You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Kittens, Guessing, Networking, Tax

Sluggy Freelance pointed to Puppybreak as their complaints department. Aww. :)

And lest we forget the cat-loving among us, there is also Kittenbreak.

For the record, I wouldn't say I was a dog person or a cat person... or a duck, pig or budgie-person, come to that. I don't have any desire to own living things that can crawl under the couch, make secret deposits under my bed, or gnaw on my books, and I'd be worried about the welfare of anything that I was responsible for - I feel its something of a personal triumph that I haven't managed to kill the houseplant given to me during my housewarming. Even if I can't remember what it's called. :)

***

If you're wanting an interesting game that takes advantage of the power of modern search engines, then Guess the Google may be just what you're looking for. It displays the top 20 images for a search term, and you have to guess what the term was - it's kinda fun.

***

Sabrina's father seems to have found the time-zone thing pretty tricky, since she got a call from him at 11:45pm the first night, and 4am the second. (I answered the phone both times, because I've got a receiver right next to my bed.) I found it quite funny, though it was a little hard to get to sleep after the 4am call - if it had happened again this morning, it might have moved from "amusing" to "annoying", but he called at about 8:30am instead, so I have great hopes for the future. ;)

We had a nice flatmate-bonding session last night, because we were trying to get their wireless networking going. Networking is firmly in the hardware support arena for me - and this is the arena where I'm in the "helpless Christian" category, rather than being the guy with the net and trident... Okay, that may be a metaphor too far. Anyway, the challenge of trying to get this stuff to work was compounded by the fact that neither of my flatmate's WinXP installations are in English. The French version wasn't so bad - I could generally guess what various buttons and menu items might be - but the Japanese was pretty inscrutable. And not being able to "drive" is pretty frustrating, especially when they appear to be clicking randomly while you're stopping to try and think.

Anyway, T's network card is set up, and S's card should be set up soon - if nothing else, I should be able to con one of the people coming to the party on Saturday from work to take a look.

***

We got into a big discussion in the office about the correct tax strategy. I'm already paying provisional tax, so consensus seems to be that I should lower my withholding tax to 20%, and use the "extra" income in to lower the amount of interest I'm paying, and hand over the extra dosh during the provisional tax times. On one hand, that seems attractive; but on the other, the fact that my revolving credit account isn't really a real bank account makes everything that much more complicated to manage. :( Other people are planning to raise their withholding tax, so they can keep below the level that triggers provisional tax. Thank goodness I live somewhere with a relatively simple tax structure, rather than, say, the States.

Those of you who are employees don't know how lucky you are. ;)

In other employment news... I just got an email from HR pointing out that my contract only runs until July 1st. So I've now got to decide whether I want to renew until November 1st. This is complicated by the whole "should I ask for more money" thing, which you have to think about as a contractor (since you never get a raise otherwise). Given that they would be well and truly poked if I left in July, you might think that I have a fairly strong bargaining position - but it's always hard to tell whether the people you're negotiating with have any idea what you do. :)

Toads, Pants & MLK

Now, is the Mystery of the Exploding Toads more like a Scooby Doo mystery or a Lovecraftian tale?

***

I ran another session of Changeling last night. Some very good moments on the part of the players, but someone correctly pointed out that the pace has been quite slow for many of the characters. I blame the fact that I prepped insufficiently - I really need to go through and think carefully about the characters and their keys, and have things to throw into the mix if nothing crops up by itself. I also have to resist telling the players too much just because I'm tired, among other failings. ;) Hopefully I'll be more on to it next time.

***

We were talking about the etemology of "pants", as used by the British to indicate that something is useless. We guessed that it might have something to do with Cockney rhyming slang, but that turned out to be a false trail - instead, it seems to be related to the fact that pants is a synonym for knickers rather than trousers in British English.

However, it did lead to a lovely discussion of rhyming slang and its relationship to leetspeak, and (because it was pertinent) what we might be able to call annoying text-message sounds and ringtones. The best we could manage was "Martin Luther King" ( = irritating ring), but no-one has said "Turn off your bloody Martin Luther!". Yet.

ANZAC Day, Flatmate, Home Theatre

You know how some things can be so familiar that you don't really see them any more? Like street lights, for example - if someone says, "Point to the streetlight," then you can do it... well, you're more likely to say, "What?" But you could do it, if you were so inclined.

Memorials to the Great War and WWII can be kind of like that. I don't know what it's like in, say, the US, but I don't think I've ever been to a settlement in NZ or Britain that hasn't had some sort of testament to the people who used to live there, but went overseas and never came back. I know some local stories - for example, at the beginning of WWII the top stream maths class at St Pats all trained as navigators for bombers. None of them made it through the war.

One of the weird things is that it's something that touched the lives of everyone who was around at that time, and it's something that's still in living memory. My father's parents met, in part, because of the war. I can't imagine things getting to the point where NZ reintroduced conscription; but then again, people seemed to genuinely believe that there'd not be another war after the Global War.

ANZAC day was just another working day for me.

I don't think I have any particular point to make.

***

Picked up my new flatmate from the airport. Her plane landed five minutes after three other international flights touched down, so it took about 40 minutes for her to clear customs. I was vaguely worried throughout, since I'd foolishly gone up to the Gate upstairs, rather than down to where Customs lets out. Hey, it's been a long time since I've picked anyone up from an international flight into Wellington!

Anyway, apart from being randomly teased by some complete stranger (he saw the sign I had saying my flatmate's first name, and said he thought I was being optimistic), I had a relatively uneventful time, though it's a weird experience to stand there and try to see whether any strangers are trying to catch your eye. My flatmate, on the other hand, had a passport official who said that she must have the address wrong, because they lived next to my house, and it was empty!

(When we got to the house, Sab (my flatmate) spotted the official on the street - she had obviously decided to make sure that Sab actually arrived. I'm not sure whether that's endearing or creepy.)

First impressions? I think we're going to get along just fine - and I don't base that solely on the fact that she's insisting on not letting me pay for the booze that I got her to get at duty-free, which totally made up for having to pay $6 for the priviledge of parking at the airport. ;) Instead, I base it on the fact that she laughed at some of my jokes, a sure sign of a keen and incisive mind. >;)

For your own first impression... well, Saturday isn't far away!

***

You know what what would be awesome? You know what would be a really, really good use for the space in the roof? Something along the lines of this guy's home theater, that's what! Something to aim for once the mortgage is gone...

Busy weekend, Hi to Workmates

I'm feeling vaguely guilty, as I didn't get as much done on the weekend as I had intended. It was one of the first Fridays I've had to myself in quite a while, and I used it to finish off the Studio Ghibli film collection I've borrowed. Saturday was mainly tidying and cleaning - I got the bedding organized for the new flatmate, and gave her room a quick once-over with a vaccum - and then off to Great India for dinner. We were all impressed by the service, and Debz tried to convince me to ask the head waiter whether they served curries, to see whether he'd say, "Indeed, sir," in a withering Jeeves-like voice. (I declined the challenge.) Later that evening, I got mistaken for an Englishman by ordering a Pims and ginger ale; I'm choosing to read nothing at all into that.

Then, there was Sunday: more tidying, and then off into town for Yum Char at Chow. This was quite different from Grand Century - less roast pork, more "peanut and blue cheese fried dumplings". And the roast pork buns were fist-sized, with one per bamboo steamer. They had a "buy one dish, get one of equal or lesser value for free" deal going, so it actually ended up pretty reasonably priced - one of the veterans told us not to order the custard tarts at the end, because each $2 tart counted as a separate dish (and so it's those that would be free, instead of the $10 cashew and pumkin fritters).

As soon as that was over, I headed back home, just in time to vaccum the rest of the house before having five other people over for dinner. As it turns out, dinner for six is pretty much optimal for my current set-up - I don't have to open the leaf in the table, I have enough crockery and cutlery, and I get to have a whole half-cheesecake to myself afterwards. Uh, I mean, there was plenty of everything to go around. And what's more, I didn't even have to cook! However, I did have to walk down to the dairy in the hail... twice. But the food was totally worth it, so thanks to Y for cooking. :)

When we finished up, it was only about nine, so I was able to get to two of the three other events that I had been asked to that evening. (The two I chose were within walking distance of each other, and the cook wanted to go to one of them - sorry, H&J!) In fact, I managed to see and talk to a remarkable number of people that evening, all things considered. Probably the weirdest burst of synchronicity was being introduced to a British woman who, as it turned out, grew up in Hay-on-Wye (my favourite second-hand bookstore infested Welsh border town). She was invited to the flatwarming, but unfortunately will have left the country by then. And even with all this, I still got home around midnight, and cleaned up enough of the dinner debris to feel virtuous. (This basically translates to rinsing and stacking, but not washing, the dishes, and cleaning up everything else.)

I guess I better make sure I wash the dishes before Tom gets home tonight.

Anyway, all this meant that I still have a couple of things to plant, and I haven't done anything much for the game I'm running tomorrow. Ah well, there's all of tonight - I'll have to prepare a tenancy agreement form and print out one of those bond things, but that still leaves plenty of time once I get home from work.

***

Since my new flatmate has no idea what I look like (and vice versa), I'm going to have to turn up to the airport with the traditional Big Piece of Card with her name on it. My ever-helpful colleagues suggested that it would be funnier if I turned up with a card saying, "I am Svend," but I'm not sure that I need that much help to look retarded for our first meeting. ;)

***

I may have misunderstood, but one of my workmates implied that they had found my blog. If I spent my time trash-talking people at my work, this might worry me - but as it is, I'm merely surprised that they stayed awake long enough to finish an entry. :) It's quite a different situation from the teachers that I know who've got blogging students; I mean, there are aspects of my life that I don't bring up very much at work, like roleplaying, but it's not like my workmates would freak out if they found out I had a life[1] outside work. Well, not all of them, anyway.

From my point of view, pretty much the only extra thing you might take away from finding the site is that I'm overly verbose and hopelessly addicted to parenthetical asides. However, since any email longer than three paragraphs triggers accusations of "doing a Svend", I'm pretty sure that some of them have already noticed.

So - welcome to any readers from work! Hope to see you Saturday! :)

[1] Those snickering about my equating "roleplaying" with "having a life" have obviously never met my gaming groups. :)

Houses, Worst Song, Garden

Two more people in my office have gotten the house-buying bug. One has pretty much finished, but the other is discovering various legal wrangles, and is getting the vibe that the seller and the vendor are hiding something from him. He's not sure that it's not some past history between them, rather than anything to do with the property, but (as he said), "If it really has nothing to do with me, then they need to hide it better." :)

There's talk about "mega-nega-money", which I think is a much better term than "mortgage".

***

I wanted to go to a seminar at Vic that had a title along the lines of "Culturally Aware Persuasive Technologies", but I forgot that this wasn't consistent with my desire to walk into work. :( The walk is pretty good, by the way - it takes about three-quarters of an hour at a brisk pace, and it's a nice amount of time to be listening to music with little or no distraction. And it's exercise, which is good, and not using petrol, which is both environmentally and fiscally responsible.

I'll admit that it's a lot nicer to be walking to work than walking home, though - but I think that's something to do with glorious sunshine vs. dreary cold and dark, rather than any eagerness to get to my computer and start sifting through email. :)

Anyway, to make up for missing the seminar, here's a link to a survey being run by the University of Waikato's Computer Science department to find the worst song in the world. Why don't you go help them out? :)

***

Had lunch yesterday with the elusive Topcat, who long-term friends will remember from Vic Uni's long-vanished BBS. She seemed in good spirits. It's a little sad that nothing sprang up to take the place of the BBS... although perhaps blogs serve a similar purpose. Arguments with Creationists notwithstanding, I suspect I tend to write more here than I did there - and I feel a lot less pressure to be entertaining or relevant, since I don't feel I'm cluttering up a public space if I'm suddenly possessed by a desire to talk about my garden.

... which is something that will need tending to this weekend, I suppose - I've planted a couple of fuscias, but I might put in something colourful and low, like pansies or violets. I should buy some compost, since I seem to be tossing out a lot of dirt while I'm weeding, and my soil doesn't look particularly fertile. Oh, and I need to clean up my front yard - even with the gate closed, I seem to get large quantities of rubbish blowing in from the street. Having visitors on Sunday, and the new flatmate on Tuesday should ensure that the house is pretty tidy - which will be good for next Saturday.

I hope that having the new flatmate turns out well.

Bubba, Killers, Petrol, Work

Watched Grave of Fireflies last night. Thank goodness I had some unwatched Azumanga Daioh on hand to cheer me up again - I watched all of disc 3 to compensate.

I've also been watching Bubba Hotep - the two commentaries, the documentaries, everything. I've been looking forward to watching it based solely on the one line summary, "Bruce Campbell as old Elvis in a retirement home with a black JFK fighting an ancient mummy" - but I hadn't realised that instead of just being a comedic horror, it was actually a redemption story, as well as a comment on how we treat old people in our society. I mean, it's got funny bits in it as well, and horror things, but I think that it manages to be a deeper movie than that, whereas, say, Tongan Ninja gives you precisely what it says on the box. I think Tongan Ninja is a fun film, but in the event I ever make a movie, I hope it's closer to Bubba Hotep.

Actually, I hope it's considerably lighter, with less swearing and cancer of the penis. But in terms of unexpected depth, BH isn't a bad thing to aim for.

***

While it's popular to say that exams don't prepare you for the real world, I would say that this is a pack of lies, at least for some aspects of my job. Being told there's something wrong with a system, and trying to puzzle it out, feels exactly like some of the exams that I had at university.

Actually, if you include the corrections that teachers would send out, saying, "Sorry, there's a typo that means it's unsolvable as stated - here's the actual question," and, "Whoops, we forgot to include this essential piece of information, let's put it up on the board now," then the resemblance is even closer.

Anyway, I'm slowly tracking down an interelated series of problems with a piece of software that I am responsible for on the grounds that I was the one that oh-so-foolishly touched it last. I've come to the conclusion that the only way I'm going to get rid of some of these things is to break them in a really simple way, say, "Oops, I'm really busy, can you fix that," and then pass it off the next thing that goes wrong to the sucker who picked it up, on the grounds that I'm still busy, and they fixed it last time... which is pretty much how I got into this position in the first place, come to think of it.

Anyway, we're slowly uncovering stuff, and I should try to document it, to make it easier to push the problem onto someone else's plate. Or to deal with it more quickly when it turns up again on mine, which seems more likely.

***

There's occasional speculation about our future at work. The truth of the matter is, we probably won't know what's going on until it's pretty much upon us - that's more or less how it happened with the other two big projects that we got between LotR and King Kong, anyway. It doesn't seem like PJ's next film will require all that much in the way of digital effects, so I've heard some artists worrying about a big down-size; but on the other hand, we're unlikely to just hang around until PJ is ready to start his next film.

Well, both I and my mortgage company jolly well hope it's unlikely, anyway. ;)

***

When reading Hitherby Dragons, someone linked to an essay written by someone whose mother was involved with a serial killer. The essay is very good, but I think the most interesting thing is the comments - it shows me very clearly some of the weird religious politics that go on in the States, on both sides of the fence.

***

There's an email doing the rounds - again - advocating that people boycott certain petrol companies, because we're entitled to cheap petrol. It's originally from California, and seems to make the rounds in a slightly modified form every so often. At least it's not a request for postcards to a dying child, or promises that Bill Gates will send me an ipod if I pass on an email message that he'd have no way of tracking.

Busy weekend, P&N, other random stuff.

Had a fairly busy Friday evening - at a friend's birthday until 10:30pm, and then off to meet up with some other friends at Sandwiches. It's been a long time since I've been out on the town until 4am in the morning...

...actually, no, wait, I was out until 3am at Motel the previous Friday. But previous to that, it had been a long time since I had a night so late it was an early morning. :) In both cases, I'm glad I did it, but I'm not sure that I want to do it too often - my weekends tend to be too full of stuff to have time to properly recover.

I also discovered that I am currently about $600 over my overdraft, thanks to my mortgage interest payments. Argh. It's another case of just having to shuffle money around, more than anything else, but it's frustrating to think that this is an artificial problem, induced by the fact that the fixed-term mortgages can't draw on the revolving credit account - it means that I have to continually tweak things by hand, and occasionally get things wrong, like this. I did a bit of overtime last week, which will help, but since I don't get paid until Thursday, I guess I better do something before then.

Of course, given I'm complaining about money, it's somewhat ironic that I just bought a whole lot of anime... but that's an "investment". Yup, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. ;) Besides, it's only a week or so until I get a new flatmate, which means a new revenue stream, bwhah-hah-hah! ;)

I got a bunch of stuff done on Saturday, including some gardening with my Dad, and dinner with Jenni, Lee and others. And Sunday there was the Saga of the Bed, which involved driving the van with an enormous trailer among the windy trails of Roseneath - all praise to Ema, and I hope she does well in her exam. And later that day I had a good yarn with Zephfi, and we watched the excellent The Twins Effect. All in all, a good weekend.

***

Having a quick browse of The Register, I noticed this story about Barcelona upgrading a system to create the
4th-ranked supercomputer. So far, a fairly typical tech story... but notice that it's installed in a chapel. Hmm. What are they doing with that much computing power that requires that it be situated on hallowed ground?

***

In other weird tech "news that confuses", someone at work sent this out, and I thought to myself What the heck? And then I thought - actually, it's kind of cunning of Hitachi, making something that's so insidiously lame that people who'd never read a article about hard-drive technology will see it.

***

Another person at work showed some masterful turns of phrase - here are two that I managed to save:

"More fun that going barefoot in a bucket of mice."
"As easy as shooting kittens in a barrel."

All class.

***

Many have asked - can't ninjas and pirates just get along? Now, through the magic of The Sims, we see that the answer is yes - but it will end in tragedy.

Speaking of magic - I'm not sure I've ever thought, "You know, there are some Live-Action Roleplaying Spells I Could Use, Right Now." But I'm glad that someone else has. In fact, I think there's a real market for the Holy Arrow of Extended Due Date around here...

Okay, that's enough random stuff - time to go do some real work.

P.O. Blues, Game, Captain Vegetable

Woke up this morning,
Woke up this morning,
And my clock said quarter to one.
Woke up this morning,
My clock said quarter to one...
An' I thought to myself, this day ain't gonna be fun.

Drove in this morning,
Drove in this morning,
And the car clock said it was 'round nine.
Drove in this morning
And I noticed it was around nine...
An' I knowed that there'd be no parking for this car o' mine.

Walked in the front door,
Strode in the front door,
Saw the note say'n the network was screwed.
Came in the front door,
Saw that note, said the network was screwed.
I gots the systems team power outage mad scramble tidy-up blues...

(What a pity I don't play an instrument, otherwise I could give you an mp3. :)

***

Ran the first full session of the Changeling game... I'm a little worried that it was too heavily expositional, but people seemed to enjoy themselves well enough. I'm going to have to take notes about what I said about the world - for example, the following freeholds have been mentioned:

The Embassy Theatre, which contains the king's palace.
Wakefield Markets, which belongs to someone Jenni's character doesn't like.
Somewhere in Karori, belonging to a Dougal who's lord to Vax (an Eiluned ally of Jenni's character).
National Library, which belongs to Grand Vizier Marika of House Eiluned.

And as foretold in the prophecy from the character creation session, someone got stabbed in the face - with the jawbone of Maui's grandmother, no less. Oh, I foresee fun times ahead... ;)

***

I think that the story about Cookie Monster cutting back on cookies is interesting because it talks about Seasame Street having a multi-year story arc, rather than using Cookie Monster to remind kids that cookies are "sometimes" food. I mean, surely everyone remembers Cookie Monster dressed in mad bling (yo), singing about "Healthy Food, tastes real good!". And that's disregarding Captain Vegetable!

"It is I - Captain Vegetable!
With my carrot, and my celery!
Eating crunchy vegetables is good for me!
And they're good for you -
So eat them too
For teeth so strong
Your whole life long
Eat celery and carrots by the bunch!
Three cheers for me, Captain Vegetable!
Munch, munch, munch!"

Okay, when I say "everyone remembers", I probably mean "everyone who was a member of the Muppet Club, or is a whole lot younger than me". :) Here's a place where you can apparently download a .wav of the song.

Anyway, I should get back to the damage control...

Busy Weekend, Two Requests, Disco Elevator

Yet another busy weekend descended on my free time like a swarm of free-time-eating locusts. Friday night I went to drinks at the ridiculously expensive Motel, which was very nice apart from the price. Listening to the music they chose to play, it was somewhat eerie to notice how much of it I own - The Andrews Sisters singing Bei Mir Bist du Schoen and Grooving For Mr G, for example. I met a number of new people, and caught up with someone the old university BBS crew will remember as Topcat. I didn't leave until 2-3am, which was something of a mistake, since the next morning I was planning to drive to Palmeston North...

Saturday morning, off to the parents to swap vehicles, and then zooming up to Palmie to see my brother and his wife, and pick up the awesome shelves, which simply slotted into place when I got back to Wellington. I also got a number of plants and cuttings... which I've just realised I really, really have to water/plant tonight. I had lunch up there, and then motored on back home (via Foxton to buy some Foxton Fizz) in time to watch Pom Poko and Kiki's Delivery Service and eat Malaysian with Jenni & Lee.

Sunday, off to deliver stuff to the parents, then out to Newlands for the Gif/Muggle/Sas housewarming, and back again for Dad's birthday, from which I'm still a little full, despite having no lunch. (I did have a bagel, though, so that probably explains it.)

So... I guess tonight is dedicated to game prep, and tomorrow is running the game... and then I think I'm free... until Friday, anyway.

I was wondering why I hadn't done very much overtime recently... I think I may have spotted the answer. :)

***

I believe that the disco elevator has been doing the rounds for a little while now, but I figure there might be someone who hasn't been exposed, so... (Flash with sound, but SFW.)

***

While I remember, I've got a couple of reader requests. Firstly, I've been asked for a (humourous) song concerning a Simon. Any suggestions? The best I've been able to come up with is Jimi Hendrix playing "Simon Says" with a crowd, which is hardly on a par with the best of Flanders & Swann or They Might Be Giants. It's a pity that they're not looking for something about a Trevor, or better yet, a Kenya.

The second thing is - does anyone have FileMaker experience, and want a bit of work? It's not here at Weta, but it might be interesting, and is certainly with cool people... unfortunately, I can't help them, since any spare work-time I have should really be spent at my current work.

V8, Bad Food, Movies

I am now a ratepayer. This means that I find this critique of the economic justification for the V8 race kind of interesting, if only because it shows how the Council seem to be overselling the event, either deliberately or through ignorance.

I don't watch motorsport, but I acknowledge that a lot of people enjoy it. My problem with funding this event is that it smells way too much like a scam. That, and it's really clear that the people who'll be benefitting from it won't be the ones paying for it - I mean, I'm not going to be getting $270 back for the $40 I'll be paying, unless visitors sign some sort of waiver thing allowing me to mug them, or something.

There's an online form to voice your support or disapproval, with the figures that they are quoting about the costs and benefits. They don't mention the fact that Canberra bought themselves out a very similar contract just recently, because they were losing too much money... but on the other hand, I guess they wouldn't.

***

On a happier note, I'm not sure that this is what ARPAnet's creators had in mind as the future of computer networking, but I think we can join together in saying: Steve, Don't Eat It! (Thanks to stupidstuff for pointing this out to me.)

Oh, which reminds me, there's currently an article on the creation of unix, networks, and the emergence of open source on Groklaw. I hadn't realized that they started writing Unix and connected up ARPAnet the same year that they landed on the moon; nor that Linus Torvalds was born in that year. That's kind of cool.

***

Don't know what the title of the movie would be, but how about this for a tagline: "Getting in touch with your mescaline side."

BTW, they're going to be making a sequel to Pretty In Pink. I immediately thought, "Well, it worked for Before Sunrise and Before Sunset..." And then I slapped myself around a bit. :)

Fireplace, Flash, Monkey Butler

My brother finished making shelves to go over the fireplace in the currently unoccupied room. They are awesome, I'm sure you'll agree, as is he.

Now all I have to do is get the bed from Ema's basement, and the impending French materials scientist will have a place to sleep, and a place to put stuff; once I fix the handles on her wardrobe door, she should be all set. I'm considering buying a spare duvet and sheets for guests, now that I have a linen cupboard and everything... although at the moment, that cupboard is full of miscellaneous electronic stuff, like a spare tv and video. I guess I should think about a good reorganize in the near future.

Hmm. On one hand, I can see it'd be kind of daft for the new flatmate to buy bed stuff, since she's only here for four months. On the other hand, I suspect providing sheets, pillows and a duvet may be more than a landlord would normally be expected to do for a tenant. I guess we'll see - the fact that the Warehouse has some really cheap sets of stuff at the moment could be taken as an argument either way. :)

I hope that she's pleasant, and interesting, and doesn't set fire to anything accidentally. Or on purpose, come to that.

***

I recently found a useful FAQ for those of you wanting to install linux on a dead badger; this was surprisingly relevant to me for reasons to complicated to go into here. However, this reminded me of the good old badgerbadgerbadger, which in turn reminded me that Everyone Loves Magical Trevor... yeah yeah, yeah, the cow is back! And then suddenly - he's ten times as slick!

I guess it's because everyone loves the chocolate. Or maybe because Your All Gay - the song dedicated to inept insulters everywhere.

Okay - those five are flash files with sound, so those of you without headphones at work won't care, and many of you will have already seen them - but hey, I've now listened to Magical Trevor 2 about 20 times... it's just so catchy! :)

***

Heh. We just had a discussion in my office about a great idea for a series of flash cartoons - "Damn You, Monkey Butler!" I could provide more context, but I'm not sure that would improve anything - but come on, the cartoons practically write themselves!

Changeling, Tricks, Wireless

Managed to just finish the first draft of the rules, and made a copy for everyone, two pages per page... and managed to put the original pages on the photocopier the wrong way around, so that it was really confusing to read. :p

Anyway, people managed to make characters, despite the fact I hadn't managed to write a "creating a character" example; and we even managed to squeeze in one scene, which had the following script for the Sluagh known as the Three Sisters:

Heidi: Something will happen during the Convention at the Queen's Warf.
Hannah: Something terrible.
Lorilei: Something glorious.
Heidi: There will be those whose destinies intertwine with yours, for a time.
Lorilei: There will be a Chrysalis.
Hannah: There will be a death.
Heidi: Some will be there to raise a power.
Hannah: Some will be there to strike in vengence.
Lorilei: [glancing at Hannah] Some will be there because they are sad, lonely geeks with no lives.
[pause]
Hannah: [sarcastically] Some think My Little Ponies are an art form.
Lorilei: [hissed] Some have James Marsters screen-savers.
Hannah: [half-standing] Some will be getting stabbed in the face...
Heidi: Sisters!
[They both subside, glaring at each other.]
Heidi: Here are tickets to the event – pray be in the central square at midday.

I'll be fixing rules stuff, adding examples, page numbers, and maybe even an index. Looks like it'll be 40-50 pages in the end; I'll give people a heads-up when it's done.

We're actually playing next week - it'll be interesting to see how that goes. My initial impressions? The Keys mechanism give the players a big reason to be proactive (though a big chunk of that may be down to the player) - one of the consequences of this is that I'll be less pressured to drop things into the game for the characters to be reactive to. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

***

One of the cool things I learned from Tricks of the Trade is what "diva darts" are. And how about these two tips:

Customer Service Representative: If you're faced with an irate customer on the telephone who won't let you help him, leave them on hold for about three minutes, then pick back up and pose as the manager. Thinking they've "won" the battle, the he customer is much more likely to work with you.

Irate Customer: If you faced with bad service and are being "escalated," calm down before interacting with the next person up the chain of command. The lowly incompetent drone you've been howling at will likely warn his supervisor to expect a raging psychopath; if you are on your best behavior when the manager speaks with you, he will probably be confused and much more inclined to help you out.

Heh. :)

***

Got my 3Com wireless router yesterday, as well as a wireless card for my box, so I'll be able to charge my flatmates with thew cable modem part of the TelstraClear bill in good conscience - once I get around to plugging everything in and set up. The only downside is that I'm even more tempted to buy a laptop... and one of the people in the office has been getting prices from IBM through work, and it'd only cost about $3k, and I'd be able to claim the GST back immediately, and depreciate it something like 49% in the first year, so that'd be about $500 back off my next tax bill. But... that's more than $250 in extra interest on the mortgage in the first year, plus the $3k capital that I wouldn't be paying off. At the moment, I'm thinking that it's a pity that I didn't work out how to do depreciation and so on a year ago. :)

There are lots of really neat things that laptops would let me do... but most of them I can do with hardware I've got at the moment, one way or another. For example, music for games at other people's houses can be done with my mp3 player, as long as I'm careful to set it up appropriate playlists beforehand. Oo, I might set up one of my unused boxes in the main room, so I can browse and stream mp3s there. Hey, with a infrared keyboard and mouse, I could do some pretty nifty things.

But a laptop would still be pretty neat. :)

Changeling, Bash

Well, I'm most of the way through rewriting White Wolf's "Changeling" setting to use The Shadow of Yesterday ruleset. A legitimate question would be - why, when there are at least two perfectly reasonable rulesets for playing Changeling? (The WW tabletop rules, and the Shining Host LARP rules.) Wouldn't my time be better spent writing up the adventure that I'm meant to be running tomorrow?

And indeed, wouldn't my time be better spent writing either the adventure, or the rules, rather than creating another journal entry?

While I have no good answer to the last question, I've never been very happy with some of the assumptions of the default setting, and this gives me a chance to remind myself of the things I like about it, while formally chucking out the bits I don't. While playing around with the Cantrip system, for example, I've ended up messing with the Art descriptions quite a bit, and have tended towards the model used in Hosts rather than the tabletop version.

Anyway, I'm getting close to finishing the rules, which given I've basically used no text from any of the original Changeling sources (except a number of titles), is no mean feat. It looks like it'll be about 25-30 pages when I'm finished, though there's plenty more I could do. I might put a link up, or I might decide that I prefer to avoid having my pants sued off me by White Wolf's attack lawyers. ;)

***

And now for the non-roleplayers... it's been interesting to read what some people choose to tell the world about. I mean, I can't imagine writing about liking a girl - and not just because I know my Mum reads this (Hi Mum!). It probably has something to do with the fact that I can't imagine talking about liking a girl.

"Liking a girl". Good grief, what am I, from the fifties? :)

***

The mighty Need to Know pointed at the good old IRC not-always-safe-for-work humour site, bash.org.

WallJam7: roses are red
WallJam7: violets are blue
WallJam7: all of my base
WallJam7: are belong to you

***

Anyway, back to trying to get ready for tomorrow.