Making apterous

Vox Ludio: Matt Hamer

2016-09-03T14:22:00.002-07:00

An Apterite for well over 7 years and a Co-event veteran, Matt Hamer is one of the most enduring, endearing and enigmatic figures on the site. Read on to read what he has to say on Countdown, concerts and coupledom (and play his Easter Egg game!)...

You joined Apterous back in 2009 - over 7 years ago. How has it changed in that time?

I’ve always been a Scrabble® player first and foremost – Countdown is my second wordy hobby, really. Whilst I was a regular viewer of Countdown in the ’80s, it was the appointment of Jeff Stelling as host which renewed my interest in watching. The lure of Apterous was then too strong: even in its early days, it looked great, and it was rammed with innovative features and challenges – it became so much more fun to play than ISC (Internet Scrabble Club).

As the years have passed since then, Charlie has continued to develop and add features to Apterous. But alongside these technical enhancements are the changes in how Apterites themselves have used the website creatively. It perhaps began when players found new meta-games: pencil-mining, achievement collecting, and high-score hunting. It’s continued with Apterites now using infrastructure that Charlie has put in place, to lead all sorts of diverse initiatives for the benefit and enjoyment of others: dictionary updates, elaborate tournaments, The Mole, quizzes, to name a few.

In parallel with this increased sense of community, the in-person Countdown scene has grown tremendously, with Apterites supporting online friends during TV recordings, and a flourishing Co-event (unofficial in-person tournament) calendar. Apterites should be proud of their contributions to both the online and in-person games.

What have your favourite Apterous moments been?

Online, my favourite moments have encompassed gameplay (maxing an Aegilops Letters Attack after 864 attempts; and a Stepdown tournament which proved a thriller of a climax to Marcus’ 2012 Aptolympics); as well as the characters who have made Aptochat a hugely entertaining forum to frequent (anyone have time for a quick top 5?).

In person, I’ve attended 25 Co-events, and these provided me with a Countdown moment I’ll keep forever: Michael Wallace presenting me with a trophy at Co:Lon 2011. As far as English language Countdown play is concerned, I’ve now retired and returned to Scrabble, but I’m delighted by the success of FOCAL, and I’ll continue to attend one event a year. Ben, I’ll see you in Lincoln for my “hands glued to head” pose!

Is there any particular reason why you chose Spongebob Squarepants as your avatar?

Genuinely, little thought went into it. I like SpongeBob, although I could equally have chosen one of many animated characters. Ironically, for an Apterite represented by a character who lives in a pineapple under the sea, I react adversely to the enzyme BROMELAIN found in pineapples. (A valid 9 in CSW, but not yet in ODO, if anyone's wondering.)

You’re one of the most prolific foreign language players. What are your favourite languages, and why?

Other than English, the only language I can hold a proper conversation in is Dutch, although I can understand German and French reasonably well. Dutch has a wonderful flexibility in its sentence structure, and Dutch speakers enthusiastically adopt loanwords and new idioms in a natural way. It gives the language a wonderful capacity to convey different nuances of meaning. I sometimes wish native UK English speakers were less resistant to evolution of their language – I wish they wouldn’t condemn contemporary words or spellings like LOSINGEST, SRSLY, MINISCULE.

But which language is the most fun to play on apterous?

I concentrate on three or four Apterous languages, but I’m always impressed by the Apterites with a command of seemingly all of them. Miriam, Phyl, Catriona, Adam G, and others, are particularly talented in this regard.

Dutch and German are my favourite languages to play on Apterous, because of the quirks of the Apterous lexicons. In particular, the Dutch lexicon, which was a huge word list scraped from various sources, and was really meant for a spellchecker, includes all sorts of bizarre entries (NEWAGECD, SEXCAM, PARADISEBYTHEDASHBOARDLIGHT). I quite enjoy the challenge of spotting these in amongst more conventional words.

You’re also one of the most consistent players of the Daily Duel on the site. Back in the day, you were pretty vocal in Aptochat about messing up rounds - are you more relaxed about playing the game now, or just quieter when you’re unhappy with your performance?

The monthly Duel competition rewards a combination of playing conservatively every day (not risking words or fudging numbers), and good knowledge of the regular high-scoring words in less popular variants (Unlimited, Aegilops and Omelette). As most of Apterous’s very top players either don’t play every Duel, or have never bothered with the more off the wall variants or languages, it leaves the minor placings open to lesser Apterites.

And yes, I had a history of dealing with my frustrations about bad luck by venting them in aptochat. There came a point though when I realised that this was rather antisocial. Around the same time, my outlook on life became a little more relaxed, so nowadays any annoyance at muffing a Duel subsides almost straight away. Apologies to anyone who I used to offend with my outbursts.

As half of one of the community’s most lovable couples, what romantic advice do ‘Hayfield’ have for Apterous’s budding young Romeos and Juliets?

Ha, allowing me to dispense romantic advice might be dangerous, but I’d say meeting people with common interests is a good bet! If you happen to have a love of words and arithmetic puzzles, then with aptochat online, plus FOCAL’s ever-growing circuit of in-person events, you have more opportunities than ever of meeting like-minded individuals. Some of these, you might also have the hots for, and if the number of Countdown-related couples is an indicator, then some of these might well like you back.

You’ve lived in several different countries. Tell us some stories from your time abroad!

I loved the vibrant music scene in the Netherlands; in the summers, I would spend weekends watching bands in fields, and nights DJing at student parties. I got to chat with Moby, stomped on the foot of a popular showbiz personality, and appeared on TV dancing to Eagle-Eye Cherry.

Early nights and clean living were more my thing by the time I moved to Texas. I ran my first half-marathon in San Antonio (being careful not to urinate on the Alamo, like Ozzy Osbourne). I spent an evening at a small-town rodeo and country dance, although I’m not quite sure how I got to be there. I remember mostly being terrified of having to dance with the local Texan girls. Of course, they were just being friendly by chatting to the visiting guy with the English accent; I was trying desperately to hide that I had no clue how to two-step.

Anyone who’s Facebook friends with you will be aware of your astonishing commitment to going to gigs. What are your best gigs of all time, and which artist would you most like to see live?

Music has been profoundly important for most of my life, and I love most the experience of hearing, and watching, music being played live. Over twenty years after the first live show I saw, I’ve now seen nearly a thousand. Favourites have included that very first show – the now greatly missed songwriter and performer Kirsty MacColl – and a trip to California to see the re-activated pop/punk legends the Go-Go’s. A more unusual, but equally memorable gig, was an Idlewild show where singer Roddy Woomble was taken ill shortly before showtime. Rather than cancel the show, the remainder of the band played a free, full set, inviting a fan on stage to sing each song. It was wonderful to watch those 20 or so music-lovers feeling invincible as they lived out their rock fantasies that night.

With many of my favourite bands re-forming in recent years, there are few remaining acts on my wish list of those I still haven’t seen. I’d love Voice Of The Beehive to re-form, and I hope that recently reactivated Scottish mid-’90s indie-poppers The Secret Goldfish will play once again. Of acts who are better known, I somehow never got to see the fabulous Pulp. (You’re missing out! – Ed)

In your opinion, what was the best year for music?

Music and me are inextricably linked, and I do associate years with their music.

Amid the economic and political depression, the short period from 1977 was an incredibly creative time for music. The DIY rebellion of punk rock, followed by the new electronic sounds of the first homebuild synthesisers, yielded bands who I still love today – the Go-Go’s, Buzzcocks, the Human League, OMD among the bigger names.

It’s difficult to narrow that period of punk and new wave to a defining single year, so if I were pushed, I might also pick 1996. In the wake of the Britpop explosion, major labels were throwing cash at guitar acts, and the smaller independents were blossoming. Ash, Slingbacks, Pullover, Kenickie, Helen Love, Spacemaid… some of these bands fizzled out after only a few singles, some are still active today, but all of them hold wonderful memories for me.

Final question - if you were to host a dinner party, what would your menu be?

It depends whether I have to prepare the food – my repertoire of “things I can cook that are good enough to serve to other people” is limited. There are however two dinner parties I’ve always wanted to organise, but have yet to do so. One would be based on what was hilariously considered the height of dinner party style in the late ’70s, so prawn cocktail in limp lettuce for starter, something stodgy and beefy for main, and Viennetta or chocolate fondue for dessert, all washed down with Liebfraumilch. It would also be – of its time – lovingly un-PC (the ladies would all drink sherry, those cranky vegetarians would be disdainfully served nut roast). And the other idea? Well, as soon as I can come up with a full menu of dishes which both sound rude, and look rude... you can bring the cock soup.

Matt's Postscript

For the pop music fans, I’ve concealed an Easter egg (or more specifically, 10 Easter eggs) into my replies. Can you uncover the well-known act who inspired me?

[Answer in white text below]

The text contains the titles of Michael Jackson’s ten studio albums (Got To Be There; Ben; Music & Me; Forever, Michael; Off the Wall; Thriller; Bad; Dangerous; HIStory; Invincible).

Vox Ludio: Jack Worsley

2016-05-18T04:46:00.001-07:00

I interviewed Apterous's current Top Dog, Jack Worsley [pictured left with his broken COLIN Hangover trophy], for Countdown in Leeds's successful and very entertaining 'match programme' last month. So here's a FOCAL special for Vox Ludio with the series 66 champion...

You’re top of the FOCAL league after 3 events. How do you feel the season is going for you so far?

Of course I'm happy to be at the top but there's still a long way to go. I think FOCAL's a cool idea and, although it hasn't changed my approach to events too much, it certainly adds a new dimension to them for many people. I'm sure we'll be able to call it a success come December.

In February, you were pipped to the post at CoBristol in a close final against Jack Hurst. What was going through your mind during the game?

I felt reasonably relaxed throughout. I was surprised when a couple of my words were disallowed - particularly RETABLED - but I got the rub of the green with the new words at both COLIN events. Therefore, I couldn't complain when things went against me. The other Jack was a worthy winner. You'd have thought he'd never been away from the Countdown scene. In reality, it was his first event for over two years.

How are you going to bounce back from that defeat?

I won't change too much. I never take Co-events too seriously (it's not the Olympics) so I'll just go there, have fun and see what happens. And I may try and bribe the host to make things easier. We'll see.

How do you feel about your chances at CoLeeds?

It's tough to say. I have cut down on the Apterous practice recently, so that should make things interesting. I hope to be challenging, but there are many tough obstacles to overcome. You can never say for certain what will happen, which is part of the appeal.

Who would you say is your main rival at Leeds, and why?

It would be unfair to narrow it down to one as the field for Leeds is very strong. Innis Carson has an unbelievable record, so he would be the obvious choice. Then there's Kirk Bevins, who never seems to lose it, despite having played very little in the last three years. I think there are a few potential winners, though, with other honourable mentions going to Dan McColm, Zarte Siempre, Tom Carey and your good self [Jen]. And then there's the awesome Conor Travers. I know he's not expected to attend, but that's still no reason to rule him out.

What does your manager, Paul Worsley, say to you in the dressing room before the start of a tournament?

Being from a sciencey background (he worked as a pharmacist), he's often advising me on the dietary front. I prefer not to do things scientifically, so I just do my own thing. On the whole, he's very supportive, which is a great help.

Countdown-loving children across the country look up to you as a role model. What are your top tips for getting to the top of the anagramming game?

There really is no massive secret. Like with anything, you need to practise hard to get to the top. Never underestimate your own potential. I remember watching the Series 64 final between Adam Gillard and Edward McCullagh. I was in awe of them at the time and I thought I would never be able to get near them. Less than a year later, I won the Series 66 final. Also, don't panic when you suffer a dip in form, as it happens to everyone. When it comes to Co-events, just enjoy them and you'll gain more from the experience. And of course join Apterous.

Finally, what’s your favourite type of biscuit?

Do Jaffa Cakes qualify as biscuits? If not, I'll say custard cream, but there aren't many types that I don't like.

Vox Ludio: James Robinson

2016-03-01T11:51:00.002-08:00

It's been a while since the last Vox Ludio (nearly 2 1/2 years, in fact), but what better way to get back into the swing of it than by interviewing long-time Apterous favourite and gameshow legend James Robinson? The Mirfield maestro shares his thoughts here...

Hi James, how’s your day been?

Hey Jen, it's not been a bad day today. It's a nice day off, as I've just been celebrating my 28th birthday, I never work on my birthdays, as where's the fun in that??

Of course, the first question in any interview with you has to be: how are ‘the Terriers’ [Huddersfield Town FC] doing at the moment?

Well, as any Town fan will tell you, the first thing we want is to have an entertaining team who will get us great results. At the start of the season, that wasn't happening, but our brilliant chairman, Dean Hoyle (a lifelong Town fan), made probably the biggest gamble in the club's history by hiring the (unknown in this country) German-American David Wagner.

And what a move that was!! His "Gegenpressing" ethos has made Town a much fitter team, a much stronger team, and a team to be feared. The amount of times that fans from other teams have compared us to Barcelona this season is unreal!!!

And while we might not quite get all the results together yet, it's a very promising future we have with our youngsters mixing in with some shrewd signings. Philip Billing (our young Danish holding midfielder, who scored a cracker against Forest last weekend) is a name to look out for in the coming months/years.

You’re famous for your boundless enthusiasm for all things Countdown, be it recaps, Co events or being in the studios. What is it about Countdown that you love so much?

I remember first watching the show at 3 years old, at first I liked the music and title sequence (this one, in particular) I remember getting my first word when I was about 6/7 (SLEDGE, it was), getting my first conundrum at about 8 (had to be CHOCOLATE ) and my first 9 at about 11 (DECANTING, which I spotted after about a second or so).

In the early days, of course, it was set in Leeds, and living just 10 miles away in Mirfield, I felt a sense of local pride and I even dreamt of being in the audience - but being young at the time, I didn't realised it was pre-taped, and thought it was live!!

I think the thing I love about it most is that it's a simple concept. "Here are some letters, make a word out of them; here are some numbers, use maths to solve the problem; here's an anagram, unscramble it."

When I watched the show as I was going into my teens, I thought I was getting better, my maths was always decent, but I thought my vocabulary was OK (that was until Julian Fell in 2002, then Apterous, after I went on the second time, came along... and since attending my first CO-event in 2010, it's amazing to see how people with so much dedication can get so knowledgeable).

I'd say I really like the behind the scenes aspect of the show when I go into the audience. Until you go into the audience, you only have a rough idea how everything works, and it's the same when I do other quiz/game shows. To me, learning all the cool bits behind the scenes is an extra bit that I enjoy in a sort of geeky way.

With FOCAL tournaments lined up in St Albans and Huddersfield this year, you’ve got plenty to work on behind the scenes. Describe your ultimate Co event, if money were no object!

If I could have an ultimate CO-event, first, I'd get the current Countdown studio, as we definitely need that, especially with the big clock. I would get Rachel as we need her for my benefit. I'd get Tim Vine in to be our day-long DC guest, cos he was just amazing when I had him as a guest back in 2009. He'd keep us entertained all day, especially once my jokes dry up!! I'd also bring back all the legends, who we haven't seen/heard of for ages, e.g. Julian Fell, Harvey Freeman, Allan Saldanha, Scott Mearns, etc., so we could have a super awesome tournament. And since the Pointless game worked well at COHUD last time, maybe bring half the Pointless studio in as well for a bit of mid-game fun, along with Richard Osman, as he's super necessary to make it a proper Pointless show.

You’ve been on plenty of gameshows besides Countdown - Eggheads, Mastermind and Pointless to name a few. What’s been your favourite gameshow experience? Are you planning to apply for any others?

I would say Eggheads is my favourite, because normally when I go on other game shows, I go on by myself. I feel that like on Countdown, not relying on others makes it easy on yourself, as you know your own strengths and weaknesses, but not your team-mates, but the fact that my team became only the 10th team EVER to take the Eggheads down to one for the final is just something remarkable. I would've been happy just for it to be 3-3, but the fact that pretty much everything went our way (up until the last bit) was just unbelievable. It'll certainly take some beating!!!

I have applied for other shows now (I had to wait until Eggheads was on until I could apply for others), but I now am having an audition for Only Connect, and I do hope that I can finally get on The Chase real soon, and hopefully take on Paul "The Sinnerman" Sinha, as he has a great love of Countdown, like us lot.

As a born and bred Yorkshireman, what are some of your favourite things about Yorkshire? (Presumably not Elland Road!)

Hehe, I might be a born and bred Yorkshireman, although thanks to my parents both being from the Midlands, I don't have the accent. But Yorkshire as a whole is just a place of beautiful diversity and contrasts. You have the multi-cultural diversity of the different faiths in the west, the beautiful scenery of the coast in the east and the amazing hillside peaks in the north, and the industrial south, which gives a perfect mix of urban and rural. Also a good bit of Yorkshire Tea can't go a miss either.

You’re a big fan of James Bond. Which Bond do you identify with most, and why?

My favourite Bond is the one I certainly most identify myself with, Roger Moore. He was very English, quite liked to be a bit posh, and while I'm not quite that, I do like the idea of being it myself. He never took himself seriously in the role, but he had that debonair attitude, which made the role his own. He might not be as rough and action-hardened as Sean Connery and Daniel Craig, but if he did that, it wouldn't be believable, as they tried to do to him when they did The Man With The Golden Gun.

Finally, as a prolific user of emojis - what’s your favourite emoticon?

Hehe, I must say I do blame c4c for my love of emojis, without those emojis on the side when you make posts, I might not have ever used them!! I think my favourite sums up what I like about life, being COOL, so it's this one:

Thanks James! We'll be back next month with some insight into the mind of Street superstar and irrepressible tournament organiser Marcus Hares!

Unplanned downtime

2014-06-17T08:37:00.001-07:00

Apterous will be down til Thursday. This is the sort of thing the new server should relieve. Sorry about that.

Signing the applet: what it is and why it matters

2014-02-24T10:48:00.000-08:00

Many of you will have spent the past few weeks confronting a fairly terrifying warning on when logging into the game. And for some people, it simply doesn't work at all, or requires fiddling around setting up exceptions for apterous.org and all sorts of other junk.

So, good news: this has now come to an end! These warnings only apply to unsigned apps, and as of today, the apterous app is signed. You may have to click through some sort of warning one more time, but the warning is much less scary and even quite useful. After that, you should be good to go forever.

You can enjoy the benefits of this without having any idea what it means, but for the curious, here's a rough explanation. The game runs in your browser as a Java applet. (The details of what this means aren't particularly important, you can think of an applet as just a normal app like Microsoft Word or, err, Angry Birds, except that it runs inside Chrome or Internet Explorer or Firefox or whatever.) Unfortunately, over the last few years, Java applets have become a popular way for people to infect computers with malware (e.g. viruses, spyware, adware), so there's a real need to crack down on this sort of abuse. To this end, the latest version of Java made it much more difficult for applets to run in the browser. In particular, the applet must now be "signed". Signing an applet means attaching a real person's identity to the program before it can run, and these identities are verified very carefully by various companies around the world before they can be used. In the case of apterous, that real person is me. Then, if an applet turns out to be malware, you know exactly who to blame -- you have their real name, address, passport number, and many other details. That's enough to discourage most criminals, and should allow everyone else to make and run Java applets safely.

As noted, identities are verified very carefully and in my case this took several weeks due to the ridiculous amount of bureaucracy involved. It also costs a substantial amount in legal and administrative fees. But I think it's a good investment, and should put this irritating problem to rest for the foreseeable future. So, you're welcome!

Vox Ludio: Matthew Tassier

2013-10-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

A new Vox Ludio is upon us (at last!), this time administered by Zarte Siempre, who you may remember as the subject of the previous episode. And the subject of today's episode is Matthew Tassier, who many of you will know as the terror of numbers rounds everywhere. Matthew's Glory Roll speaks for itself, but luckily Matthew himself can also speak and in this episode, he does. I must admit that all blame for the tardiness of this belongs to me, since Zarte sent me the text ages ago and I only just got around to posting it. So, apologies, and on we go.

Zarte Siempre: Hi Matthew, how are you?

Matthew Tassier: Hi Zarte, very well thanks.

ZS: Whilst trying to research you a bit to get some good questions to ask, whilst I obviously knew your forte were the numbers, I was amazed to find out how many numbers records you actually seem to hold – where does your numbers proficiency come from?

MT: Numbers just always made a lot more sense to me than the arbitrary grouping of letters into words. Before I went to school I was fascinated by a grandfather clock that my parents had and I learnt to tell the time at a very young age and used to get annoyed if people told me it was ten past three when I could see that it was clearly only 9 minutes past 3. Some people would say I'm pedantic. That's the furthest back I can trace my affinity with numbers and it's continued ever since. Maths was easily my best subject at school and I went on to do a degree in Mathematics and Statistics and have always worked with numbers since.

ZS: Do you get your enjoyment of numbers from being so good at them, or do you get that good at them because you enjoy them?

MT: I guess the being good came first. Watching Countdown while growing up in the 80s I could often beat the contestants in the numbers rounds, but tended to get beaten in the letters. In Apterous letters rounds depend on things like knowledge of high probability words and ability to "spot" words without trying and tedious things like stemming or learning word lists. However, everyone knows about adding, subtraction, multiplication and division so numbers rounds are a pure mental challenge.

ZS: You currently hold the outright record for the ludicrously hard Spoilage Numbers Attack? Is that the record you're proudest of? If not, what is? And do you have your eye on any other records?

MT: Yes, the Spoilage NA record has to be the one I'm proudest to hold as it is clearly the most challenging numbers test on Apterous. However the record is overdue an upping so expect to see me post a new mark before the end of the year. There are other achievements I am proud of like my bullet Aegilops NA max game and especially my Bullet Hyperlock NA max against Rex. However I'm also pleased with improvements in my letters game. It may have taken four years but I have improved from something like 5.5-6 maxes average in 15 rounders to 8.5-9 now which may sound like slow progress but as someone who has never played hundreds of games a month I'm pretty pleased with that.

ZS: Is there any advice you'd give to a player wanting to improve their numbers game (or indeed any aspect of their game in general)?

MT: I think the best way to improve is simply to play the game, preferably against a human opponent, and observe what your opponent beats you with. If it's a word you're not aware of then I'd look up its definition and find out more about it as this really helps cement it in your memory. In terms of numbers rounds once again practice makes perfect, but there are other things to consider. For instance I think I've recently improved my use of the 30s, not getting bogged down in a method that I can't quite make work. Also don't waste the time while the numbers are coming out on a 6 small or 1 large round. I usually multiply the three largest small numbers together before I see the target as that may lead you to a solution that you're unlikely otherwise to find in the 30 seconds. One more thing to think about is the balance between what I call constructive and deconstructive methods. Deconstructive methods are where you start by taking apart the target (e.g. factorisation) whilst constructive methods are ones where you work with the numbers you are given, try to get closeish and then adjust your method. I think I use the constructive approach a lot more than many of the top numbers players which lends itself well to some of the more complicated variants like spoilage or hypernasty numbers.

ZS: Unless you have a cunning pseudonym, you appear to be one of the better players never to have appeared on the show. Why is that? And do you have any plans to enter in the future?

MT: I don't use a pseudonym, but interestingly I am a Southampton fan, having grown up near there and Matthew Le Tissier is my favourite Saints player of all time. I've always played apterous because I enjoy the game rather than as a stepping stone towards going on Countdown and performing well. I am a big Countdown fan and watch every episode, though often a few weeks late ... I'm really looking forward to you appearing in a couple of days. (Ed's note: This has now happened. [Spoilers]) The thought of applying to appear on Countdown is both exciting and scary, I'm not convinced I want to watch myself on television and see myself how others see me. Having said that I will probably apply at some stage, when it's a convenient time in my life and I'm sure I'd end up enjoying it if I did get on.

ZS: What's your attitude to the game in general? Are you overly competitive and looking for world domination? Or do you just like to unwind by sadistically bamboozling people with 6 small numbers?

MT: I am a very competitive person and will always give 100% to win the current game I am playing. But it is important to me to enjoy playing, win or lose. I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive and being able to balance them is the key to getting the most out of apterous I think. And of course I enjoy outwitting people at 6 small, particularly if they've just crushed me with 9 letter words.

ZS: What else [if anything] would you like the world to know about Matthew Tassier?

MT: Nothing, I've told you too much already. One day I'll probably turn up at one of these CO events, you can ask me more then!

ZS: And finally, from playing you, I've always got the impression that you enjoy a glass of wine – have you got any particular recommendations?

MT: A glass of red wine and a game of apterous is certainly a good way to wind down at the end of the day, but I'm no wine buff. I like a nice Chianti for instance, but to me most wines taste pretty similar. I can however recommend avoiding Turkish white wine. When I heard it compared to camel's urine I felt the comparison was rather unfair on the camels. To be fair on Turkey this was one particular bottle and I probably made a really bad decision to choose it. Really I'm more of an ale man, so my recommendations would be to try any strong dark ("brune") Belgian beer (you can't go wrong) or if you are in a pub this winter look out for Downton's Chocolate Orange Delight. It really shouldn't work but a pint is delightful.

Ah, so you're the other guy that likes Chocolate Orange Delight! I knew there had to be someone. Thanks for your time, Matthew, and for your patience, Zarte. See you for the next one!

Vox Ludio: Zarte Siempre

2013-07-01T04:41:00.000-07:00

The more astute amongst you will have noticed that I've failed to meet the one-a-month target for Vox Ludios for the last few months, mainly thanks to being busy with real life and making the actual game (mea culpa!). So to speed things along and provide a fresh perspective, this month's interview was administered by the much timelier Jen Steadman, who you may remember from the previous episode. She spoke to Zarte Siempre, king of aptochat banter and all-round top dude. Here it is!

Jen Steadman: You're one of the newest players in the top 50. How did you find Apterous, and what got you hooked?

Zarte Siempre: I found Apterous at a difficult period — I'd just broken up with my partner, I was still coming to terms with the circumstances that put me in a wheelchair and work had dried up. My thought process was "I really need to do something at least vaguely productive, to keep my brain in gear". I remembered my love of Countdown as a kid and thought "There HAS to be an online version somewhere" and went hunting. Lo and behold I found Apterous and have been playing since. As to what got me hooked, with the question saying "top 50" that implies it's about the gameplay, and it's really not for me. I've always been addicted to people, I just get through them quite quickly as most bore/irritate me. But within the community, despite my character often being a polar opposite to others on the site, there's never a sense that that's an issue – in fact, the opposite. Apterous welcomes diversity and for as long as it does, so will I, and as a result stay "hooked" (I feel like that's terrible English – but I hope it does the job). I think the fact that most of you put up with my piss-taking, acerbic, eternally grouchy self helps too!

JS: I understand you've recently filmed for the show - without spoilering, how did you find the experience?

ZS: I found it incredibly easy to adjust to. I told myself the night before, that whatever happened, I was going to take it one game at a time, and enjoy it. I think I was nervous for about the first 5 rounds, and then it just all evaporated away. All you have to do is what you do every time you log on online – just focus, and think about just that one thing. I'd really advise more people to have a go, because the lights, the music, the people – none of it affects you once you're in the zone. If it had affected me though – I'd just have got pissed... I mean considering my best ever co:event was Lincoln and I played that almost entirely half-cut, there might be something to be said for it...

JS: People have arguably become more serious about Apterous as the standard has increased - how seriously do you take your rating, gameplay and suchlike?

ZS: I think the fact I openly admit to playing while not at my soberest says a lot for how seriously I take it! Sure, I get frustrated with myself if I have a bad game – but that's it – I get frustrated with myself. I think there's a serious point to be made about people taking it too seriously. There's several people who I'm on about a par with who chew themselves up every time they miss a single word, and who've played double the games I have. People don't realise I've not even played 4,000 games yet – I come on to have fun, and if I don't have fun – I don't learn from the mistakes I've made and it clearly works. And I refuse to believe that that's SOLELY me. There's become an increasing culture of public self-flagellation AND self-congratulation in the 18 months I've been on the site and it's the only thing that tarnishes it for me. We have a wonderful community with some wonderful, interesting people – don't make a mockery of that by getting irate in a chat room when you've "only" got 13 maxes. It's meant to be fun! No-one's going to change the world sitting behind a laptop screen re-arranging letters, and no-one outside of a few other people doing the same thing gives a damn how good you are at it. So let's just chill and have some laughs. I like to think that I try to keep the mood light, and I hope other people would agree (and maybe even appreciate it on occasion!)

JS: You were the first person to get a max game in the new 15 rounder format. Have you got your eye on any other Apto firsts or goals?

ZS: Put simply... no. It's impossible to have your eye on firsts really, because most of them are either impossible to someone who is as non-versatile as I am, or things I could do, have already been done. And those that come up in the future, I don't know what they'll be, and so it's pointless trying. I always said that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, I'd like to be remembered for SOMETHING by every social sector of my life, and I think being the first ever person to max the new 15, would ensure that. That's more than enough for me. I'll leave the record-breaking to those who are better at it!

JS: Two current tournaments - the Apto-tude League and The Mole: Apterous Style - are being run by you. What do you enjoy about running tournaments?

ZS: I don't think there's something that I specifically enjoy about hosting tournaments – it's more things I enjoy about each tournament I host. Apto-tude is something that didn't exist before I committed to it – it's a test that never ends for anyone. The top players always have to be at their best, or they risk slipping down the ladder. The players down the bottom, have something to aim for and can set themselves achievable targets. And on top of that, everyone is always playing for something. In a knockout, you can draw one of the top 5 and be out in R1 – with this, every time, you're trying to take the next step. I love watching the tables unfold when someone surprises themselves by coming from the back, or when one of the big names has a bad day and suddenly finds themselves having to save themselves. It's like watching the football season – there's ALWAYS a story if you look hard enough.

With regards to The Mole, I'm a completely sadistic bastard, and watching the players wander around cluelessly trying to work out what's going on pleases me greatly. In all seriousness though, it's been great to provide a challenge that can be classed as apterous-related, and yet take people away from pure gameplay. I'm hoping that there will be several of them, because I think people might get more into the back-stabbing and double-dealing that the game requires, once they find out what players who know the game have been up to in this one (Hopefully this interview will also put the cat amongst the pigeons!)

JS: Outside of Apterous, you're a keen cook. What are your favourite recipes? Are there any types of cuisine you specialise in?

ZS: Yes, the kitchen is my safe place really. I've been at my lowest, practically rocking in a corner, singing sea shanties while wearing a tutu, but you give me a knife and I won't start mutilating my environment, I'll just knock up a remoulade (I felt a 9 letter word had to finish that sentence). My cooking style is mostly pan-Asian, but I also like fusion food, or food that twists the ideas of what a classic dish is. An example of the former would be a thai inspired sea-bass salad – with the fish flaked through rice noodles, with lots of chilli, lime, ginger and pickled vegetables and finished with fish floss (Crisped up fish skin which you then breakdown into a thick crumb – almost like pork scratchings). An example of the more fusion-side would be my curried beetroot risotto, finished with ricotta, and sometimes served with seafood, but it doesn't really need it. My favourite dish I've ever invented was scallops with a cumin and pea puree, a balsamic vinegar caramel dressing, parmesan crisps and finished with a few rocket leaves and some chorizo oil. My more out-there ideas... savoury ice-creams. Piping hot goats cheese and spinach filo tartlets with a caramelised red onion ice-cream. And I'll give you a dessert to finish off – jelly, cake and ice-cream Zarte style. Cardamom and pistachio cake, saffron ice-cream and a kaffir lime and ginger beer jelly. And if you think this all makes me sound pretentious well you can go... be right... I guess it is quite pretentious...

JS: Last but not least, what's your favourite flavour of crisps?

ZS: Ah, I do love crisps. If it's a bog-standard multipack, then I'll always go after the Salt and Vinegar, but my absolute favourite is probably smoked chilli and goats cheese – they're not cheap, but fuck me, I can eat them by the lorryload. Also – mix together tzatziki and lemon curd and dip salt and vinegar Pringles in... it's completely heathenish but delicious.

Thanks, Jen and Zarte! More episodes more often in the future, hopefully! And as always, please do follow us on Google+!

Vox Ludio: Jen Steadman

2013-02-05T18:41:00.002-08:00

Welcome to our fourth Vox Ludio, starring apterous celebrity Jen Steadman. Jen joined in June 2011 and has since run up a long list of apterous accomplishments, perhaps culminating in her excellent recent top spot in Game of the Week. And she's kindly agreed to speak to us here. Here goes!

Charlie Reams: So, first things first. How did you come to find the site, and how were your earliest experiences of it?

Jen Steadman: I became a bit obsessed with Countdown during a pretty crap first year at uni, and I'm ashamed to admit I found Apterous as an indirect result of stalking an attractive contestant on the wiki. (Naming no names.) One thing led to another, and I soon found myself a fully paid up Apterite. Had it not been for the subscription, I might have quit in the first week or so as a result of being, well, not very good at anagramming - fortunately my tightwad student tendencies convinced me to carry on playing to get the most value for my money, and I'm glad I did. Once I discovered variants (especially Unlimited) and chatting to other players, I became increasingly addicted to the site. Fortunately I've kicked the Unlimited addiction now - you really can only type 'SENSELESSNESSES' so many times...

Charlie Reams: You're one of the top-rated players yet to appear on the show. Any plans on that front? Is there a specific point at which you'd consider going on?

Jen Steadman: I've always maintained that I won't go on until I graduate - I'm not the most hard-working student as it is, so the incentive to play more Apterous rather than less would be disastrous on my degree! Graduation's only a few months away now though, so I'll be applying soon hopefully.

Charlie Reams: It's perhaps beside the point to mention you as apterous' top-rated female player when you're one of the top-rated players full stop. Nevertheless, do you feel any special responsibility as trailblazer for the ladies' team?

Jen Steadman: The lack of female representation both in the top 50 of Pro Ranks and in terms of series winners (the last time a woman won a series was in 1998) is what inspired me to get better. Well, sort of. I had a vague plan about being the top-rated female player about this time last year and mentioned it to Mark Deeks, who I'd become good friends with following the discovery that he'd been to see my slightly obscure football club (Tonbridge Angels) play before. He not only encouraged me to believe that I could be the best female player, but also taught me about stemming and split multiplication, as well as teaching me a load of useful words. Without a combination of that and being inspired to end the male domination of Pro Ranks/prove those who doubted female ability at the game wrong, I doubt I'd have improved so much. I'm pretty territorial about being #1 female, though. I do want there to be more women in the top 50, but not at my expense!

Charlie Reams: You're running a well-received sweepstake for the 30th Birthday Championship. Who's your tip for the title? (Ed's note: This interview was conducted before the tournament began, honest!)

Jen Steadman: It's hard to look past Innis or Conor really, although Innis in particular has a horrendous draw. Jack Worsley was my 'dark horse' tip, but with the Predictor putting him 5th favourite he's not much of a dark horse any more... What makes it exciting is the fact that it could go any way - people seem to have automatically written off the non-Apterites, but there could be a few surprises. It's hard to say when so many of the contestants are unknown quantities.

Charlie Reams: What are your personal objectives, apterous-wise?

Jen Steadman: Top of the list is breaking into the top 25 of Pro Ranks (when was the last time there was female representation in the top 25?!) - easier said than done when the standard is so high right now. Other than that, completing all Ascension cycles, learning how not to suck at 6 small and, more ambitiously, maxing a Letters Attack would be nice achievements. Maintaining a healthy level of perspective about it all is also an important one, though some would probably argue I don't have one...!

Charlie Reams: There seems to be a broad spectrum between people who turn up exclusively to play and people who largely hang out in chat. Where do you stand on the social side of things?

Jen Steadman: Without the social side, I doubt I'd have stuck around so long. For one thing, it keeps me sane at uni as I'm on a tiny campus in the middle of nowhere, which means I don't get out much. But I just love the Apterous community in general, be it for making 'top 5 most doable Apterite' lists in chat at obscene hours of the night, being rowdy and obnoxious in the back row of the Countdown audience, or the chaos and debauchery (/stemming and drinking) of Co events. Main chat intimidated me when I first joined, and I imagine others may feel the same. But you miss out on so much by not getting involved with the socialising. If not for Apterous, I wouldn't have a membership card for a Mancunian casino and wouldn't have ended up dressed like a slapper at an Alan Partridge party in Cardiff, which are both experiences that have enriched my life and come in useful for anecdotal purposes. Plus the friendships I've made on the site mean that even if I do badly on the show, my 30 days of in-game time (eek) won't have been wasted. Incidentally, don't bother going to the Mancunian casino if you're just looking for somewhere to drink post-1am - it's £4.20 for a Bulmers. You might as well put a few fivers in a blender and drink that instead.

Charlie Reams: What games do you play outside of apterous? Are you into Scrabble or other word games?

Jen Steadman: I like Scrabble, although like many Apterites am a bit dubious of the dictionary (OUTPASSION?!). Unfortunately my friends and family point-blank refuse to play me, and I'm not good enough at it to give a serious player a decent game. Tetris is my all-time favourite game, though. As with Apterous, I prefer speed variants of it to endurance ones. I hate to think how many hours of my life I've spent trying to break my 40 lines high score on both my Gameboy and Facebook...

Charlie Reams: Would you rather beat Innis Carson or Apterous Rex?

Jen Steadman: Probably Rex. I always feel weirdly guilty when I beat the top players, unless the player's a massive douche - which, unless he hides it very well, Innis isn't. And even if he is, he doesn't get all arrogant in chat afterwards like Rex does. There's nothing more satisfying than beating a bad winner.

Charlie Reams: And finally, but most importantly, what's your favourite cocktail?

Jen Steadman: There used to be a bar in Falmouth that served a cocktail called a Cookie Monster, which was a lovely shade of blue and involved sugar, cinnamon and lemon (which makes it sound like posh tea with food colouring in). The bar staff would set it on fire and then you'd drink it as soon as the fire went out. Unfortunately that bar's closed down since the owners left in dubious circumstances, so I'm not sure I'll ever have one again. Just as well I prefer cider, really.

Thanks Jen! More Vox Ludio next month, maybe. And don't forget to follow us on Google+!

How ticket ideas get plucked into reality

2013-01-29T19:24:00.001-08:00

Lately I've had a handful of people asking me questions along the lines of "When will such and such a feature be implemented?". These are perfectly reasonable questions, if not also so politely phrased. So rather than answer these recurring queries individually, I thought I'd write a blog post about it and try to demystify the process a bit.

The first thing to recap is that apterous is almost entirely the work of just one person, which is to say, me. The lovely Matt Morrison deals with people's avatar photos, and everything else is me. That means I'm simultaneously the designer, programmer, webmaster, database admin, test engineer, customer service operative, pixel artist, and various other things besides. Some of those things I'm quite good at; others are more of a struggle. So, perhaps not surprisingly, apterous takes up pretty much all of my free time. I'm passionate about this site and I love working on it, so I don't say this in search of any sympathy, but you should understand that the skeleton staff is the reason we can charge £20 a year and not £20 a month. And I really am going as fast as I can.

The amount of stuff that can get done is therefore essentially limited by how fast I can work on it. And the list of tickets grows faster than I can attend to it. Which is great! It's awesome to be able to focus my efforts on just the best ideas which will make the most people happy. But it does mean that some ideas will lose out, and some will take a long time to happen.

It also means that's it quite hard to for me to predict when I'll get around to a given idea. The overall order of precedence is generally: bugs first, then performance issues, then feature requests. In practice it's a lot more liquid than that because some bugs are just not that important, and some feature requests are quite urgent. There are also certain types of ticket that tend to get de-prioritised. The most common example is variant ideas, for a couple of reasons: first, the number of variants needs to be kept under control, in order to keep the game usable; second, people need time to enjoy the existing variants before a new one comes in; third, variants are quite easy to come up with and a lot of work for me to build, so the incoming flow of ideas will always greatly exceed the outgoing flow of implementations. But broadly speaking that's how I allocate my time.

Within that basic order of precedence, I generally work through the list of tickets in approximately votes × time order. This is a refinement of the obvious "most votes" order, in which we imagine that people are not limited to voting for each ticket once, but rather can vote again every day, and continue to vote every day in the same way that they voted the first time. So, for example, if a ticket had one up-vote 100 days ago, and one down-vote 30 days ago, it would have a net score of +70. This means that popular ideas will bubble to the top very quickly, while any ticket with a positive net score will eventually amble its way to the top, so even niche ideas eventually get their day in the sun. (We also do various other Bayesian things but that's a discussion for another day.) So to give your favoured ideas the best chance of getting implemented: vote early, vote often!

Beyond that, various other considerations come into play, such as: how much work it would actually take to do something (easy crowd-pleasers are great!), whether I have any good idea of how to execute the idea, and what I feel like working on at the time. It's quite unpredictable. That's part of the fun.

So, to answer the original question head-on: I don't know when or even if your idea will happen. But most likely, as soon as I can!

PS: Don't forget, you can now follow apterous on Google+! There's a bunch of stuff there that doesn't appear anywhere else.

Brief maintenance today

2013-01-21T01:33:00.002-08:00

We're having some electrical work done at Apterous Towers, so the game might be briefly unavailable. Don't panic!

Vox Ludio: Jim Bentley

2013-01-04T06:39:00.001-08:00

It's that time again! This time around we're chatting with the delightful Jim Bentley, apterous and C4Countdown stalwart and Series 50 semi-finalist. Jim appeared on Countdown in 2003, becoming an octochamp with a robust 756-point total. He returned for a quarter final with Adam Laws, and the two players were neck and neck going into the conundrum. Laws buzzed in first for the narrowest of victories, marking a gripping end to Jim's run. Since then, Jim has been ever-present voice in the online Countdown community, and was one of apterous' earliest users. Over to the interview.

Charlie Reams: You're still involved with apterous and online Countdown in general nearly a decade after you appeared on TV. What keeps you coming back to the community as a whole?
Jim Bentley: Over the years, my reasons have probably shifted quite a bit. Early on, it was to keep up with events on the TV show, but as the community developed, it's become less and less about the show and more and more about the people. Countdown seems to attract clever people who have interesting and funny things to say, and who wouldn't want to associate with such people? That's definitely the reason I've stuck with the various forums over the years, even after I stopped watching the TV show regularly. But the main reason now is apterous, as it provides a perfect platform to combine two things I enjoy doing: playing the game and talking rubbish to people on the internet.

CR: You were one of apterous' first players and you've played over 10,000 games. Can you pick out a favourite word from all that? Offered by you or against you, actually.
JB: I do remember being pleased to get BLOWFLIES because I'm not good at seeing nines or compound words. And also because it sounds cool, like an early 1970s blaxploitation film with a soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield. I'm always impressed when someone beats me with a word that I've never heard of, but also when I'm beaten by an everyday word that I've just not spotted. Both these things still happen frequently, but no specific words really stand out, I'm afraid. Oh, except JUXTAGLOMERULAR in Aegilops, that was quite a good one.

CR: You're probably the only player in the "10,000 club" who is still quite casual about the game. Are you ever tempted to take it more seriously or are you happy in your relaxed state?
JB: It's true, for somebody who's played so many games, I should probably have improved a bit more. But then, I'm very slapdash, I still see letters that aren't there and I still go for plenty of words that I'm not sure of at all. I have no concentration and get distracted by all sorts of things – plenty of times in numbers rounds I'll glance up at something on the TV or whatever and in doing so, completely forget what I'm trying to do with the numbers, even if I'm halfway through a method. I'm quite good at recalling words, but they're just as likely to be valid words in the dictionary as they are to be brands of Hungarian toilet cleaner or something I've seen written on a road sign. It sounds perverse, but I actually quite like all that uncertainty, it makes things more exciting.

I realise I probably could improve if I put a bit of effort into learning words and it's something I did consider a few years ago, but that's as far as it went. For a start, the idea of rote-learning words has about as much appeal as a midnight swimming lesson with Michael Barrymore, plus I'm not even convinced that the information would go in - I think my memory's still pretty OK, but I probably don't remember things as easily as I did twenty years ago. Or maybe I'm just lazy. Or maybe I think learning words would take the fun out of the game. Or maybe…I've run out of excuses.

The other thing is that standard games are only really a small part of apterous, I definitely play more non-standard stuff now. One of the most impressive things – and there are many – about apterous is the range of games and formats on offer, and there aren't many that I don't enjoy. So I suppose that as more and more formats have emerged, I've spent less and less time on the standard format, and perhaps this has contributed to me being a bit rubbish at it. Another excuse!

To be serious though, to get to the standard of the uber-players, it seems that you need near-perfect word knowledge and near-perfect anagramming abilities; I don't think that I have the necessary inclination or brainpower to achieve either, so I'm happy enough to flatline.

CR: Talking of casual play, how often do you play drunk? I've heard rumours...
JB: To be honest, it's very rare for me to play apterous having not had a drink, but that's because I generally have a drink most evenings and I don't get chance to play apterous until then. So you could say that it's more unusual for me to be playing completely sober. But I don't really get drunk very much any more, probably the only two days in the last couple of years that I've been properly drunk were the last two COLIN Saturday nights. That said, I've definitely played games on apterous where I've been a couple of steps beyond "merry", but I can't recall an occasion where I've been inebriated enough for it to make any appreciable difference to my game. Although, to be fair, there may well have been innumerable occasions and I just can't remember any of them due to being shitfaced.

CR: You do have some very non-casual accomplishments, including one of longest standing untied records in the history of apterous, which is more than just a matter of endurance. Talking of which, you famously fell asleep in the final hour of the Endurance Event and missed the decisive duel. How did that happen?!
JB: Haha yeah, the Endurance Event was fun. I'd like to claim that it was a deliberately contrary act – like an art statement – to do the first 23 then deliberately not do the last one. But it wasn't, I'd been up for about 40 hours and I must've just lost concentration, or got too comfortable and fallen asleep. Maybe it's a sign of age, as I occasionally stayed awake across two nights as a student (whereas the Endurance Event was only one) but then of course I did take a lot more drugs back then. I remember feeling pretty stupid at the time, but now it's just funny. It's like a really typical sort of thing that I would do.

CR: You're also known as the musical talent behind the techno band Fahnn. Do you ever listen to your own music while you play? Does it affect your performance?
JB: I do almost always have music on while I'm playing apterous, but it's very rarely any of my own stuff. Fahnn wouldn't be a good choice, it's too distracting. The original intention of Fahnn was to make music that was too unpleasant to listen to, but that went a bit awry as some of the tracks ended up having a conventional melody (sort of). Generally most of it is too abrasive to make it useful as any sort of soundtrack, though. It would be like trying to play at the bottom of a very deep hole alongside a group of malfunctioning robots having violent cyber-sex with a pile of rusting farm machinery.

Some of the stuff I've done since Fahnn can be good, though – I think anything long and repetitive and relatively mellow is good for apterous. And I think generally upbeat is better than downbeat and it's probably better if it's not too wordy. But maybe different formats would suit different types of music, possibly I should be listening to more happy hardcore to truly reach my best at Octolock Numbers Attack, I don't know. I hope not. I can't believe I haven't thought more about this until now, though, it could be a whole new exciting area of study.

CR: What's your favourite soup?
JB: I love all soups, even the unpopular ones like mulligatawny and lentil. Probably my favourite is leek and potato, but it has to be home made, all the tinned leek and potato soups are too gloopy and unpleasant (actually the Baxters one is OK, but nothing like as good as one I can make myself, and I'm a rubbish cook). Home made tomato soup is also in a different league to the tinned ones. But hey, I'm not a soup snob, tinned soup has its place, especially if you're pressed for time. I quite like a Heinz beef and vegetable or chicken and vegetable, they do those ones quite well, but of course you're straying towards the area of stew with these. Is a stew still a soup? Where is the line drawn? It's certainly a troubling issue.

Thanks Jim! More Vox Ludio soon.

Vox Ludio: Richard Brittain

2012-10-13T02:59:00.000-07:00

The last Vox Ludio, featuring Innis Carson, received a lot of nice feedback so here's another. The subject of today's interview is the incomparable Richard Brittain, champion of Countdown Series 55 and long-time apterous player. His Countdown career ended with a notorious conundrum guess in 2009's Champion of Champions XIII but he's continued to play on apterous over the years. I really enjoyed this interview and I hope you do too!

Charlie Reams: You were one of apterous' first users after it opened to the public in 2008. What was your initial motivation to start playing? Do you remember your first game?
Richard Brittain: I just looked back at some accounts, and, interestingly, Ecclesiastes Myanmar (a creation of mine) was created on 06/10/2008, and my real account was created on 29/10/2008. So, although I don't remember this, it seems that I first created fictional, silly accounts before a serious one. I seem to recall first creating an account called 'roko roko' (which, apterous says, was created several hours before Ecclesiastes Myanmar).

So, it would, at first glance, seem that my first motivation was to cheat under the guise of an outlandish moniker, using some dodgy anagram solver which probably wasn't even OED. I suppose I didn't feel guilty because I was just testing out a new site and hadn't started 'playing seriously' yet and thus had no responsibilities, and cheated against such figures as Damian Eadie, Keith Bevins and Mikey Lear, who I would later walk to Jerusalem with.

I guess I was also preparing for the CofC. Perhaps I wanted to play anonymously, so that players could not analyse my weaknesses - I can't quite remember. Anyhow, I created my real account before the CofC was recorded, so must have realised that a) I had no chance of winning the CofC so might as well start using my real identity. b) Cheating under spectacular monikers is actually quite boring.

After creating Richard Brittain, I pledged to play seriously and never again cheated. For me, on any game, cheating gives me no satisfaction and would blemish any serious account.

CR: You're known for being one of the most eccentric characters in a community of eccentric characters. Is that something you cultivate or is it a natural part of your personality?
RB: It's difficult to explain. I suppose I am a fairly different person now to the person I was, say, 4 years ago. Comparing the old RB with the new RB would be a little bit like trying to compare the Roman Empire with the Holy Roman Empire - They are similar in name, but not much else. Sometimes I look back on some things I may have said or wrote online, and I think 'Wtf?'. But, I'm pretty sure that most of it was real and not cultivated. However, I probably did play on people's fears and expectations to some extent. It's quite sad really - I think I was eating too much coleslaw (or too little?).

CR: People might not realise that we in fact knew each other as children, since our parents were friends from their school days, although we lost touch when they did. Do you think the seeds of our respective fascinations with Countdown etc were somehow sown in that youthful interaction?
RB: I would like to think so. This is one of those strange-but-true facts. I certainly remember visiting the Reams' house in my youth about once a year. I grew up on the fringes of London, and thus it was exciting to visit a countryside house with a swimming pool. I first thought seriously about applying for Countdown at the age of about 17/18, several years after we had drifted out of touch with the Reamses, and I stumbled upon some images on the web of a Co-meet and saw a figure called Soo Reams, and thought, 'Gosh; that looks like that Charlie Reams fellow'.

CR: You've held all sorts of records in various formats over the years. Which of your achievements are you most personally satisfied with?
RB: For a short while, I dominated the Bullet scene, but then I guess other people figured out how to play Bullet and I became a has-been. However, I was the first to max a Bullet Numbers Attack, and didn't even have too many attempts. Since then, I have sometimes tried to break new records, and will occasionally be seen having an obscene number of attempts against bots, but have not succeeded. This just goes to show that you can't 'brute force' records. They will come to you when they are ready.

CR: And you also hold the record for most maxes in a Greek 15, albeit in an 81-way tie, so that's not to be sniffed at. Are you a fan of non-English play? Are you still learning Hebrew?
RB: Just checked the stats, and I am the 4th best Hebrew player, which is quite satisfying. I learnt some elementary Hebrew while studying Theology at Leuven, Belgium, which was about the third degree I dropped out of (Though, I am now studying History at Greenwich uni, and have made it to the 2nd year). I am only fluent in English, but enjoy playing different language variants on apterous.

CR: You didn't get the call-up for the forthcoming Countdown Champions Event. Did you apply? Were you disappointed not to make it? (Ed's note: I feel I can broach this sensitive subject since I didn't make the cut either!)
RB: Yes, I applied, to which Damian replied 'I thought you were certified insane'. But then he said 'Maybe. Let's see how it pans out'. Recently, I got an email to say I was on the reserve list (with, probably, about 200 other people). Really, though, I wouldn't invite myself back on to Countdown. I disgraced the show with my Gandiseeg appearance, and my presence in the studio could potentially unsettle other participants. From the producer's perspective, it wasn't worth the risk. Although I would have taken it seriously and respected the spirit of the competition, the producers couldn't be sure that I would not spoil their 30th birthday party. I must say, I am surprised by much of the list, and I probably won't watch the competition.

CR: I look back on that with the Gandiseeg episode with a lot of fondness although I'm a bit tired of the joke now. Since you won't be watching, have you moved on to other things? You're rarely seen on apterous nowadays.
RB: True story: I was at a house-warming party recently, and a group of people watched Gandiseeg/Saloneen several times whilst tripping on acid and rolling around in laughter. I'm glad that I have left this fairly unique legacy, but I am bored and slightly embarrassed by this 'joke' now.

I've watched only a handful of Countdown episodes in the last 3 years. I am still up for playing apterous, once I've installed java on this new machine. Recently, I have been watching a lot of historical epics, reading books, playing Civilization 4, walking round London aimlessly and quizzing.

CR: Do you still have that beard?
RB: The beard comes and goes. It's there right now - Charlemagne - but might not be next week - when I'm Julius Caesar again (how/why did people even shave in Roman times?)

CR: Thanks for the interview!

And there you have it. See you for the next edition!

Server maintenance

2012-09-12T02:50:00.001-07:00

The game will be unavailable from 8pm today (12 September 2012) until about midnight for some important maintenance.

Updates

21:10. Backup completed, server is in transit!
00:15. Server has arrived at its new home, now for the hard bit!
00:45. We're back! Tentatively.
00:46. Dan McColm entered the room. Dan McColm says: yay!

Anticipated FAQs

Why is it down for me but not other people?: The server is moving physical location, which also means its Internet address will change, so the name "apterous.org" will briefly be pointing to the old expired address. I will update it to point to the new address as soon as the move begins, but ISPs store their own local copy of this information and it will take them a while to notice the change. If your ISP happens to be one of the slow ones, it might take them a bit longer to update it -- maybe up to 24 hours.

Vox Ludio: Innis Carson

2012-05-14T14:42:00.001-07:00

This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of articles in which I pester apterous players for their thoughts on various things and share them with you, the loyal player base. Hopefully this will interesting and give some perspective on players at various skill levels, and maybe even stimulate some discussion. (On which subject, apologies to anyone who tried to comment on the last post; apparently Blogger is having some trouble and ate all the comments, including mine. Sigh.)

So, where better to start than with the player who has just recorded his 62nd consecutive week atop Pro Ranks, another accolade to add to his quite astonishing stack of them: Innis Carson. It hardly seems necessary to introduce him; since starting out in November 2008, Innis has set innumerable records across multiple languages and variants and is, by almost any reckoning, simply the best player in the game right now. Now on to the good stuff.

Charlie Reams: How and when did you first discover apterous?
Innis Carson: I was one of the several hundred people who flocked to the c4countdown forum out of curiosity when you plugged it on TV back in October 2008, and I followed a link from there to the then-new apterous website. For a mind-game-loving internet nerd like me, it was like stumbling upon a treasure trove. Back then the website was a lot smaller and the game much less developed than it now is, but the possibility of playing and chatting with other enthusiasts gave it a sort of community feeling, which made it infinitely more enjoyable than any other online game I'd ever come across. Instantly I was hooked, and 3 and a half years later I still very much am.

CR: Was there a point at which you decided to put in the hours to excel, or was it more of an organic process? Were there particular landmarks along the way?
IC: It definitely wasn't something I planned; I would have been horrified if someone told me when I was starting out that I'd end up spending over 2000 hours playing! It just so happened that I found apterous during a particularly dull year of my life when I was still at school but had an unconditional place at university, leaving me with no motivation to study or even turn up to school. Apterous filled a vacuum in my life at that point, and I probably spent more time playing it than is healthy for a human being. Those first 8 months or so were when I made the bulk of my progress as a player. It was always purely voluntary though, it's never felt like a training regime. I only ever play when I want to, which just happens to be quite a lot.

There were lots of small landmarks for me during the process - I remember being thrilled when I first got a max score in a 15 rounder, and each time I reached a new height in the ratings list and Pro Ranks. Another quite significant milestone for me was my first win against Kirk Bevins, who was very much the dominant player in the earlier days of apterous. Seeing each of my personal targets fall one by one was immensely satisfying, and definitely spurred me on to keep playing.

CR: Are there any players you particularly look forward to playing? Either competitively or recreationally.
IC: It's very hard to pick favourites - I'm very happy to play anyone, and everyone makes their own contribution to the apterous community. I'd say Adam Gillard in particular is always fun to play with since he's willing to experiment with the more off-the-wall variants of the game - like Hypertouch, Aegilops and Bullet - which most players steer clear of, and shares my appreciation for statistical and linguistic quirks that only us and about 4 other people on the planet find interesting. From a competitive point of view, Dan McColm and James Nguyen spring to mind as examples of people who will always push me to the limit and give me a great game, there are countless others though.

CR: What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment in the game?
IC: Again it's difficult to choose one, but completing the Star Chart (except the CSW path, I'm allergic) was a pretty significant one, in that it required me to reach a competitive standard in practically every discipline of the game. Admittedly it's largely a test of will power rather than skill (Star 30 of the American Way took me no fewer than 70 attempts), and no doubt many players could achieve this too if they cared to, but there's something very gratifying about looking at a complete wall of stars and knowing that you can overcome pretty much any challenge the game has to offer if you put your mind to it.

(If you ever introduce a Spoilage path, you're a dick.) (Is that a feature request?! — CR)

CR: You've topped the monthly Duel leader boards 19 times from 24 in the last two years and rarely miss a day. How do you stay motivated for the long-haul contests like that? Is it still stimulating or is it now something of a chore?
IC: It's definitely not a chore, I would have given up long ago if it was. The Duel is one of the very best features of the site in my opinion, since it only requires a small time commitment and it gives everyone something to aim towards, whether it's an individual win for casual players or the monthly title for the more dedicated. I certainly can't take it for granted that I'll win the monthly contest - there are plenty of great all-rounders like Matt Bayfield and Adam G who almost always match me every step of the way, and there's enough variety in the duel formats that you never know who'll have their moment of glory next. And even putting the leaderboards aside, the duel serves as a nice light-hearted challenge that you can log on and test yourself with whenever you've got a spare few minutes. I'd only ever miss one if I had no internet access that day for whatever reason.

CR: You're often a front-runner when new variants and formats appear, setting high scores in the first few days that prove to have considerable longevity. Is that something you look forward to? Do you think the different variants draw on essentially the same skills or is there a new learning experience each time?
IC: Well there's no doubt that those who can play the Normal variant well will by and large be the same people who can play Octorock or Lockdown Jr. well; ultimately the underlying skills of pattern recognition and word retention pervade all variants (maybe to a lesser extent in the mindscrew variants like Hyper Unlimited and Duckdown). That said, I do think each variant gives a subtly different perspective on the game, enough that they help keep the game fresh, even if they don't always present much of a new challenge. I'm always keen to try new variants when they come out. The first few days of each variant's lifetime, where everyone's fighting over the high scores, are particularly good fun.

On a related note, playing variants is a seriously underappreciated way to get better at the game. In my earlier apterous days I used to play Speedgoat/Goatblitz nearly as much as I played Normal, and I strongly suspect it did far more to improve my word knowledge and anagram skills than playing Normal ever did. I daresay it's also more fun (these two observations might not be unrelated). I definitely think people who stick religiously to 30-second Normal 15 rounders are missing out on a huge part of the apterous experience.

CR: People often consider you one of the more quiet and introverted amongst the top players. Do you think your personality affects your play, how people play against you, or how they consider your achievements?
IC: I do have difficulty expressing myself in a social way (both online and off) and it wouldn't really surprise me if, as a result, people got the impression that I take apterous too seriously. In reality though I'm just in it for the fun like everyone else - I certainly wouldn't have the patience to spend 2000 hours of my free time doing something I didn't enjoy. In general apterous seems to be a relatively understanding community towards introverts (as one might expect from an online word game!) so I haven't found it to have too much of an impact on my experience with the game or with other members.

CR: As the game's top player, you presumably receive a lot of challenges. Do you prefer the closely-contested games against other top players or the more exhibition-type games against newer players who just want to see you in action?
IC: It's definitely a lot more satisfying to be involved in a competitive match, where both players' performances are noteworthy, than it is to completely overshadow somebody. Hopefully people won't interpret this as me saying that I don't like playing newer and lower-rated players; I enjoy all games and will always accept a challenge when I can, but it definitely adds another layer of enjoyment for me when there isn't an automatic expectation that I'm going to win.

CR: What motivates you to keep playing and improving? Do you have unfinished goals in the game?
IC: There aren't really any long-term goals left for me now, I've already progressed way more than I could have fathomed that I ever would when I first joined the site. There's always going to be little things to aim towards, like getting max games and high scores in obscure formats and finally spotting that 9 you've always known but never had a chance to use, but ultimately, apterous still serves me well enough as an amusing time-waster that I don't really need any further motivation to keep playing. The friendships I've made with other members and the fun I've had at the occasional in-person tournaments (such as Co:Lon) contribute a lot to the lasting appeal of apterous too. There hasn't been a point where I've seriously contemplated giving up playing, and I don't foresee there being one any time soon.

CR: Thanks for your time!

And there you have it. I hope this was an enjoyable change from the usual introspective ramblings. Let me know via the comments if you'd like to see more or less of this sort of stuff in future.

The new front page

2012-05-07T13:48:00.001-07:00

A month ago I wrote about the ticket system and its limitations. To recapitulate, my complaints were: attending to tickets left less time for my own really new ideas; it's hard to say no to other people's ideas; and the only person who read the tickets was me. Well, a lot has changed in the last month, thanks to two big, related changes. The first is the total overhaul of the front page, and the other is the introduction of ticket voting.

Overhauling the front page has been on my mental list of priorities for a while but I could never quite figure out how to do it. Realising that I wanted to find some way to get tickets onto the front page (suggested by comments on the previous article) was the first step; that would clearly require compressing the other elements, which led to the idea of merging the "News" (announcements from me) with "Happenings" (announcements from player activity), and everything else flowed pretty naturally from there. If someone were designing a website from scratch, it's doubtful they would ever have hit on the old design, which filled 80% of the front page with updates from the designer (updated a few times a day at most) and squeezing everyone else's activity into a narrow sidebar, but these sort of things happen with incremental design. Ho-hum.

The other is ticket voting, which is such a blindingly obvious innovation in hindsight that I feel a bit stupid for not having done it before. But it only really makes sense in a context in which enough people even see the tickets to get a representative vote going, and in which tickets are organised into some larger structure so that people can actually vote on things worth voting on. Both of those are recent developments, so maybe it's not so stupid. But it's clearly been a very popular innovation.

So now, my new ideas can be fed into the ticket system and compete with existing ideas on a level footing, which resolves the first problem. (And in fact, I tend to get more excited about ideas that have had a lot of up-votes, even if I was initially reluctant personally, so motivation is less of an issue anyway.) Bad voter response is a good and equitable reason to reject an idea, which makes it possible to say no; plus it's easier to leave tickets hanging that have had bad or indifferent user response, so that has changed my feeling about the ever-growing list of feature requests. And clearly a lot of people are reading and thinking about the tickets, now rebranded as "discussions", and that addresses the problem of player involvement.

There are some new challenges engendered by this new system; how to deal with popular tickets that are technically infeasible, for example. But it's a big step forward and I'm pretty happy with it so far. Thanks to all of you who continue to be part of this little democratic experiment!

Some thoughts on the ticket system

2012-04-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

I launched the apterous ticket system nearly six months ago to rapturous silence. For a few days after that the only tickets were created by me, either as formalised "notes to self" or copied over from the old Bug Report and Feature Request threads on the forum. But then things started to snowball; the number of tickets has now passed 500 and continues to accelerate. By this simplistic metric the system is a great success! So I thought now would be a good time to reflect a little on its relative merits.

Perhaps some readers were not even aware of the old "system" that apterous users used to communicate with me. Users could log on to a separate forum (after creating a separate account with a new username and password, and waiting days or weeks for it to be approved) and post a comment in one of two free-form discussion threads, according to whether it was a bug or a feature request. I would then try to remember to act on these ideas, if I thought they were good, and sometimes other people would chip in and discuss. People could also email me or send me private messages in various media. In fact it was this total decentralisation of ideas that prompted me to create the ticket system in the first place; I just couldn't keep track of everything I wanted to do.

Clearly the old system wasn't very good. Bugs would often get lost in the mists of time, and good feature ideas would get forgotten if they weren't requested at an opportune moment. The new system keeps ideas hanging around until they can be resolved one way or another. In fact the improvements of the new system over the old are so various and so obvious that there's really no point discussing them here. Instead, in the spirit of self-critique, I want to talk about some of its limitations.

First, the ticket system has significantly changed the way I work on apterous. Previously I would look out for reports of particularly egregious bugs and address them right away ("firefighting"), and then I would work on whatever I felt like. If I couldn't bring a good idea to mind, I would trawl the topics in reverse order until I found something to do. (This would more often be a new feature than a bug, because novelty is always more exciting.) Now, the first thing I do when I have time to work on apterous is look at the list of open bug tickets. If I have an idea to resolve one of them, I'll get on that; having open bugs makes me quite profoundly unsettled, as if I'm appearing in public with food on my clothes. If nothing comes to mind from the bug queue, I'll look at the list of open feature requests. The number of feature requests is now so large that there's always something on there that could be done, and because the tickets hang around until I resolve them, good ideas don't get lost. And there are a lot of good ideas. So far so good. The problem is that it's now much harder for me to break out of that cycle and do something completely different. I might have an exciting idea for a new feature (like aptathlon!) but I could easily delay working on it indefinitely when other ideas are competing for my attention. And the tickets will tend to win because I feel pressure to deliver on the things that users have actually bothered to ask for, and on top of that it's very gratifying to clear tickets. The upshot of this is that there will probably be fewer of the "completely new" things than there have been in the past. Tickets have generally been better at prompting incremental improvements to game and interface elements; in other words, stuff that is more important to the users than to me as the designer! And overall that's clearly a good thing. But striking the balance between my ideas and users' ideas is hard when there are always shiny tickets just waiting to be resolved...

Another problem with tickets is one of social dynamic. With the forum topics, I could quietly ignore ideas that I didn't consider to be good enough or worth the amount of effort they would take, and in the absence of a definitive index of their own requests, most of the requesters would soon forget about the suggestion anyway. Now, I have to make an explicit dictatorial ruling on every request, and (contrary to what you might think!) I really do not enjoy doing that, especially when I have to say No. There just isn't a nice way to tell someone that you won't be doing what they asked, especially in the rigid medium of text. Of course I could write a long, personalised explanation of why I'm turning the idea down on every ticket, but then I would spend all my time navigating tickets (especially now they arrive at a rate of several a day), plus no doubt get embroiled in a back-and-forth discussion about the merits of the ticket. So I have to be somewhat perfunctory in my responses. Furthermore, because I find it genuinely quite unpleasant to say No to things, I've occasionally found myself accepting ideas that aren't that great, or entertaining possibilities beyond the point where they had any real chance of getting accepted. The ticket system, despite its formalisation, is actually a lot more personal to me than the flowing discussion of the forum. And problematically, I do like to be nice.

My final reservation is that few tickets are now read by anyone except me. The kicking around of new ideas, which was commonplace on the Feature Request thread, is essentially defunct. This is especially unfortunate for larger-scale conceptions like new variants, which often need to pass through a few people's imaginations before solidifying into something really neat and appealing. With certain tickets I have deliberately sought out expert opinion from subsets of the player base, but (to borrow an observation from The Wisdom of Crowds), a small pool of experts is no substitute for mass consultation. In theory the tickets should be open to a wider audience (since anyone with an apterous account can easily read and comment) but in reality it's too sprawling and abstract to be of interest to anyone but the hardcore. And even if I found some way to draw people into the system (e.g. links to interesting tickets in News), it's still fundamentally undemocratic since only I have the power to decide which tickets look promising. (Also, in the forum system, other people would often shoot down bad ideas or clear up misconceptions for me. Now I have to resolve everything myself!)

All things considered the ticket system is undoubtedly A Good Thing. What makes me happiest is that the game does not look unrecognisable from what it was six months ago; it looks basically the same, but with a new lick of polish. So the system is clearly working. But I would be very open to ideas for addressing the particular problems outlined above, and also hearing general feedback on how the ticket system has altered people's perceptions of the site. I hope it was something like what I intended.

Aptathlon I debrief

2012-03-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

For the first proper post on this blog I thought I'd talk a bit about the latest Aptathlon: what my intentions were, how it panned out, and what I've learnt for the next one. Comments are particularly welcome as I try to figure out what parts of this people actually want to read about.

A quick recap of what Aptathlon is for those that missed it. There are eight "events", each of which is a given game format, like a Numbers Attack or Bullet Hebrew Speedgoat (okay, I didn't really use that one). Each player can play a single game against a patzer opponent in one event of their choice. Then we take the highest individual score in each event, add them together, and that's the team score, with the intention obviously being to get the highest team score possible. The event runs over the course of a few days and players can see the scores that have already been posted when they decide which event to enter. And that's pretty much it.

So why did I bother to create this new game mode? The idea came from my general worry that apterous caters well to the very top end of players, who can compete for rankings on literally hundreds of different leader boards. This is great and I think rewarding people for being good at stuff is important and part of what keeps players coming back. However, there's no escaping the fact that most leader boards are dominated by a small number of players who are extremely good at the game, have huge word knowledge, superhuman arithmetic skills, and are often comfortable even playing in different languages --- and that's intimidating for new players, who can't ever see themselves being that good (perhaps rightly!). At some point I'll write a post about the various ways that I've tried to address this problem, but Aptathlon is one facet. By forcing players to restrict the application of their skills to a single event, it greatly increases the pool of people who can win an event and therefore contribute to the team score. Also, because it's a team effort, I hoped that players would feel less disappointed if someone else surpassed their score, since it's still all for the good of the team; in other words, it's less directly competitive than something like the Duel. And to stress the point: I don't think there's anything wrong with competitive modes, I just think there's space for something different as well.

And how did it go? Well, let's take a look at the final results. Unsurprisingly, the 15 Rounder event was won by a highly ranked player, the current #2 in Pro Ranks in fact. More encouragingly, other events were won by players ranked #10 and #17, and the remaining five events were won by players outside the top 25. However, before we congratulate ourselves too much, we should note that four of those were still in the top 100 and the only remaining player, who won the Spanish 15 event, currently holds all of the major Spanish-language records. So there were no huge surprises. But still, the top 100 plus language specialists is a much wider pool than can realistically be monthly champion in the Duel (just five people in the last two years). So that's some kind of progress.

Now let's look at what didn't go as well as I wanted, and what I plan to do about it for Aptathlon II.

First up, a certain number of people seemed confused by the designation of Aptathlon as a "team game". A few got the idea that it's a team game in the sense of requiring group coordination to achieve a shared goal, i.e. deploying people's skills efficiently across the different events to maximise the team score. However, other people assumed that "team" meant they would be playing against some other team, which I hadn't anticipated. When you start a new job and they say "let's meet the team", you don't normally think "oh, I wonder who they're playing against"! But nevertheless I should've found some way to manage that expectation, because those people were then disappointed with what it wasn't rather than what it was, and that's frustrating for everyone involved. On this front I think there's nothing to be done; people will hopefully get the idea for the next one, and now a benchmark has been set (1177 points), people will hopefully play as a team to beat that score, which was my intention at the beginning.

One thing that disappointed me was that six of the final eight high scores were set on the first day, which meant that the gradual improvement of the team score didn't pan out as I wanted. In particular, one of the formats got maxed within a few hours of the Aptathlon starting, which effectively reduced the event roster to seven for everyone else. And in most of the other events people posted pretty good scores very quickly, which probably dissuaded other people from entering. To compound the problem, I didn't make it clear enough that the scoring was Stepdown, so I imagine some players were discouraged at a glance by seeing things like a Bullet 15 score of 130! So that interface aspect will definitely be remedied next time around. In future I will also have to be smarter about choosing formats that are a little more difficult so that the scores can steadily improve over the course of the event, which is ultimately more exciting and satisfying for everyone. I have some ideas for that but I think they'll work better as a surprise, so I'm staying zip for now.

I was also disappointed with how few people entered: only 62 over the five days, which is fewer than have entered the Daily Duel on almost any day this year. Part of that might be the discouraging factors I just discussed. Also I didn't do a good enough job of publicising it; a single line in News announcing the start of the event, and then a link on the front page to the ongoing status of the event, which was probably not prominent enough. The Duel, by contrast, virtually publicises itself because you get an explicit challenge from the Duellist whenever you log in. So I'll try to bring something like that into the interface for the next one. Also I think some sort of explicit reward for participation might help, so next time there will be an item just for entering (a la the Duel Jewel) and perhaps an additional item for the eight people who post high scores (or maybe that's against the spirit of the thing. Not sure yet.)

Finally, there was one thing which went better than expected! Before the event I had worried that the top players would hang back until the final day and then "poach" the events with the weakest scores. As it turns out, curiosity evidently got the better of them and most of the top players played on the first day; only the 15 Rounder got overtaken late in the event, and was actually a very good score already, so that's all fair and lovely. Perhaps that won't work as smoothly next time, now the novelty has worn off, but we shall see. There's also an incentive for players to play earlier because ties are broken on an earliest-first basis, so too much hanging back is risky for people who are particularly focused on individual attainment.

So there we have it. I've focused a lot here on the things that didn't work out well, but overall I was actually quite happy with it; there were no major technical disasters, the people who did enter mostly had fun with it and got the idea, and a fair amount of the feedback was positive. And unlike Top Dog (which has never really been what I wanted; more on that another time), it seems like most of the problems are soluble within the current framework. So thanks to everyone who played and for all the comments so far. Here's to Aptathlon II!

Welcome!

2012-03-19T18:36:00.002-07:00

Welcome to the apterous development blog. The intention of this blog is to give me, your friend and host Charlie Reams, a look "behind the scenes" of apterous. I don't mean the technical stuff so much, which is probably too niche, but rather the higher level ideas of design and decision making that hopefully will be of general interest. Also the blog format should allow me to discuss things at greater length than the one-line News items on the apterous front page will allow, so I'll link here when that's worth doing. I'm not promising any particular schedule for updates, but I'll be aiming for quality over quantity.

So, welcome! Stay a while. Subscribe. Or whatever it is people do with blogs, I don't really know.