Tsunami Relief Concert

On Saturday night, Claire and I went to the Tsunami Relief concert at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, which was pretty fab. We arrived at about 3:15pm, just as things were starting to kick off – on one of the many park and ride services being operated especially for the event. The buses and their fuel were both donated for the evening, and the bus drivers were working as volunteers (but taking donations towards the fund in tubs at the door). We had some confusion over the gate we needed to enter by, which only increased our relief at getting in out of the driving rain. It wasn’t much warmer inside, but huddling with a crowd pushing their way towards the stage quickly warmed us up. The Millennium Stadium is huge. It’s amazing to wander down onto the floor, with tens of thousands of people looking back across it.

The concert was really good – a lot of acts I’d looked forward to seeing: the Manic Street Preachers, Feeder, Eric Clapton and Keane were all fantastic. But between these were a lot of other acts which were surprisingly good – Katherine Jenkins, who performed first, was absolutely wonderful: her rendition of “Amazing Grace” brought tears to my eyes. Lulu was wonderful, Kelly Jones of the Stereophonics was just stunning… even Craig David was more than tolerable as he performed a slow and easy acoustic set. And polishing it off with Jools Holland’s Ryhthm & Blues Orchestra and Eric Clapton jamming away together made a great finish to the evening.

We were both exhausted from about 11 hours on our feet, but it was a great show well-worth seeing. I pity those of you who tried to get tickets but were too late – you missed out.

Sadly, we both lost a point on Bryn’s Challenge – disallowed as we were from taking food or drink into the stadium, we had to resort to the fast food available on-site. We settled for merely having a hot dog each, while the folks we watched on the Troma Night webcam tucked into their pizza, but it’s still disappointing that we had to do so. Ah well.

We got back into Aber at about 3am: Claire took a lie-in on Sunday morning after a sterling driving effort (albeit less of a “sterling driving effort” than when she drove to Stirling, but hey).

Walk Into Mortor

One does not simply walk into Mortor…

Lord Of The Rings Animation - 'One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mortor [sic]'

When The News Comes Close To Home

On Sunday, Claire was reading me a BBC News article about a woman who fell from Constitution Hill this Saturday, sustaining a severe head injury.

It turns out that the woman was Nia, the receptionist from the Technium. We found out when she didn’t turn up for work this morning. The Technium manager sent a text to her phone, and the call was returned by her dad.

It’s funny when you read a news story like that and you don’t realise that it’s somebody you know.

Extra Haggis For Geek Night Players

I seem to have come into posession of a couple of haggises (or “haggii”, as I prefer). Would any of you Geek Night regulars like to join Claire and I a little earlier this evening for a haggis supper before we get down to the board games? A vegetarian alternative can be arranged for, if required.

If you don’t know if you like haggis or not, it’s also the perfect oppertunity to find out (and I can make sure there’s a backup option in place in case it turns out you don’t). All Geek Night regulars welcome – just drop me a text or leave a comment in advance so I know who to expect. Food at 6; board games from 7.

Technium Phone System

Grr! Yet another fuck-up by the folks who run the Technium phone system: right now, every sixth call (exactly) to SmartData‘s number is put through to the WDA‘s answerphone (the WDA share our building). It’s a fucking joke.

This is on top of the various problems we’ve had with our voicemail. And don’t get me started on the other things we were supposed to be able to have but aren’t fixed yet (hunt grouping, on-hold music, etc.).

The Aberystwyth Technium is a wonderful building and a great place to run a business. Just make sure you bring your own phone system.

More Flash: “Second Term”

Jon has posted to his blog about "Second Term", JibJab‘s most recent parody of the American policial system (you’ll remember It’s Good To Be In D.C. and This Land, which I blogged about earlier). In any case, the versions you’ll find on JibJab and Yahoo are surrounded by advertisements and can’t easily be resized (hey; if you’ve got the processing power to run it full-screen, do so!), so I’ve made a copy of it here for you to watch.

Flash MX 2004 Data Integration/XML Features

Geeky post.

I’ve just been playing with the data integration and XML-parsing features offered by the new version of Macromedia Flash (traditionally used for animation on the web, but nowadays used for all kinds of things, like those silly games at Shockwave.com). They’re actually quite impressive – here’s the result of my fiddling this evening (requires Flash Player 7 – not worth downloading just to see it, though):

Adblock

It’s an RSS reader, connecting to the Scatmania web site – or, more simply – it connects to this web site and picks up the summaries of the most recent posts and provides them in a compact browser (with a little ‘Go…’ button to take you to the full article).

Why’ve I posted it here? Because it impressed me to see what Flash is capable of these days. Apologies to the non-geeks who are by now going “La la, la la…”

Geek Night: Diplomacy

After last Sunday’s Geek Night, I’ve observed that there are a fair number of us (well: Claire, JTA, Ruth and I, at least) who would be interested in an online, one-day-per-turn game of Diplomacy, an entirely skill-based strategy game made in 1959 and based on World War 1. It’s a really, really simple game, but the only way to win is to negotiate with the other players and to make promises which you may or may not keep. And it’s very clever.

But… the only way to truly appreciate Diplomacy is with a full complement of seven players. So – that means we need three more people who are willing to trade about 15 minutes a day (for about a week and a half to three weeks) for a chance to participate in Geek Night‘s own Diplomacy war. All you’ll need is an internet connection and access to e-mail.

You can even play as a pair or a team, if you like, and have several people ‘lead’ one country (which might be useful if, say, you don’t want to dedicate 15 minutes every day – you can take turns). But the crucial point is that I need to find representation for the seven powers of Europe, and right now I have four.

The game will start next weekend, probably.

We’ll be playing by the standard Diplomacy rules (summary), on a standard map. All player identities will be public and diplomacy between players – by both private and public channels – will be encourages. Any questions, or people who want to join our little game, can be posted as comments or e-mailed to me.

Edit: Player List (see comments for discussion):
Player list currently as follows:

  • Dan & Claire
  • JTA
  • Ruth
  • Jon
  • Andy K & Faye
  • Matt
  • Andy R & Sian

That’s it. No more players this game.

I’ll explain how we’re going to play this by next weekend. Hang in there.

Freedom Sport And Surf

There’s a lesson here for any business with a web site:

I’m sure that you may be familiar with Freedom Sport & Surf, the sports goods shop on Alexandra Road (opposite the carpet shop formerly known as Rumbletums Cafe). Well; they had a website – FreedomSportAndSurf.com. But they let the domain name expire, and it’s been picked up by a porn site: take a look.

In any case, the owners of the store aren’t internet-savvy, and had completely forgotten they had a web site. Similarly, most of the staff weren’t aware of it, either, until a lady came in, recently, and informed the staff member at the counter they she thought it was “disgraceful” that the shop had “things like that” on it’s website, where “children could view it”.

Today, staff at the shop are frantically scrubbing the web address from their carrier bags. Hilarity.

Urgent Message For Paul!

This is an urgent message for Paul M:

Some of us in Aber are concerned that your original travel plans had you returning to Aberystwyth on Monday 17th January. It is our understanding that you have an exam on the morning of Monday 17th January, and we’re not sure you’re aware of this. We have tried several times to get in touch with you using instant messaging tools and by telephone, but to no avail.

If you know that you either do or do not have an exam on this date, please post to your weblog, or contact us, as soon as possible, so that we Aberites know that we do not need to try to find a way to get in contact with you!

If anybody has an up-to-date phone number of Paul’s parents, please contact me so we can sort this out.

Thanks for reading.

War Of The Chrononauts

This post is almost entirely about board games. If you’re not interested, stop here.

As some of you will no doubt realise already, I have at long last gotten Chrononauts and War Of The Ring, two board games I’ve been trying to get my hands on for some time. Not being ones to want to wait until Geek Night, this Saturday, Claire and I have played each, once, over the last two days. Here’s our results:

Chrononauts
Chrononauts is a product of Looney Labs, the guys behind the stunning Fluxx. The players are time travellers, trapped in Earth’s “real” timeline and trying to restore key events of the last 150 years to the configuration that will allow them to travel ‘home’ – and win. But they can also win by patching lots of paradoxes (holes made in the fabric of spacetime by the combination of incompatible events) – putting new histories in to replace damaged bits of time, or by collecting artefacts from certain historical periods.

People’s goals and identities are secret, so you need to infer what people are trying to achieve from the distortions in time they seem to be causing. And you might need to keep your own goals secret too – if you use explosives to destroy in advance the iceberg that the Titanic hit, in order to save it, you’ll attract attention from other time travellers who might re-plot the course to make it hit a different one just to spite you!

Players are encouraged to come up with nanofiction (very very short stories) to explain ‘how’ they’re achieving things – don’t just say “I’m flipping 1941″… explain how you’re preventing (or causing) Pearl Harbour to be bombed by the Japanese… then look at the “board” of cards and see what repurcussions it has on the rest of the century…

It was fun – although I think we both found it a little confusing for the first few turns (how am I supposed to achieve these goals, exactly?). It’s easy to dive in to (“Draw one! Play one!” methodology), though, and good clean family fun.

Claire won.

War Of The Ring
War Of The Ring has rapidly climbed to number 4 on BoardGameGeek‘s Top 100 Games list. It’s a sightly Risk-esque board game but with a semi-simultaneous turn structure and funky themic special rules.

This was, to be fair, fucking challenging to get into. The pair of us spent about an hour sorting out the pieces (hundreds of the buggers) and reading all the rules. Claire decided to play the Free Peoples of Middle Earth, so I took control of the Shadow Armies. These two sides can win – militaristically – by capturing the cities and strongholds of the other: and statistically, the Shadow – with a respawning army – will eventually achieve this goal, given enough time.

But the real hope for the Free Peoples lies in the Fellowship Of The Ring – Frodo and Sam, guided by the Companions of the Fellowship, use a secret ‘movement track’ to sneak across Middle Earth to try to get the One Ring to the crack of doom and destroy it. And the more effort Sauron puts into finding it on a given turn and preventing them from destroying the ring, the less resources he has with which to command his armies.

Various special cards make combat variable and allow a variety of techniques to be employed; from quick raids on enemy territory to extended sieges around Middle Earth’s strongholds. At one point, Claire had got the Fellowship successfully East as far as the Woodland Realm, and had started trekking South towards Mordor, before my Nazgul caught their scent and started forcing them to use the ring – and suffer it’s corruption – to escape. This caused the fellowship to seek sanctuary with the dwarfs of the Iron Hills, at which point my armies stormed the Woodland Realm, Rivendell, Minas Tirith and – finally – the mighty Helm’s Deep, and win. Could have been a closer thing, and I’m sure we’ve both learned a shedload about the game.

We thought it’d be particularly useful if we played one such 2-player game of War Of The Ring; so that if we play the 4-player version on Sunday, at least some of us can explain it all (and no – we won’t play on the same side!).

Geek Night This Sunday

Of course, we can play both these games – and the other usual stuff – on Geek Night, if people want. Chrononauts is for up to six players, and War Of The Ring supports 2-4 (in ‘teams’ of 1-2, between whom control of armies is split).

Bryn’s Challenge – Update

Here’s the update on Claire and my progress with Bryn’s Challenge – his happy little Un-Supersize-Me goal of avoiding fast food for a month:

All’s good. We’re also taking advantage of the opportunity to explore with cooking things we wouldn’t normally, and I’ll be sharing, here, some of the things we’ve tried. Starting with last night’s dinner, a large frittata. As I understand it, this is Italian for – pretty much – ‘omelette’; but I suppose to be fairer it’s actually an upside-down, grilled omelette with stacks of vegetables or pasta in it. The Italians apparently – traditionally – use yesterday’s pasta in it, but we didn’t eat pasta yesterday, so I used heaps of different vegetables instead. In any case, here’s how I made it, in case any of you want to copy:

Pig And Potato Frittata
Serves: 3 portions; probably 5ish if served as part of a larger meal

Ingredients:
~450g new potatoes, microwaved and sliced
8 rashers lean smoked bacon, diced
2 medium courgettes, diced
1 large red pepper, thinly sliced
5-6 large free range eggs, beaten
~250g extra mature cheddar cheese, grated
Italian seasoning (generic), 2 tablespoons
Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil

Method
Microwave (about 4 minutes, in the bag) or boil the new potatoes until they are softened, but not quite cooked. Thoroughly beat the eggs in a jug, adding the italian seasoning and a pinch of salt, and leave to stand. Slice the potatoes and put them, the courgettes, the pepper and the bacon into a lightly-oiled frying pan at a medium heat until the bacon is cooked.

Add the egg mixture, pouring it liberally across the entire pan, turning up the heat to maintain the temperature, and lowering it again when the egg begins to cook. Keep the egg moving to ensure it does not stick – the egg’s job is to hold everything else together, not to stick itself to the pan. Cook for a further 2-3 minutes on a medium heat, then liberally cover with grated cheese and put the entire frying pan under a pre-heated grill (you heard me – under the grill).

Grill for 3-6 minutes, checking occasionally and (optionally) adding Worcestershire sauce (we didn’t have any, but it would really have worked well, I think, until the cheese has begins to brown (like cheese on toast!). Season to taste, and serve with a side-salad and a nice vinaigrette (tip: world’s easiest vinaigrette – disolve lots of sugar in a dark vinegar). Wonderbra.

Having read some of the comments appearing here, here, and here, for example, I’ve realised that pretty much everybody seems to be taking on Bryn’s Challenge for one of the following reasons:

  • Health
  • Challenge
  • Bullied by partner

Am I the odd one out, here? Am I the only person doing it primarily to save money (Claire and I do eat out too much, to be fair… and it would be nice to wean Claire off her Burger King obsession <lol>)?

More to say. Next post.

More Old Blogposts Recovered

I achieved another success this morning in my effort to recover as much as possible of my personal life online into one place – I’ve managed to rediscover five ‘lost’ (and previously unread) weblog posts from April 2003. Folks who really want to might care to go back and read:

It’s getting harder to find sources of old electronic diary entries like these ones and publish them. But I’m genuinely considering trying to dig up some of my old paper-based diaries (the ones that haven’t been lost or burned) and archive them here for you all to see (high school crushes, fun and games at Preston College, eighteenth birthday [three pages or so of it!], starting University, becoming attached to Reb, breaking up with Reb [and all the stuff in-between] – I’ve got it all somewhere!) And where I’ve still got gaps, I might have to make a couple of posts to explain what I was doing in the interim, where I remember.

Doing this, I think I can get a pretty concise history of what I’ve been up to since about the summer of 1998, and perhaps a little further. Which will do.