Tom's Corner

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:31:59 GMT

I saw this on Facebook and it made me smile:

"Robin D. Laws and Jonathan Tweet are now friends."

You need to be quite a deep gamer geek to find it amusing.

Urgh

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:59:17 GMT

Urgh.

The Tavern seems crippled by my new hosting company servers, but having migrated all my sites their over the last 6 months I was ready to close the old host account and save 7 bucks a month.

At work I have got ourselves in the stupid position of agreeing to deliver effectively the same course twice in two different schools, which given that we aren't even paid to teach is a very silly thing to do when we could do just one and combine the students. I suspect all I will get when I suggest this is unpopular with three Heads of School.

I am starting to get really low at how Gwenthia has stopped being fun and effectively crippled once we started doing rules, even though Pete has done some really excellent work on it. We need to discuss it at Continuum.

But most of all I am utterly drained and worried about the possibility that we are facing an intimidation campaign from the people who attacked Matthew. The paint attack on the car (rumoured to have been done by 2 friends of the original attackers) was followed by a couple of cruise-bys. I worry that as the summer goes by we'll see more of this as they try and get Matt to withdraw his testimony.

It is seriously worrying Matt, he's sleeping with a walking stick by his bed, and has utterly crushed Ann's spirit. I just don't know what we can do.. the police have alternated between organisational indifference to some real attempts to help by the local police constables. But they can't be here all the time, we need to work out some strategies and ones that don't leave Matt more traumatised.

Off to see how much it will cost to respray Matt's car shortly, then maybe we will go and look at security cameras at the Maplin store in town.

More Fun in ShitLand

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:20:33 GMT

I am in Netherlands, Ann is running a course in Warwickshire.
Matthew woke up this morning to discover his car has had a pot of paint emptied on it.
He rang police who were utterly uninterested, despite the previous assault and associated threats of intimidation.
Closed it immediately, no interest in collecting any forensics.
Now if this is who we think it is and they left any forensics it is a home run for the police, but they don't care.
I then rang and tried to escalate it and was basically told if I don't like it then complain to the Chief Superintendant.
It's not like it was a random event in a big city, we have a clear suspect and we live in the countryside, someone had to travel to our place to do this. Ah well, the policeman who is handling the assault case is on at 9pm and I have asked him to ring. Looks like I may be becoming quite disillusioned with the police shortly. Problem is it completely destroys all the positive messages we have given Matt to trust in the system. Fortunately he has taken a positive view and has filled the house with all his mates and they're going to have a big party and sod the vandals!

Hairspray

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:05:09 GMT

Just coming back from London where, in addition to work, I went to see the musical Hairspray. What a happy, joyful, anti-racist, anti-sizist bundle of great Sixties music, wonderful performances by Leanne Jones and Michael Ball and one of the only musicals I've been to where one felt the audience (which had many big, beautiful and blonde ladies in it) would break out dancing. They certainly were singing along.. A great show, not at all preachy with some great R&B, Motown and rock n roll inspired numbers. I can see real women (and I don't mean just big girls, Tracey's friend is long and lanky) loving this musical and men who love real women will love it too. It's kind of what the Sixties should have been, and in many ways was..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairspray_(musical)

Bit of a scare

Tue, 20 May 2008 18:40:02 GMT

My son Matt got jumped by a couple of lads who beat him around the head with a baseball bat last night. They'd already punched him up at the bus stop before driving to a bridge near our house and laying in wait for him to arrive and walk home. That is malicious, nay planned and evil. What is worse is that they had been out with him all evening on good terms, with some slight falling out over a girl between Matt's friend and the lads. After the attack he staggered home and banged us up terrified with a bleeding cut on the head and various bruises from the bat all over. We called the police and got him to hospital and he is physically fine but very traumatised from the threats they made to him and us if he went to the police.

Long story short, today Matt gave a statement to the police, they were very good and helpful and addressed his fears. They has already arrested one of the lads and this afternoon he confessed to the attack but not to using a weapon. When the other lad comes back from work and is arrested then they'll be released on police bail which will restrict where they can go relative to Matt and our house. They'll probably be charged with actual bodily harm with intent or possibly grievous bodily harm with intent. Of course you can't be sure, it isn't always as simple as that and there is a long way to go, but since he's confessed then I can't see it not ending in court.

My concern is that my son is safe, and that this doesn't traumatise him too much and/or affect his A-level exams.. next one Friday. I do want the lads punished and also taught a lesson so they don't do that again. A premeditated ambush with a weapon aiming most blows at the head is well beyond some laddish rough stuff, it is plain wrong.

How do I feel? Very strangely calm.

Rebus' Edinburgh

Fri, 16 May 2008 12:02:44 GMT

I rarely post other people's work here but I am so utterly blown away by this picture of Edinburgh by Krasnyi Fotoapparat that I just had to share it. I know some of you love Edinburgh, or are going to live there, and I am going to the Festival this year (for the first time) so why not?

(PS: I have been quite poorly with an ear infection, that'll teach me to take a week off work!)
(PPS: I am trying a Firefox variant called Flock that integrates all the social networking sites out there. I will feedback when I have either dropped it or made it my default browser.)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Madness

Thu, 08 May 2008 13:01:34 GMT

I feel the British Labour Government is lurching ever rightward and reactionary as they lose their grip on power and reality. For all their faults the first Labour government decentralised, liberalised whilst they also strangely did the opposite in other areas. Now, as they fall apart we see them desparately trying to appeal to the populist reactionary constituency: new ill defined censorship laws that will no doubt haunt us for decades, Dangerous Porn Act; redefinition of cannabis against the advice of all experts and the police, Smith & Cannabis; the ongoing debacle that will be ID cards, and now the revelation that despite being the most spied on individuals in the world, CCTV has no realisable effect on crime at all, CCTV doesn't work.

I shall write to my MP, even though he is retiring and the constituency is being redrawn.

Birthday in Amsterdam

Tue, 06 May 2008 18:35:32 GMT

From May2008

Ann and I spent a happy weekend in Amsterdam where the weather was lovely. Despite changing hotel rooms twice we had a pleasant time and I enjoyed all my presents. I do wonder how it'll all change after their smoking ban in July. Pix here

Facebook is shit, o2 arena and London was fun, had a bad week

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:41:29 GMT

IMHO Facebook is pointless shit full of viral crap that promises something and delivers nothing. Avoid. I have just deactivated my Facebook account. I can't delete it and my friends can't see that I am inactive (interesting twist eh?) but at least I never will get anything from that cesspool of tat again. [Do I sound cross?]

I have had some good productive chats about a route to market for Gwenthia. My chief wish is the get books into FLGS and get some people enjoying all the hard work of the Design Mechanism. I suspect that the world has legs but I think we also have to conclude that it might be a one-shot wonder, so hard choices need to be made on what to leave in or take out.

I am 75% through laying out the Exodus Matrix as our first 'all in one' playable scenario using just the core RuneQuest book. I am about 50% thorugh writing a classic 'underground' adventure in the same style. I want to finish them before Continuum, have them printed and sold to create some buzz, and then put them on rpgnow as pdfs.

Work is busy so I have only been able to feed back on the latest draft of Wordplay and not start to tackle the Secret Agent Man theme.

We saw Cirque de Soleil at the o2 arena (formerly the Millenium Dome) last Saturday. Great venue, always knew London could make good use of it. Show was okay but maybe not as 'groundbreaking' as all that. Was basically a melange of french graphic novels, pink floyd and a lot of weed. IMHO of course.

My steroid dose went down last week and 7 days later, this Tuesday, I crashed. Could bearly get out of bed I was so tired and unfocused. Looks like below 20mg a day I don't work. :-( I changed my dose back and was fine by Friday.

I now have shedloads of work to catch up on.

Damn.

BTW.. my tests have all been deleted.. Jane knows what I mean.

True20

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 09:49:18 GMT

Here it is: a free True20 licence (like d20 or RuneQuest or Traveller) and a revised edition of the rules, combining the Companion with the original rulesbook. Very nice.

http://greenronin.com/2008/04/true20_adventure_roleplaying_t.php
http://greenronin.com/2008/04/now_available_true20_adventure.php

Now I am rather in love with playing Talislanta and therefore the Omni system right now, but anytime soon I just know I am going to go all True20. It's a lovely clean, lean, roleplaying game that keeps enough of the d20/D&D system but leaves out all the deadwood. If Wizards had released this as D&D 3e, I'd be still playing it now..

Veg Bed

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:23:53 GMT

I have built my veg bed in the blizzard and carted 2 tonne of topsoil. Jiggered beyond belief.

Topsoil

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:30:59 GMT

Well I have committed myself to building my raised vegetable bed this Sunday. I now have 4 tonnes of topsoil and mushroom compost on my drive! If it rains before Sunday it could all get horrible so I have sent Ann to buy a very large plastic sheet! 4 tonnes is more than I need for the bed, that's 2 tonnes I think, but I need to layer a good 15cm onto the flower beds at the back so that is what the extra is for.

Wish me luck!

Stardust

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:10:34 GMT

I watched Stardust the other day and having read the novel by Neil Gaiman I was unsure if I'd like it. I did! As charming and sweet as the novel, slightly different, both as lovely and uplifting as each other. Nice.

Various

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:51:04 GMT

I am watching 'Tales of Earthsea', the latest Studio Ghibli film based on some part of the Ursula K LeGuin books. I loved the books, they opened the doors to non-Tolkien fantasy in a much better way than Moorcock. Sad to say, 60 minutes in and I suspect this as duff a film as the IMDB reviews suggest and LeGuin hints herself on her webpages. It wasn't made by Hayao Miyazaki and isn't patch on other masterpieces such as Nausicaa, Laputa or Kiki's Delivery Service. Very sad.

Over the last week I have realised that there is no way I can afford to heat my greenhouse, save to stop the frost. I have moved all the seedlings and propagation indoors. I have created and planted a bulb area in my borders, and realised that my problem is that we have no topsoil. Since I am building my raised beds soon and they will need topsoil, I shall order extra and layer it onto the back beds. I have fertilised my raspberries, planted rhubarb plants, popped in a blueberry and potted on my tomatoes and fuschias. I'll need to get my veg. bed sorted soon so I can plant out cabbages and lettuces in a fortnight or so.

I have been working all week, and although my boss is very keen that I do not travel too far, I think I need to get out and start my wider job soon.

Gaming wise there is no sign of the promised Traveller game so I think I may run some Gwenthia on Tuesdays now we have a full ruleset to playtest. I have a planned Talislanta game next Thursday with my son and his friends, I shall run Scent of the Beast. I have found the pretty rare Sub-Men Rising campaign by robin_d_laws. Maybe I'll get to run it all! I am implementing the more restricted magic rules from Codex Magicus to throttle back magic a little and give a reason to wizards to track down spells and artefacts. It looks like darransims may run some HeroQuest Tekumel at Continuum and that would be awesome.. I hope he knows how popular it will be..

Open Source Alternatives

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:53:48 GMT

You know what you want to do.. you know which commercial software does it.. but some fool (maybe you or maybe a 'Linux' or 'OS X' friend) has got you on an operating system that doesn't run it, or you don't want to shell out more money..

What you need is free open source software.. but it's all crap innit?

No! Much of it is brilliant, so what this site does is map a commercial programme you may know with the FOSS alternatives: so I want iMovie.. this will suggest Kino or various others..

This is a great resource and worth keeping whatever operating system you run to be able to save money, avoid piracy and support FOSS:

http://www.osalt.com/

Oh and while I am at it, a site just for OS X freeware software:

http://www.freesmug.org/

Talislanta Gaming Weekend

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:24:10 GMT

We had our second gaming weekend session. Simon stayed over last night and today we played my first ever Talislanta game. I have adored Talislanta for years and years and (according to Simon and Graham) wittered about it but never run it. It's been something I have been a little unsure of letting people see since it is so cosmopolitan and alien and a little silly.. and everyone loved the setting, the system, I managed to ft the whole scenario in and everyone had FUN! FUN is our objective and so success all round.

I am SO happy!

Bloody Gales

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 11:24:36 GMT

Bloody gales, hammering on the roof. Can't sleep. When there was an earthquake I assumed it was the wind ripping off the the roof.. again. We have such a nice house but we live in such a valley of wind..

I am always slowly scanning, editing and cataloguing old pictures. The latest are a set from University and the NODDSOC 25 hour roleplaying events. Some nice nostalgia if you were there or know the people..

I have also posted an idea for sorting out WebDAV on Ubuntu Brainstorm. If you have the time please vote for it..

My steroid dose reduced again yesterday. I have been having weird little facial muscle "freezes" all week.. and an appointment with my consultant on the 19th March.

Looks like Hilary has had it. Obama looks to be the winner in the Democrat primary. Mind you I have nothing against Hilary except she has a discomforting stiffness, but I think women have a hard time balancing the sexism and expectations in political life, it's a tricky one.

I am running a Talislanta game on the 9th March so I need to focus on that fully and deliver a great gaming experience. I hope people are going to come.. it's gone a little quiet.

Tom

Great Thunderbird Add-Ons

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:50:33 GMT

Now you know that Mozilla Thunderbird is a great mail client, right? Works well and protects you and is good wholesome free open source software..

But do you know that you can add-on all sorts of little extra stuff that customises, enhances and generally makes Thunderbird do all sorts of stuff? They're called.. gee.. Add-Ons..

No? Well let me tell you the ones I use and rate..
Yes? Then I'll show you mine but you show me yours..

Display Mail User Agent Extension by Christian Weiske, Jürgen Ernst

Displays icon for user agent of received mails. Adds an image on the right side of the "expanded header view" which displays the icon of the application with which the selected mail was written. So if the person which sent the mail you're currently reading used mozilla to send this mail, a mozilla icon will be displayed. In feedback window the link to the website of that mail client is shown. And you can click on it.

This is largely fun but has some uses. It's great to see just what people are using as their mail client..

LookOut 1.2.1
by Aron Rubin

LookOut is a plugin which allows Thunderbird to interface with Microsoft's mail tools by decoding metadata and attachments encapsulated/embedded in a TNEF encoded attachment (aka winmail.dat). The TNEF decoding engine was inspired (with permission) by the tnef.sf.net project.

This is a very good idea, those winmail.dat attachments puzzle and annoy me. On the other hand I am not sure just how close to helpful this add-on has got. I have it installed and since I know longer have "winmail.dat" problems I think it works.. it's worth having since they are advancing towards some things like contact information having nailed normal attachments..

Remove Duplicate Messages
by Thorsten W. Schmidt, Thorsten W. Schmidt

If you have duplicate messages (e.g. from merging folders or downloading messages several times) you can use this tool to find and remove them from the selected folder and its subfolder by rightclicking on a folder and choosing "Remove...

This is a real workhorse.. which is maybe it appears to have been written by the same man twice! If you have accidentally ended up with duplicates in your folders then this is a goof fast and efficient way to clean the bad confused puppies out.. hang on, do you think it has the same author twice as some cute Germanic coder joke?

Later..

Tom

Soft Rime

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:42:29 GMT

We've been having freezing fog and "soft rime' which is kind of like snow but it isn't.. It is -7 degrees Celcius the last few mornings.

From Rime

I feel crap today.. I felt like a truck had run me over Monday, great Tuesday and the truck has been back today. Matt has a bad cold and we just watched Resident Evil: Extinction, which was a great blast. Nowt original but rock'n'roll fun as usual..

Now, time to write my rpg tribute trilogy of scenarios..

Tom

Gaming Weekend

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:40:51 GMT

Our gaming weekend has been going very well. We had a great game of Twilight Imperium on Saturday, although it would have gone much quicker if we had not had to clip out little spaceships for 90 minutes first. Once we got going we found the game runs quite smoothly and although the huge numbers of tokens did get a leetel unwieldy we enjoyed it. We played for about 7 hours but didn't quite finish, next time we should complete a full 5-6 player game in about 7-8 hours. Mind you.. it may be some time before we get the chance. Dom and Simon and I then sat up with Ann until quite late putting the world to rights and talking about manufacturing and work..

From Twilight Impe...

Today Dom is running his Savage Worlds conversion of the classic 2300AD adventure "Mission Arcture". Graham and I are playing Aussie Special Forces and sitting here with Billabong outback hats and Aussie T-shirts from when I was at Ayers Rock.. The game is running quite well.. I hope people enjoy it.

From Gaming Weeken...

I think that the Savage 2300AD game showed that 2300AD works fine with the Savage ruleset and indeed can cope with awesomely overpowered weapon systems and still run well. Sadly, having played the scenario twice it is basically a long corridor with an endless supply of Kafers to kill. We had fun but I think there may be better ways to enjoy 2300AD with any system. As I said, we had fun and big thanks to Dom..

Dom's writeup is here.

From Gaming Weeken...

Doing stuff but eyes tired

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 15:54:09 GMT

I am getting quite a lot done, we had a nice evening with our friends the Nerurkars on Wednesday night. Then on Thursday I went into the Hallamshire hospital and had a MRI scan of my lumbar and lower back region to investigate the lumbar radiculopathy I seem to have.. I took a Pink Floyd album and chilled in the tube! Friday I went and helped Helena setup her new Servage account, emails, ftp server, and the beginnings of their various family websites, especially her son Max's skating website.. that boy does great sk8r stuff and (IMHO) great photos.. I then cut back the dead ornamental grasses in the garden and planted some more daffodils alongside the snowdrop and bluebells in my new border. My greenhouse arrives next Friday and I am starting to get into this gardening lark big time. BTW if you want some very cheap snowdrops to plant into a border or lawn.. there's an offer at T&M..

Update, Leopards and Nonsense

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:18:52 GMT

I go to a lower dose of steroids today. The last reduction has made me very aware that my face isn't fixed.. closing my eyes and forming words has become more difficult all week. However I am basically sound and will start work again on the 18th. Like my other interests I shall focus on certain key tasks since I have been pleased to say that my team have shown that they can operate well on their own and I can stop micro managing and let them fly.. every cloud has a silver lining. My eyes get tired quickly so I'll have to go easy.. I also suspect that glasses may be an accessory I shall enjoy losing.. soon.

Rich Crawley came to see me Tuesday and we had a great old chinwag. He's just upgraded his Mac to the new Mac OS X Leopard and told me all about the new features such as the new "Cover Flow" Finder option and the very cool "TimeMachine" backup system. All sounds elegant and stylish and (note this Microsoft) useful. The combination of ergonomics and elegance in Apple products is why, however much I love Linux, I will always have a Mac somewhere..

Anyhow, apart from the usual Government bollocks and the usual media bollocks about the death of DAB, I have no more update for today.. and shall wend my way to a nice cup of tea..

Leica M7 and Roleplaying Systems

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:29:32 GMT

My replacement Leica M7 has arrived. This replaces my dearly beloved M4 which was stolen in St.Petersburg (spit). I am very ambivalent about it. My wife doesn't like it, and I am not sure I do. My M4 was silver, this is black. My M4 said "I understand and know about great cameras", the M7 says "I have more money than you". Still, I haven't gone and shot pictures with it and I guess that's when this new relationship will start to form. [I know this sounds terribly self-indulgent and spoiled, but this is LiveJournal and this is my obsession.]

Now as to my other obsession: roleplaying. I have decided that following my illness I need to declutter and focus. One thing I suffer from is that I chase, buy and read systems, when actually what I am interested in are settings. Settings are actually better described in source material, films, guides, etc. These are also cheaper than game systems since they are a little more mainstream (or even very mainstream in some cases). I do not need any other systems, I already have 3-4 that work fine. What I need to do is focus on settings.

So.. my first decision is that Glorantha and I are parting. Great though it is, I have Gwenthia and Taslislanta that offer me all that. If you also note that I love Tekumel then I have enough. So despite that fact that I will play and enjoy it at cons, my collection of books is all up for grabs.

Ah, that felt good..

Reply to Pete

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:19:58 GMT

Pete Nash wrote and so I thought I'd use it as a way to update you all with my health.

> Hi Tom
>
> Sorry to hear that you've been unwell. I hope that the secondary problems you've >been experiencing will pass quickly. It sounded horribly like a stroke to me, but lets >hope the doctors can sort it out.

Thanks. It wasn't a stroke for certain. But it may have been a TIA, but any stroke or TIA is one sided and the thing about mine that makes it very odd is that it is both sides.
They kept me in in case I had Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) which can be tricky but mine started at the face and that starts at the legs.
The associated and previous neuropathy is what is making them investigate neurosarcoidosis as an underlying issue.
My MRI scan showed inflammation around the 7th nerve (face), so something has gone on and is behind all of this.
I can talk and most people wouldn't notice anything wrong but I am aware of having to work my lips and mouth and my eyes become very tired by about 2pm.

It's early days and I am not trying to leap back to work too soon. My colleagues are doing well and keeping all on an even keel.

Stephen Fry and Vaio

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:33:45 GMT

I bought the Guardian on Saturday, basically to get the free DVD of the Battleship Potemkin film for my son's Russian History A level. To my delight my wife found that the high poobah of eloquent nerd Stephen Fry has a column on technology and he has just got an eee notebook! Enjoy.
On another but related note, Sony have released a truly lovely media centre PC, and yet saddled it with Windows Vista. Now I realise I may be being over picky, but in my experience Windows is not a good platform for anything realtime or critical. It is a shame that Sony can't bit the bullet, take the various excellent open source tools and Linux distributions and create a stable and rock solid media centre in such a lovely case. How about it Sony? We know you know how to do it.. and you're not adverse to Linux on the PS2 or PS3, so why not a VAIO media centre using Linux?