Gavin got through his latest medical crisis. I spent most of yesterday in the East End of London, sitting beside his bed of pain at Newham General Hospital. After many delays he was finally wheeled into theatre at 4pm, and was out again by 6. What amazed me was how the operation produced an instant improvement - he was almost immediately back to his old chatty self, in spite of having a fresh 2in incision in his abdomen.
 
Full marks to his boozy friends, who turned out in force at his bedside - James, Steve, Nicky and various others I didn't recognize.

Kids! Who'd have them? After an exhausting few weeks I had pencilled in tomorrow as a much-needed day of rest and recuperation. But breaking news: Gavin is having an emergency appendectomy at Newham General Hospital tonight. So my day of recuperation will be spent rushing down to the East End to mop his brow etc.

And the reason I had to look for a new home for my bank details, is that the screen of my Psion 5mx just blew up again - for the third time. Enough is enough. It was a wonderful little machine in its heyday, and looked after me for about 6 years, but I've become become unwilling to shell out another £100 to repair the screen every time it goes. Fortunately it still works if you hold the clamshell open about an inch, which is uncomfortable for prolonged use, but gave me enough visibility to do what was necessary to get my vital data off it.

I know it's very uncool to blow the trumpet for a Microsoft product. But I've just started using Microsoft Money. Within the first week I have been made aware of about £75 sitting in my current account that I was unaware of. I'm still on an evaluation copy, but when I buy it it will cost me about £20. So it's already paid for itself 3 times over.....

Sitting at work writing scripts, listening to The Huckleberries and feeling homesick for Salisbury.......

Fantastic post from Maggi Dawn on the Trinity and worship (via Jonny Baker):

If a relational understanding of the Trinity is the context of our coming to worship, there is no longer a need to please or impress God in order for him to bless us with his presence. We do not need to create, as it were, a good enough party to wake God up and make him think he might join us. It's quite the other way around. The Trinity are already having a party of their own. There they are, communicating, loving, worshipping, laughing, dancing, always and forever, without a break. Grace, love and adoration flows constantly between the Godhead. And, if you look again at Rublev's icon, you'll see that there is a fourth, empty place at the table - an implicit invitation. Come and join us?

Here's another gallery, this time some blurry photos of the final afternoon at this year's Workshop. What a lovely bunch of people! Thanks for some great times everybody.

I went cold turkey on my caffeine addiction yesterday. This was prompted by an incident on Sunday - I was taking a breather from Workshop and dropped into the Clapham Junction Costa for a latte. Enjoyed it, but as I got up was hit by a wave of dizziness and nausea that lasted for at least an hour. Not good. Decided to cut the ties.

So I spent yesterday in a sleepy headachy haze, dutifully sipping Redbush or mint tea. Went home, ate, lay down in bed slept for 11 hours. Feel a bit more normal this morning and managed to tough out my breakfast craving for a cup of tea. Hope this will get easier....

ConsimWorld is going to a subscription-based service. I've spent a lot of time over the years reading ConsimWorld postings, and occasionally contributing too, but I'm not sure I want to pay for the privilege. With BoardGameGeek thriving there are other ways to get the game info fix I crave.

Here's a new photo gallery of boardgamegeeky goings on at Hay-on-Wye last weekend. (Oh great, now they've changed Blogger so that it frigs around with my HTML without my permission! That just about puts the tin hat on it. I hate Google and Yahoo. A plague on both your houses!)

I used to love my Oddpost account. It was so cool, and noone else knew about it, and it had the best spam-nailing algorith on the planet.

But from now on it's not Oddpost, it's Yahoo. And that's just not cool any more.

Well, NimrodCon has been and gone. Just got back, exhausted, and after gorging on Chinese takeaway food (were we just hungry or did I need to prove to myself that we are really back in a civilized country where you can get food after 5:30pm?) I am now ready to report how it went.

Pretty good really.

There was a strange syndome that affected Simon, Phil and myself, the symptoms of which were, after driving to an adjacent country to meet up with a bunch of boardgamers for a long weekend, the patient finds that he does not actually feel like playing boardgames. Sadly Simon did not recover from this. Phil managed a few rounds of Lord of the Ring: the Confrontation and Railway Rivals. And I confronted my disease head-on by playing Europe Engulfed (1942 scenario) with Dave. Eight hours hard graft, much of which, weirdly, was played before an audience. Quite a few of the company seemed to find it an enthralling spectator sport. At certain key moments, for example my big Summer 1943 offensives that sealed Dave's Stalingrad pocket forever, you could have heard a pin drop. Being watched really added to the pressure, and it was the most intense wargaming experience I've had for a while. Gratifyingly, I won. Launching a 1942 invasion in Belgium seems to be a workable - if hair-raising - approach.

Other highlights were enjoying Phil's wonderful cooking, walking the ridges of the Black Mountains in showery weather, and playing Zendo in pub (the excellent Kilvert Arms). Thanks to Dave, Nick, Danni, John, Steve, Robin, Simon, Phil and the Celtic Lodge for making it a great break.

So now we know what to think about religion too. Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Guide to British religions:

Are you a Zoroastrian? What do Catholics, Sikhs and Hindus believe? Find out with our guide the main religions practised in the UK today. You can find guides, important dates and links simply by clicking on the religions below.

Nice idea, but you might pick up some odd ideas. For example, the Charismatic Renewal are very keen on celebrating Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, and Ascension Day for example. Really?? (Thanks Rob for the link)

Nice review of Memoir 44 at The Wargamer:

Old plastic army men never die; they just get lost under the couch. The army man is a resilient little figure that rarely fails to command the attention of young and old alike. Platoons of plastic have a way of drawing the eye and triggering an urge to make machine gun sounds; it’s practically a reflexive response for some.

It's a pain really - I had decided not to get this for a while in a bid to cut down expenditure on new games. But having read this rave review I've now got the cravings all over again....

Very interesting review of Knizia's Blue Moon at the Games Journal:

Blue Moon effectively offers a game with the versatility of Magic, but with the wallet-crunching collectibility of those games tempered somewhat. While there has been considerable overlap between the worlds of board gamers and collectible card game (CCG) players, it is probably fair to say that there is a certain amount of antipathy towards trading card games from many players of 'German-style' games. The apparent rule that the CCG player who buys the most wins the most, and the need to purchase and trade to explore certain strategies or tactics, can seem bizarre. While I would argue that there are also many good points to such games, the clear influence of collectible card games on Blue Moon will add an interesting element to the debate, as this non-collectible game comes not just from the workshop of one of the most prolific of board game designers, but a man who is on record as a skeptic of the CCG format for games.

Finally, some substantial gaming to report. Phil came home on Saturday, and we started as we mean to go on with lots of two-player conflict, for example Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation. The Dark side kept winning, until at last Phil figured out how to win with the Good guys.

Then on Sunday I went over to the Alder Valley Games Society where I played some more LotR:tC (shamelessly pinching Phil's strategy insights) until more people turned up and I was introduced to RoboRally. What a great game, a really good idea cleanly implemented. I did terribly, managing to program myself down a ventilation shaft, with no help from my opponents - not once but twice. Really enjoyable fun.

I had much more mixed feelings about Duel of the Ages. Fiddly, fiddly, fiddly! The interlocking map boards were badly warped in David's (new) copy, making the clever jigsaw idea totally unworkable. Trying to manouevre the fiddly little player markers over this warped wobbly and disconnected surface was enough to raise anyone's blood pressure. (Just emphasises to me how far the Americans are behind Germany these days in game production standards.) OK the core mechanics - basically a skirmish wargame - are solid enough, but the weird scenario is very very strange, and seems to be totally unexplained in the rules booklet. What the heck is going on? Genghis Khan running around with a laser rifle taking pot shots at Annie Oakley?? What are these towers? What is going on with the labyrinths? What does it all mean?? Not convinced, though I might possibly play it again, especially if someone figures out how to flatten the playing surface.

Wargameroom.com -- Real-time Internet Wargaming!: Wargameroom.com is a website devoted to the real-time play of sophisticated boardgames over the Internet. Programs now available for BtB, EE, H:RC, PoG, UF, WtP, and WW

I downloaded and had a quick play with the Europe Engulfed module. OK it has a somewhat 1980s interface, but it's pretty amazing to be able to play a complex game like this online at all.

I met up with an old schoolmate last night, a guy that I haven't seen for oh.... 28 years. We talked about all sorts of things of course, but along the way Laurence confirmed Phil's favourite theory, that "You need to get a dog, Dad. Chicks go for guys with a dog." Ironically Laurence, because he is a happily married family man, is in a position to own a dog, and reports that he has discovered this whole dog-walking subculture which apparently is rich in nice-looking women who think he is a great guy because he looks after his dog. Ironic isn't it that I, who actually need to meet these nice dog-walking girls, am not in a position to own a dog because of my single life-style.

OK I admit it - I've been exploring the Wizards of the Coast website, where I found this article with some good advice that is applicable to all kinds of boardgaming, not just Magic. Forgotten Lore: Mind Over Magic:

The great players all compete with discipline and mastery over their emotions. Any player can win if he or she gets a great draw, or if an opponent is mana-hosed. It takes a great player to overcome a poor draw to claim a victory. Within the playing community, there are many ways to describe various facets of this ability: the Jedi mind trick, the good-player draw, or most often, luck. What is seldom recognized is that good players seem to get lucky more often because of their inner game. First, they build their deck to minimize the impact of a lousy draw. Second, they play with calm discipline even when things aren't going their way. Again, the focus is not on the almighty win, but on being wholly present in the game. The distinction might be a fine one, but I believe it holds nonetheless.

I only noticed this today, but Jim Dunnigan's classic text The Complete Wargames Handbook is available online.

Once upon a time I loved this house
Now I'm thinking bout burning it down
And I'll be long gone when the fire burns out
On the way to another town

Steve Earle on "Transcendental Blues"

Also there is a 20% discount on everything at Columbia Games until 5 July. I have never actually bought anything direct from Columbia but have heard nasty rumours that you are very likely to get done for import duty on their games, because they cannot be classed as paper and books apparently. Sadly buying direct is now the only way to get Columbia's latest titles.

If you are at all interested in wargames get yourself over to GMT Games and download their latest flyer. There are some bargains in their sale, and also lots of interesting new titles to pre-order on their P500 scheme. I have voted for Twilight Struggle, a PoG-style game about the cold war, along with Manoeuvre, a simple horse and musket era game, and BattleLine, a reprint of a classic game that I missed first time round.

Just a couple of weeks now until NimrodCon - what looks set to become our annual visit to Hay-on-Wye for books, beer and boardgaming. Pretty much fully booked now with 8 guys signed up, so unless you're a beautiful woman with unconventional tastes you've probably left it too late for this year.

Almost the best fun is planning what games to take along. Here is my current list (but subject to extensive revision over the next fortnight):

Scarab Lords (for the pub)
Finstere Flure (silly horror fun)
Wilderness War (a taste of wargaming that won't take too long)
Hammer of the Scots (another taste of wargaming??)
Euphrat & Tigris (can never get enough of this)
Amun Re (haven't tried this out yet)
Zendo (for the pub)
Memoir 44 (if I have managed to buy it by then)
Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation (oh dear the boot's full)

Just a tiny bit of gaming to report. Simon came up on Friday as he was planning to visit Workshop, and we played a couple of games of Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation. Great fun, always felt like you wanted to try it one more time to see what would happen if you used a different strategy. Definitely one for NimrodCon.

Tiring but very satisfying weekend on the Workshop team. We were desperately short-handed but everything seemed to get done somehow. I invigilated 2 Open Book Reflections (fancy name for exams) over the course of the weekend.

Best moments were both to do with worship....

First was Saturday morning worship done by Nick Fulcher and his group, an alt.worship-style set of installations on the theme of circles. Especially moving was the invitation to paint a circle with kiddie-type paints and then reflect on what your heavenly parent thinks of your efforts.

Then after packing up Sunday night we had a 30 minute wait to kill while the van turned up. We were all feeling pretty drained. Philip suggested breaking bread, Linda and Balacz allowed their shopping to be plundered for wine, and we had a wonderful nourishing time sharing the Jesus meal together.

As some of you may know, I'm currently on the road back to Canterbury. Today I got hold of Common Worship: Daily Prayer, which is the Church of England's new liturgy for personal use. It's beautifully presented, with red pages marking the sections, and lots of instructions and options and rubrics and tables of dates and seasons and readings. I don't know whether I want to pray with it or play with it. The same part of me that likes writing code or figuring out the rules to a new game enjoys all the technical bits of this prayer book. Slightly worrying? Liturgy for geeks?

You're the only one I want
I've never heard your name
Let's hope we meet some day
If we don't it's all the same
And I'll meet the ones between us
And be thinking about you
And all the places I have seen
And why you were not there

Townes van Zandt
as sung by Lyle Lovett on "Step Inside This House"

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!