News Archives: April 2004

Friday, April 30, 2004

UN Peacekeepers For Edinburgh?

The Times today has a lovely little report on the residents of Edinburgh's New Town who have called in the UN to arbitrate their war with Edinburgh city council over giant wheelie bins. I wonder if, when they're finished there, they might want to sort out the battles between us, our insurers, and the owners of the bin that crushed Claire's car?

Posted by graham @ 07:29 pm

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

More Swearing At Computers

The latest Online Opinion column is up, and as expected is a (largely common sense) rant on ID cards. No columns appeared for the last two weeks, which the site explained was due to me being on holiday. Last week that was true, but the week before was more complicated. I started to write a column, then got interrupted by server problems, which took several hours to fix. This week was nearly a repeat - luckily only a few minutes to fix this time.

Which brings me to my current dilemma. The current server, frankly, needs replaced. Given that many of the problems are down to the hosting company and their connection falling over, it needs replaced somewhere else. The current situation has just one advantage - it is cheap. My dilemma is that while I would love to move to a new server with a new connection, I can't really justify the extra costs involved for the amount of hosting business I currently have. So, do I find the money anyway, and try to attract more hosting business - effectively move into the hosting business myself? Do I limp on with the current status quo? Or do I jetison the small amount of hosting we currently do, and find a cheaper solution for our sites?

Posted by graham @ 02:09 pm

Monday, April 26, 2004

The Nationals Report

Thursday

When we came to choose games for the Nationals, I settled on Cthulhu, while Claire chose "LARP" - same as at Dundee, where two Cthulhu-esque freeforms made up the category. Unfortunately, this year the instructions came through to "bring water proof clothing, and your own rubber weapons if possible". So the day before the Nationals, we headed round to borrow a staff from friends who are into the rubber-sword genre. Claire got an hour or so practice, by the end of which she could beat me when I had just a sword, but me with sword and shield was fairly even. Not that I'm any good. Then we headed home to pack.

Friday

The trip to Sheffield was full of detours. Normally, I'd head down the M74/M6, but Claire's car was booked into the garage in Edinburgh - latest chapter in the Conpulsion bin incident story - so we dropped it off, then headed for the dread A1.

To complicate matters further, Claire wanted to stop off at a velvet mill just west of Bradford. Which meant we would be approaching it from the North-East. Trying to plot a straight-ish route that avoided the nightmare of Leeds and Bradford traffic proved difficult, and I'm not sure the route we finally took was anything like optimal. It was, however, hugely scenic, and largely traffic jam free. The effort proved worthwhile, and I staggered back to the car carrying Claire's huge parcel of new velvet. No idea what she's going to do with it all.

By this time we were getting into rush hour, so we crept past Leeds on the M62, then into Sheffield on the M1. Staring at the map convinced me to jetison the directions we'd been given - they made more sense if you were coming from London - and follow my nose. Worked alright, and we'd have picked the directions up again if the council hadn't shut the road we were supposed to follow. Oh well. As it happens, Sheffield Uni is pretty easy to find.

Registered and picked up Lee, who was vaguely heading for the halls. Drove up to the halls, and registered there. Picked up Mark, who summoned Helen and Nick, and the six of us headed for a quick meal before going back to the centre for drinking and socialising. For some reason, we settled (around half seven) on African - a little restaurant called UK Mamma. Once seated, we were convinced to try the buffet, which proved tasty and interesting, and far too much for us to finish. Deserts arrived, and we were handed a little African drum. The owner had been making jokes about drumming and limbo dancing for most of the night. I was starting to worry - my back doesn't bend that way.

The drum was passed round the table, each of us having a go. Then more drums appeared. Then the owner decided we needed lessons. Ten minutes later we were all drumming away, more or less in time. And Claire and I were drunk enough that somehow we decided that Grant might want to listen in, so he had to suffer a drunken phone call around this point. Then a limbo stick appeared, and we all tried that as well. Nick was pretty good, I was awful...

We made the hall bar in time for last orders (just) then sat up far too late chatting to people, and drinking Ben's wine.

Saturday

Somehow we made breakfast, then down to the centre on time. Having a car has its advantages - we were amongst the last to leave, but overtook most people on the way. My game was great fun - abducted friends, vampires, sinister clowns, odd creatures (some trapped in underground cells for impossible lengths of time) and an old, near forgotten mystery. I was playing a female medical student, so bad taste corpse jokes, cynicism, and hypocrisy was the order of the day. The group had also shrunk from the original sign up, so only four of us played. Which to my mind is just about perfect for Cthulhu. Somehow we muddled through to a more or less successful conclusion, although most of us were unhinged by the end, and one guy was institutionalised. Couldn't really ask for a better start.

After dinner, at the decidedly mediocre Aunt Sally pub, we went back to halls to change, then chatted to people in the bar. I sat through the pub quiz, not playing just enjoying making "how could you not know that?" noises to the few I knew the answers to. Eventually, most of us drifted back to the halls bar, which was more or less a repeat of the night before, except this time we'd picked up a bottle of Bowmore, so Ben got to drink our booze.

Sunday

Breakfast proved more difficult, partly due to the difficulty in acquiring tea before descending four floors to the dining room. Somehow we made it again, and packed and left the halls on time. Not that I needed to. My new GM turned up an hour late - without apology - and had no characters worked out. One girl gave up at that, the remaining three of us muddled through a somewhat ordinary spies-stumble-onto-enemies-using-cthulhu-beasties plot. Apparently if we had more time, we'd have ended with a Dick-esque ghost-but-don't-know-it plot, which could have been interesting. Wasn't the worst game I've played at the nationals, but after Saturday's stunner, it was a disappointment. Oh, and I won the category, for whatever that's worth. I blame the two hours of corpse jokes on the Saturday.

After most people headed off, we went for dinner with a couple of the Sheffield guys, including Claire's GM, Dave. He'd offered to let us stay at his for the night, which pretty much sums him up - a good bloke. We ended up in a chain fast food place I've never heard of before, but which appear to be all over England now. They do char grilled chicken quarters, with spicy sauces, chips, rice and/or salad. Very tasty, and quite fun. After that, we hit the pub with more Sheffield guys, then slept very soundly.

Holiday report to follow... probably.

Posted by graham @ 09:18 pm

ID Cards Don't Work

I'm half expecting Wednesday's Online Opinion column to be a rant on identity cards. In which case, this is a little preview. Worth posting in case I write the column on something else. Mainly what bothers me is that we're getting these things, at great expense, for reasons that make no sense.

1. ID Cards will fight terrorism. No they won't. The terrorists we know about are either (a) blocked from the country or (b) watched bloody closely. Those we don't know about won't be discovered through ID cards. There won't be enough information. The only possible result of adding information from ID cards into the hunt for terrorists is to throw up all sorts of false positives, leading to wasted man hours, and persecution of innocent people.

2. ID cards will prevent illegal immigrants. No they won't. Quite apart from the possibility of forgeries, those immigrants who are not working are being supported by friends and family who will doubtless cover this one extra illegality along with all the others. Those who are working are already required to provide their employer with either national insurance or work permit details. Those employers who don't enforce the old rule, won't enforce the new one either. Nor are we likely to see calls for that to happen.

3. I have nothing to hide, so I don't need to fear ID cards. Yes you do. The potential to track terrorists is almost non-existent, but there is a large potential to track those who may be vaguely associated with a political/religious/sexual/racial group that the current establishment (that may or may not be related to the current government) has taken a dislike to. Given that in the past that group has included large chunks of the Labour party, Catholics, and homosexuals, you'd need a very narrow circle of friends to not be potentially at risk. Especially given the large number of false positives mentioned under point one.

Posted by graham @ 08:09 pm

Sunday, April 25, 2004

Birthday Plans

My birthday is less than three weeks away, and I've decided to celebrate on the preceding Saturday (8th May) with a party at home. If weather is agreeable, a bbq is a possibility. If not, we'll probably bbq in the kitchen instead... Chances are that if you are reading this, you should consider yourself invited (along with any good friends of yours). E-mail me if you need details of how to find the house.

Posted by graham @ 08:13 pm

Saturday, April 24, 2004

Back in the Journal

Over the last week or so, I've been to the student nationals, holidaying in yorkshire, and catching up with everything that needed done when I returned home, plus a few other bits and pieces. I intend to write a few entries about all that when I find a moment, but until then I'll leave you with the news that my outlaw biker name is Chief Graham of the Booze Junkies. Nuff said.

Posted by graham @ 10:10 pm

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Killer App

It's become so common place we almost forget it, but occasionally it strikes me just how useful Google really is. I'm typing away, a factual query crosses my mind, and the combined power of Google and a broadband Internet connection, and I have the answer in seconds. (If you're really interested, this time it was "what do you call those telescopes that only use lenses?") How ever did we manage without it?

Posted by graham @ 08:23 pm

Monday, April 12, 2004

And More New Gloranthan Content!

I've finally got round to writing a draft for the follow up to "The Trollkin Economy". The originally titled "The Trollkin Economy 2" deals with the thorny issue of trollkins getting pregenant. I've been meaning to write this for about two years now, but finally got round to after an e-mail on the subject from Jane Williams.

I really regard both of these as first drafts, and one day might get round to writing the definitive treatise on the subject. Probably only after collaring Greg and asking some pointed questions first, though.

Posted by graham @ 06:43 pm

Sunday, April 11, 2004

New Gloranthan Content!

For the first time in quite a while, there is new Gloranthan content on this site. Following a thread on the Heroquest list, I've added a couple of maps comparing various versions of the Lunar Empire with real world maps. Commentary is limited - hopefully the maps speak for themselves.

Posted by graham @ 04:08 pm

Friday, April 9, 2004

Beware! Low Flying Mini!

The British and French may have lost Concorde, but the Belgians have their own alternative - a Mini capable of Mach 3.

Posted by graham @ 07:33 pm

Use Comments to Reply...

1:: Give me a nickname and explain why you picked it.
2:: Am I lovable?
3:: How long have you known me?
4:: When and how did we first meet?
5:: What was your first impression?
6:: Do you still think that way about me now?
7:: What do you think my weakness is?
8:: Do you think I'll get married?
9:: What makes me happy?
10:: What makes me sad?
11:: What reminds you of me?
12:: If you could give me anything what would it be?
13:: How well do you know me?
14:: When's the last time you saw me?
15:: Ever wanted to tell me something but couldn't?
16:: Do you think I could kill someone?
17:: Describe me in one word.
18:: Do you think our friendship is getting stronger, weaker, or staying the same?
19:: Do you feel that you could talk to me about anything and I would listen?
20:: Are you going to put this on your blog and see what I say about you? (If yes, please include a link!)

Posted by graham @ 12:34 pm

Thursday, April 8, 2004

Let The Genie Out Of The Box

Marbles is finally here! The new Marillion double album, in its deluxe campaign box and book format arrived today, and has been on constant rotation ever since. It is a pretty stunning album. Not sure yet whether it quite compares with Anoraknophobia, Afraid of Sunlight, or Brave, but in places its damn close. Do yourself a favour and pick up a copy. Ideally, get the double CD version, or you'll miss such gems as the intelligent pop sing-along "Genie" (not to mention its heavier reprise at the end of "The Damage") and the Floyd-esque "Ocean Cloud".

Highlights so far are the above two songs, plus the run of "Don't Hurt Yourself" (acoustic guitars under trademark Rothery swirls and pop-genius hooks - should be a single), "You're Gone" (gentler, slow burner, very infectious, and the first single - out in ten days or so), and "Angelina" (probably the closest challenger I've noticed to "God" and "21st" from Anorak). But this is Marillion, so it'll be some weeks before I've properly absorbed all the sounds and formed something like my final opinions - especially with some 100 minutes of tunes on here.

Posted by graham @ 03:19 pm

Wednesday, April 7, 2004

The Worst Mail Delivery in Britain?

The Royal Mail is changing its delivery routine. The public face claim is that they are eliminating the second delivery - which only accounts for 4% of mail, so fair enough. The truth is more complicated. After severe difficulties in getting our mail, I did some digging. Turns out that as well as removing the second delivery they've "had to" move the postmen from a six to a five day week, with the total hours worked not changing. The end result is that instead of the relatively small task of removing the second task, they're instead re-doing all routes in Britain.

So, my house is now nearly at the end of the postie's route, which is now longer than ever before. And because it's a "town walk" they aren't even starting deliveries until 9am. They've decided that predictable delivery time is paramount, so I am now highly unlikely to ever see post before 1pm, and could see it much later than that. Much better than the older, less predictable system, under which I sometimes saw my post before nine, and normally before ten thirty.

I now have guaranteed one of the worst mail deliveries in Britain. Apart from the poor people who count as "rural". Royal Mail aims to deliver to them two hours after me!

Posted by graham @ 08:50 pm

Monday, April 5, 2004

Bloody Computers

Today has been rather stressful and unproductive. I was having some computer problems yesterday, but no more than often happens, but around lunchtime today, the mouse buttons stopped working. Clicking on things barely worked. Rebooting didn't help. So out came Norton, which ran for about four hours, before telling me it had found 162 viruses. What happened to "auto-protect"? Presumably one of them was responsible for all the problems, and certainly now everything has been repaired and quarantined, it seems to be much healthier.

Then Claire came home, muttering about stress, and asked if I'd got her e-mail. (Which I hadn't - see above virus discussion.) Turns out she'd had an obscure bug at work that finally turned out to be a race condition masked by an over-enthusiastic optimiser in SQL Server that doesn't actually run one line of code in some situations.

I'll swear computers are getting worse. Ten years ago, everyone had heard of viruses, but no one had actually seen one. I worked support at the time, and they just never actually appeared. Now, e-mail is full of them. I guess that's what they call "progress". For futher commentary, see Kernel Panic, starting around this comic.

Posted by graham @ 08:35 pm

Sunday, April 4, 2004

Liver and Live

One of the advantages of owning a company is that you can get a Makro card. Most of the stuff in Makro is pretty normal prices, but some of the food is pretty cheap, especially if you buy their special offers in bulk. Today we went shopping, stocking up on steak and cat biscuit and other essentials. Amongst the other offers was ox liver for 99p a kilo. Being partial to a bit of liver and bacon, this went in the trolley with the rest, and we planned to cook it tonight. When we finally got into the packaging, we were a bit surprised to find that instead of the normal stringy scraps of randomly sized chunks of liver, this was exactly what it said. An ox liver. A whole liver. More used to supermarkets, this was a new one on me, but I much prefer this way of buying liver. Five bloody minutes with a sharp knife later and it was carved into even slices, some of which were then coated in flour and roasted. Probably a good thing there were no vegetarians present at the time - poor dears might have fainted. The cats, however, thoroughly enjoyed licking up the blood from the chopping board.

Other news is that I now have a live journal account. I'm never going to post to it, but it does let me read the private entries of those who agree to be friends with me. The username is "buserian" should you wish to be on that list.

Posted by graham @ 08:41 pm

Thursday, April 1, 2004

Sheesh

I keep being surprised just how argumentative the Gloranthan community can be. On the heroquest list there has been a discussion started by those who aren't happy with the scale of the maps. Jane Williams popped up to wonder what the problem was, so I replied that to my mind it was inconsistency. As an example, I quoted the Imperial Lunar Handbook which has one line about "riders can manage up to 350 miles a day... blah blah... riders can make Mirin's Cross from Glamour in three days." [Not exact quote.] From which I would assume a distance of about 1000 miles from Mirin's Cross to Glamour - unlike the 300 miles on the map in that book...

But lots of people got interested in the "350 miles a day" bit. Fair enough, it seems an odd claim. So I quoted more fully - that this was based on relaying horses, specific magic, and was only for Imperial Couriers. Which you might have thought would settle it. But no... One guy picked at my specific wording, several people have moaned that this tells them nothing about ordinary travel rates (as if this is my fault...) And the worst of it is that an interesting spin off discussion started by John Hughes on other means of transferring messages quickly got lost in the heat.

Oh dear. I didn't write the book, and I didn't use the quote for anything other than as an example of distances being specified in the text. I happen to think it's a reasonable figure - we have real world examples of 300 miles/day being achieved by similar methods. Being criticised because an example I didn't write can't be applied to areas it was never intended for seems a bit much to me. And frankly, I'm a bit tired of defending a canonical example from people who don't appear to have actually read it. Especially given I quoted it in full.

Tonight is the second session of the Fading Suns LARP. So far this has proved a considerably less anal and therefore enjoyable game. I'm looking forward to it, even though I know one of the best players from last time (hi, Nancy!) won't be there.

Posted by graham @ 03:27 pm

Musical Mystery

There's an interesting bit of viral marketing to be found at Musical Mystery. The basic idea is to answer 64 questions (some of them real stinkers), then guess the identity of the mystery artist based on songs from their forthcoming album. Those who manage to get all those right go into a prize draw for a cash prize (currently over four grand) with runner up prizes of i-pods and cds. The mystery artist hopes that this will lead to new people hearing their music without being put off by the name attached to it.

Anyway, last night I got the last answer of the 64, and I've known the artist all along - those who know me should find that a big hint as to who this is... And, yes, begging e-mails will bring hints, and bribes will bring answers...

Posted by graham @ 09:28 am

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