News Archives: August 2003

Saturday, August 30, 2003

Diplomatic Incidents

Nothing quite like infuriating people all round the world. Yesterday, I inadvertantly kicked over an ant nest. The wonderful people at the Men In Black, who run demos at conventions for Steve Jackson Games, are putting together a Munchkin variant for us introducing Gloranthan cards. Very cool. I found out about this yesterday, and put together an e-mail announcing it to the various people who would be interested. Someone passed that e-mail on to someone at Issaries (I can guess who) who appears to have read only the first three words of "official Gloranthan Munchkin tournament" and decided that I was announcing that SJG was putting together an actual Munchkin expansion - without permission! Rather than check with me, this person then apparently contacted SJG to demand an explanation. Eventually this came back to me, and I was asked to publicly clarify my comments.

Oh dear. Like I'd be the first person to know of anything SJG are up to. I don't even know what Issaries are up to these days. My mail was, admittedly, slightly clumsily worded, but was actually correct. If someone was bothered, a single e-mail to me would have cleared it all up. Blowing up at another company (let alone one as important to your future survival as SJG is for Issaries) is pretty stupid when you haven't even bothered checking your facts.

Today has been hectic - me writing freeforms and Claire working on the map books. She's now got most of them done (bar the intro page). They look wonderful - I'm expecting much praise for them when we show them to people at the con. We've also been recruiting more gophers. Unfortunately, due to a small breakdown in communication, we've ended up with more than we strictly needed. Never mind, it means less work for each of us, and they're all good people. Mainly, I'm glad this means they'll all be at the con.

Posted by graham @ 10:26 pm

Thursday, August 28, 2003

Deliveries

As part of the preperations for Scotscon, we've (largely meaning Claire's) been making a limited edition artist book of some nice maps Claire painted. They are things of great beauty, and having seen the first finished book, I can't find words to express how proud I am. The problem has been that to finish them, we've needed various bits delivered. In order to get the colours right, we're printing them ourselves, so more printer ink was needed. Ordered that on Saturday, to be delivered Tuesday. Monday was a bank holiday down south, so that slipped to Wednesday, but the courier should have it with us before twelve. The package doesn't arrive by twelve. Phone the company, they phone couriers. It'll be there by two. It isn't. By four. Nope. Package isn't addressed correctly. (It is.) It'll be out by ten the next day. By eleven thirty. Finally, it actually turned up at twelve today - only twenty-four hours late.

Better, was the handmade paper for the covers that we ordered from Thailand. That was finally delivered today. Turns out that it got to Edinburgh on the 20th - over a week ago. Some bright spark said "Oh, Bo'ness. That's in England, init?" So our package got from Thailand to within a few miles in one day, then took over a week to go via Cumbria to get here. And there isn't a thing you can do. Hmmph.

On a side note, yesterday's Online Opinion column is up, I just didn't get round to announcing it here. Cancun Failures makes the bold prediction that the trade talks in Cancun will do no good at all for the majority of the world, then makes a few suggestions of what could be achieved if we in the west weren't so full of our own self-importance. Enjoy!

Posted by graham @ 10:28 pm

Friday, August 22, 2003

Positivity

Despite the somewhat dubious joys of having a machine tell me I write like a girl, today has left me in a pretty good mood. I'm not entirely sure why - nothing much has changed. However, I've been dwelling on the more positive aspects of con organisation. Instead of getting upset about certain people, the people who are being hugely helpful, encouraging and cool are foremost in my thoughts. Everyone coming to the con are in there somewhere, but at the moment John, Liam, and Nick canter to the front. This week, they've been the guys who have come through when I needed them. Thanks.

In general, the con seems to be going well at the moment. Freeforms are shaping up nicely, and Claire seems to have the map books under control. Tomorrow we're getting the maps themselves printed. I'm looking forward to seeing the first finished book - they are going to be things of great beauty.

Posted by graham @ 10:41 pm

The Writer of This Post is Probably Female...

The Gender Genie is fun, but broken. Like any other simplistic measure, it breaks pretty easily. I've tried a few journal entries (all but one female), a couple of short stories (both female) and a couple of Online Opinion columns (both male). So what does that tell you? Not a lot. The belief seems to be that men tend to be journalists, women diarists and writers of descriptive prose.

Update Ran this entry through the Genie after posting. Yep, its "female"...

Posted by graham @ 09:09 am

Thursday, August 21, 2003

Depression, Busy Schedule, and Lies

I haven't posted for a few days because of an incident that occured on Tuesday. I've been pretty pissed off for much of the last couple of days, and as a result sleeping very badly. Which has left me not in the mood for blogging. I don't really want to talk about what happened - I'm not the kind of person to air my laundry in public. Suffice to say that I've disagreed with lots of Nick Brooke's Ten Things I Hate About Glorantha, but this past few days is proof that number ten has entirely the wrong target...

Another, more positive, reason for the lack of posts is that I am almost insanely busy, primarily with con preperations. I have managed to produce two columns for Online Opinion, though.

Blair's Iraq Fantasy attempts to find a reason for the invasion of Iraq, given that no logical explanation exists. 112 Days in Iraq is the first "extra" column I've written for a while. It points out that 112 days was how long Blair and Bush gave the UN weapons inspectors to do their work, and that 112 days is how long the allies have been (according to Bush) in charge in Iraq. Given which, why haven't the infamous weapons been found?

Posted by graham @ 10:00 pm

Monday, August 18, 2003

Recovering from the weekend

The weekend was kinda hectic. Fun, on the whole, but busy. I've barely touched the computer - sending a few con related e-mails was about all. Much of Saturday was spent gardening - cutting hedges, dead heading the budleia. I'm still surprised to enjoy gardening - I've only had a garden for about three years, now. There is something meditative about cutting hedges and mowing lawns, and seeing the garden take shape is very rewarding. After much hard work (we have a lot of hedge!) and a bath, the evening was spent with friends in the Holyrood Tavern. I was driving, so was drinking coke, but enjoyed a well deserved night off; even if the "comedy singer" in the back room was too loud and out of key.

Sunday afternoon saw a visit to the Whistler exhibition at the Hunterian in Glasgow. A bit disappointing, really. A few fine pieces, the overrated Mother, and a lot of half-finished padding. Only two Nocturns. Somehow, I suspect Whistler himself would have been horrified - an artist who cared about the presentation of his work as much as he did isn't likely to have appreciated being remembered with a display of unfinished work. After that, we went to parents for dinner, and to fix their computer. Not entirely sure what happened, but a clean reinstall of Windows proved necessary to bring it back to full life. Long winded and frustrating. Mum kept apologising for the time we spent, and didn't seem to believe me that it all took no longer than I had expected.

After all of which, today - back to work and back to the computer - has seemed oddly quiet. Constant phone calls and e-mailing means it hasn't been, but I only got out of the house for shopping and a brief walk. High point was a quick chat with Grant on Skye - trying to persuade him to add an RSS feed to Pacarras whilst agreeing to help him with the FuturePerfekt project of his. Low point was the discovery that people supplying the paper for the covers of the maps fundraiser had only sent a sixth of the order. Since the supplier is based in Thailand this is a big worry. We face trying to arrange for the missing part of the order to be supplied by the end of the week, or finding an alternative. Frustrating.

Posted by graham @ 09:39 pm

Friday, August 15, 2003

RSS Feeds

I've decided that I'm going to try and use this blog thing as a sort of diary. Every day I'm using a computer, I'll try and post a comment before switching off. Just giving a "I've been doing this today, and I'm feeling like this about it". No idea how well this'll work, but the results might be of interest, and should certainly act as a catharsis for me.

Recently, I've been quite obsessed with RSS feeds. They look like they have a lot of potential to make the whole blogging thing manageable. I seriously don't have time to click to lots of blogs to see if they've been updated, but pulling all the headlines down to one place looks much more practical. As my contribution, I've pulled together a few (fairly random) feeds on to one web page, and added RSS feeds to this site and online opinion. (Find them at http://grahamrobinson.com/weblog.rss and http://onlineopinion.net/opinion.rss.)

The one problem with RSS is that its all still a bit techy. Not a problem for me, but off putting for others. I've butchered a PERL script to produce the feeds page here, written a Python script from scratch to produce the RSS for this page, and I'm currently maintaining the Online Opinion feed by hand. The tools do need to get a lot better, although some of the blogging tools are, admittedly, a lot closer than the one I use. One word of warning - the feed for here only updates once an hour, so there will be a lag between me posting and the headline being syndicated elsewhere. There's also no point getting your headline reader to check more than once an hour...

Beyond this, I'm swamped with con work - spent two hours tonight just sending e-mails. Three weeks to go, then I get a break.

Posted by graham @ 10:11 pm

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

Random Thoughts

I've had this page for a while, but I'm still not sure what I'm doing with it. Occasional announcements are all very well, and will continue, but it all seems a little bit soulless and, well, dull. Should I be using these posts to express my self? To exocise internal torments? Or just to keep friends informed of what's happening in my life? And does it matter that I frequently don't find the time to post here regularly?

There is much recent news. I've come off the diet. Six and a half weeks without pasta or rice has got too much, I'm afraid. I've lost some 22 pounds, most of it in the first three weeks. Now I appear to be denying myself for nothing - I haven't lost anything for over a week. On the whole I'm quite happy - I'm still about half a stone overweight, but that ain't so bad.

The last week has seen a number of mile stones - my Father's birthday, my third wedding anniversary, and Online Opinion's first birthday. All within four days. Very nice to spend time celebrating - concentrating on the positive in life is always more fulfilling - but that and con duties have left me with little free time.

Posted by graham @ 09:05 pm

Latest Online Opinion Column

This week's Online Opinion column is now up. A little late, but blame that on a night's drinking with Grant. Hutton and the Search for Truth makes some not terribly bold predictions about the outcome of the Hutton inquiry, and then explores some of the issues that won't even be touched. I finish with a prediction that Blair's real problems start next Wednesday. You'll have to read the column to find out why.

Posted by graham @ 11:13 am

Wednesday, August 6, 2003

Two Online Opinion Columns Again

Another two columns this week at Online Opinion. Kelly on Kelly touches once more on Iraq, this time focusing on the unbelievable assertion that the Prime Minister's official spokesman believed his comments to a journalist wouldn't be printed. Spy in the Sky asks why the government is pushing for an intrusive solution to speeding, when lower cost, privacy-protecting measures are available. Both columns address the issue of government desire to control us, and the scary future we're building here.

Posted by graham @ 09:46 am

[Archive Index]