JamesG

Awesome

2008-07-06T12:49:21Z

I'm sitting down to a BLT sandwich for lunch ... and the salad is all out of my own garden.

Slug hunting

2008-07-03T22:09:06Z

I've just been out in the garden with a torch and gardening gloves hunting slugs and snails and throwing them over the back fence into the common (where if there's any justice they will get eaten by birds). There were dozens of the things... probably getting on for 60 to 100. Many of them made anguished sounding squeaks on being picked up. I think I got most of them, and stepped on a couple by accident which rubs my pacifist sensibilities up the wrong way. I think the ideal solution would be to find a hedgehog and build it a little house at the bottom of the garden, that way I'm helping wildlife rather than hurting it, but my poor beans certainly don't have any sympathy (or many leaves) and all the buds on my courgettes are gone :(

Raining

2008-07-02T16:42:08Z

After about two weeks of glorious sunny weather it started to rain today. I got a little damp walking home, but on the bright side I won't have to water the garden ... well, maybe just the tomatoes.

Yay me

2008-06-28T10:16:52Z

Took and passed my driving theory test this morning, 50/50 on the multiple choice and 60/75 on the hazard perception (pass mark is 44/75). Next up, talk to thurisaz_art's hubby about lessons and booking a practical test...

Gardening

2008-06-25T22:42:25Z

A week last Sunday my mother came up and helped me clear the horrible mess of weeds out of my garden. We took a load of bags of rubbish to the tip, and I got rid of a bunch more this weekend. She also brought me three tomato plants, and a bunch of scaffold planks my step dad had cut into meter lengths for me (as well as several packs of home raised sausages).

Last week I ordered a vegetable garden set from Crocus, which arrived on Friday. Saturday morning was spent assembling the raised beds; over the weekend I made several trips to the DIY superstore, mostly for compost (filling raised beds takes a lot of compost). Sunday I got back from swimming, and finally got everything into the beds.

The first of the raised beds has been filled, and I need to go to buy more compost...

In the first bed, Dwarf french beans either side of the pyramid of runner beans, two courgettes and one yellow courgette, borlotti beans, and purple sprouting broccolli. The twine marks out approximate 1' squares for ease of planting and identifying groups.

The second bed has golden acre and savoy cabbage at the back, peas in the middle, and assorted salad greens at the front.

The third bed has ten sweetcorn plants (which need to be planted in a group for wind pollination), and six cauliflower.

The three tomato plants are in pots at the end of the garden.

Herbs on the patio, from right to left, Greek basil, sage, rosemary, African blue basil, chives, Tarragon, Thyme, Lemon Thyme.

AGS Coffeeshop crash

2008-06-23T20:51:50Z

On Saturday a few members of the AGS went to Coffee and Corks for this month's games social (campus rooms being in the clutches of Conference Office for the vacation) much fun was had...

Here Simon, Roo, Matt and Elton are seen playing Ninja Burger, the game of Ninja delivery agents ... if you need a burger on board a nuclear submarine, atop Mount Everest or in the middle of an anime convention, Ninja Burger is the restaurant to call. The others had got a game in before I arrived, but I managed a close victory in the second.

After two games of Ninja Burger, we moved on to Lord of the Fries, a game of zombies working at a fast food restaurant (fast food was kind of a theme this afternoon). Roo won the first game using the regular menu, with an interesting strategy of never calling so emptying her hand first and therefore not losing any points for cards in hand at the end of the game. In the second game we used the Ratherbee's Steakhouse menu, and I managed to win thanks to a couple of high scoring rounds.

The event will be repeated over the summer, check the AGS website for details.

There will be a short delay

2008-06-22T18:29:04Z

The promised updates will have to wait for tomorrow, I was in the garden until quarter to seven, have just eaten, and am now going out to a game...

A resolution

2008-06-22T08:05:49Z

I haven't posted anything here for ages. I will start posting again regularly. I will write more in general.

Two more updates later today on what I've been up to this weekend - gardening and gaming.

Too tired this morning

2008-02-11T09:44:16Z

First, sorry for going so long without an update, then making it such a quick one!

The Vice-Chancellor is visiting our section at the university this morning. Since my promotion, I've been wearing suits to work and generally looking quite smart. Despite having shined my shoes over the weekend ready for tiday, I put on my trainers this morning without even thinking, and didn't notice this until I got in to work. D'oh! Hopefully she won't notice...

First day in the new job...

2007-12-03T13:31:10Z

...well I've survived until lunchtime at least, and am trying to relax a little. I came in a bit early to shift my computer and everything else I need in to my new office from next door and generally get settled in. So far I've mostly been doing my old job as there's no one else in the office today to do it, but there's various meetings today and later in the week that will make things more involved. I have a bit of time off I need to use up before the end of the year, so will be taking a long weekend - hopefully I'll sort out some of my Christmas shopping! Everyone is being really friendly and supportive, so things are looking good so far.

Dragonmeet

2007-12-01T23:17:09Z

Had a fun, if tiring, day at Dragonmeet today. Having left in what I felt was good time ended up running a little late due to delays on the train near Chatham. The con felt a little quieter in previous years, possibly due to problems with the website, and it was of course a shame that John Kovalic (muskrat_john) had needed to cancel, but despite that everything seemed to go well.

angusabranson was running around like a mad thing running the show, with frequent announcements to drum up interest for games and seminars; I managed to have a brief chat with him, and congratulate him on Cubicle 7's licence announcement - a Doctor Who rpg! I don't envy them the licensing issues on that one, but look forward to seeing the end result. The material they had for Starblazer Adventures, due out early next year also looked very interesting.

I did a bit of shopping, picking up Burning Empires from Leisure Games, unfortunately they didn't have any copies of Reign in stock, which is the other RPG.net darling I'd been hoping to get at the show. I also bumped into Pookie (pwca) who introduced himself and proved he read this journal by congratulating me on the new job! Pleasure to meet you sir.

In the afternoon I ran the GURPS Discworld scenario, Lost Temple of the Volcano God of Slakki. I got five players signed up for this and much fun was had by all. End of the day I bumped into another of the Canterbury gamers, and we headed back for our train (narrowly missing one due to the wait for a Circle line train, but at least getting something to eat on the way).

Double woohoo!

2007-11-29T09:26:51Z

I'm pleased to say I got the job! The interview panel was really impressed with my presentation and happy with my answers to their tough questions. They told me yesterday afternoon, but with instructions to keep it reasonably quiet until they could announce it to the rest of the office this morning. As it's an internal move they want me to start on Monday, which is a little nerve racking - I'd vaguely expected a January start, giving me the Christmas break to get my head around it. It will be odd being the boss in a suit in the office next door, rather than one of the team in the trenches, but I'm looking forward to it - and the pay rise will be welcome!

Woohoo!

2007-11-14T11:37:55Z

My boss has been seconded to a job in the Vice-Chancellor's office for a year, so when his post came up on the Personnel website I applied ... this morning I got e-mailed to invite me for an interview on the 27th. This will be a short presentation on issues related to organising exams followed by a formal panel interview. Bit nervous, haven't given a formal presentation for ages, but at least I'm fairly familiar with the subject matter...

TV listings

2007-10-10T09:06:47Z

Season two of Eureka (pointlessly called "A town called Eureka" for the UK) was on Sky last night ... episode 3 of season two. Likewise I noticed season four of The L Word is on Friday night (at midnight) episode six. I haven't watched much Sky lately, so could understand missing a Eureka trailer, but I'd been looking out for The L Word over the summer, and it appeared without any fanfare whatsoever. Time to break out the torrent downloads I guess. I did manage to spot the new season of Ugly Betty which started last Friday, and Charlie Jade, which had been getting teaser trailers two months ago...

Unread books meme

2007-10-05T15:21:26Z

Seen at various points on my Friends list, but specifically pinched from rimrunner:

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby-Dick
Ulysses
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies *
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
1984
~~Angels & Demons~~
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela's Ashes : A Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People's History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves*
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down*
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit*
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

I haven't actually finished Collapse yet, but I've only got a couple of chapters left... I'm using a very generous version of "on my to read list" in that if the title made me think "I should read that" I underlined it, but that doesn't mean I own a copy or anything.

Belated GenCon report

2007-09-14T22:32:24Z

So I was at GenCon UK in Reading for the first weekend of September. Arrived early Thursday afternoon, got slightly lost walking to the university campus, but managed to arrive and get checked into my room. The campus was irritating in that there were no straight lines between anywhere, and attempts to take shortcuts were generally blocked by hedges, fences, or building sites...

The convention locations were somewhat spread out; the main building had the registration desk, and rooms for sponsors, the trade hall was in a separate building, the RPGA games in another, and demo games room (where I was based with the other SJ Games Men in Black at the con) was in an entirely different building, on the second floor. Because of this there wasn't exactly much passing traffic and I didn't get any games in on Thursday afternoon at all. I went to the on site catering facility for the evening (having missed breakfast and lunch while travelling) ... the food was terrible. So terrible in fact, that I didn't finish it and went to bed miserable and hungry.

Friday morning was still quiet; played a game of Kings Blood with fellow MiB and GURPS author Phil Masters in the morning, and ran a demo game of Crime Lords for a couple of people in the afternoon. Entertaining, and it's much more fun as a multiplayer game than two players. Having learned my lesson I went back into central Reading Friday night for a meal at Nandos - much better move, as apparently several people who eat on campus that evening suffered mild food poisoning!

On Saturday morning I ran a Discworld scenario, which I may well run again for the AGS intro meeting next weekend. This was a very silly game and much fun was had by all ... the characters managed to argue their way out of the last combat on a technicality, which allowed the players to get to lunch before their afternoon games. I then spent most of the afternoon uneventfully on the demo table, but shortly before I was about to pack up and head to dinner got a couple of people for a Dinohunt game, another game I really love to play. Phil and I went in to Reading for dinner at Wagamama's - Mmmm ramen...

I had two players sign up on Sunday morning for a Transhuman Space scenario, so Phil volunteered to play the other three characters as NPCs which made the game run much more smoothly. In the afternoon I bumped into a friend at the reenactors' tent, got a demo game of Wizkid's Star Wars constructible game, which was fun, and I pick up a couple of bit for that. At that point it was time to head off to catch my train, after a few hurried goodbyes. Standing room only on the train from Reading to Paddington, and the Circle line closed for maintenance :-( Still got in to Canterbury in time for the regular Sunday night game though.

That career meme

2007-09-14T16:56:04Z

It seems like half my friend list has done this...

1. Go to http://www.careercruising.com.
2. Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark.
3. Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
4. Post the top fifteen results.

1. Physicist
2. Computer Engineer
3. Astronomer
4. Mathematician
5. Technical Writer
6. Meteorologist
7. Researcher
8. Oceanographer
9. Cartographer
10. Historian
11. Marine Biologist
12. Biological Tech
13. Multimedia Developer
14. Paleontologist
15. Aerospace Engineer

I guess that Astrophysics degree was the right idea ... if only I had a research job!

Home and Garden

2007-08-16T16:38:53Z

Got a leak in the ceiling below the bathroom last weekend; with the help of a friend we got a couple of floorboards up, and the panel off the service duct to the flat above. There was lots of dampness visible, but unfortunately no sign of it's origin, though the shape of the damp patch on a beam suggested it might be in the duct. Put a heater and a fan in the room to try and dry it off a bit, hopefully at least showing where the water came from better. There doesn't seem to have been that much improvement, though there is a possible drip at the broken edge of floorboard coming out from under the bath, suggesting there's a problem in there... The next step is going to be contacting the council (who own the block, and hold the buildings insurance) and seeing about arranging a plumber to track it down and fix it properly.

The other thing I did over the weekend is have another go at clearing the weeds out the garden. This is now much improved (though there's still ivy covering a fair chunk of the patio) and I have a big pile of weeds and such that will probably become a bonfire this weekend. Having been cleared the garden is looking pretty barren. I'm thinking about putting some small raised beds in for vegetables (probably 4, about 1m square each), but I've probably missed planting time for most things. I should also clear the moss and put some turf down between those. I suspect I should make a compost bin, or at least a heap, as well...

Note to self

2007-08-14T10:30:38Z

Caffeine is not a substitute for a good night's sleep... Looking forward to a lie in after the resits finish.

Quick update

2007-08-11T08:22:06Z

I really suck at posting regularly, don't I! Currently in the middle of the resit exams at work, which has meant slightly long, busy days, but not as bad as the main exams during May/June. It has put a dent in my exercise time though!

About to leave for a Karate class on campus; a sensei is coming down from London to take a class. This will be followed by a group BBQ, which as I usually have to rush back to work after the lunchtime classes will be a nice opportunity to socialise.

This evening a friend is having his 40th birthday party, fancy dress with the theme of Heroes and Villians. I'm going to go as MacGyver, mostly because it's something I can manage with minimal effort ... all my other ideas were abandoned when I realised there was only two weeks prep time left and one of those was going to be taken up with resits.

Tomorrow, hopefully going to get a bit more work done sorting out the garden, which after last weekends efforts is better, but not good.

Haven't heard from prettyfrenchgrl for a couple of weeks, which always gets me slightly down. Hopefully she's well and just busy with her work and social life, but an e-mail or something would have been nice!

Now going to rush off and try and get some laundry on before I leave for class! Will try to make proper updates more frequently.

Potty about spoilers

2007-07-20T11:31:46Z

I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan; I think the books are OK, but I've not been desperately looking forward to 7 or anything. Thing is, after this weekend I will get spoilered; and if I know how it ends I might not bother to read it at all... so I might see if I can get a cheap copy at midnight just so I can find out what happens from the source.

I generally try to avoid spoilers, but it's difficult sometimes. I got badly spoiled for Battlestar Galactica this year, with both the really awesome bits from Exodus part 2 turning up unprotected online where I didn't expect, so I was disappointed at not getting the full impact on actually seeing the episode.

ASDA say they're selling Hollows for £5 which has to be less than cost so not only would I avoid spoilers, it would hurt Walmart ;-) I'll see how I feel around midnight...

Day in the country

2007-07-14T21:20:46Z

I'm visiting my Mum on the farm for the weekend, which is a nice break. There's been lots of progress to the barn conversion since I was last here, which is now looking very house like, but still a fair amount of work to be done.

Today we went to the Michelham Priory Game Fair, where Mum and Jon were helping out with the gun dog events. I got to watch some of the displays (including the Falconry, which is always impressive) wandered around the stalls, and had a go at the air rifle and clay shooting stands (doing OK on the air rifle, but pretty poorly on the clays).

Got home in time to feed the animals, had dinner and are now watching "Bride and Prejudice".

All this exercise can't be good for me...

2007-07-11T21:42:54Z

I signed up for the sports centre on campus a couple of weeks ago; the rate for staff is pretty good compared to a commercial gym (students get it even cheaper) there is a good selection of classes, and they did a fitness assessment and gym program when I signed up.

I've thrown myself in fairly heavily while I've got the enthusiasm on my side, in an attempt to get into a routine. Monday is the tough day, Karate at lunchtime, which is a very physical class (and often overruns it's hour!) and circuits after work, which is a tough class, but hard work, several friends also do that, so it's nice to see them as well. The combination of both those classes in one day is hard though, so I'm not sure that I'm going to keep doing both every week. Tuesday is Iaijutsu (which is a lot of fun and isn't as strenuous as the other classes) before work and gym after, Wednesday is Karate at lunchtime again, Thursday is gym after work, and Friday is Iaijutsu in the morning.

So far, hard work but I'm enjoying it. Hopefully it will get easier rather than less fun.

Saturday in London

2007-06-25T21:42:39Z

On Saturday, I went up to London to meet ncp and her husband. I've known her for over ten years now and it was the first time we have met in person. We met at Victoria (slightly delayed due to problems they had at the hotel) and from there headed to Buckingham Palace, arriving just in time to see the Changing of the Guard. From there we walked down The Mall to Trafalgar Square, stopping for food before walking past Downing Street to the Houses of Parliament and taking a tour of Westminster Abbey. After that we took the tube across town (irritatingly the District and Circle line was closed, so diverting by the Jubilee) to see Tower Bridge and the Tower of London.

It was a good day, and hopefully we will see each other again in less than ten years!

Doctor Who: The Sound of Drums

2007-06-24T16:49:40Z

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

It's far to long until next episode!