Stuff and Nonsense

My new nutter of the week

2008-05-09T09:37:32Z

I've started listening to Radio 4 on the drive to work. This occasionally makes me very irate, generally because I don't find the subtle art of avoiding the question all the much fun. This morning it made my actually swear when Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor pointed out that "A society led by reason, mumbly mubly waffle, we all know where that leads, mumbly waffle, Hitler".

Cue Simon swearing irately when driving the car. This is not a direct quote but he did basically equate requiring evidence for your fanciful inanities as being the start of the short path down to being a brutal Dictator.

Grrrrr.

Indeed.

2008-05-08T07:59:21Z

That is all.

Well

2008-05-07T13:11:27Z

I've been busy at my new work. I'm now officially in charge of next years Conflagration, Feb 2009, watch this space! I've seen Iron Man twice and got the new books for Dark Heresy which are nice and are seriously spurring me into wanting to run a game. I've been dismal in my writing of 'I Can Has XP' because I've got no one to play it with.

And I got very drunk in Edinburgh last weekend, which was good. Though the recovery was a bit hellish.

More soon.

So....

2008-04-30T11:57:16Z

I'm now the GUGS Convention organiser. Partly because no one else wanted the job. Fun fun fun. Turns out it means I've also got to organise our trip to the Student Nationals (which I've never been too...). So as per my earlier plan I'm coming through to Edinburgh on Saturday afternoon and plan on hanging about, probably on timeforteas couch and in pubs until some time on Sunday when I will go home.

Any ideas for a good pub? I'm a bit out of the loop on Edinburgh.

Bibble.

2008-04-21T09:14:23Z

Read The Last Hero at the weekend. Didn't do much else.

Trip through

2008-04-17T14:21:09Z

Well it's entirely likely that I'm going to be running Conflagration next year. The EGM is on the 29th and as far as I know I'm the only person standing. So that's going to be fun. I'm think though about heading through to Edinburgh on the 3rd and 4th for a multi prong plan type thing.

Firstly I'd like to grab the various fools wonderful people who have run Conpulsion and try and get as many ideas as I can from them. There may be alcohol involved in this.

Secondly I'd like to playtest some of my newer games, including wherever 'I can has XP' has got to with people. If anyone is up for this drop me a line or a comment, this would be cool.

Anyway, best I get on with coding, Much to do.

Letter to Traveline

2008-04-16T12:50:01Z

Well I went to the SPT site to use the marvelous (if a bit ugly looking) JESS system to find it had been replaced with your nice shiny new system. So I thought I'd give that a bash.

Can I have JESS back please?

I'll go over my issues with the Traveline site below in a bit more detail but firstly let me explain I'm writing as an experienced web developer who has worked on a number of different sites including s1ojbs.com and now develop sites for travel agents. So I know exactly how easy it is to get things right.

First up your ridiculous Unsupported Browser message, when I first went to the site I was using the Beta preview of Firefox 3. I got the unsupported site message and thought I'd give you the benefit of the doubt in not supporting pre-release software. I found it risible that you suggested IE6 and Firefox 1.5 both of which are out of date and the manufacturers of which suggest not to use. As my time machine was not available I instead plumped for Firefox 2... only to find this is also Unsupported because (from the site) 'These are very old browsers or those that do not have a widely used audience.'

Or you can't be bothered to A) write a decent future proof website and B) write useful browser sniffing code (which quite frankly you shouldn't be using anyway).

Then I tried to find out about travel information from Hillington East. It's a train station in Glasow. I only mention this because after giving me a run down of every single bus stop in Hillington (all four and a half pages of them) it then failed to actually mention either Hillington train station. Which I found a bit worrying (though it did turn them up in the search results).

On a less sarcastic actually useful note here it might make sense to return the least specific items first, and train stations before bus stops. The train stations idea is because there are likely to be less of them. Trawling through 5 (slowly loading) pages of bus stops to get to something a bit less specific to work out you route in general is a bit of a pain.

I liked the fact is will do a post code search but you might want to do (the admittedly non trivial) job of sorting in a human sensible order. So house number 100 does not come before house number 99.

I could go on about the fact that sometimes the layout goes screwy or the fact that 'Term & Conditions' wraps onto two lines but I do have to get some work done today and also try and help my wife work out howto get to her new job. I would advise her to call your prominently displayed and rather expensive telephone number but I'm guessing it's about as good as your website.

[Update] Just to say Traveline got back to me within 40 minutes with a a polite email from a real person (with actual email address and mobile number) offering to help me plan the route and saying they look into my points. So hats off to them for customer support there anyway.

Very very

2008-04-16T11:26:41Z

simon@shangrila:~$  history|awk '{a[$2]++} END{for(i in a){printf "%5d\t%s \n",a[i],i}}'|sort -rn|head
  117   perl 
   70   ls 
   63   sudo 
   51   cd 
   34   ssh 
   24   ps 
   24   kill 
   15   fortune 
   10   rm 
    8   less

Yes my machine at work is called Shangrila. No I can't explain why. Yes I did chose the name, I just liked the sound of it. Yes I use perl a lot.

Down

2008-04-14T14:57:38Z

I'm feeling a bit down. Haven't done any writing for over a fortnight, I did get a little story telling card game and an adventure written but I've got no idea when I'm going to get to run it.

The worst bit is the new ideas are starting to pile up and I don't know if I can drag myself back to older unfinished stuff. Which i'm still having ideas for too. The worst of course is my own tendancy to procrastinate, reading, playing games or watching TV..... sigh. I'm starting to get the whole, no one gives a monkeys about your foolish ideas thing again.

Busy weekend

2008-04-14T08:23:55Z

Amongst other things I watched "28 weeks later" or "Oh my god we're so dumb." as I now like to call it. The levels of stupidity required to make the film work are just staggering. It did have some good scary bits in it but the pathetic plotting grated my nerves. Sigh.

Also I bought power tools and put up shelves so now I am truly a man. Or something like that. We now have a shelf/hook thing in the hall and a couple of rather natty floating shelves in the lounge. So that's all good.

I've been reading Sandman since I finished Legion which was a very nice continuation of the Horus Heresy saga. I'm looking forward to the last two books.

Also saw Doctor Who which I really enjoyed, I think Catherine Tate is showing that she can do more than really annoying comedy. Which is good.

Bloody Mondeo

2008-04-10T08:11:59Z

First off I finished The Unadulterated Cat the other day. It's a fun read.

The end of my drive in this morning was made rather less fun by the addition of a Mondeo in my rear bumper. Well OK he was maybe a foot away from my rear bumper, for a few miles, at about 70mph. This of course means he was only about two feet away from me, something that does not put me in a good mood. I'm trying to calm down now and get round to some coding. This will probably happen soon.

Two last or not two last

2008-04-07T08:27:36Z

Well I finished The Last Continent on Saturday and then took a detour from Rincewind to read one of the books I picked up at the library this being The Last Legion (the military Sci-Fi one not the Roman legion one I'd read before) which was OK. I'll probably get the rest of the series.

But today I've not brought a book into work so I can instead try and get some of the ideas for I can has XP actaully written down. You never know it might work. Right now my fingers are too cold to do anything.

Shoot 'Em Up

2008-04-04T07:51:48Z

So what to say about this truely awful movie? Apart from the fact that it is probably the masterpiece in it's genre. Yup it is the perfect mindless action flick bordering on satire even. Not only is it full of cliches but ever fight scene is more ridiculous and overblown than the last. I do think as a work of satire it is pure genius, and the bit with the Mercedes was just wonderful.

But it's just too silly.

Way too silly.

RoBlocks

2008-04-03T11:54:25Z

Small programable robots blocks? Yes please.

Yum

2008-04-03T09:12:57Z

Well work is going well. Already writing live code, which works, this bodes well for the whole senior developer lark. Looking at updating khanate possibly making it a blog of some form. Need t oget back to my writing, I've read a few books recently Interesting Times being the most recent, but my writing has tailed off. Going to try and do something about that tonight.

Meanwhile I changed my dressing for the first time this morning, it's icky but easy enough. Woke up at about 3am but felt truely terrible. My tow was really sore, finally got back to sleep and it was fine this morning. Hopefully it will continue to be good, fingers crossed.

Ouchie

2008-04-01T11:44:14Z

So I had my rather annoying left toenail removed this morning. The actual removal was a much less strenous procedure than the earlier injections to numb my toe. But I managed that without passing out which I was most impressed with. The drugs are starting to wear off so my toe is a bit sore, but not too bad all things considered.

After seeing the Sky One Colour Of Magic and Light Fantastic the other day (which I quite liked actually) I thought I'd do a bit of a rincewind kick. So I've read Sourcery, Eric and Moving Pictures which I know didn't have Rincewind in but is the first book with Archchancellor Ridcully in so I wanted a peruse.

Meanwhile the new job goes well. I've not really written any code yet, apart from fixing a bug I spotted, but I've been reading a lot of it.

Woot

2008-03-28T11:04:29Z

Today is my last day at e-loanshop. monday I start at pastures new as Senior Developer at TravelTek. Onwards and upwards and such like. Though hopefully I can stay in one place for a bitthis time....

Side note

2008-03-27T16:25:07Z

Fire Time was one of the few books in my collection I'd never read despite carting it between different houses over the years. I have now rectified this issue.

It's quite a good story, very good sci-fi.

Whew

2008-03-27T14:26:06Z

Well I couldn't sleep last night due to lots of coffee and the flat being really hot. So while trying to sleep I worked out the plot for a one shot horror game called 'The Lodge of Cairn Mohr' (and yes I do realise there is a vineyard called that). As I'm so busy right now at work I wrote it up just now, 3000+ words of adventure. I'm hoping to run it a few times for people and then I will hopefully, if the games go well, release a PDF of it.

My current thought is at least one game in Glasgow and one through in Edbinburgh. Anyone interested in a quite intense horror session?

I am annoyed

2008-03-26T16:43:51Z

Apparently letting your children die of a treatable condition because you don't believe in medicine isn't child abuse..... I'm fine with people believing what ever they want to believe. I'm less fine with people forcgin their beliefs on their children, I know from personal experience just how long it can take to clean wacky ideas out of your head. But killing your f**king kids because you think your invisible friend is going to cure them! That. Is. Just. Wrong.

Writer's Block: What? Everyone Doesn't Like Me?

2008-03-26T09:20:41Z

Why do you think it is some people don't get along with you?

View other answers

Because I can be hyperactive and absent minded? Because some people believe some really bizarre stories about me? Zen?

I am who I am.

2008-03-25T10:55:19Z

Another Conpulsion over, I had a great time seeing all the people i haven't seen in ages. Including all the people in Edinburgh I really should see more often. I got to run two playtests of my game which went down well and had many people burst out laughing when reading the early playtest docs which was gratifying. The wonderful natural20 and myself ran the charity auction in the standard me getting to sell the utter crap and be the comedy relief type schtick. And I owe GEAS £200 which is actually pretty good for me.

I worry that I was maybe too annoyingly hyperactive. But I can't change who I am, I tried it hurt I'm being me again. For those of you who can't cope, sorry.

Anyway tonight I'm making a fuss of polli and then tomorrow I get serious about the writing. Hopefully I'll have a playtest ready version of the game, missing some of the background thats still mulling over in my head, and the art which I haven't even thought of yet, ready by the end of the week. That's my goal anyway.

Once that's done I'm going to look at fleshing out Turn of Fortune (my 24 Minute game) and another project I mulled over yesterday. Plus there's Conflagration and the two day murder mystery LARP......

Yup. I'm me again.

A question

2008-03-20T13:27:35Z

Does anyone know what the current state of Computer Skills education is in the UK? Are there lessons in programming?

General Ramblings.

2008-03-20T10:22:39Z

When I read about Gamma radiation eating goo it gives a warm glowy feeling. It's nice to know whatever happens life finds a way forward. OK it's not life that's particularly chatty or anything but it's life.

Side note, my Tuesday campagin got very interesting this week after the players stopped a major Haemorrage event in the centre of London. The Americans have declared a state of Emergency having recieved 'credible evidence' that the 'terrorist attack' was linked to Iran. The British government is in tatters and the current plan is to bring Tony Blair back from his speaking tour of Australia as Prime Minister Pro-Tem. And the PC's are holed up in Paris trying to work out what to do now.

Good times.

Meanwhile I need to get what I've got for 'I can has XP' printed today to take to Conpulsion of the weekend and maybe get a character sheet whipped up at lunch time. On the bright side I know what XP stands for now.

One more step into the next TL.

2008-03-19T14:14:05Z

Room temprature superconductors anyone?