Whatever next? - PhotoShop tennis!

Fine bunch of nimrods you are!

No-one turned up last night! Humph. But I was determined to have a nimrod evening so I actually finished glueing my IceHouse pieces together. Now I can play IceTraders, Martian Go, Zarcana etc. Groovy!

Anyway, I'm so disgusted that I'm running away to sea - on the lovely Irene Jack. So no more postings for a week.

Read Robert Locke's refreshing plea for an open mind about evolution. Excellent stuff!

About Board Games is a massive resource - and I'd never even heard of it before today. Loads of game-related stuff.

For example they have a fascinating interview with James Ernest, the founder of Cheapass Games.

From Kory Heath - an illuminating discussion of game design, elegance and emergent phenomena. It would be interesting to think about these ideas - which Kory has developed through his interest in abstract games - in relation to elegant wargames (they feel elegant to me, anyway) such as Paths of Glory or Krieg.

This is not a drill.

Come over to my place Thursday (23 August) at 8pm. We might play Samurai. We might play 1876. We might play Cosmic Encounter. (Why not? Let's live a little!) My paper IceHouse pieces might even be ready for action. Bring wine and beer. Eat Steve's corn-chips.

And I promise not to cancel this one.

Having spent Saturday night sleeping in a marquee (don't ask), I was napping at 2pm on Sunday when James arrived hungry for a Paths of Glory foursome, closely followed by Dave and James. I was still feeling groggy, so I let James and Dave slug it out in the grand old manner, while I had a quieter afternoon teaching Steve the game and having a much gentler war of it.

The slugathon next door came to a spectacular conclusion when James managed to lose about three quarters of the German army in France, and Dave gave a fine example of his trying not to look smug face. My Germans were dealt a lesser but still bruising setback by Steve's Brits at Calais. After poor James left for home we gave my new Aquarius deck a quick outing, which everyone agreed was great fun, and more thought-provoking than the hippy graphics would suggest. A great nimrod afternoon - thanks guys.

Andrew Maly's Up Front Page is still there, after all these years, and back issues of Mike Nagel's (now defunct) Relative Range.

Amazingly, Andy has also published the whole UpFront! Rulebook as HTML. What a labour of love! Mind you, this game deserves to be loved.

Big congratulations to Phil, my younger son, who achieved great results in his AS-levels. Here are his grades:

A Law
A Sociology
B English
C Art

Well done, Phil!

John Cooper's four-eleven is one of the weirdest, but also most strangely compelling, weblogs I have come across. He just records whatever is happening to him at 4:11pm every day! He is part of the Looney Labs crowd so his entries are quite often games related. He also has some sort of science job and I'm still trying to figure out what it is from the limited snippets of information in enigmatic entries like this:

010703 tue
"That's our big guy," I say, pointing to Hardy, our lab's six-foot diameter sphere. Then Sandy and I turn to exit the cleanroom.

Isn't it always the way? When I'm looking forward to a quiet evening at home to catch up with chores, I always seem to get button-holed for some urgent task just before I leave work! But the people concerned have just given me a Lions rugby shirt, which is a really nice gesture of appreciation. And it's still only 6pm, so it wasn't actually that much of a sacrifice!

More from Gavin, who writes:

Kill me now! I have just ordered my first ever real BOARD GAME! After reading about "Kill Dr Lucky", I decided I had to have it. And it was only a fiver! Bargain.

[If any potential advertisers are reading, please note the revenue generating potential of this weblog.]

Gavin has also had an article published on www.bbc.co.uk/bristol!

Had a great time on Saturday at Jonny and Caroline's new beach-hut down at Bournemouth. It was a bit blowy, but regular cups of tea kept us warm, and we played boules, rounders, and even went for a dip, as well as having a massive barbeque. Lots of people there, with lots of little kids running around, it was great!

A bit of serendipity had a feature on Radio 2 yesterday about beach-huts, pointing out www.beach-huts.co.uk where I can search for one of my own to buy! However, there are many more wanted than for sale or to let adverts.

Gavin really needs to work on his negotiating skills.

When I offered my tape-chewing VCR to anyone who wants to risk it, Gavin offered to give me £30 for it!

Talking of Gav, the vote about his plastic surgery is balanced on a knife-edge, so go over there and vote NO to save him from a future with numb lips.

Apologies to anyone who was planning to come, but I'm cancelling this Thursday's session at my place (16 August) as I am going to the Proms!

Does anyone want a VCR?

I replaced mine this weekend, because it occasionally chews up tapes. I'm not willing to risk my Star Wars trilogy! It's a Toshiba, only three years old. It may be relatively simple to fix. If you want it you can have it.

Friday evening picked William up and drove over to James' place deep in West Wiltshire. Met Emma, his wife, who is not only pretty and charming, but also a keen games player. Easy to see now why James always wears a happy smile!

We played Linie 1 (I can never get my head round this game), Castle (intriguing - but has little rules printed on cards which you need to read from the other side of the table), and Kill Dr Lucky. The last one was the highlight - like Cluedo, only fun. Instead of detecting a crime you have to commit it! You wander around a big house looking for a nice old man called Dr Lucky, then attempt to kill him! This is a great piece of game design, elegant, amusing, and very tactical.

Thanks James for a great evening, and for feeding and watering us so generously.

Observations of a Game Tester is a great piece of writing which shines the clear light of experience on what makes a good game. It also puts into words many of the reasons why I enjoy mucking about with games so much.

Good grief, a massive archive of IceHouse games!

Well, is Happy Fun Die a game? It's certainly the funniest set of game rules I've read in a while.

Place your vote at Planet Gaz for whether he should have his jaw operation. As his Dad, I'm campaigning for a big NO vote!

I was as irritated as the next man when Seamus Heaney pipped JK Rowling to the Whitbread Book Prize: but I'm listening to him reading his translation of Beowulf as I drive to work this week, and I have to admit I'm bowled over by it.

More tantalising details of the forthcoming Napoleonic Wars. Better start saving for 2002 straight away - there's going to be this, Barbarossa to Berlin, and Ancients Battle Cry, just for starters.

killingthebuddha is fantastic.

Any nimrod with an interest in the Napoleonic Wars will be pretty excited by this news from GMT Games. Oh there's a bright day gonna dawn.......

James Lileks is fascinating today for his American-eye view of The Royle Family.

Betty Bowers is a Better Christian Than You - pretty bad taste but very funny! And a fair target?

There will be no gaming at my home this Thursday, but James has kindly invited us over to his place for a session on Friday (10th August). Please contact him (JamesCros@farming.co.uk) if you need directions. (I know I do!)

The Cheapass Games Double Secret Web Page looks interesting, especially Brawl. Kickboxing teenage girls in leotards, sounds good to me!!

Stuff this! I'm going out on my bike......

I'm also spending far too much time in front of my PC this weekend when I should be out in the sunshine. Unavoidable, as it is work-related. Upgrading a development box to SQL Server 7. Lost one of their databases unfortunately - oops! Hope no-one notices.

Hmm. Still glueing my paper Icehouse pieces together. Good grief, there are lots of them......

OK, as promised, here are some Things that Grind my Nads

Guys gesturing at me when I overtake them

Chocolate on my new keyboard (Phil!)

John Humphreys

Overfishing of the North Sea

Bad losers

Erm......can't think of anything else. I'm just not angry enough!

Good grief, the ultimate in design-your-own religion! - the SpeakOut.com Religion Selector. Worryingly, I came out as 100% Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic. Which confirms what I have suspected for a while, I'm just not cut out to be a Protestant!

Low turnout at last night's nimrod session - just William!

Where were you all? Enjoying yourselves doing something else, I suppose.....well, that's just not acceptable!

We played Space Hulk, great fun, I won both times, but William seemed to enjoy the game nonetheless.

No session next week, I'm afraid, normal service resumed Thursday 16 August.

Do I come across as too enthusiastic?

Reading my recent posts I get that impression. All these positive feelings can be a bit wearing. There are lots of things that grind my nads too, maybe I should write about them sometimes? What do you think?