It's all been a bit of a social whirl the last few days. Thursday was Book Group with Helen in Richmond. (This month's book was Fingersmith. Observation - women feel as uncomfortable discussing lesbian sex scenes as men do with gay sex scenes.) Friday was Scottish country dancing at St James the Less in Pimlico (Rob McGovern who features in my blogroll was there with his wife Roberta). Followed by crashing at Abi and Esther's place in Tooting. Snatched a few hours at home on Saturday before rushing over to Salisbury for dinner party hosted by Catherine and Shaun. Shaun cooks a fantastic curry. Stayed over and visited Harnham Free Church on Sunday morning. Had 20 minutes at home before Dave arrived to complete destroying me at Europe Engulfed. Quiet Monday night, thank goodness (except spending most of it on the phone to Fiona), but off to Salisbury again tonight for a barbeque at Bill and Maggie's place.

As an INFJ I badly need a few days of solitude to re-energize myself....

At last I've found it! Victory in the Pacific - 2nd Edition Rules. My copy of this game is the first edition, with its confusing and misleading rules.

I completely redid my garden this week - which I have been negelecting for months. On Monday I spent about half an hour removing dead plants and completely digging it over. And on Tuesday I spent about £9.50 at the garden centre and 20 minutes planting out my garden. It looks great. Are you impressed? Am I some sort of gardening super-hero? The Charlie Dimmock of Farnham? Perhaps I should mention that my "garden" is a 5'x4' balcony with 3 plant boxes and three terracotta pots. Even so, it's now a very pleasant place to be.

I'm slowly piecing together a local gaming network for myself. On Sunday I went to the Alder Valley Games Society's monthly boardgaming afternoon. Last time I visited the society I was a bit discouraged to find that they concentrate on RPGs and CCGs. But this time I got to play Battle Cry (lost), Settlers (missed winning by one turn), and Ra (lost badly). Genial opponents, and a fun afternoon. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Ow! Ow! Ow! My shoulders hurt (practice Parachute Landing Falls). My face hurts (too much sun). My upper arms are bruised (riser straps). My thighs and calves hurt (repeatedly walking up a hill). My head hurts (PLFs and dehydration). My feet hurt (running fast trying to inflate the wing). My hip is bruised (PLFs). The back of my neck hurts (PLFs?). The front of my neck hurts (chin strap). My balls hurt (harness). Yes, you've guessed - I went paragliding yesterday (at Green Dragons). And I just can't wait for the next session!

Looks like a very comprehensive guide to blogging tools at THEOOZE (via jonny baker)

And the Guardian agrees with me! Guardian Unlimited | Arts reviews | The Valkyrie, Coliseum, London: Lloyd's production, with designer Richard Hudson, assembles a muddle of contemporary imagery that adds nothing to Wagner's drama. Why, for instance, is Sieglinde dressed as a muslim woman in headscarf and trousers and her husband Hunding got up in camouflage fatigues? What does that image, with its inevitable suggestions of ethnic and religious conflict, add to an opera in which such themes are absent?

And I was right about the singing: For half of the first act, Per Lindskog was excruciatingly out of tune as Siegmund.

But why am I still so angry about this?

Amazon.com: So you'd like to... Own The WHOLE Sandman Library.

Well, yes I would, now you mention it. Very much.

Oh weird. I just noticed that my BlogStreet RSS feed is autogenerating. It just takes rather a long time, that's all.

A good introduction to Go at TradGames.

And Masters Games looks like a good UK online supplier of nice Go equipment.

I played (and lost) Go on BrettSpielWelt last night. Easy to find an opponent with the new BSW interface. But you can only play 13x13 Go.

Next time I might try the Kiseido Go Server instead (as recommended by Mikko Saari).

Actually I was totally unaware of Memoir 44 until I read Chris Farrell's posting. Having looked at the Days of Wonder website I am consumed with geek-lust for this game. It must be mine!

Chris Farrell's KublaCon convention report is well worth a read for his interesting comments on the Europe Engulfed phenomenon, as well as debunking Up Front and giving us some first impressions of Memoir 44 the latest Battle Cry spin-off:

Firstly, I'm glad Europe Engulfed has been successful, but its high profile for a wargame seems to be drawing people who are sort of poking at it rather than taking it seriously. We saw a bit of this with Paths of Glory; many people heard it was great and wanted to try it, but weren't willing to learn the rules or put in the non-trivial effort necessary to learn what is a fairly serious and challenging game. We had several people show up for this event wanting to play, but never having even looked at the rules. This is not the way to go. Europe Engulfed is an absolutely great game, so I recommend that if you want to play, read the rules ahead of time (they're online) and take it seriously. You won't regret it; as I say, it's a fantastic game, and really just not that hard to learn in the main. But you'll get a heck of a lot more out of it by being prepared.

I went to Camden Lock on Saturday, which was OK, but I did get a bit jaded after a while looking at endless stalls selling crystals, pan-pipes, incense sticks, tin buddhas and other new-age paraphernalia. Found Village Games, which turns out to be about the size of a pantry. Mostly sells chess sets, Go equipment (tempting, but rather expensive) and tarot cards. But does have a few German games (eg Settlers, Samurai) on the top shelf.

Cheered myself up by going over to Playin Games in Bloomsbury, where I picked up a game that I thought was out of print - Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. Cool!

Then it was over to the Coliseum for part 2 of ENO's irritating Ring cycle. I was duly irritated, by the boiler-plate Valhalla, by Fricka's briefcase, by Wotan's desk toys, by the whole pretentious confusing mess. But I was surprised to be irritated by the music as well - the tenor who sung Siegmund, one of the biggest roles, was - I'm sure of it - singing flat. I overheard a guy in the bar who was more charitable about it, said he had an old-fashioned style of singing. I'm not feeling charitable - he was flat.

RSS = Really Simple Syndication. Really?

Nimrods used to have a nice RSS feed provided by a free service called BlogMatrix. When BlogMatrix folded I didn't notice for about 6 months, but I recently got round to setting up a new RSS feed with BlogStreet. It's free, that's plus point. But it's not automatic. In other words, every time I post to the weblog I need to remember to login to BlogStreet and refresh the RSS feed. More often than not, I don't bother for a few days, which means that you the reader get my trivial news later than you need to.

So you geeks out there - if you know of a more efficient alternative RSS provider, please let me know.

10 worst album covers of all time (via Julia Set)

My kids worry - especially Phil - if I don't post so I suppose I had better give you an update. I wonder if anyone has written about this yet - blogging as a way of keeping your family together?

Workshop last weekend was very tiring due to shorthandedness on the team, but very satisfying too. I had to act in a Victoria Wood-esque sketch at one point, and needed to dig deep to find my inner Northennness.

Yesterday Dave drove all the way over here from Amesbury to play Europe Engulfed, the 1942 scenario. I let him take the Germans, of course, and in spite of not knowing the rules he promptly smashed a hole through the centre of the Russian line and took Moscow. By the end of the evening there was nothing much left at all in the way of resistance in central Russia, and I was organizing a scratch defence of Stalingrad and the Caucasus. However the Americans have made their appearance in North Africa so I have at least a fighting chance of conquering Italy by the end of the scenario.

This has happened to me so many times that it's almost a law of nature - if you teach someone a game he will stuff you at it.

Meanwhile at work I seem to have become the department's Excel expert. How did that happen? I know nothing about Excel!

I'm off to the Arts Centre tonight to watch Touching the Void. The sun isn't shining tonight so hopefully there will be less light leaking onto the screen than there was last week!

Sort of looking forward to The Valkyrie at ENO on Saturday. Will just have to shut my eyes and ignore the urban gangster-themed production and concentrate on the music. I am also planning to visit Camden Lock before the performance and seek out a rumoured game-shop in the area.....

Sign outside the El Greco exhibition at the National Gallery:

"No lecturing allowed in the exhibition rooms"

Nevertheless I overheard several people droning recycled banalities at their politely bored spouses/companions, who clearly hadn't noticed this sign on their way in.

The pictures were overwhelming and stunning. Frankly, the only sensible response to them was awed silence.

I have been soloing Europe Engulfed in preparation for teaching Dave the game when he visits next Tuesday. This is the second time I've had a run through the game and it's starting tio make sense now. I'm playing the 1942 scenario, which is a much better place to start than the full game. Most of the fiddly political rules are all in the past by 1942, so you can concentrate on the combat rules and knocking ten bells out of each other in Russia! I'm also starting to realize how important the special actions are. They can massively increase the dynamism of your war-effort if they are used aggressively. I'm realizing that you should be using them as a matter of course, not saving them for emergencies. They might seem expensive at 5 WERPS each, but a well-timed "retreat from contested area" for example can rescue units that might cost you far more than 5 WERPS to rebuild.

The Axis are not doing very well so far. They got off to a disastrous start with a failed offensive in Voronezh, lost loads of units, and have been slowly walking backwards ever since. Meanwhile North Africa is almost cleared, although the 8th Army have just had a dismal turn spending 2 special action to eliminate the last Italian unit to no effect!

This is a great game. It's everything I hoped Barbarossa to Berlin would be (but turned out not to be) and more. The only drawback is that it's a two-mapper and so takes up quite a bit of room. Really looking forward to playing a live opponent next week....

I went to see "Lost in Translation" at Farnham Maltings last night. What a beautiful film, all about ageing and loneliness and longing. Poor old Bill Murray, he meets this beautiful young woman and impossibly, they fall in love. But in the end, all he can hope for is to say goodbye properly. Really sad, and touches me right where it hurts at this stage in my life.......

Sashinka: The best thing you can learn in the twenty-first century is (1) how to categorise sensibly, (2) how to pack a small bag, (3) how to talk to anyone, (4) how to write a list. Everything else is so much commentary, white noise, ephemera. Do those four things, and you can do anything.

In the same posting she also has a gripe about the new Blogger interface, but I won't quote that for fear of offending some of my readers.....

U2 beat the Hives 3:1 yesterday. Experience shows the youngsters how it's done. I'm still optimistic we're going to see them in the finals.Phil's Spin Off: U2's surprise drubbing of the Hives puts them back in contention in Group B.

Prodigal Sons Update

Gavin is on holiday in Slovakia this week with "the Baron". I expect he is being extremely prodigal over there. Latest text news indicates that "all the women are shit hot".

Phil returned home, as prodigal sons traditionally do, for the weekend. He cooked two fantastic meals for me, drank all my wine, and encouraged me to do a lot of "chilling", which was just what I needed. Only blot on the weekend was that he refused to play any boardgames with me, and stuffed me at Close Combat 2 instead. Highlight - sitting outside the Hawkley Arms in the sunshine with Phil and a pint of Thwaites Mild, two ideal companions.

When Mikko Saari, the Finnish game blogger, has a Weekend gaming session, the activities include a sauna. And who says geeks have poor personal hygene?

Over at LawPundit there's a long rant about how useless the new Blogger interface is. Most of which I agree with, sadly:

The old Blogger interface by Pyra Labs was a work of art which was apparently designed by bloggers, or at least programmers who understood what the needs of bloggers were - speed, efficiency, and simplicity. The old Blogger interface was highly intuitive and simple to use FOR BLOG POSTING, with all the necessary commands - and OVERVIEW - located conveniently on one page. There was no needless clicking and searching.

This morning we were surprisingly and unexpectedly faced with the new Blogger interface being forced upon us, the unsuspecting users ('never ask your users' seems to be in vogue these days). From a practical point of view, this interface is a disaster for blogging. It may be great as the initial interface required by beginners just starting out, but it is nothing for the frequent or experienced blogger, as it takes at least twice as much - valuable - time to do things with the new interface as it did with the old interface.

The flashing of headlights can have so many different meanings:

1) I'm really angry with you, you just cut me up!
2) It's fine to pull out in front of me
3) Thankyou
4) I'm a lorry driver and so are you!
5) Do you realize that your boot is open?
6) There's a policeman with a radar gun up ahead

What is spooky is that you can nearly always tell what is meant from the context. It's like some weird oriental language with only one word, which means loads of different things depending on the way you say it.

Lots of fun going on at the moment over at Phil's Spin Off, where music is being reimagined as football: Yesterday's games in the Music World Cup were both absolute scorchers, settled at the last by a controversial vote by Mr Nimmo. The scores then:

U2 4 - System Of A Down 4
The Hives 4 - Daft Punk 4

The results mean that the group is still wide open.

But I like them. NME: Keane, it's fair to say, are not the reason Hendrix first doused his axe with petrol and frantically soloed amidst a ball of flames. They're not the reason Sid phlegmed up his first ball of gob. And no, Kurt Cobain definitely didn't die for this. To all intents and purposes, Keane represent everything there is to hate about rock'n'roll.

Another very tempting pre-order from GMT. Wellington: In adapting his award-winning* The Napoleonic Wars system for the Peninsula War, designer Mark G. McLaughlin creates a furiously paced, card-driven and battle/siege-intensive strategic/operational game of Wellington's campaign to drive the French from Spain and invade France itself. With a maximum three turns in length, with sudden-death endings possible - and quite common when one side is 'on the ropes' - at the end of the first or second turns, Wellington is a game easily played to conclusion by two, three or four players in an evening or an afternoon.

I'm suffering with the opposite of a hangover this morning, whatever that is called. You know, when you don't have anything to drink in the evening and next day you feel lousy. That's probably a really bad sign isn't it.

I went to Taunton at the weekend to visit my crazy friend Jo. One of the craziest things he ever did was to start a small charity (in 2000) called Street Children of Peru. Every year he takes a work party of 15 or 20 people to build accomodation at street kids' homes in Lima and Iquitos. I haven't been on one of these trips (yet) because I have a suspicion that swinging a shovel for two weeks in Amazonian heat would probably kill me. But I'm deeply impressed by what Jo is achieving year by year, and my visit to Taunton was for the purpose of meeting the other trustees of SCOP and signing up as one myself.

My first task - don't laugh - will be to redesign their website. I wonder if I can manage that before my 30-day Dreamweaver trial expires?! Or maybe I shall just handcrank the HTML in Notepad. Or maybe I shall pinch someone else's HTML - all in a good cause you see.

The other thing I'm excited about is growing the Education Fund. At the moment SCOP is supporting three ex-street kids through higher education. A degree! What an incredible opportunity for a young man who spent his early years struggling to survive on the streets. And this can be done for such a tiny amount compared to what education costs in the UK. So I would love to see more people sign up as sponsors. Email me for details!

I can't think of much worse than spending a lifetime doing something that isn't what you want to do. --Neil Gaiman

I saw that today on a mailing list, and I thought "ouch!" What an indictment of my life, here I am wasting my life in an office when I should be out there doing something - writing wonderful books for example like Neil Gaiman does.

Then I thought again. Tell that to the refugee, Neil. Tell that to the unemployed guy in Delhi with a hungry family. Tell that to the street kid. There are many things worse than having a dull if comfortable job - not having one for example.

A good way to start a book about web design:

HAVE YOU HEARD of the World Wide Web? If so, your understanding of this exciting new medium has probably evolved somewhat over the past few years. Here is a common evolutionary trajectory:

1. What is this Web thing?
2. The Web is just a flash in the pan.
3. The Web is actually pretty cool.
4. Hmmm, maybe we can make money on the Web.
5. The Web is the cornerstone of the New Economy.
6. There is no New Economy.
7. What was that Web thing?

Have you ever noticed how strange some women's magazines are? You know, the ones with a photo of a beautiful cover girl with her happy, gleaming smile, and right next to her, in big bold letters as if it's a caption: "I PULLED MY BABY FROM THE WRECKAGE - WITH NO HEAD!"

Multiman Publishing have finally produced their long-promised ASL Starter Kit: ASL Starter Kit #1 is a self-contained module which will let players start playing Advanced Squad Leader almost immediately. A liberally-illustrated rules tutorial teaches gamers ASL using a conversational style to teach the concepts of ASL.

Flumph, flumph. Flumph, flumph. Flumph, flumph.

When I walk nowadays, that sound drifts up to me from somewhere between my legs. It's my new jeans from Next, where it was impossible to get anything less floppy than "Boot Cut". It's the sound of denim flares rubbing together with every step. Last time I heard that sound, it was the Seventies......

Greg Costikyan feels - quite strongly - that games are not literature: First, it is true that many games are tightly bound to story (I've written on this subject elsewhere), but it is equally true that many games are not. No story in chess. Nor in Europa Universalis, Civilization, or Tetris, not unless you stretch the meaning of 'story' beyond reason. As I have said before, and will doubtless say many times again before I die, games are their own artform, and while analogies to other forms are sometimes useful in understanding games, it is a rank and obvious error to attempt to perceive them solely through the lens used to understand a different form such as, say, literature. To make an analogy to a wholly different form: Music is not a storytelling medium. Many musical forms are indeed tightly bound to story--opera, the musical, the ballad--but many others are not--symphonies, the classic 3 minute rock song, house. Just so with games.

I actually played games with a local group on Sunday. Yes I know the sun was shining like the first day of creation, but I was locked firmly indoors with Neil Duncan - grand old man of the postal Diplomacy hobby - and 5 other people playing boardgames. I got to play Serenissima - which I enjoyed a lot more than first time, mainly because the rules were explained to me properly, and people didn't whine whenever they got attacked - and Vinci - which suffered from less whining than it usually does in Salisbury but still had an overanalysis end-game problem.

I'm not much given to making snap judgements, but the new Blogger interface is crap! Crap! CRAP!

Contact lenses - argh! No! No! No!

It was OK while I was at home, everything under control, putting them in for an extra 2 hours every day, fine. But as soon as I got to work, I don't know if it was the extra stress, running around talking to people, peering at the computer screen etc but after an hour it was "I have to get these things out of my eyes NOW!"

I love my digital camera. I love Adobe Photoshop Gallery. And I love my broadband connection. They let me make things like this.

After a traumatic half-hour this morning being taught how to put in my trial contact lenses and take them out again, the optician said "I'll just go off for 5 minutes while you try it on your own." Within about 60 seconds I had managed to lose one. Permanently. I wondered if she would think I had lost the lense deliberately, in order to cut short the ordeal. "Don't worry" she said in a resigned voice when she came back, "this happens all the time."

Some lovely ideas on this website. I'm thinking of using one of them next time I lead Workshop worship. The Youth Ministry & Spirituality Project: Before you look through the site a few comments: Take your time. Much of the material here is grounded in years of conversation and practice by churches, youth pastors and youth. Try not to 'scan' the site. Notice when a sentence, idea or image catches your attention. Notice what attracts you as you engage this material. Take time to stop and reflect on how God might be seeking to meet you through whatever it is that interests you here. (via Jonny Baker)

From a conversation with a furniture delivery man on Wednesday.

Delivery man: This is a nice flat, very spacious.

Me: Yes, I'm really pleased with it. I've just recently moved in.

Delivery man: Yes, I thought so. I thought it looked a bit unfinished, you know, still lots of things to sort out.

I am The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis apparently (which is spooky seeing that this is one of my favourite books by my favourite writer!)

You were just looking for some decent clothes when everything changed quite dramatically. For the better or for the worse, it is still hard to tell. Now it seems like winter will never end and you feel cursed. Soon there will be an epic struggle between two forces in your life and you are very concerned about a betrayal that could turn the balance. If this makes it sound like you're re-enacting Christian theological events, that may or may not be coincidence. When in doubt, put your trust in zoo animals.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

I picked up Final Fantasy X again recently on my PS2. A few months ago I got completely killed by Seymour Guano and his horrible "aeon", and was so demoralized that I gave it up for months. I just didn't see how he could be beaten. I think part of it was the impact of the graphics - that pain spell is horrible to watch, and the underground hellfire thing, well I'm still haunted by it. But I had another go last week. Spent a good deal of time buying all the latest weapons, making sure the gang were all properly equipped and skilled up, had the right overdrive settings etc. Saved it all then walked into the hall for the big confrontation. It went like a dream. Went straight in with all 3 of Yuna's aeons, and by the time they were all dead Seymour was only a few big hits away from defeat. Most gratifying. Now I'm stuck on the stupid puzzle that comes next......

As one of my readers has asked: I am using Norton AntiVirus (only £20 and far too important to leave to freeware) and the XP firewall. Not sure how best to configure the firewall so I just left it to the defaults. Everything still works, but then the door may be wide open for the bad people too. I used to administer a corporate firewall as part of my job but all that knowledge seems to have slipped away in the intervening years.....

This is great! I've just got my wireless ADSL router working. I bought an Ebuyer (ie Origo) router and card and a connection from PlusNet. I set up the router with my laptop plugged in on Friday night - very straightforward indeed. Today I planned to put the wireless card into my PC, but it was with a sense of forboding that this was likely to be the tricky bit. 10 minutes approximately from opening the case to posting to my blog.

Better stop blogging and get AntiVirus and a firewall installed........

The 30th birthday of Dungeons and Dragons makes the front page on the BBC News website! BBC NEWS | Magazine | Whatever happened to Dungeons and Dragons?: In the 1980s millions of teenagers world-wide would battle dragons armed with just a few dice, paper and pens. D&D became part of youth sub-culture but as the game celebrates its 30th birthday - is anyone still playing?

BayCon last weekend was good fun. Held at a fairly run-down motel 5 miles south of Exeter, staffed by underpaid migrant workers, with crumbling windowframes and peeling decor, nevertheless it offered gaming space and fairly cheap rooms for a large number of gamers, many of whom are personally large as well. Why do geeks always tuck their T-shirts into their jeans, no matter how big the beer-gut?

Anyway, I played lots of games, losing most of them, and failing to get into the top 100 list. At a convention with about 120 attendees, that's a pretty bad performance. Enjoyed trying some new games (new to me anyway) such as San Juan, Alhambra, Medici, Attika, and Age of Mythology. Nick played a 2-day epic game of GMT's Napoleonic Wars. I was woken by him when he finally staggered into our room at 5:30am Sunday morning, only to sit in bed punching out his new copy of Attika!

My favourite discovery of the weekend was a game I had taken along with me but never played - Scarab Lords. A really excellent two-player card game by Reiner Knizia, marred only by tatty American-style production values (how come Blue Moon, another similar Knizia game, which costs about the same money and is manufactured in Europe, has about 10-times better physical quality?)

Talking of Reiner, he was there apparently, but I never saw him. So I never got the chance to do a Waynes World on him ("We are not worthy!")

Nimrods: three years old today! Ho-hum. Ever onwards, I suppose.

At last, GMT's sequel to Battle Cry is available to preorder. However, they are setting the threshold quite a bit higher than usual - they need 1250 preorders before they will commit to producing the game. Well, there's one here.

Commands & Colors: Ancients: Unlike its younger brother, Battle Cry by Hasbro/Avalon Hill, Commands & Colors: Ancients is moderately more complex and contains additional historical details without the battlefield clutter. Most scenarios will still play to a conclusion in less than an Hour.

Hmm, let's see, things I have discovered during the last week or so:

1) I am a complete lightweight. I was lured out of my flat yesterday evening by the sunshine, and wandered down to the William Cobbett where I sipped a leisurely pint. One pint. Followed by a large glass of water when I got home. And this morning I have a headache.

2) Shaun of the Dead is a wonderful film. British, very funny, exciting too, and it hasn't got Hugh Grant. The new Ster Cinema in Basingstoke is a lovely cinema, huge screens, steeply raked and very comfortable seating - BUT the sound is so loud that even ordinary dialog sounds like giants shouting. Very uncomfortable, and breaks the illusion of reality as well. Won't be going back there.

3) Axis and Allies: Europe is good fun but flawed. Went to Dave's place on Monday and played it with John. It soon became apparent that the whole game comes down to a titanic struggle between two huge stacks on the Moscow space. It is also a bit weird that the British cannot reinforce Egypt, but that can be easily fixed with a house rule. But basically the game needs completely new victory conditions.

4) It's a pain dealing with BT. I want broadband on my PC in the spare bedroom, so I called BT to get a line extension put in. The girl at the call centre agreed to send an engineer round first thing, so that I wouldn't have to take a day off. But the engineer was actually booked for a 1pm slot. Stuff them. I am going for a wireless router, and PlusNet as a provider. (They do a £19 a month contract with no access to binary newsgroups, which is good for me as it removes the temptation of all those mucky newsgroups!) I'll let you know how this works out.

5) There is some wonderful countryside near Farnham. On Good Friday I drove over to Selborne and walked a section of the Hangars Way, stopping for lunch at a wonderful Free House called the Hawkley Arms. Lovely folded chalky country with hanging woods on the steep hillsides, and secluded little valleys and villages. This is my favourite time of year, the countryside looks so beautiful, but it's almost saying "You haven't seen anything yet! Just wait till the leaves come out!"

Went (with Nick, Debs, Suzy and others) to see Polly Paulusma play at Bush Hall in Shepherd's Bush last night. She's a folksy-modern singer-songwriter. Thoughtful, melancholy lyrics make a great combination with her sunny, mischievous nature. Nick - who is a creative web-designer type - was more taken with the striking visuals created by strongly coloured spots cutting across images projected onto the ornate plasterwork of the back wall. Wished I'd taken my camera in. A good evening spent soaking up much-needed nourishment from the arts.

Gosh, this is probably the first time I have ever been nominated for a Most Eligible Bachelor award!

A Media Studies student emailed me with a questionnaire about blogging. Here for posterity are my magisterial answers:

1. How long have you been a blogger?

3 years

2. What made you create your blog initially?

I was inspired by a blog called "Relapsed Catholic". I thought a weblog would be a good way of communicating with my (then) boardgaming group in Salisbury - notifying of events, writing up game sessions etc. I initially envisaged my friends contributing postings as well. It didn't work out like that - it rapidly broadened out to include other things I'm interested in, like music, Christianity, my job etc etc. It bacame mor of a personal journal I suppose.

3. When you write your blog do you write with an audience in mind?

Yes: mainly friends in the boardgaming hobby, my children, people who leave comments. Sometimes I think I'm just writing notes to myself - which would be a good enough reason for doing it. Of course I keep my eye on my stats and wonder who these 40 unique visitors a day are and why they visit!

4. In your opinion, what is a blog?

It's a journal-like website format, mediated by software which makes it very easy for the non-technical writer to post to it.

5. Would you consider your blog a form of journalism?

Some blogs certainly are: not so much news reporting, but a valuable substitute for newspaper opinion pieces and columnists. I don't consider mine to be journalism.

6. Do you think blogging is just a passing phase?

No, it's pretty firmly established now. There are plenty of people who seem to have a need to blog or read blogs.

7. What form do you think blogs will take in the next few years?

I think there will be new technologies for separating the wheat from the chaff, making it easier to navigate through the "blogsphere" and quickly find out where the latest buzz is happening.

Book Group tonight! No not the TV show, the book group in Richmond that I belong to. Things I like about my book group: We have good coffee and cake (usually) We read and chat about some great books that I would not otherwise have touched, for example, tonight we will discuss "Under the Net" by Iris Murdoch, which was surprisingly comical, and contains possibly the best pubcrawl in English literature. I am the only man there. Apart from me, the group consists entirely of lovely, intelligent young women. No really. One of whom (Helen) always cooks me supper before the book group starts. Did I mention the coffee and cakes?

More opera last night - Simon got tickets for Eugene Onegin with Welsh National Opera (and Amanda Roocroft) at Southampton Mayflower. In contrast to ENO's Rhinegold the production was superb, beautifully staged and costumed, with great acting as well as singing from the cast. I've never experienced a Tchaikovsky opera before, and it was a revelation to me. His music is so flexible and lyrical and well-paced, never descending into routine "let's get this conversation out of the way" stretches, always serving the drama and charged with emotional weight.

You remember how I have been struggling for about 3 years with a desire to play the fabled IceHouse games Zarcana/Gnostica, but am too worried about the spiritual implications of buying a Tarot deck? Well maybe Matt Arnold has provided me with a way forward:

Frustrated with playing Gnostica with a tarot deck? Can't get your friends to play because remembering what the cards mean is like doing tax returns? Is scoring a chore because the three values of cards aren't immediately distinguishable? Then download this strictly-functional-yet-stylish beginner's deck created for gnuthin' but Gnostica, which I call Tarotories. With minimalized graphics and instructions on every card, and no mature or macabre imagery, it might become the only deck you use.

They are a bit functional though - I kind of miss the "mature or macabre imagery".

Looking through the referrals stats for nimrods never ceases to amaze me. Only yesterday somebody dropped by looking for photos of World War 2 hand grenades!

In London over the weekend I noticed the posters for Shaun of the Dead billed as "A romantic comedy. With zombies." The great news is that this project was put together by the team who created Spaced - probably my favourite ever sitcom ever (whatever the moronic British public thinks.)

SLICK: The Sortable List of Icehouse's Cool Kindred has been cleaned up and purged of broken links.

Andy's Page About Homeworlds:

I really like John Cooper's Icehouse game, Homeworlds. I think it's one of the very best Icehouse games we currently have. It's elegant and exciting, it looks great on the table, it's different every time, the theme rocks, and it makes excellent use of the pyramids. One of my criteria for a perfect Icehouse game is that it offer deep strategy while using little or no equipment other than the pyramids, especially including using the table itself as a featureless gameboard. Homeworlds is a perfect Icehouse game.

Text message conversation with Dave this morning:

Dave: Hi Pete, any jobs going at your place? I fancy being a computer expert, it's easier than plastering.

Me: We're desperate for a Java programmer at the moment, can you help?

Dave: I'll be there in an hour. I've got my passport ready.

Roger Scruton in the Telegraph - Why Wagner still rings true:

The Ring was conceived as a religious festival, with the Oresteia of Aeschylus in mind. It was to unfold a world-embracing myth, through intimate human dramas. Its characters were conceived both as believable people and as symbols of universal powers. By following their fate, the audience would be led by human sympathy towards a vision of redemption, in which human beings stand higher than the gods.

To strip The Ring of its legendary atmosphere and primordial setting - in the manner of most modern productions - is to jeopardise this religious aspect of the story, and to give us only half of what it means.

I went to see Rhinegold at English National Opera on Friday. I've been looking forward to the ENO Ring for years. I've bought tickets for the whole cycle this year, I went to the staged rehearsals over the last two years, and I was eagerly awaiting the visual spectacle of the full production. And how my heart sank when the curtain rose to reveal the Rhinemaidens got up as lap-dancers in a sleazy club. As the evening wore on it was heart-breaking to watch the superb musicianship of the orchestra and cast struggling at every turn to make itself heard through the puerile nonsense of the production. Rhinegold is full of nature music - invoking mountains, rivers, caverns, sunrise and rainbows - but on stage all we could see was relentlessly urban, indoor settings, and the gods (how thought provoking!) portrayed as a family of gangsters and the Nibelungs as overalled proles.

The worst thing about this kind of pretentious bollocks is that it closes the door on newcomers. It becomes a game for insiders. We who know the operas are invited to admire the director's clever insights into Wagner's subtexts, or his witty subversion of Wagner's intentions. But for a newcomer the story is rendered unintelligible by the fact that there is very little correlation between the words that the characters are singing and the actions that they are performing on the stage. For example Rhinegold climaxed with the gods' triumphal entry into their new home Valhalla. The orchestra was describing this spine-tingling moment with electrifying skill, but what we saw on stage was a press conference, with a crowd of photographers gathered around Wotan. Oh so clever-clever, but how would a Ring first-timer make sense of all this?

Is it really any wonder that opera audiences continue to shrink and age?

Gosh I'm still pretty tired after my skiing trip. Running around with a group of 30-somethings really took it out of me. I've been sleeping at least 10 hours a night since I got back and I'm still feeling sleepy. Moreover I slightly twisted my knee in a face-planting incident last Wednesday which has left me limping, and the limp is throwing my back out leading to mild sciatica! I know it's bad form to moan about all this when it was all self-inflicted, and many of you may not have been lucky enough to go skiing at all this winter. Still, isn't a weblog an ideal place to safely park my self-pity without damaging my social life?

Game-wise, I have been continuing with a solo game of Clash of Giants (the Marne game). Last night I got to the exciting climax when the Paris garrison duly rides out and crushes the German right wing. Most gratifying. This is a great game, maybe I can persuade Dave or someone to come over for a weekend soon and play it.

I have also bought Medieval Total War this week. I know I'm behind the curve on this, but I have only just acquired a computer capable of running this game. Very impressive it is too - I've been concentrating on the battlefield game, and I'm just stunned by the tactical wargaming fun I can have with this. Similar to DBA, but you can watch the little men running around and fighting. I would have liked a slightly more detailed tactical feel to this - the emphasis is on game rather than simulation - but it is an amazing achievement. I will be very tempted by Rome Total War when it arrives though I don't usually buy new releases, preferring to wait until the price drops sub-£20....

Skiing last week was great. I don't remember ever experiencing such perfect snow conditions. My skiing abilities were, let's say, variable, but I had one golden day (Wednesday) when everything came together, the sun was shining, and I was skiing like an Austrian. Perfect.

It was an Oak Hall holiday, so that meant a big friendly group in the evenings, many of whom learned Zendo from me as the week went by. In fact I was sometimes greeted on the slopes with a cheery cry of "Hello Master!" to which I would reply "Hello disciple! I hope you are meditating upon the koans."

I also took Fluxx along which surprisingly did not go down so well. In fact Alastair, who is a keen bridge player, seemed to find one 10-minute round of Fluxx an agonizing ordeal. Come to think of it, I remember feeling the same way when I first played Fluxx years ago, but I guess I have warmed to the Looney Labs way of gaming since then.

Hmm, tempting - deluxe cardstock maps for GMT games such as Barbarossa to Berlin, Paths of Glory, and The Napoleonic Wars.

Phil was home on Monday. I took the day off and we spent much of the day playing Close Combat 3 head to head. We took it in turns to use the laptop - playing without the mouse (using the "attack nipple" instead) was a significant handicap. But this game is a classic, and this is a near-perfect 2-player wargaming experience. It's like playing Advanced Squad Leader in real-time, without all the mucking about with rules and tables. Curiously Phil, who is normally very good at this sort of thing, was finding me hard to beat. There's life in the old grognard yet!

My feet hurt. I went for a run this morning, second one this week. Only ten minutes round the park and up and down the hill, but now my feet hurt. I must get some decent running shoes I suppose. Trying to get some basic level of fitness ready for skiing next week. Here's the webcam at Hauser Kaibling, halfway down the run that ends outside Pension Ennstal where I will be staying. Looks lovely - loads of snow and lots of sunshine as well. Makes the hurting feet all worthwhile....

I put together my Shuttle box on Friday night (as a result of which I felt completely trashed ready for a demanding Saturday at Workshop!)

Delighted with the result, no problems at all during the build. The Shuttle box is very well put together and comes with very good instructions for the build. Because of the small form factor everything has to be put together in the correct order! There are nice little touches like a cabling run for the CD drive cable.

I bought 512 Mb Crucial memory, a 120Gb Seagate drive, an AMD XP 2500 Barton, a black Sony CD-RW (looks nicer than beige with the metal box) and OEM Windows XP Home, all from ebuyer.

My only mistake was to buy the retail AMD chip with a fan. The Shuttle box has its own clever heatsink arrangement so I could have saved £8 and bought the OEM version.

Mine is a Shuttle SN41G2 which includes GeForce4 graphics onboard - I've tried playing HomeWorld so far which looks great. If I already possessed a recent graphics card I could have saved money with the SN45G which is also a more recent product I think.

Crystal Caste now manufacture IceHouse pieces made from Obsidian, Hematite, Aventurine and Jasper. Up to $120 for just one stash!

Winston Churchill: If you would know a man's character, only observe how he plays a game.

James Crosfield writes:

Do you fancy going to Salute this year (24th April) I could pick you up on the way to London. I could also call at Salisbury and pick up anyone from there. Quite happy for you to advertise my Salute taxi on Nimrods.

I will order tickets and parking in advance in about three weeks time.

Drop me an email if you fancy going and would like a lift with James. I can't make it this year but had a good time when I went last year ( in spite of selling off my copies of Empires in Arms and Pacific War in the Bring and Buy at stupidly low prices.)

I am soloing Clash of Giants, the Marne scenario, at the moment. Excellent hex wargame, simple rules, big counters, ideal for gaming geezers like me. It's turn 5 and the Germans are running out of steam, and looking nervously at the huge fortified camp of Paris sitting menacingly on their right flank. The BEF have rallied, and are cautiously moving forward again from the deep south where they finally stopped running. Solo gaming, that's what I am reduced to these days. Still, I am going to Baycon with Nick this year, 15th - 18th April, where the guest list includes the legendary Reiner Knizia. Now a game of Euphrat & Tigris with the designer - that would compensate for the weeks of gaming famine!

It's years since I did this, but I've decided to build my own PC again. I've been having a lot of fun with my new digital camera, but my grotty old work laptop doesn't really cut it for processing the photos. These days there are alternatives to the beige tower for the home system builder. You can get huge perpex cases full of flashing neon lights. (Hmmm - not sure if that's me somehow.) Or one of these babies - a Shuttle barebones system, which is what I have ordered. It's a compact aluminium case with its own form factor motherboard built in. Just plug in an AMD XP2500 chip, a 120Gb Seagate Barracuda drive, and half a gig of memory, and you've got a pretty nice system for £350. Plus another £70 for Windows XP which I am buying, yes Gavin, buying as well. Only two slots but it has lots of connectivity and GeForce graphics built in. Should be pretty good for games too.......

Episode 1 of "Dunkirk" on BBC2 last night was excellent. Filmed in the same edgy handheld style as "Band of Brothers", which can deliver real emotional punch when you briefly glimpse shocking events almost out of the corner of your eye. It also used a lot of archive footage intercut with the acted scenes, which I thought might be irritating but actually was very effective and gave us scenes of large-scale chaos and destruction which would have been impossibly expensive to do any other way.

I'm still shocked and angered by the scene where British POWs were crammed into a barn by the SS then massacred with grenades. Knowing that this was a reconstruction from a first-hand account makes it worse somehow.

I also felt a vague sense of shame throughout the episode. The British Army of 1940 was such a shambles - years of disarmament and appeasement had left us totally unable to stand up to the Wehrmacht. And from what I've read of WW2 history this amateurism persisted well into 1942 - Narvik, Dunkirk, Crete, Gazala, Singapore, a miserable sequence of botched defeats, often at the hands of inferior forces.

Anyway, unmissable stuff, I'll be there again tonight for episode 2, with the VCR running too.

Someone just failed to sell a Medieval Castle on EBay!

Alan Emrich, of Totaler Krieg fame, is running an eleven week game design course at Stanford University:

Principles of Game Design is a ‘how to’ course designed to teach you the fundamental philosophies of game design and apply them in a hands-on manner using a step-by-step process that develops your ‘game design muscles.’

Talking of work, I have a new boss now who is actively getting me lots of interesting work to do. Which explains why the blog has taken a back seat recently. Blogging was a way for me to stay sane through months of under-utilization and boredom at work. So don't worry if I don't post much - it probably means I'm happy and busy in my work.

Good grief, I've just returned from a meeting where yet another departmental reorganization was announced, with more to follow. And we're still coming to terms with the fallout from the last two reorgs. As a company we seem to be reaching the point where reorganization is more or less continuous, there are never times when the structure is stable for a while until the next upheaval - it's all upheaval. Maybe I could write a trendy new management guru type book about The Liquid Company and make loads of money so I wouldn't have to work in one any more......

The flat-warming party last Saturday went really really well. Lots of people turned up. Before a party I always have this secret cold fear that no-one will come and I will finally be forced to face the truth that I've been hiding from for so long - that I've become a sad old man with no friends. But no, not yet anyway - the place was full of happy looking folk who had made the effort to come over to Farnham on a windy winter's night.

Phil and Harriet did a fantastic job of the food, they spent the whole of Saturday in a gin-fuelled haze, producing delicious nibbles for the throng.

One game was actually played, at 2am by Nick Phil and me. Nick was desperate to play a game but my collection was locked in a room where a married couple were sleeping, so the only game available was "Formula Carts". You can't get this in the shops, only one copy exists, designed and manufactured by Phil as in infant. It's a bit low in decision points, but it was an exciting race and it only took 10 minutes to complete (always a plus for any game!) I wonder how much it would fetch on eBay?

One of the last things the BBC ever does may be to publish a photo by Gavin: BBC NEWS | Magazine | In Pictures | Your pictures: Britain's cold snap

You have to scroll through 16 good photos, then you get to Gavin's.

Tempting - you can now buy Martian Chessboard Sections.

I am busy preparing for my housewarming party on Saturday (if you think you should be invited but haven't been, please let me know!). Cleaning bathroom, moving all unpacked boxes to one corner, disposing of unironed laundry, putting half-played games away, that sort of thing. Phil is preparing the food for me so I have also been working through his emailed shopping lists of mysterious ingedients - this is a bit like opening a new jigsaw puzzle, I have no idea what all these bits are for, but they look pretty.

You can never be sure how many people will turn up. If half the people who have promised to come don't turn up, there will be about 10 of us - on the other hand if half the people who have said they might turn up actually turn up there will be 40 of us, some of whom will be drinking wine from mugs and using hands for plates.

I've just been made aware of the excellent Taxonomy of Icehouse Games, which lists but also classifies IceHouse games to fit the structure proposed by David Parlett's Oxford History of Boardgames.

Stop posting for a few days and I get more visits than ever! Yesterday in particular was a bumper day. Hmmm - is this pointing to a way forward for making nimrods a more successful weblog?

I can't make it to ManorCon again this year so perhaps Baycon is an alternative, especially as the "already booked" list includes Reiner Knizia!

Gosh I'm tired this morning. Not sure why. I went to the ceramics class at Farnham Malting yesterday evening, which was great fun and also physically tiring - which you would think would make for a good night's sleep. No such luck - I spent the whole night either being pursued by people who wanted to kill me, or waking frequently from these disturbing dreams at ungodly hours. This evening I will follow a more tried and tested route to a good night's sleep - curry and beer followed by a couple of hours hunched over the Europe Engulfed board.

I visited the Alder Valley Games Society last night, on my quest to find new opponents in this area. I made my way to the Union Building in Aldershot for the second time this year, and avoided being mistaken for an ex-para this time. Found the club members crouching over tables in a large tatty hall, and introduced myself. Bit disappointed that the emphasis was very much on CCGs and roleplaying. But on the plus side, the club's Chair is not only very cute but also female. I spent the evening watching a group roll up their characters for a Call of Cthulhu campaign. Not a great spectator sport, but they were very friendly and chatted with me about the club's history etc. Apparently the first Sunday every month is a boardgame special so I will make sure I give that a try soon.

About a year ago I decided not to P500 GMT's Ardennes 44. Rats! Chris Farrell is positively glowing with enthusiasm for the game. :

One last thing, and I think the real reason why I liked this a lot: it's a great game, and by that I mean that the game confronts you with interesting choices all the time, choices that feel like you are really playing a game and not struggling against or gaming a system, as is far too often the case in these things. I played the Germans, and I always felt like I had real options. There were several legitimate strategic choices of where to attack to get the required VPs, and then lots of operational choices as you can re-route offensives to get around traffic problems or take advantage of the same in your opponent's network, allocate your strategic movement capability wisely, budget your critical corps-level artillery, maintain flexibility to take advantage of local opportunities, and decide between blasting right through now before the Americans are reinforced or trying to work around the flank.

I went to see Spirited Away last night at Farnham Maltings, the local arts centre which shows films several times a month. I liked the venue a lot - the rustic and rather tatty Great Hall has well raked seating (unlike many cinemas) so no sightline problems for short people like me. It was also great to turn up at 8 and have the film start on the dot, with no adverts or trailers!

And what a stunning film! This is my first experience of a Japanese anime movie, so I just wasn't prepared for the visual impact of this art-form. Apparently there are even better anime films around - wow, that's hard to imagine!

I've read criticisms (on IMDB) that this film doesn't have much of a story-line. Well, I suppose so, if you have been used to Hollywood type story construction (conflict, conflict, conflict, smart-ass dialogue, action set-piece every 10 minutes). It seems to me that Spirited Away follows the ancient fairy-story shape of a child finding a doorway into another world where she meets archetypal figures, converses with beautiful or terrifying spirits, and embarks on fantastic adventures. Echoes of C S Lewis, E Nesbit, Lord Dunsany, Brothers Grimm and so on back into the timeless depths of folklore.

I visited my Mum and Dad over the weekend. OK I'm used to this from other people, but I was a bit stunned to get the "So what do you actually do?" question from my own parents.

Emma, who is doing Workshop this year and is in my tutor group, is also a very talented stained glass artist. If you've just received a windfall, why not visit her website and commission a window?

I guess I anticipated I would feel like this at some point. Having ripped myself out of my existing social networks and plonked myself down in a strange town, it's all feeling a bit quiet and lonely. Visits from various offspring and nimrods have helped, and the housewarming party at the end of January should help some more. But the challenge remains, I have to get out and make a new network for myself here.

Finding a church should help, but I am treading carefully on this one. I belonged to the same little church in Salisbury for about 18 years, sticking with them through some difficult times out of a sense that loyalty and perseverance was important. Got a lot of good things out of that time, but it was also pretty isolated from what has been happening in the wider Christian world. I've only recently started reconnecting - went to my first Greenbelt (at age of 44 for goodness sakes!) last year, finished Workshop last year. So I'm dead certain I don't want to dive into another isolated little church that's not connected to the Christian mainstream.

So far I've tried:

St Thomas's, a large attractive Anglican church just around the corner. Great to see a woman officiating at communion. Largish congregation seemed to be composed of wealthy retired types (what did I expect round here?)

Farnham Baptist Church. Very much what I'm used to, only bigger, happier and clappier. Seem to be growing - they were baptising a middle-aged convert (a man!) when I visited. Not sure if more of the same is what I want?

Planning to visit:

Various "community" churches in Farnham like Jubilee, Vineyard etc.

St Saviours in Guildford which I think is a big HTB clone.

Alternative worship outfits in London, like Grace and Vaux and Holy Joes.

As you probably know, Columbia Games, famous for their block wargames, only sell their stuff from their website nowadays. Which is a bit of a bummer for us in Europe. So their current offer (until 12 Jan) of free shipping anywhere in the world is a great opportunity pick up their games at a reasonable price.

OK this blog is supposed to be about boardgaming. So here is something about my recent gaming experiences:

1) Saturday morning visited my *local* games shop five miles down the road in Aldershot, with my parents' Christmas cash burning a hole in my pocket. It was really great to browse through a game shop in person, not online. Finally settled on two pieces of Knizia Egyptiana - Amun Re and Scarab Lords. They both look very pretty and intriguing, although the quality of the components in Scarab Lords is a little flimsy and cheap compared to what we normally expect from Euro games.

2) John, Dave and Steve visited on Saturday afternoon, all the way from Salisbury. We played Zendo, which went down well. Even John, who is allergic to anything from Looney Labs, was requesting "just one more round". No idea who won. Then it was Illuminati, which I have never been a fan of, probably because I have never grasped the rules properly. So I requested an exhaustive rundown from John before we started. Sure enough I enjoyed the game a lot, and my Network even came within a hairs-breadth of winning before John's Cthulhu snatched the prize. Then I cooked dinner, and we finished with a quick game of Carcassone.

3) Since Christmas I've been slowly getting ready to play Europe Engulfed - counting counters, sticking stickers, and reading rules. This game looks absolutely gorgeous. It takes up two tables, I've got it all set up for 1939, and I'm just about ready to run through a few turns. Just need an opponent now (Dave?)

4) On Sunday attempted to visit the Alder Valley Games Society at the Union Building in Aldershot. Met a guy in the carpark who thought I was a fellow ex-para there for some kind of reunion! Do I look like an ex-para??! We spent a happy 15 minutes trying to find a way into the building. Eventually managed it, paras were there, but no game society. Maybe next week?

I investigated Guildford Ceroc club last night.

Better than Salisbury:

Warmer
Average age a lot younger
Not many wedding rings!
Licensed bar

Not as good as Salisbury:

Too warm
Dodgy sound system
Smaller dance floor
More men than women
Difficult parking
More expensive entry and drinks
Teaching at a slower pace

I had a good evening, and it was a nice friendly bunch of people. I will definitely go back next week. I guess I'm just missing the familiar faces at Salisbury Ceroc.

Freak accident in my kitchen this morning. Slamming cupboard doors --> tray rolls out of slot in cupboard --> onto island unit below --> where it smashes a red biro clean in two --> bits of biro fly across kitchen --> I spend about 10 minutes cleaning up splashes of red ink from worktops.

Moral of the story - either get a square tray, or stop slamming cupboard doors.

There's a good article in the new Games Journal about the amazing boardgame cafe scene in Korea:

Cafes are very clean, very modern-looking places, with artwork up on the walls advertising games from the past and present. Spiel de Jahres award winners, box cover art, and pictures of people playing the games adorn the walls. The cafe usually caters to one of two different groups of clientele; either students from the local colleges and universities (who prefer more sophisticated games), or office workers (who prefer much simpler games). It is not uncommon for five or six board game cafes to be on the same street, within one hundred feet of one another—and on a typical night all of them are filled to capacity!