Nothing to Say

I fought the road and the road won

2009-11-19T21:24:17Z

So yesterday I did something stupid on my ride to work and I made a bit of a mess of myself. I broke a bone in each hand, got road rash down the left side of my face and neck and needed a few stitches put in where my glasses ploughed into my face:

Lovely, I'm sure you'll agree. In addition I managed to knock myself out so I got to spend the whole day in hospital, as they kept an eye on me to make sure I hadn't done anything worse to my head.

Hey ho. I am pretty thankful that there wasn't any cars right behind me when I came off. The hand bones should heal in 2 to 3 weeks apparently but for now no cycling and everything else is a little bit more awkward than normal...

A Shorter Post

2009-02-12T22:14:48Z

As I cycled to work this morning, I was heckled by a pedestrian. He shouted at me that I should be running a red light, not stopping for it, as I was. You can't please everyone, I suppose.

Mass Effect, CRPGs and Me

2009-02-12T22:12:41Z

Mass Effect, CRPGs and Me

Mass Effect came highly recommended by several friends. Hell, one friend liked it so much he went to work for the company that made it. However I've never really warmed to CRPGs so it was not until it became available for a fiver that I decided to give it a shot.

I've been trying to like CRPGs pretty much ever since I discovered traditional tabletop RPGs, way back at the tail end of the '80s while on holiday near Arisaig. The Bard's Tale was the first CRPG I bought but didn't take to and others followed, with Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights sticking in my mind as games I tried but just couldn't like.

Along the way, there have been exceptions. I enjoyed Final Fantasy VII, Septerra Core and now Mass Effect. Mass Effect was not without its irritations though, which has led me to start considering what aspects of CRPGs I like and which annoy me.

I think one fundamental problem I have with CRPGs is that I expect them to be like (tabletop) RPGs and they're not. The CRPGs I've liked have been those which I have not attempted to treat as if I am playing a regular RPG where the GM and the other players are hiding behind my monitor.

Final Fantasy VII and Septerra Core both felt as closely related to Lucasarts-style adventure games as RPGs. Sure there were fights, stats and inventory systems to deal with but they never pretended that you were role-playing your own custom character or had much control over your destiny (except whether or not you survived the numerous fights). I was playing a character that had been defined along with the plot I was experiencing. The interest was in seeing how the plot unfolded and affected my character, not in deciding how I would navigate the plot and deciding how my character would interact with it.

Mass Effect is a more traditional CRPG than these other two. However as it uses a very FPS-like combat system it could often feel as much like a shoot 'em up as a CRPG. In other CRPGs I never really appreciated the simulation of a tabletop RPG's roll to hit, roll to damage mechanic. Clicking on a monster and waiting until its hit points or those of my character run out is not much fun, nor particularly immersive. Instead of being bored by combat, combat in Mass Effect was generally fun.

Mass Effect did highlight one other major issue I have with CRPGs and it's to do with time and causality. It is exemplified by what two friends both said about how they played the game.

The initial stages of the game are fairly linear and set up the main plot. Mass Effect has a space opera-style science fiction setting so needless to say, the fate of the galaxy is at stake. Once this is set up you are given a spaceship and left to your own devices. There are three or four planets you can visit that are connected to the main plot but there is a whole galaxy of other planets out there, too (well maybe a couple of dozen or so you can actually visit).

To paraphrase, both friends said "When I got in the spaceship, I totally ignored the plot worlds and concentrated on side quests in order to level up a bit". This, I gather, is what you do in CRPGs. Who cares if the fate of the galaxy lies in your hands? There's levelling to do!

I think it comes down to the old accusation that CRPGs suffer from linear plots. By making loads of side quests available and not requiring you to approach the plot worlds in a particular order, Mass Effect can claim to be non-linear and open. Unfortunately this approach feels fake to me and reduced my immersion in the game and its plot, even as I succumbed to it. I was no longer Commander Shepard, on a desperate mission to save the galaxy from an ancient menace. I was back to being plain old me, playing a computer game by exploring every bit of it that I could access.

You see, it doesn't matter how long you take on side quests, the plot worlds will still be waiting for when you get round to them. Neither does it matter whether you go to plot world A first, or plot world B. The plot on each planet is almost entirely unaffected by what has already been done and what has not yet been done. Whenever you go to planet A you'll encounter bad guy X. Whenever you go to planet B you'll encounter NPC Y. If you spend half a year bumming around the known galaxy, bad guy X will still be on planet A when you finally visit. You may not have to play through the game in a linear order but the order you choose to play it has little or no bearing on what you encounter. Additionally, even though the game presents itself as allowing you to choose how your character interacts with their environment throughout the game, most of the time the effects are all very similar, irrespective of what your character chooses to do to cause them.

While I also had some more implementation-specific issues with Mass Effect (annoying loading/cut scenes and poor inventory management, mainly), this I think was the main CRPG issue I had with it. Like I said, the combat was entertaining enough that I could put up with it but I still wish it could be done better.

I understand that heavily divergent branching plots would be a nightmare to implement on a large scale in any computer game. However I think that it must be possible to at least give a stronger feeling of narrative causality than Mass Effect manages. If you leave visiting planet A too long you may find that bad guy X has already left for planet B in order to torment NPC Y. Alternatively visiting planet A early on may catch bad guy X unawares, allowing you to prevent them from unveiling their sinister scheme on planet C later on in the game. Personally, I'd be willing to live without quite so many side quests if I felt that the manner in which I approached the main plot had some real affect on how it played out.

Mass Effect is a step forward for CRPGs, at least from my perspective. However I still think they've got a way to go before they really live up to the expectations that I have due to them having "RPG" in the genre's name...

Have you ever wanted to be in a band?

2008-10-09T21:21:18Z

If so, reading The Spirit Speaks may make your humdrum, non rock 'n' roll life seem like a better idea after all. The Spirit of Love is the keyboard player for Alabama 3 and while his intermittent blog posts are always very entertaining to read, they are also very good at getting over the fact that being in a touring band is not a good place to be if you want to stay healthy in mind and body...

The Watchmen - Trailer

2008-07-22T22:11:17Z

Here it is. From what I can tell from viewing a quicktime movie, it's a little more hyper-real in appearance than I'd have hoped for. Not surprising I suppose, as it proudly proclaims its from the director of 300, but I'd have thought the comic's low-fi visuals would translate best as something a bit more realist.

Chop chop busy busy work work bang bang!

2008-07-01T22:11:03Z

Friends may remember me mentioning an advert from my childhood, which involved a factory full of penguins saying the mantra "Chop chop, busy busy, work work, bang bang". They probably also remember looking at me askance when I mentioned this and questioning not only the accuracy of my memory, but also my sanity.

Well, thanks to the power of teh Internets, I have found evidence it existed. I had even correctly remembered that it was an ad for British Telecom - a quick Google suggests I therefore remembered it more accurately than most folks who remembered the phrase.

I despair

2008-02-01T20:23:24Z

As is usual when I am at work, today I went to the local Greggs for lunch. As I was waiting for my tuna roll to be made up, a woman came in with a young boy (presumably her son). She indicated that he could have one of the sweet goods on display. The boy pointed to a strawberry jam doughnut with pink icing. In reply, the woman said, and I wish I was making this up...

"You can't have that one. It's pink. You're a lad. You're not a poof."

In case anyone present thought this was some odd joke, she proceeded to point to all of the available doughnuts, muffings and other assorted sweet baked goods, telling him that he could have any of these, but not the pink doughnut. He could have had a yellow one, if one had been available, but not a pink one, because he was a boy.

I think I was a little stunned. It was the sort of dialogue I might have expected in an episode of Life on Mars, but not in real life. Beyond the sheer stupidity of it, I couldn't help but wonder how she could be certain that this 5 year old boy was straight? Or did she actually think that eating some pink icing could influence the boy's sexuality?

http://www.0pornos.com/? Are you kidding me?

2007-09-19T20:47:53Z

I'm a moderator for a mountain biking forum. One of my main duties is to filter genuine membership requests from those being made by spammers. Frankly, if I just deleted every new membership request, I'd be right 95% of the time or so. Around 10 spammer accounts get created each day.

A vanishingly small amount of these spammer accounts could be confused with genuine membership requests. For a forum dedicated to mountain biking in Scotland we get a surprising number of membership requests from directors located in Canada who enjoy snowboarding. Still, even amongst all the blatantly spambot-generated membership requests, those who list their home page as http://www.0pornos.com/ (I am not going to hyperlink to that) take the biscuit. Really! Could they at least fucking try?

The Clown Prince of Time?

2007-06-26T21:54:09Z

I have until now left the Doctor Who blogging to Dr Sordid and craigoxbrow, but The Sound of Drums finally got me to open my mouth.

While I have fond memories of watching Doctor Who as a child, I was never the dedicated fan that others were. So compared to some I haven't been too upset by some of what Russel T Davies has done to turn the show into what he and the BBC reckons a 21st century audience expects it to be. I didn't agree with it all but generally mostly it's produced decent enough TV.

Turning The Master into The Joker though is just not on. Unlike the Doctor, the Master's portrayal has previously been somewhat consistent across regenerations. Turning him into a capering trickster (albeit a sociopathic, megalomanical capering trickster) just doesn't sit well with me. This feeling of wrongness only intensified when I watched the Doctor Who Confidential that accompanies The Sound of Drums. I'm not sure if I'd ever actually seen Roger Delgado's portrayal of the Master, but the clips of him on Confidential presented a Master I much preferred to the new one.

For me, one of the reasons that the Master is scary is because he is in control. Lunatics are scary because around them, nothing is predictable, or under control. These two impressions do not sit well together. The reasons given for the Master's new behaviour were unconvincing too - apparently he's always been insane. So why has he only now started acting all manic and gurning?

It is particularly galling to have this not-at-all-like-the-Master interpretation of the Mast served to us when in the previous series an impressively Master-like villain got crammed into an episode that really had too much stuff going on for its 45 minutes run-time. Tony Head made a great Master, unfortunately he was playing a Krillitane (actually you could argue that John Simm's Master would have been fine as some other villain, but I digress). I could even have forgiven him for not having a goatee. (Is that really how you spell goatee? Wikipedia thinks it is, anyway.) Derek Jacobi seemed to be doing OK without one too, come to think of it. But then he didn't have to do a song and dance routine.

The thing is, despite my irritation about this, I'm aware that to an extent, Russel T Davies and the rest of the production crew had an impossible task. My impressions of the Master are based of a few fuzzy memories of those old Doctor Who stories that I saw that contained him, and a lot of projection. Every other old-timer Doctor Who fan will have remembered him in a slightly different way. For example, siliconowl's ideal Master would probably be camper than mine. There's no way that the Master could return and be right for everyone, especially when he would have to be right for all the people who have not seen Doctor Who before. However, I'm not sure the production team's done themselves any favours by changing the character so much.

So basically, there's not actually much point to this post except to bitch about how The Master should not be The Joker and to generally sound like an old curmudgeon. Bah.

21reasons @ 2007-06-15T19:34:00

2007-06-15T19:07:39Z

I thought that in lieu of ever actually having something bloggish that I wanted to say, I could try posting some of the gaming ideas I've had. Random RPG-related ideas still strike me occasionally. Sadly I am rarely able to force them into something that would give me the will or the confidence to actually GM something, so they usually at most get stored away on a hard drive and forgotten about. Maybe by posting them some good will come of them.

I'll start off with a couple of special items for Feng Shui. It once occurred to me that while the Shadowfist CCG and the Feng Shui backstory both contain magical artifacts and whatnot, none have really turned up in the game itself. At least not in the adventures I've played, nor the game books I've read. What I ended up creating aren't really magic items per se, but they are special and unique and they could add a little bit of flavour to a Feng Shui game.

The Twin Dragons

Backstory

A pair of Colt M1911A1s, each detailed with dragons etched along their barrels and down their handles. The Dragons' eyes are picked out in jade. In recent years the guns have been stored in a sombre black briefcase, along with 2 clips of ammunition for each gun.

These guns belonged to a near-legendary postwar hitman. He disappeared mysteriously in the late 1950s, though his infamy has lived on, along with stories of his pistols, the Twin Dragons.

A person can use the Twin Dragons for one 'hit'. During a hit, the guns are deadly; a perfect pair of pistols. Countless bodyguards have fallen before them and they have signaled the end for mob bosses, gang leaders, Secret Warriors, monsters and even ghosts.

After the hit is complete, their wielder must pass the guns on to another, or they will suffer terrible misfortune for as long as the continue to possess the guns. No-one except their original owner can ever use the guns for more than one hit.

Rules

If a character with a Guns AV of 13 or higher gets their hands on the Twin Dragons, they function as normal M1911A1 pistols until the character picks a specific target. The target need not be present and can be vaguely defined as long as the target is unambiguous. For example, the target could be "Freddy Cheng", or it could be "Whoever masterminded the attack on our Feng Shui site".

In any fight directly related to taking out the target, the pistols gain some special abilities when used together:

They count as Signature Weapons, each inflicting +3 damage.
They take out unnamed characters on an outcome of 4 or more.
They give their wielder 3 schticks in Both Guns Blazing. If their wielder already has schticks in Both Guns Blazing, this will not raise their number of such schticks above 3.
They can damage *anyone*. Damage Immunity: Bullets has no effect.

It is up to the GM to decide which fights these benefits are awarded, but they should be directly connected to taking out the target. For example, fighting a bunch of mooks who know where the target is doesn't count but fighting a bunch of mooks guarding the entrance to the target's base does if he is at home.

After the target is killed or the character declares they no longer intend to kill the target, the character must quickly give the twin dragons to another character. If they do not, all characters they fight gain a +5 bonus to their AVs against the character and the character suffers any other misfortunes the GM can dream up.

The definition of "quickly" is again up to the GM. They shouldn't have to hand them to the first passing person as soon as they drop the target, but hanging onto them when they have met plenty of people who could accept the pistols is unacceptable.

Doc's Lucky Gun

Backstory

This gun is a .380 detective's special, well used, its wooden grip worn by a multitude of palms. As these things go it is an unremarkable looking weapon. The only way to distinguish it from countless other similar firearms are its obvious age, a filed hammer and the inscription "H. Lloyd" discretely etched into the weapon on one side of its barrel.

The history of Doc's Lucky Gun is far less well known than that of most legendary weapons. It is thought likely that H. Lloyd was the titular Doc, the original owner of the gun, but no-one really knows for sure. As many of its subsequent owners seem to have led rather short and unfortunate lives after taking the gun into their possession, it is likely that its first owner started this trend rolling.

Doc's Lucky Gun is a fearsome weapon and it has brought about many a person's doom. Those who have wielded it have described it as almost eager to be used, keen to jump out of its holster and into its wielder's hand at the slightest provocation. Unfortunately, while deadly, the gun is not too picky about who it shoots and it has gained as fearsome a reputation as a source of 'friendly fire' as it has for its deadliness to its wielder's enemies.

Rules

Doc's Lucky Gun counts as a Signature Weapon, inflicting +3 damage compared to a regular detective's special.
Doc's Lucky Gun takes out unnamed characters on an outcome of 4 or more.
As long as the wielder is using Doc's Lucky Gun it grants its wielder the equivalent of 2 levels of the gun schitck Fast Draw. If the wielder already has schitcks in Fast Draw this will not raise their number above 2.
While it is in their possession, whoever wields Doc's Lucky Gun has their Fortune stat reduced by 2. This Fortune penalty applies until someone else chooses to wield Doc's Lucky Gun. Throwing it away or hiding it in a closet does not stop the bad luck, somebody else has to pick it up.
If the wielder of Doc's Lucky Gun fails an attack roll while using it, call for a Fortune Check, difficulty 0. If this roll fails Doc's Lucky Gun will shoot a friend of the wielder (or a bystander) determined by the GM with an outcome equivalent to the negative of the outcome from the Fortune check.

Credit Where Credit's Due

Doc's Lucky Gun is largely a creation of bozobaggins, though another friend, Bruce, actually played the titular Doc. My contribution was to GM the chaos that Doc's Lucky Gun caused, and to realise that it could be happily transferred from Call of Cthulhu to Feng Shui.

His Life in Serious Organised Crime

2007-04-03T19:57:39Z

Mark Thomas: My Life in Serious Organised Crime was the funniest thing I've listened to in ages. Go download it and listen to it before Radio 4 take it offline - which may be on Thursday, so hurry!

In the news today...

2007-02-22T12:22:53Z

A collosal squid's been landed by fisherman near New Zealand. This enormous cephalopod is roughly 10 metres long (though the little graphic at the bottom of the BBC story seems to suggest it's about twice that length) and a whopping 450kg in weight. Cthulhu is going to be mighty annoyed when his cousin doesn't ever return from his trip to the shops...

Mind you, if Cthulhu spends the next handful of years plotting his revenge before attacking humanity, we'll be able to fight him off with lasers. Rock!

I expected more bureaucracy

2007-02-13T12:59:26Z

I phoned the speed camera people today. In the second of two short conversations, I was informed that a police officer had reviewed the photo taken by the speed camera and had concluded that it was not a picture of my car. Presumably it's entirely the wrong model, or they took me at my word that my car has a tow hook and is a different colour to the colour of the photographed car as it was described to me. Anyway, a letter has been posted to me, which apparently apologises for the inconvenience and confirms that no further action will be taken against me.

This is all very much a relief for me. While I knew I had not been speeding down that road on that day, I expected a Brazil-esque journey through bureaucracy or the legal system in order to get the speed camera people/police to agree...

My Magical Car

2007-02-11T13:01:31Z

Apparently, while I was at work two Fridays ago, my car started itself and went for a drive!

How do I know this? Because the following Friday I got a notice of intention to prosecute due to a speed camera getting my car on the A68 on the morning of the 2nd of Feburary. This I find odd as:

I haven't driven on the A68 since June last year.

I was at work at 10:21 on the 2nd of February.

Hell, I even cycled to work that day!

Anyway, the lovely letter I've been sent doesn't actually tell you what to do to contest one of these things. I get three options: Admit it was me, tell them who it was, or tell them who I've sold my car to. So what's the procedure for actually saying "you've got it wrong!"?

The one bit I know is that I can make an appointment to see the relevant photo at their offices. I was vaguely under the impression I was supposed to be sent a copy, but apparently I'm wrong about that. So tomorrow I'll phone them up and try and work out what to do next.

Hopefully the method for contesting this will be fairly straightforward. If I'm lucky the camera caught an obviously different car with a similar number plate that it mis-read. If I'm unlucky the cars could be very similar or worse still, someone for some reason could have 'cloned' my car. Anyway I will try and keep my blog updated as to how this progresses.

Bikes. Everywhere.

2007-02-06T22:59:04Z

So last week, I got my new bike. Because the bike's arrived ahead of the lock I've ordered for it, it's having to live in my flat, instead of secured to the ground anchor in my shed. But then again, it's not like I haven't had a bike in my flat before.

This morning, my commuter bike's freehub froze while I was riding to work, about a mile from home. This meant that I could no longer pedal. Arse. An often suggested method for unfreezing a freehub is to, ah, relieve oneself on it. However I was on a busy street with an empty bladder, so instead I elected to push my bike home. By the time I'd changed and grabbed my car keys, the freehub had defrosted, but I was no longer in my cycling kit. Hmm. I guess my commuter will be sleeping in the flat too. Two bikes up here is a bit of a pinch, but not impossible.

On Thursday, siliconowl will be coming round for roleplaying. He's likely to cycle here, which means there'll be three bikes trying to fit into my hallway. That could be tricky...

Change is Possible!

2006-11-19T19:24:44Z

That's what the machine in the NCP car part said last night. Including the exclamation mark. I know that it actually meant that we would get change if we overpaid for parking, but as someone who generally finds change very hard work, I found it amusingly encouraging.

21reasons @ 2006-09-25T19:45:00

2006-09-25T18:55:34Z

Were you, like me, told as a child that if you dug a hole all the way through the earth you'd end up in Australia? Apparently Americans are told they'll end up in China, but you get the idea. Well sadly freakcrab has blown a hole through that childish misconception, by sending me a link to DigHoles.com.

Thanks to this interesting use of Google's mapping technology I now know that were I, no matter where I was in the UK, to dig a hole through the centre of the Earth, I'd end up in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere south of New Zealand. Anyone digging such a hole from Australia would end up in the Atlantic Ocean. Some Spaniards are luckier and would make it to New Zealand but for most of us it'd be a watery experience. If we weren't fried to a crisp due to all the molten hot stuff that resides inside the Earth, that is.

Any Falkland Islanders looking for an unconventional way to escape their sheep and penguin-filled homelands could tunnel their way to the China/Russia border. I think that a plane to Blighty would probably be a better idea, on balance.

Crappy book meme

2006-08-30T22:46:21Z

bozobaggins has tagged me for a meme. Because it is a thought-free way to get my blog updated, I thought I'd do it.

So, here's the meme:

Grab the nearest book.
Open the book to page 123.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
Tag five people.

OK, so here's what we get:

(Sea trading requires the Astronomy advance, and Ocean trading requires Magnetism or Navigation.) These connections are affected by enemy territory.

One last thing deserves mention. You can trade strategic resources and luxuries with other civilizations, but only if their capital is included in a trade network with your capital.

Oddly enough, the closest books to my PC appear to be manuals for complex games. The manuals for simple games being booklets.

Consider yourself tagged if you're reading this and you haven't done this meme already. I'd be quite surprised to discover that there's more than five qualifying people out there...

When people get in the way of politics

2005-11-15T21:31:25Z

The Register has an article about Masood Khan, and how he's going to save the Internet. It's uplifting to hear that sometimes politicians and diplomats can be coaxed around all the political issues that often seem to stop things getting done. Mind you it doesn't sound like much is going to be achieved anytime soon, but at least things are moving. In addition, wouldn't it be nice if it were something like world peace rather than Internet governance? Still, something's better than nothing.

Shadowrun in a nutshell

2005-10-17T09:22:19Z

From this RPGnet review of Shadowrun's fourth edition:

SR4 is a game in which, by default, Players will play Shadowrunners, who are Horrible People that Shoot People Right in the Face for Money. They will form Extravagant Plans, something will go Completely Wrong, but they will Improvise and get Paid Anyway. The Shadowrunners will then Fence the Loot to feed their Crippling Drug Addictions that they acquired so that they would have the build points to better Shoot People Right in the Face.

I think that sums up Shadowrun pretty well. Well actually the few times I played it I don't remember any PCs having Crippling Drug Addictions but that may be because only the fourth edition has merits and flaws as part of the core rules...

Top Fives

2005-09-20T21:46:37Z

This entry would have happened yesterday if it was not for an annoying feature of Opera's mouse gestures. I have learnt my lesson and I'm composing this update in TextPad before pasting it into Opera...

I watched High Fidelity at the weekend. Later, as I pondered my lack of blog updates I decided to take leaf out of John Cusack's character's book. I'd do a top five post. Inspired by what I was doing when I had this idea, here is my top five tracks I listen to at very high volumes when driving:

Long Snake Moan, PJ Harvey. From the opening "Mm hmm..." to the closing roars of guitars and vocals, this is just a great song. Driven along by an energetic bass riff, this song manages to include two fabby guitar breaks inbetween PJ Harvey's feral vocals. It's a great example of a song that's powerful and raw without being dark or bleak with it. The other tracks on To Bring You My Love are very good too but this for me is the stand out track. Is This Desire's Perfect Day Elise may have supplanted this in the top five if the rest of that album was up to the standard of To Bring You My Love. Long Snake Moan is also the song that I'm most likely to turn the volume up for when others are in my car.
Up Above My Head, Alabama 3. From the Brixton collective's latest album Outlaw, though an acoustic version is also available. It opens like it's going to be a cover of Walk This Way but this song is archetypical Alabama 3. Cool riffs, samples and lyrics littered with pop culture references all come together to form an uplifting and immediately accessible track. It just sounds great at high volumes. Woke Up This Morning is the track's obvious competition but I've perhaps been a little too over exposed to that song and besides it seems more prone to distorting at high volumes over my car's speakers than Up Above My Head does.
Someday I Will Treat You Good, Sparklehorse. This is probably the most accessible song on Sparklehorse's first album Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot and thus a primary reason I got into the band. It's a fairly straightforward indie rock song, albeit with some occasionally odd lyrics but it has a great pace and energy. It is also the winner of a special prize for the song that I am most likely to sing along to at loud volumes.
Save You, Pearl Jam. Well they're not short of loud rock songs but this one from Riot Act wins. Get Right from the same album was also in contention as well as tracks from pretty much every other album they've done. Save You probably wins out because Riot Act was one of the first CDs into my car's CD changer and seems to work well in the car. Of course the fact that it's a loud and fast paced rock song with some good example of Eddie Vedder roaring lyrics helps. It is also the sort of tune I wish I could have stuck in my head when I'm tearing down the hillside on my mountain bike. Usually all I have in there when I'm doing that is my own internal commentary ("change gear, haul on the pedals, lean against the corner fool!, arse I'm not going to go into this jump as smoothly as I'd like...") and the noise of the bike going over the trail but who wouldn't like a rock soundtrack to their life?
Lakini's Juice, Live. This one's from Secret Samadhi, the album they made after they stopped trying to sound so much like Pearl Jam. Big chunky guitars are backed up by strings that don't sound too much like an overproduced rock cliche. In conjunction with the lipstick Voodoo lyrics you get a cool heavy rock song with a nice edge of sanity feel. The closest competitors I can think of from Live are Simple Creed from V and Like I Do off Birds of Pray but they don't really come close.

If only the ol tag could do countdowns, then that'd be even better, but there you go. I suppose if you want to make this a whole dirty meme thing you could start giving people top fives to fill in. Hopefully they wouldn't all require so many annoying links...

What I did on my holidays

2005-08-23T12:50:58Z

In lieu of a proper update with a point and stuff, here's a list of some of the things I did during my recent time off from work:

I went to Cambridge:
- There I attended Consternation, a gaming convention, along with freakcrab, silicon_owl, Martin and Oliver.
- I played one roleplaying game, "Abnormal for Norfolk", but it was pretty good.
- I picked up some bargains in the con's auction but also some cheap tat too.
- Just as we do everytime we go to Cambridge, we spent ages wandering around town looking for somewhere to eat
- I went to see The Island. Don't bother. It's pretty upsetting that a film this poor spelt the end of Spare's chances of getting filmed.
- On the way back I actually enjoyed some of the driving. The southern half of the A68 is really nice.
I spent a lot of time clearing out some of the junk from my flat, in particular I emptied the spare room so it was once again spare.
I helped a friend move into my spare room, rapidly making it not spare again.
I threw out a pile of model airplanes. It's amazing that it took me so long to get rid of them, they'd been lurking around since I was at school. It's amazing how much influence sentimentality can exert.
I donated 4 PCs, including monitors, to a PC re-use scheme. And I still have more PCs than I need.
I went mountain biking. Woo-hoo! Three rides and each time I felt my shoulder was stronger and I was more confident. I'm still pretty timid on the bike though, particularly when the terrain turns steeply downhill.
I got a new hydration pack. My old Camelbak was cut off me when I broke my collarbone. The new one (a The North Face Megamouth 18) is dead good.
I went to the pub to join in Andy W's birthday celebrations. I don't actually go to pubs much any more, so it is kind-of worth mentioning.

Like I said, this is a list of things I've done rather than a post with a point. But someone was complaining about my lack of updates. For a clue, look at what I've named my journal - I called it that for a reason...

A little bit of politics

2005-08-07T14:56:11Z

While walking near the city centre yesterday I saw a piece of graffiti on a dumpster. It pointed to the dumpster's lid and said "vote here". I quite liked it. Well, it was nicer than the various tags that covered the other dumpsters nearby.

Missing Mountainbiking

2005-08-01T15:46:33Z

Specific moments:

When I see the Pentland Hills, usually on the way home from work, and they're bathed in sunshine and look magnificent
When I'm driving and listening energetic rock music at loud volumes.
If I let myself wonder whether my friends are out riding and what they may be riding.
When I read the article about riding at some of the 7Stanes and Drumlanrig in issue 22 of Singletrack.
If I realise that I haven't been knackered while still grinning like a loon for ages.

General feelings:

The structure has collapsed from my weekends. If I have riding to do then I get up in the morning. If I'm not riding one day out of a weekend then I still get up reasonably early on both days so I can fit in everything I want to do. These days I sleep in both days, shuffle around for most of the day and end up staying up pointlessly late. I don't really like it but I still do it.
There's a nagging in the back of my head. I'm peripherally aware that there's something else I do, something else I find fun, that I should be doing.
I'm not seeing half of my friends very much because my link to them is largely through riding.

Things that don't really make me miss mountainbiking though you may expect that they would:

Blethering on mountain bike forums. They're there to allow mountain bikers to kill time between rides, so everyone's in the same boat and I don't notice it.
Most articles in mountain bike magazines. I mostly read the reviews and while technical stuff fascinates me, it doesn't actually make me want to ride my bike more. I guess the magazines feed my geekdom while mountain biking itself appeals to a different part of me.
Using a turbo trainer. I expected that this faux-cycling would make me miss proper riding even more but mostly I try not to think at all when on it. It is far better to concentrate on the music and to try and ignore the mind-numbing boredom and discomfort of what you're actually doing.

Because you demanded it!

2005-07-28T17:10:14Z

Well, chimpy_chompy demanded it, I will write some more words about breaking my collarbone. It happened nearly 6 weeks ago now, at Glentress on one of the warmest days of the year at that point.

I had gone to Glentress with the goal of defeating some trail features that had been causing me problems of late. Typically these are steep and steppy downhill sections. On the day though I got absolutely nowhere near them. The skiers, snowboarders and mountain bikers amongst you may well know what a mogul field is. It's an area of ground sprinkled with hemispherical bumps. On a mountain bike there's generally two ways to tackle mogul fields:

Slalom around the moguls, trying not to lose too much speed.
Jump off the first mogul, clearing the rest of the field

Well that fateful day I tried option 2 and really screwed it up. Andrenaline is a wonderful thing. After I crashed I was able to sit up and swear at my bad fortune for several seconds. But andrenaline can only do so much and suddenly I decided to lie back down again and not move at all. By the time my riding buddy caught up with me I had come to suspect that I'd broken my collarbone. I only confirmed that when I attempted to move. I had previously expected that a broken bone would hurt all the time. My collarbone only hurt when I tried to move but by god it made the best of those moments.

Anyway, throught the help of several people I was taken to hospital. I owe them all a great deal. As well as Claire, who I was riding with, two strangers got off their bikes and helped me. One, serendipitously, was a doctor and he was able to get me into a sling and get me walking. That meant I could get to the ambulance without the use of a stretcher. The paramedics took me to hospital and the folks there X rayed me, gave me painkillers and put me in another sling.

According to other mountain bikers who've looked at it, I've done a fair old number on my collarbone. Thanks to the wonders of digital photography, my X ray is now online.

Since then I've had a week off work and 3-4 weeks in a sling. My arm is pretty useable now, but when I had a checkup almost 3 weeks ago, the bone itself was still broken. I can drive, I can write and I can carry things but it's still not very strong. I can't lift heavy things with it, nor can I raise it as high as I can raise my other arm. I cannot sleep on my left side which is very annoying because that's how I usually sleep. Most frustratingly I cannot ride my bike and I doubt I'll be able to do that until the summer's over. Arse.

I'm left handed and for the first few days I could do very little with my left hand. This caused me some difficulties. I had to learn to brush my teeth with my right hand, for example. I couldn't be arsed to shave right handed though so I currently have a beard. Some of my friends seemed fairly surprised by this but as my father has a beard I've always vaguely wondered about having one. I guess they don't seem as unusual to me as they are to the public at large because I grew up around one. Whether I keep it or not is still up in the air.

Ok, that's me out of words for now.