First up I took a trip to a local (more like thirty miles away) games shop and picked up a couple of things, the main one being Hive. Hive’s a clever little two-player game where each player has a stash of large, hexagonal tiles each with a different insect on top. The tiles are laid next to one another with the objective of completely surrounding the opponent’s queen bee. Different insects have different movement abilities though and it quickly gets very strategic. It’s a bit like a strange, short game of chess, but it’s very addictive and the heavy bakelite tiles are very satisfying to use.

Hive. Lovely chunky pieces

Since Hive I’ve also picked up the venerable Carcassonne, which has turned out to be a surprise hit. The game revolves around drawing tiles which represent parts of roads, fields, cities and monasteries and placing them next to matching parts on the table, choose where to place your meagre allowance of workers (meeples) to best score you points. Simple to learn and quick to play. I’ve had an incarnation of it on the Xbox for ages now, but it’s never really grabbed us. Playing it with the card tiles and wooden meeples is very different though, and it’s very quick to grab you and leave you with that ‘one more go’ feeling. I’m eyeing up the Inns & Cathedrals expansion first, as by all accounts it’s the best one to get at first.

Carcassonne. One of the Meeples claiming a city

Next up I scored a very cheap Forbidden Island from Amazon which turned up in its attractive tin. The game itself Is centred around a group of tiles that represent an exotic island that’s sinking. Before it sinks, you and the other players are trying to pilfer the various treasures by moving around, shoring up sunken areas, and making sure you all escape with the treasures intact. It’s fun, but in truth is a bit simplistic and relatively easy to win at, I can see why it’s recommended as a good gateway game for kids growing up. I might pick up its ‘big brother’ Pandemic at some point which is supposed to use similar mechanics but be a lot more involved.

Forbidden Island. Really nice tin and pieces

I was very excited to see my Valentine’s present turn up last week while I was on holiday. After a lot of agonising and indecision (I very nearly went for Merchants & Marauders) I settled on Arkham Horror, and I’m so glad I did. It’s a bit of an epic with a massive board and a lot of components, and it’s all set in HP Lovecraft’s universe. A team of investigators (the players) move around the city, balancing their skills as they go, trying to fight off the hideous monsters and seal the gates to other worlds that have been appearing. The idea is to try to seal them all quickly enough so that one of the the Great Old Ones appear, they being the likes of Nyarlathotep, Ithaqua, or everyone’s favourite, Cthulhu (no pedants please, I know they might not all be ‘officially’ GOO). It works really, really well and the feeling of everyone fighting together against the game is awesome. It takes a few turns to get your head around what’s happening during each phase, but once you’ve got it it ticks along at a reasonable pace. I love this game and can’t wait to give it a try with lots more players.

Arkham Horror. Awesome game with a lot of pieces!

I wish I could say that’s it, but it’s not. We went to Plymouth for the day last week and I bagged myself a copy of Reiner Knizia’s Lost Cities. It’s a small game for two players, and as much as it tries to be thematic (players are explorers on expeditions around the world) it’s essentially a card game. If you ignore that though, it’s a great game with a good mix of strategy, luck and risk-taking.

Lost Cities. Small, cheap and very addictive

Good times then! And reading it back, it sounds like expensive times too, but actually it’s not too bad at all. Hive, Carcassonne, Forbidden Island and Lost Cities were all less than twenty quid each (lots less in some cases), Arkham Horror has been my most expensive game of all so far at £40. I know Spring’s on its way now, but it’s nice to have something to do in the dark nights that’s not just staring at the TV or going out and spending money. Obviously I’ve still got an ever-growing wishlist, but I’m content with what I’ve got for now.

(Let’s see how long that lasts)

Technorati Tags: Arkham Horror, boardgames, Carcassonne, Forbidden Island, Hive, Lost Cities

Ironically, this boardgame isn’t actually a boardgame in the true sense. It’s a deck-building card game, and a very, very good one at that (like I’ve got loads of experience to draw on, right?). To explain it properly would take pages here, and as complicated as the set-up sounds – and looks initially – it’s actually incredibly easy to get the hang of. I think it’s going to take a lot of playing to get good at strategy, but of the three people I’ve played it with so far, no-one’s taken more than about fifteen minutes to get the hang of. Everyone starts with exactly the same deck of cards which they draw a hand of five from. They play these cards in their turn which consists of A, B and C. A is for Action, and lets you play an action card which can do anything from giving you more actions or coins to spend, to forcing the other players to discard cards in their hands. B is the buy phase, where any coin cards in your hand can be spent on new actions, treasures, or victory point cards. Finally C, clean-up. The cards you played are added to your discard pile, any cards you bought also are, and so is the remainder of your hand. You draw five new cards from your deck and it’s next player’s turn. The only time this changes is when you no longer have five cards in your deck to draw, which is when you shuffle your discard pile (including any new cards you might have bought) and it now becomes your deck. So in essence you’re building your deck as you go, trying to do it tactically.

The trick comes in deciding how to build your deck. The ‘action’ cards are also called Kingdom cards, and you play with piles of ten different kinds (from a stock of 25 different types) of them. They represent buildings or people within your dominion. So on your turn you might think ‘now do I buy the Militia to give me two extra coins and force everyone else to discard two cards, or do I buy a Throne Room to allow me to play one of my action cards twice?‘. Finding a balance between increasing your own wealth, making sure you don’t have much rubbish in your deck, and hampering your opponents at the same time is an art. The variety of card types available mean no two games are the same, and when you throw in the load of expansions available, there’s a ridiculous number of possbilities.

The game ends on one of two conditions: firstly if all of the ‘Province’ victory point cards are bought, or secondly when any three piles of the action cards are depleted. At the end of the game everyone counts up the victory points in their decks and the person with the most, wins. It might sound simple, or boring, or whatever, but it’s actually really good fun, very addictive, and every game has at least one person having an ‘ahhhhh!’ moment when an idea for a tactic, or recognising what they’ve done wrong happens. There’s a load of expansions available, and given the response of everyone on BGG and the fact that sites such as dominionstrategy.com exist, it seems like it can easily get very competitive. I’d really recommend Dominion to anyone looking to get something to play either with their other half, or up to four people, but looking for a break from the Monopoly/Cluedo route of normal, off-the-shelf games.

As well as this one I also got the heads-up on some ridiculously cheap Rio Grande (same manufacturer as Dominion), highly rated games from an online retailer, so I’ve now got the infinitely nerdier Notre Dame and Hamburgum to try to learn too. Good times .

Technorati Tags: BGG, board games, boardgamegeek, Dominion, Hamburgum, Notre Dame, Rio Grande

For the last best part of a decade, I’ve bought hosting through a company called Web-Mania. They were always cheap and pretty good value for money for what you got in terms of space and bandwidth. Unfortunately over the last year or so the level of service just plummeted. Speeds got really slow, uptime was ropey with  sites down for up to a day at a time, and customer service non-existent. Phones not answered, the once-useful live chat gone, and I’ve NEVER had a reply from an email. Then in the last couple of years they folded and were taken-over/bought out by a company called Yorhost, where absolutely nothing changed except for some new graphics on their site (it and when it was available).

Anyway, I got fed up with it, and having moved our club sites to new hosting, decided to follow suit with this place. So now I’m hosted on tsohost.co.uk and it’s a breath of fresh air. The backend is FAR more comprehensive, utilising the de-facto Cpanel for service maintenance. I was able to create a new database, new user and new FTP account in a few minutes and then import the SQL dump from the old hosting so I didn’t have to start this place from scratch. A quick re-upload of the WordPress install, a much needed update to the core (which I couldn’t do at the old place thanks to their out-dated services), ~21,000 spam comments deleted and everything’s feeling much fresher.

I almost forgot to re-do my email redirection, but luckily found that part of my brain working before I’d much of a chance to miss much email.

So, if you’re with Yorhost/Web-Mania and fed up with it, you can do a lot worse than heading over to tsohost.co.uk. Cheaper, much better service, and much more for your money. Obviously this is just my opinion, YMMV, but that’s what this place is for; my opinions. And no, I’m not on commission/referral .

Technorati Tags: tsohost, web hosting, web-mania, yorhost

Getting back into training and back into the gym has been difficult, but it’s getting better. My first session back in the gym was killer, my usual 1K warmup on the rower left me gasping and I couldn’t push anything like the weight I could a month before. I’m getting there now though, the 1K row is now 1.5K to get warm, and I’m not pushing my lungs back in after. I’m back to a full stack on the chest press machine (110KG) so I’ll be back on the bench with dumbbells and the barbell, which I’m looking forward to.

TSD is going reasonably well, I’m making some real conscious efforts at the moment to try and correct parts where I know I get lazy. That means deeper stances, not raising between techniques, and trying to get those kicks up and for once, locked-out! I’m still taking loads of Fish Oil and Glucosamine Sulphate, and while I know it’s too soon for anything long-term to even start making itself obvious, I do feel better for it.

Technorati Tags: Fish Oil, Glucosamine Sulphate

My first dip into ‘something-you-don’t-see-in-town’ territory was the very excellent Last Night on Earth. I wasn’t sure what to expect, despite having read a ton of reviews, but I was really pleased with what turned up in the big box. Everything’s really high-quality and well made, and the artwork and presentation is awesome. There’s even a CD included with mood music! Saying that, I should probably explain what kind of mood, I’ve not said what the game’s about.

As the more astute of you might have guessed, Last Night on Earth is a Zombie game. It’s set in the same sort of scenario as dozens of films before it; zombies are taking over, the apocalypse is coming, and one hardy group of meatbags (humans) are trying to survive. The players take the roles of heroes or in control of teams of zombies, the heroes attempting to complete the scenarios on offer (there are quite a few to keep the game fresh), the zombies just trying to stop them by any means necessary (usually eating their brains). I really like the way the heroes aren’t just differentiated by having different shaped models; they all have individual statistics, traits and abilities, it feels more like playing a video game than a board one. The rules are a bit heavy-going at first, but it’s worth persevering with. Actually no, that’s not true, the rules themselves aren’t that difficult really, it’s more a case of remembering what you can do on every turn, and what order you have to do it in.

I played a game with my other half and two of our friends, and it was a hoot. Get some drinks involved, snacks on the table and a lot of ‘discussion’ along the lines of ‘you can’t do that! – consult the rules!’ and despite the game taking a couple of hours to finish, it’s really good fun . I’m already eyeing up the expansions which add a whole host of new map tiles, scenarios, heroes and event cards – these event cards are what drive the majority of actions and decisions in the game. Flying Frog have done an excellent job in creating something atmospheric and enjoyable, and the reference wiki on their website is awesome. Any time you’re unsure on any part of the rules, or how any of the cards work, you’ll find the answer there.

The world of the board game geek is a really unique sub-culture, and one I don’t think most people would ever really stumble on without knowing someone already in it, but I’ve got to say I’m hooked. I’ve started choosing my next potential purchases, and at the moment (this can and does change almost daily) I’m looking at Arkham Horror and Descent. The only thing I’ve got to be careful of is making sure I don’t get too carried away, I could easily spend a lot more on this than on my other games habits!

Technorati Tags: board games, boardgamegeek, Last Night on Earth

Um yeah, that one didn’t work out quite as I’d hoped… The warmup was still a shock to the system, so much so someone else got a nosebleed from the exertion But once we were back into the swing of things it was like I’d never been away, and I have to say I’m so pleased to be back in a dobok and working hard. The conditioning exercises at the end of the session left me with purple forearms today, but that’s all part of the fun .

The other part of this update’s title refers to the fact that last night was exactly six years to the day that I first started training in Tang Soo Do. In some ways it feels like a lifetime ago, in others, like yesterday, but going along for that first session in a cold school hall was one of the best decisions I ever made. Here’s to the next six!

Technorati Tags: shock to the system, tang soo do, TSD

Like millions of others over the last few days, I’m back on the ‘lose weight, get fit’ thing. In fact I’m all over it. Instead of just doing it with a vague sense of commitment, like those joining gyms this week with one eye on next months direct debit date to make sure they can cancel it in time, I have a real, actual goal to aim for.

Actually that’s a bit of a misnomer, I don’t have a specific goal at all. No dream weight or size or anything like that, but a definite time and place I want to be reaping the rewards of my impending monastic lifestyle. That time and place is the European Tang Soo Do Championships in Germany this May, over my birthday weekend.

I’m not sure why I’m so eager to get it done for that in particular, but it’s firmly lodged in my brain now, so that’s just how it is. I’ve been to a lot of competitions now, and not done well at all since mixing it up with the Dan grades. Now while it’s true that my technique isn’t the greatest, and that it all depends on the judges on the day, there’s also another major contributing factor; fat guys don’t win forms.

I know, I know, ‘it’s nothing to do with that’ – but it is. So I figure if I can at least get in shape properly by then and I still lose miserably, it’s because I suck at forms, not because I’m wobbling all over the mats. That I can live with. The essence of a forms competition is aesthetic, it’s about how it looks, and like it or not we’re affected by factors below our level of conscious thought. So from now until then I’m going to use this to keep track of what I’m doing, how it’s going, and to motivate myself. It might come across as part blog/part Facebook status at times, but that’s just tough I’m afraid. If you’re after something to read with a bit more intrigue, do yourself a favour and read The Pelican Brief.

So here we go, day one, it starts today with my first session back at the gym which will in all likelihood kill me. Such fun!

Oh and as an aside, I’ve also decided to start again with the Fish Oil and Glucosamine Sulphate supplements in an attempt to mend my ailing hips. I got on with them quite well last year, so I’ll give them ago for a couple of months to see how I get on.

Technorati Tags: EMTF, European Championships 2012, tang soo do

Of all of these, the one that seems like it should be one of the easiest, isn’t. Is it really so difficult in this day and age to get a TV signal in the bedroom? Apparently, yes. I have a big main external aerial on the front of the house and the coax from it runs down the front of the house and straight into the living room. There’s no junction box, no feed from the attic, just one wire to one room. The bedroom is in the back of the house and upstairs, basically as far away from the point where it comes in as possible. I’ve got the same problem with the wireless connection, the router is in the living room too and the signal barely makes it to the bedroom. Why do I mention wireless? Because if I had that I could at least access all of the media on my computers in the bedroom without wires running everywhere. Oh, and that’s supposing I have a wifi media player too, which I don’t have.

Or do I?

In a fit of boredom I started following links on Instructables.com, a site which makes me wish I had a massive, fully equipped workshop and a load of money. One of the guides in there was for softmodding a Wii, which I’d heard about doing before with a hack for the Zelda: Twilight Princess game, but never really bothered with. This was mostly because I didn’t want to brick my Wii, but also because I had no real reason to. However, over the last year or so I’ve only really turned my Wii on for one game (the very excellent Sin & Punishment: Successor to the Skies), so it’s just sitting there taking up room beneath the TV gathering dust.

After reading more about it I found there are a lot more elegant ways to do it nowadays, without the use of a modchip, and with brick-proof reliability afterward. Me being me and reading this was like a red rag to a bull, there was no way I could resist giving it a go. Armed with a blank SD card, a laptop and an excellent guide, I set about it.

I’m not going to lie and say this is a five minute, idiot proof piece of cake, because it isn’t. There are a few places where you could slip up, and more than once I found myself having to google specific things, but in the end the guide worked, and after an hour or so I had a fully modded Wii.

This newly opened Pandora’s Box has lots of possibilities, but the one which immediately grabbed my attention is WiiMC. The small app gives the Wii the ability to play just about any media, from any source. While the idea of filling a USB drive with stuff and playing that is a good one, I was taken by the idea of streaming it over the home network. After setting up the Samba share in WiiMC (much easier than it sounds) I tested it in situ, about eight inches from the router, and it worked perfectly. A Triumph!

Except, of course, for the rubbish wifi signal in the bedroom, where the Wii is now destined for. Oh no, not more ethernet!? There’s no way I’d be allowed to run ethernet all over the house. But I’ve got a PC in the room across the hallway from the bedroom with a PCI wifi card doing nothing, surely there’s some way of getting that to provide me with a wireless signal? Actually, yes there is! Most computers offer ad-hoc wireless networking but it’s very limited in what it offers and in terms of range. I discovered a gem of a program called connectify which proved to be the answer. Run this little beauty on a windows 7 machine and it acts almost like a bridge between networks, and acts as a wireless access point all in one. I gave it an SSID of my choosing, chose a password and chose to share the ethernet connection on it (that’s how it’s connected to my router), and sure enough it appeared straight away in my phone’s list of wireless networks! This means I can now move the wii and the spare TV into the bedroom and stream any media on my computer straight to it, along with any internet content too, like youtube or iplayer!

Genius.

Of course it still doesn’t solve my problem of just getting an aerial signal in there, but that’s the next problem to solve. Hopefully the next time I update it’ll be to tell you how I did it.

Technorati Tags: connecitfy, hack, softmod, Wii, WiiMC

I’ve really enjoyed the little Muay Thai I’ve watched at places like Seni/Martial Arts Show, but it’s hard to get into it properly there as you’re stood in deep crowds in a big, noisy environment with lots of distractions. When I got the invitation to watch the ‘Mean Machine’ show I didn’t have to think about it, the chance to watch some more in an event format was far too tempting, especially given the fact that a friend-of-a-friend was fighting in the main event for the British title. Most martial artists in Cornwall are at least aware of Julie Kitchen, her reputation as the ‘Queen of Muay Thai’ precedes her, and I was half-expecting to see her in attendance, but what I didn’t expect was for her to be the one collecting tickets on the door! It’s always nice to meet big names who don’t see relatively menial jobs as beneath them.

I was surprised with the production of the event if I’m honest; the light show, sound system, ring announcer, production – it was all really well-done and professional. Unsurprisingly the majority of the fighters were local, with most of them coming from Touchgloves in Penzance and WAKT in Camborne and Wadebridge, but the quality on show was really high. I was expecting to maybe see five or six bouts and be there for a couple of hours, but when we opened the programme I quickly realised that wasn’t going to be the case – seventeen(!) fights scheduled which took five hours to get through!

As the day went on the quality went up, it was so cool to see something so skillful and intrinsically violent in nature up close like that, but the biggest thing that came through was how well everyone upheld the respect and tradition of the event. Even those who you could maybe argue were a little more ‘freestyle’ than the others were still obviously well-grounded and there wasn’t an ounce of ego on show. The clubs demonstrating full ceremony were really good to watch though, WAKT in particular, with fighters coming in wearing their mongkol (headband) and walking the ropes, praying in the corners.

I was impressed with a lot of the kicking, especially the front leg roundhouse. I was surprised to see the amount of power some of them were generating off a front leg kick at head height. The last few bouts were really impressive at a technical level; the all-out brawls that some of the fights broke down into weren’t on show and the close-quarters stuff in the clinch was really clinical. In fact from where I was sitting it looked like three or four good knees to the head that ended the main event. It’s very easy to see why the best MMA fighters often train in a mix of Muay Thai and BJJ, as far as competitive striking arts go it’s got a lot going for it.

Training for a while in Tang Soo Do gave me a differing viewpoint to a lot of the people in the audience I’m sure, and it was really hard to not compare stance, kicking style and ring tactics. I think training in a striking art made me appreciate smaller things more, like wincing at the leg kicks which looked soft and slappy and didn’t get much recognition from the crowd (there were some purple legs at the ends of bouts, and a lot of limping), and not paying much heed to a good head kick which was obviously blocked and largely nullified, but had the fans cheering. I look forward to future events, I’ll definitely be in attendance again.

Technorati Tags: mean machine, muay thai, touchgloves, wakt

Sloe gin is a very traditional thing to make over here, people have been adding sloes, bullace and damsons (to name but a few) to gin for years, and it’s very easy to see why. There are loads of traditions and recipes that go into it, depending on where you are and what’s been passed down to it. Recipes vary, but the one golden rule was always to pick sloes after the first frost. That would make sure they weren’t picked until October at the earliest usually, meaning they’d be ripe and juicy. Down here though (Cornwall) we’ve had a pretty warm summer, and as is usually the case, our crops were ready much earlier than that this year. I managed to pick 5 lbs out on a walk with the dogs in the second week of September – get in!

It doesn't look like much, but that's a big bowl!

After spending a small fortune on gin it’s time for the very laborious job of getting the sloes ready for the bottles. Again, tradition dictates how you do this, I’ve heard stories about how it’s meant to be done with a pin or a sewing needle. All it really needs to be is something to break the skin to let the juice and colour from the skins to leech out into the gin, so I find the best method for me is to sit down with a big bowl of washed sloes, an empty bottle and a sharp paring knife. I slit each one up one side and pop it in the bottle. It’s pretty mind-numbing, but it means I can watch a film or something while I’m doing it. All that’s left to do then is to add some sugar and put the top on the bottle.

Here are the recipe and proportions I use:

1. Take an empty litre bottle of gin and half-fill it with sloes
2. Add 150gms of sugar
3. Top up with gin (allow a little room at the top of the bottle for turning)

That’s it. After that, turn the bottles every day for a couple of weeks and then once a week for the next couple of months. Ideally you want to leave it for at least three months before you drink it, despite the temptation. After that time, decant the gin into a new bottle. If you get lots of debris and sediment pour it through a coffee filter. They say it’s best left until the following winter for the flavours to mellow, but to be honest mine doesn’t usually make it through until new year . The sloes you’re left with aren’t just ready for the bin either, there are loads of things you can do with them, including making Shlerry and Slider, or my preferred option, chocolate sloe truffles.

Three litres in bottles, already looking good enough to drink

Mine’s been in the bottle for nearly two weeks now and is already starting to look rich and tasty. If you’ve got any sloes nearby, get out and get some and have a go, you won’t look back

Technorati Tags: autumn, drinks, gin, sloe, sloe gin