (even good ice cream), and it's not as good as those good ice creams (but it is at least as good as the cheaper ones). The consequence of this is that it's like making bread - it's not going to be worth the effort to use it to make 'standard' ice creams (or to bake 'standard' breads), but what it does allow, and should be ideal for, is the option of making custom ice creams - flavours that you don't get.

Basically, it's an excuse to make lots and lots of ice cream, for "experimental purposes". In particular, I'm intrigued by the notion of an orange choc chip* ice cream (because mint choc chip is good, and because although mint chocolate is good, orange chocolate is better). Oh, and I can't help but think that the bananananas may be improved by the addition of their partner-in-crime, the walnut.

* Of course, this might prove to be awful. After all, if it was actually good, you'd think you'd be able to buy it. But, hey, that's why it's called an experiment.

The Worst Idea Ever

For Christmas, I got the boxed set of the first four seasons of "Clone Wars". I had already seen the first three of these on Sky, but never saw the fourth do to a change of channel (coupled with a failure in advertising the same). So, over the past several weeks, I have been gradually watching my way through the series, and reached the end this weekend.

For the most part, "Clone Wars" is an excellent show. Indeed, for the most part it is vastly superior to the prequel trilogy, with the caveat that if the episode synopsis mentions Jar Jar or C-3P0 (or mentions Padme but not one of the Jedi as well), you can be pretty sure that the episode is going to suck. But even that's not too bad, since it's only 22 minutes until the next one.

However, right at the end of season three, and then at the end of season four, they made a massive, massive mis-step: they decided to bring back Darth Maul.

This was probably inevitable. In fact, I've been hearing reports of him coming back (as a cyborg, as a clone, or something else) almost since "Phantom Menace" was released. And, superficially at least, it seems like a good idea - he's an incredibly popular character, and probably the most compelling new character introduced in TPM.

Alas, while it might sound like a good idea, it's really not. Like Boba Fett, Darth Maul's legend has always been inflated way beyond the reality. He looks cool, and he was a very good lieutenant for the Big Bad, but he actually does very little, he has almost no character to speak of, and in fact he doesn't even actually do anything evil in the film - just lots of standing around beside the actual bad guys.

And, of course, his death was pretty unambiguous. Cut in half and thrown down a bottomless shaft? Yeah, that's dead.

But no. More than ten years later, up he pops in the "Clone Wars" as some sort of mad hate-fuelled Drider Maul. Sigh.

And the funny thing is, it's entirely unnecessary. The same arc that has led to the resurrection of Darth Maul has also gone to all the trouble of introducing a 'brother' for the character - another Zabrak force-user, trained by Count Dooku, using a double-bladed lightsaber - Savage Opress. (And, what's more, he's voiced by Clancy Brown, and therefore inherently a better character!) With him in the show, there's absolutely no need for Darth Maul; conversely, if you've got Darth Maul, Savage Opress is redundant. Basically, there can be only one.

There's one other thing that really bothers me about all this: one of the key, signature things about Darth Maul is that he has all of three lines in "The Phantom Menace". And, in fact, that's really three too many - the nature of that character is that the less he says, the more effective he is. (It's just a shame that his very best line was cut from the film, and only appears in the trailers.)

So I was a little dismayed when he proceeded to start monologuing at the first available opportunity, and basically didn't stop.

(Plus, I was rather dismayed in the Mon Calamari episodes when Captain Ackbar never once referred to traps...)

On the other hand, I'm very much looking forward to the fifth season boxed set, so I can see what happens next. Could be cool.

#4: "Desolation Island", by Patrick O'Brian (yes, I'm already quite far behind on the reading...)

Experimental Cookery 2013: Onion Soup with(out) Lincolnshire Poacher

The first recipe I've done from my latest book, "My Kitchen" by James Martin, this was a nice, easy winter soup. It was quick and easy to prepare, with the only tedious bit being slicing up the onions. In future, I won't bother being quite so careful about it (since they get pureed at the end anyway), so that should help.

The resulting soup was fine, but... it seemed a little bland. I think perhaps the "optional" cheese may well actually be a very key part of the whole. When I take it to work on Monday, I'll be sure to take along some for sprinkling, and then will update with my findings.

Still, not a bad way to get set up for the afternoon.

Experimental Cookery 2013: "Dad's" Penne All'Arrabbiata with Crispy Pancetta & (no) Basil

This recipe came from Lorraine Pascale's "Fast, Fresh and Easy Food". The "Dad" referred to in the title is, I presume, her dad. Not mine - he doesn't do pasta. Also of note, Lady Chocolat threw out our basil a scarce few hours before I needed it for this recipe, and I couldn't be bothered going to Tesco for some more. So I made it without.

The stated purpose of Lorraine's book is that the meals within are supposed to be quick and easy to put together - it's almost a riposte to Jamie's "X minute meals" books. Well, as far as this meal is concerned, she succeeded - the recipe indicates that it should take 25 minutes start to finish, which is about right. There are also no particularly difficult techniques involved; it's just a case of adding things to the pan in the right order and at the right times.

The resulting meal was very nice, full of heat and flavour. It's a fair bet that we'll be having this again. Success!

#2: "Master of Devils", by Dave Gross
#3: "Pathfinder: Into the Nightmare Rift", by Richard Pett

Two Things: a Micro-rant

1. If you buy a beef product, you can reasonably expect that it does, indeed, contain beef. And, more importantly, not pig, horse, rabbit, or other meat (unless it specifically says so). It is, therefore, entirely reasonable to be angry about this. And that applies even if it's right at the bottom of the budget range.
2. That said, horse is good eating. Our aversion to it is entirely cultural. I ate it in France, and very nice it was too. In fact, had I not been told, I would never have distinguished it from beef. So there's no need to worry about these particular products.

Experimental Cooking 2013: Really Simple Sri Lankan Chicken Curry with Coconut Milk & Cashew Nut Rice

The second meal cooked from Lorraine Pascale's "Fast, Fresh and Easy Food", this proved to be an interesting experience. The meal looked interesting, and we had almost all of the ingredients in the house, so I figured "why not?" But...

I have two big observations about this meal. Firslty, it took considerably longer to cook than the 20 minutes listed in the book. To a very large extent, this was because I was uncertain that the chicken was cooked through, so gave it a good while longer, but it was also partly because the recipe assumed I was doing prep for later stages while earlier ones were cooking, where in fact those earlier stages were cooking too fast for that - if left alone, they would rapidly be burning.

The second observation was that the resulting meal really looked very little like the picture in the book, although it tasted fine.

I'm pretty sure I know how to sort both of these issues out, and the key is in preparation. As I noted, the book assumes you will be preparing later stages while the earlier ones are cooking, but the heat involved makes this an impossibility. The solution, is simple:

Before you start cooking anything...

1. Put all the spices into a single bowl - the curry powder, garam masala, cinnamon, ginger, and chilli powder. These are all going in together, so get them measured out and gathered together so you're ready to go.
2. Cut the chicken into small pieces, and season with salt and pepper. Again, put these on a plate ready to go.
3. Make sure you open the tin of coconut milk ahead of time.
4. Trim and chop the spring onions, and finely chop the garlic.

Having done that, you'll now be in a position to work very quickly as you go - when the instruction is to add a whole bunch of ingredients, you can get the last one into the pan before the first one is burnt!

On balance, this meal was actually suitably easy to prepare, and tasted quite nice. And given that the issues I had with it are easily fixed, we'll almost certainly be adding this to our repertoire of curries going forward.

#1: "A Blink of the Screen", by Terry Pratchett (which has already laid down a very strong marker for book of the year!)

Oh Coaster, Why Do You Mock Me?

As we know, the main purpose of a coaster on the desk is to display a nice picture (well, until someone's wife should accidentally spill nail polish remover on it...). And, of course, in the late 90's, they had a secondary purpose, which was to provide a use for all those millions of 'free' AOL discs that were being sent out everywhere.

But the other use of a coaster, one that is seldom worthy of mention, is to prevent coffee rings from appearing on furniture. See, the coffee ring forms on the coaster instead, thus sparing the shame of having beringed furniture. It's an important, if seldom-acknowledged, job.

Except that what happened this morning was that the coffee ring formed on the coaster, the coaster then attached itself to the mug (damn you, surface tension!), and then when the mug was lifted the coaster leapt to freedom, presumably to start a new life as a paratrooper, fell to the desk, landed face-down, and transferred a wonderfully neat coffee ring to the very surface it was supposed to be protecting!

In other news - I'm now back at work for the year. It has been good so far.

My Year in 2012

2013 has sucked so far. Due to a bout of illness, we were unable to go out last night, something that LC took particularly hard - she had gone to some lengths to look nice, only for me to be unable to go.

2012, like 2011 before it, was a very mixed year. It had probably the single best day of my life, but it has also featured some really difficult times. My overall impression was that it was a good year, but that the next year really needs to be better in some key respects.

My Year in... Work

2012 was a bad year in work. I got a bad performance review, and deservedly so, in the first part of the year. This was due largely to extreme tiredness, coupled with the stress of preparing for the wedding.

The first several months after returning from honeymoon were considerably better, but again I went too long before taking a break. Then, when I did take that break, it was not at all restful. The last few weeks before Christmas were something of an ordeal. And, unfortunately, this break has again not been very restful.

My determination for the new year is to focus more on what needs to be done, but perhaps more importantly to insist on taking regular breaks, and getting enough rest. But, more important than that...

My Year in... Health

2012 was a pretty bad year here, too. I've been suffering some severe digestive problems for quite some time. In fact, in February we actually made a trip to the hospital for an out-of-hours appointment because I feared my heart might be in trouble. That turned out to be a false alarm, but shows the seriousness of the complaint.

It actually cleared up in the middle of the year, mostly, but has been back with a vengeance this winter. I visited the doctor two weeks ago, and he thought it was a consequence of the drugs I've been taking for my neck, but the proposed fix seems not to have had the desired effect.

As things stand, I don't know what is at the root of the problem. However, it's obviously the #1 priority for the next little while to get to the bottom of it, and to get it sorted. That's pretty much key to the entire year, because nothing else can really be done without.

My Year in... Gaming

2012 was a very good year for gaming, albeit not the blockbuster that was 2011. The RPG Meetup moved to a new site once again, and continues to go well. We seem to be at about the same numbers as last year, with the same range of games on the go.

This year saw me return to "The Eberron Code", which remains one of my "big four" of especially satisfying campaigns. It should come to a close around May this year.

I also ran two one-off games. The first was a "Str Wars Saga Edition" game entitled "Through a Glass Darkly", which stands as one of my best-ever games. The second was a "Black Crusade" one-shot that... didn't go so well. I've talked about that at some lengthon my other blog, so won't dwell on it here.

I played very little in 2012, managine (I think) a solitary session of "Dark Sun". It was a good game, but I do hope to play more in 2013.

One final note of sadness: 2012 saw the final end of my Saturday Game group. We never quite managed to get together before the wedding, and at that point I let them know that I was leaving - I just couldn't commit every Saturday to a game that never quite happened. A shame, but it really was time.

In 2012, in addition to finishing off "The Eberron Code", I hope to start a new campaign, "Imperial Fist" in SWSE, and to run a handful of one-shots. I also hope to play a little more than in 2012. Perhaps more importantly, I hope to cut down on cancellations - 2012 saw both a "Mutants & Masterminds" game and the Christmas Game being cancelled, which I hope not to repeat.

My Year in... Band

2012 was a bad year for the band. We had a series of bad results, and then the pipe major left in acrimonious circumstances. This led to the one highlight of my year in the band: I got to lead them out for a single, solitary competition in Ireland.

However, this was quickly followed by another blow. I had hoped to defer the appointment of a new permanent PM until the AGM, and to lead the band out myself to the Worlds' and at Cowal. However, this was not to be - our lead drummer insisted on an election, and I lost narrowly.

That was a bitter, bitter blow, although it is probably worth noting that the guy in charge would have been my choice for permanent PM. Additionally, by that point I had decided to leave - I merely wanted to see out the rest of the season and to take an opportunity that I wouldn't have again.

So, at the AGM I left the band... mostly. As it happened, I remain in charge of the website, and remain as the Chairperson of the Committee. I'll almost certainly see that out for the year now, since it's actually not too bad.

However... I am finding that I miss playing quite a lot. As feared, I have barely picked up my pipes since leaving the band, and don't really want to lose it. Given that this band remains the "best fit" band for me in the area, I may consider rejoining for the 2014 season. We'll see how I feel in a few months.

My Year in... Resultions

I didn't really set any goals at the start of 2012. However, I did meet the target I later set of reading 52 books, so that's something. I've set some more appropriate goals for 2012.

My Year in... Travel

2012 saw me taking three trips. The second of these was the band's annual trip to Ireland, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

The other major trip was the honeymoon, to Mexico in April. It was awesome, entirely great from start to finish. It was hot, but not too hot, we went swimming with dolphins, and exploring in Chichen Itza, and snorkelling in the most amazing biosphere, and clubbing in... okay, that wasn't so good. Plus, I was able to take LC for a romantic meal overlooking the sea, complete with a totally unexpected birthday cake. Basically, it was the best holiday ever.

The final trip, and one that is important to note, was down to England to enjoy the wedding of James and Zo, cousins of mine (well, a cousin and a cousin-in-law, if you want to be picky). This was, of course, another great family occasion, and a good opportunity to actually speak to people - something we ironically didn't get much chance to do at our own wedding!

My Year in... Faith

2012 was a somewhat boring year in terms of faith. We remained somewhat involved at the church, and even attended one of the "small groups"... but that's not really faith; that's just doing stuff.

LC and I also spent some weeks trying to find a local church in Falkirk to attend. However, this proved rather disheartening, as we didn't really feel at home in any of the churches we visited. I'm not sure whether we'll bother resuming the search in 2013 - it may or may not be worthwhile.

So, 2012 was a little boring. It remains to be seen what 2013 will bring.

My Year in... Love

Awesome. That is all.

Just kidding.

The wedding in April in many ways was the culmination of a long, long journey, and the start of another. It was the best day of the year, and simply could not have gone any better. There's a much longer post about this, so I won't say any more here.

Things since the wedding have had their inevitable ups and downs. There have been occasions when I have been less than tactful, and there have been times when we just hven't stopped laughing (usually at each other).

The first couple of months were almost certainly more difficult for LC than for me - I was extremely busy and she was not yet working or started her course. This meant that things had to proceed on my schedule, and it meant that she had lots of time to fill with not much to do.

Conversely, I've found the last few months to be something of a challenge. Teacher Training, it seems, is absurdly tough. Seriously - a few years ago I did an MSc in addition to working full-time, in addition to being heavily involved in a BB company and two bands, and in addition to running a weekly RPG campaign... and while I was doing all that, I was less busy than LC has been these last months. That shouldn't be read as a complaint against LC (though I fear she wmay do exactly that), merely a statement of fact.

For 2013, there are some things that we'll need to do a bit differently. In particular, it will be important to make more time for each other, and to stop living on my schedule or on her schedule, but rather blocking our time out together. I think we also need to make some time to get away for a while, alone, together - both Falkirk and the flat are very nice, and we enjoy spending time with both our families, and such... but it can get to be rather oppressive after some months of it. And the prospect of another 12 months like the one we've just had...

My Year... Overall

As I said, 2012 was a mixed year. The high points were very, very high. The low points, though not quite so correspondingly low, did seem to drag on for most of the year. On balance, it has been a good year... but we need the bulk of 2013 to be better than the bleaker parts of 2012.

And so, that's where we are, I think.