Lathany

Does anyone have any useful tips on calibrating radiators?

Our house has a crap complex pipe structure for heating with various sets of radiators running on various different loops and we thought we would try and calibrate them all this evening to try and get something resembling an even heating effect throughout the house. Any tips on which radiators to start with (we also have some idea of where the loops start, although not completely) would be met with gratitude!

Title: Natural birth 'may aid baby bond'

Wrong. This is not a natural birth, this is a vaginal birth. A natural birth would be one where the mother (and beeb) had a much greater chance of dying throughout the process.

Sigh.

This is mostly for my own records, but if anyone wants to read what Rock, Paper, Shotgun had to say about Pathologic it's here. Read Body (at the bottom), then Mind, then Soul. For interest - I saw (some) different events as these characters and came to a different decision as the Batchelor.

I should add - contains many spoilers.

August has come and, more or less, gone. The weather picked up today but I've somehow ended up spending it indoors. Ah well, seems like a good moment for an update.

• Spring Summer Cleaning - As per usual when the duo disappear, there was cleaning and tidying of the house. I managed to tackle more or less everything I planned to, with the exception of the kitchen (although I did manage to wash the kitchen floor). It's not exactly the highlight of my holiday, but I do like (briefly) living in a clean and tidy house.
• Garden - The garden has been doing well in the cool, wettish weather; meaning I've had a fight on my hands this summer. There's still a long way to go, but I did manage to tame the flower bed by the back door. "I didn't know there was a path back there!" was bateleur's comment.
• OU - I'm waiting for my previous TMA mark to come back whilst putting off writing up my project. I've done pretty much everything except the write-up - appendices, structuring, references - but I'm running out of time, so sooner or later I'll have to get on with it. Monday, perhaps.
• Shadow Hearts 3 - I've been playing the third (or fourth if you count Koudelka) installment of the Shadow Hearts series. In many ways they've improved on the earlier versions with more fun side quests, a side-swipe at various Hollywood blockbusters and a slicker system. However, somewhere down the line they've lost the whole "plot" aspect and the atmosphere has none of the creep of the earlier episodes (particularly Koudelka and SH1, but even SH:C had some). However, it's not over yet, so there may still be some to come. Although it also seems close to the end - and a lot shorter than any of the predecessors.
• Infinity - The second mini-campaign closed with a moral dilemma; should we leave the human race to be overshadowed by a race of Guardian descendants who were far more powerful, or should we kill the girl who was/would be responsible? After much debate, she handed over the means to spread the race and thus ensure that they were not all brought up under her teachings (which all the signs pointed towards being heavily them-and-us) and there was finally agreement to let her live and look after her own industrial scale output of offspring. It was a difficult issue which split the party and it was a relief to finally come to a decision we could all back. In terms of the wider universe, there will, apparently, be at least one more mini-campaign, but that's all I know.
• From the Cellars of Xanadu - Back in the Dark Ages (late nineties) chrestomancy and I agreed to run games for each other instead of giving presents. Then nothing happened. For ages. Finally, about four years ago now (I think), chrestomancy presented me with Final Fantasy for which I chose a player list. Last summer I came up with an idea to run for him, which I've been working on in spurts ever since. It's Warhammer 40K inspired and has moved from being a long weekend game to a midi campaign. However my game is turning into the most prep-heavy thing I've ever run with weapons lists, maps, handouts galore and a D8 combat system. Thing is, I want to sort out the bulk of my notes before I start running sessions, but at this rate it'll be another decade before I start. However, I've got a player list from chrestomancy so I'm going to use it as an incentive to kick off sessions before Xmas before my GM-withdrawal symptoms get any worse.

• Being Manly - GameFaq post a "top ten" list on a daily basis. This can range from "The Top Ten Games On The PSOne" to "The Top Ten Least Angsty SquareSoft Heroes". This week the "Top Ten Most Manly Heroes" appeared. At number one was Solid Snake, leading me to conclude that being Manly involves hiding in cardboard boxes and blowing things up. Ems is half-way there already! (Number four was DoomGuy and number ten was Gordon Freeman.)
• Pathologic - After much time, perseverance and lots of reference to a faq I have now completed all three Pathologic characters. My obsession is now sated. I was discussing its attraction with bateleur and I think it's a combination of getting to see every aspect of the characters alongside seeing how many layers the situation really has. By playing the other two - particularly the Devotress - I did get a much better understanding of everyone in the game and everything that was happening. There was no big surprise at the end of Devotress (which I found slightly disappointing) but instead things unfold gradually piece by piece. So still recommended, but I'm still somewhat at a loss to accurately explain what it's all about.
• Seventh Guest - I've had this recommended to me a fair few times and thought I might get it (post OU, that is). Has anyone tried playing it on Windows XP? Is it still worth seeing?

Last year we finished the summer holiday with trip to Legoland. This year we pretty much started with one.

The rain meant that there were fewer people, but that the rides were pretty wet affairs. I got drenched early on (in part because of the Viking ride) and spent a lot of the day drip-drying. However, it wasn't too cold, so this wasn't too bad. On the plus side, it made the queues rather better; also we were more cunning with our choice of order. Consequently we managed nine rides this year compared to seven last year. The main down side was that whilst last year the duo were spell-bound by it all, this year there was a certain amount of whinge from the Bea (on grounds of wet and cold plus some general grumping). I think she still enjoyed herself, but was rather more vocal than last year with her complaints (plus this time it suffered from rather too much anticipation). Ryan still enjoyed himself muchly though.

Our rides and stops were:

• Hill Train - Really just a ride from one part of the park to another, but it meant we started other than at the entrance for rides.
• Spinning Spider - One of those "teacup" rides, only slightly faster.
• Vikings' River Splash - A water ride in round boats which finished the job of soaking us! bateleur's favourite)
• Dragon's Apprentice - The baby roller coaster that we went on last year (Ryan's favourite).
• City Walk - Not a ride at all, but a food spot for pizza and pasta. The food was pretty good (the female half of the family had ham-and-pineapple pizza whilst the male half had spag bol).
• Chairoplane - Another ride from last time (chosen for the lack of queue); fairground swings.
• Ferris Wheel - Requested by Ryan, and again with the short queue.
• Revenge of the Aztec Queen - This was really our candy floss stop (Bea had never had it and wanted some and Ryan took a long time to be convinced it was food) but we saw some of this year's show by the lake (it was remarkably similar to last year's).
• Driving School - Bea and Ryan got to drive cars around their mini road system; Ryan spent most of the time shunting Bea's back end! They got lego driving licences at the end as souvenirs.
• Balloon School - Spotted by Bea from the Ferris Wheel and later named as her favourite ride. It had the odd characteristic that you could pull you particular "balloon" higher as they went round and round.
• Fire Academy - Last's year's favourite (of Bea's) was requested by both twins so we braved the (still awful, but not as long as last year's) queues and did the whole "put the fire out" again.
• Fairy Brook - Our final ride was also from last year and requested by me - I like fairy tales and it had the shortest queues (about five minutes).

( Various bits and pieces )In other news, I've been playing too much Pathologic (as mentioned a few days ago). I'm starting to think it's my reaction to having Pokemon on my DS.

Many thanks to everyone who volunteered. I will be in touch shortly by email (and/or telephone).

( Full computer game review - possibly of most interest to al_fruitbat )

Would you be happy to be interviewed by me as part of my Economics course project (my final assignment)?

I'm after couples¹ who both agree to be interviewed by me. I'd prefer to do this face-to-face, but would also accept various other forms of communication as I'm short on people to interview.

My project is on whether game theory can be used to describe the decision making processes of couples under neo-classical (ie. traditional) economic theories. The interviews will be asking about you and your relationship (essentially to identify it in terms of length, religion, etc) and then putting a number of scenarios (variations on the same scenario) to you and asking what you would do. I'm primarily interested in what factors you would take into account as it's decision making rather than outcome that I'm looking at.

Whilst the tutor at summer school was talking about interviews taking 60-90 minutes (this was to my whole group), I'm expecting these to be less than that, but I'll have a better idea after I run my guinea pig (aka bateleur) through my questions this evening.

Names will not be used, the whole thing will be anonymous. As it's an OU essay it won't be published anywhere either.

If you would consider taking part please either drop a comment here saying so or send me an email (the one on my user page will work if nothing else). Feel free to ask further questions, etc.

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¹ Two people involved in a romantic relationship for any length of time.

A sequel to Beyond Good and Evil has been announced. I can't find anything on the Ubisoft pages, but here's the Wikipedia entry (plus it appears on various game sites).

I'm not sure whether this is the second of the trilogy first considered or whether they decided to finish the game in one shot; I guess more about that later. I'm looking forward to it, having enjoyed the first one.

• OU Summer School - I'm about to disappear for OU Summer School; I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'm really going to miss bateleur and the duo, miss my internet and miss my comfy bed (I sleep badly for the first few nights elsewhere and I'm only away for a few nights). On the other hand, it'll be a break from work and will therefore be more relaxing than the last few months and it'll mean I can get on with my project work (which this Summer School is all about). It's going to be odd to see who attends though. Previously, my literature Summer Schools were almost entirely populated by women older than I am (or was). However, tutorials of my current course are attended by students who are mostly much younger than me and about 50:50 men:women. However, I've read almost nothing (fiction-wise) since this course started so this may be a good time to pack some evening reading to fall back on if the social side isn't my thing.
• Battlestar Galactica series 3 - Having been repeatedly warned by chrestomancy that the third season was seriously awful, bateleur and I put off buying it until it had substantially dropped in price and then watched it with some trepidation. Fortunately it wasn't as bad as we were expecting. ( Here be spoilers )
• Indiana Jones - We saw the new Indiana movie and enjoyed it. It's nothing to write home about, but I felt it was a decent enough sequel to the franchise (certainly not as poor as some reviewers were suggesting) and it was nice to see the man himself once more. Were I to recommend an Indy I'd still go with Raiders, but it was a hell of a lot better than that Temple of Doom rubbish.
• Pathologic - I can't remember how I found this game but it's turned out to be as seriously weird as promised. To give you some background it's a Russian game with a fanatical following and it won all sorts of home grown awards. It's billed as a puzzle game where you play one of three characters trying to stop/contain a plague in a small, weird town. It's set (checks box), er.. last century, probably mid last century (some things are quite modern but What No Cars?). The town has a social structure rather similar to vampire clans (and I haven't yet ruled out vampires, werewolves or anything like that) and has a theatre with a masks play that you can see every night (I've missed one and seen one). Sadly the play is still in Russian. In fact, that's one of the problems. The biggest, I guess - as the translation is, err, brave, but somewhat crap¹. This isn't helped by the fact that the original Russian is also supposed to be artsy and obscure in places. The actual thing plays like a cross between a murder mystery (with first person shooter perspective) and real-time The Sims (although I've never played The Sims so I could be way out here). In fact it most reminds me of the Sherlock Holmes game that huggyrei and telpher brought over last year with the huge map of London on which you could go anywhere. Because you get that huge map in Pathologic and you can call at/break into any house (or shop) that you choose; although you have to do all the walking. And the walking in turn means I don't play it for very long at a stretch as I get motion sickness. You play one of three characters (I'm playing Batchelor, the easiest - which is short for "Batchelor of Medicine" and in turn says volumes about the language/atmosphere in this game) and they all have different roles in the unfolding story. In fact you can't play the girl (Devotress) until you've played at least one of the other two (the other is Ripper - a surgeon). The game has a fixed length because it's sort of real time (speeded up that is, an hour of game time is - at a guess - about 5-10 mins real) and, as the game reminds you at the start of each of its days, there are 12 days to survive. There's a bit of combat, but it's mostly a quest and story thing. With constant marching around the town (and examining trash cans). I might suggest it to White Wolf enthusiasts who can handle the translation (although I might wait until I get a bit further into the story - it's only day 3).
• Anniversary - bateleur and I have now been married for thirteen years (lace) and we celebrated the usual way - with a meal. Wrapped vine leaves, lamb in nice sauce (yes, I've forgotten what was in it) and then chocolate mousse with mango and clotted cream. This year we decided to do different wines with the different courses (Sancerre, Rioja and Muscat) which was rather lovely (and means we've been finishing the three bottles off all this week).

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¹ ( This is an excellent example from the first page of the manual )

Just announced!

• No guess at a release date yet
• 3D
• single player and on-line
• Five character classes all of both sexes
• A(nother) return to Tristram plus new locations
• First victim of the bad guys appears to be Deckard Cain

• Infinity - Time travel take two: We spent the first third of the session deciding what had happened. We came to some conclusions (someone was trying to kill the space person - but we didn't know who was going to be responsible this time around or whether they would succeed), but weren't really sure what we should be doing next. So we followed this up with a stint of reconnoitering and found records of three different time paths that we might be on. The next third of the session was spent nailing a not-completely-hopeless one and then setting off on it. The last part of the session was brief elation at getting the scenario right, followed by the realisation that our presence was about to mess it up. We tried to think of ways around it, came up with one, which left me summoning the Giant Turtle of the Lake (which I'd been itching to do since it showed on the time sheets). The other Infinity group may be interested to hear that I'm playing out some of the other end of the story that we were in - namely the background to the bit that left us stranded in the first place.
• Sixth Sense: Being about the only person left in the world (apparently) not to have been spoilered for Sixth Sense, I got to see it. It was fantastic. Just in case there's someone else out there unspoilered, I won't say any more.
• Syberia 2 (mild spoilers): Many, many moons ago some kind Tao soul lent me Syberia via bateleur. This month I bought and played the sequel. The whole thing left me almost in tears. The main male character, Hans, had fallen as a child and hurt his head (whilst playing with a Mammoth doll that looked a little like Ems). Ever since that day he became obsessed with Mammoths and the legends of Syberia - an island where they once lived. He became childlike and gently single-minded and all his work on automatons was aimed at his dream. His father disowned him as a consequence of this. He was eighty-odd in the computer games, but reminded me so much of Ryan. I finished the first Syberia about five years ago and, at the time, it left me somewhat wanting to see the sequel. The second Syberia finishes the story and, in contrast, instantly prompted me to buy a copy of the first one for myself as well so I can play both through together. The whole story was rather lovely. But it has the most bizarre death of a bad ever. And I'm including LeChuck dying through root beer here.
• Arkham: For once, instead of chrestomancy joining bateleur and I for some Norrething, I joined him and TheHattedOne for a game of his carefully reconstructed Arkham game (containing bits from the first three expansions). There was also lovely sausage pasta, apple pie and red wine. Plus - we won! I got to play the scientist and found the "no gate, no monster" power extraordinarily useful.
• OU: Study continues, I still seem to be surviving. Summer School is approaching and it's looking like my project may be on game theory. I haven't studied the subject since my third year at university (the first one, I mean). It really takes me back.
• Ill: Having spent almost the entire year not being off sick, I have been ill two weekends running. The first Monday I was off with muscle aches and lack of balance, then the second I developed an all-over rash which NHS Direct enthusiastically (and, fortunately, wrongly) diagnosed as measles. I think my body's trying to tell me to take a holiday.

On the BBC weekly quiz today it comments that the leader of the Conservative Party is not a member of the Carlton Club and instead: "David Cameron ... belongs to White's, another all-male club. Mr Howard and Baroness Thatcher are both full members - until now, the Iron Lady was the only exception to the men-only rule."

However on the main article here it says "The Carlton Club, the elite private members' club for Conservatives, is to allow women to become full members - 176 years after it was founded. Former PM Lady Thatcher had been the sole full female member, having been granted "honorary" membership in 1975. Other women were limited to "associate member" status without voting rights and excluded from some areas. Party leader David Cameron and former leader Iain Duncan Smith had declined membership because of the policy.".

And huh? Why have that policy if he is a member of another all-male club?

Now I can think of various answers; including either report being a mistake, or Cameron feeling that political clubs should be open to all (but not other clubs).

But does anyone know what the answer is?

I've finally finished OU assignment number 3, so I feel it's time for an update.

( rather a lot of TV and some roleplaying )

And I love the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack.

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school (and I feel there should be other categories in here and have thrown in my OU books!), italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. Here's the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend. Even if you read 'em for school in the first place.

( The List )

(And, yes, I did take a quick look at how many I'd read before deciding to follow this sheep)

I found this a tricky one as Foucault’s Pendulum, for example, took me more than one attempt to get through but was worth it in the end. Plus there are books I might recommend in specific circumstances (such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Catch 22 and Treasure Island) but not most of the time. And as for The Canterbury Tales; I've read and finished individual tales but never started a cover-to-cover read (although I do own a copy with that in mind). Also I wondered if book club books should be considered in the same camp as school ones - ones I'd never have thought of reading for myself otherwise (and a great source for new authors).

In other news - I'm missing a family. I think it must be Bea's dance class.

Having finally finished my second Tutor-Marked Assignment (TMA) I thought I would get on with a belated Con write-up.

( Click if you want to read the details )

In short - I had a great holiday.

This had a nice central theme - reporter exposing a conspiracy - and a decent heroine. I would recommend it, but with a few caveats.

I picked this game up last year for the PC (it's also available on most consoles) and loaded it up. Then I put it down at New Year and didn't pick it up again until last weekend. However I then re-started and played through to the end within the week.

I would say this game is well-known for not being well enough known. It was poorly marketed (IMO) although this was partly down to any description of the game being something of a spoiler (not to mention having a vague, undescriptive title). Beyond Good and Evil has got a cult following and I first came across it through its music which was played at the Video Game Live concert.

Its main concept is perhaps its best point. Beyond Good And Evil is all about exposing a government conspiracy by taking photographs in their secret bases. Much of the game is spent crawling around trying to get good camera angles. It's very satisfying to take a picture and later see it published in the rebel magazine.

The gameplay itself primarily involves timing-critical puzzles which are really you working out how and when to sneak your reporter character around. This means you have to have some quick reflexes (although I just about managed and I'm not really a first-person shooter player). It's got a bit of combat in there as well. Plus there's a photography mini-game which I personally found a lot of fun (take pictures of every new animal/monster you find).

I thought that the gameplay was nicely thought out as, whilst your character had fairly limited equipment and moves, it is all used to very good effect and in different ways in different scenarios. Also ordering your secondary character about works well too, particularly in giving some of the strategies a new twist. I equally thought that the puzzle-angle was put together nicely as each sneak-through-a-room is a bit different to the previous room and you have to judge when to fight and when to hide.

There are three main characters - Jade, Pey'J and Double H. Jade is the female heroine and has things in common with Lara Croft. However her chest size is much smaller, she dresses much more sensibly (green trousers, green jacket) and wears her hair short. I liked her a lot. Pey'J is a human-pig and a handyman who adopted Jade. He's the sarcastic one. Double H is Buzz Lightyear; although he never actually says "To infinity and beyond!". You only play Jade, but get to give instructions to the other two.

The plot is nice, as far as it goes. I found out after I'd completed it that it was supposed to be the first of a trilogy, which explains a lot as you don't really get any story development until the end (although they do, at least, provide some closure - assuming you ignore the post-credits scene). It's possible that they'll produce a sequel (or both); but Ubisoft weren't too impressed by the original sales.

It's a pretty short game (particularly if you can handle a controller better than I can) and doesn't have much replay value. It does have a few side-bits though (for example there's a racing game you can play on four tracks). Various people have said that they really should have made the whole trilogy as one game - and I can see their point.

Overall - I'd recommend it and, if anyone fancies playing the PC version, I'm happy to lend it out. However I'd stay away if you don't like timing critical stuff.

Yesterday, chrestomancy and TheHattedOne came over for my birthday for cake, dinner, red wine and Arkham Investigations.

This is some fan's diligent efforts to turn Arkham Horror into more of an investigation/roleplaying game by adding all sorts of extra bits which mean that there is a specific Old One, only related monster types, pre-tracked events and gameplay involves going to a location and investigating for plot events (a failure leads to the normal card-drawing stuff).

It was impressive (although the writing style was a little wobbly in places) and any Arkham fans who haven't come across it should take a look. Sadly there's only one of it (although apparently there is a second attempt somewhere which is much less good).

The main news in my life is that my six year old son has autism. As bateleur wrote a pretty complete entry last week on the subject I don't plan to produce an almost-clone of it. So, please take a look over there if you want to know about the diagnosis (it's unlocked).

The diagnosis was something of a shock to me as I was expecting him to be on the autistic spectrum rather than have full autism, but it means that he will get the help he needs (no longer any question about whether he will be statemented). Also, from a selfish viewpoint, it means that my own (mild) hearing disability was not a major factor in his inability to learn to talk until very late.

In terms of next steps, we're expecting the typed version of the diagnosis shortly (although there are unlikely to be any surprises) along with a pack on dealing with an autistic child. As part of that we'll be sent on a training course to learn more about how to teach him and generally interact with him. We'll also be taking a look at the two specialist schools in the area that will suit him. More on this when we know more.

Various other, less important stuff has also occurred in my life:

• Earthsea Quartet - Two or three decades late, I finally obtained a copy of this and read it. I liked the first three books a great deal (I wasn't convinced by the fourth which seemed more about world-building than advancing a plot) and was very glad to have read them. However, I suspect I'd have liked them more if I'd come across them a decade or three earlier.
• Amazon Films - This month brought us House of Flying Daggers and Resident Evil. The first was, as expected, rather Crouching Tigger Hidden Duck, but worth seeing and contained some lovely scenery. I can't say I rated the love story as the best ever or that I liked the lack of plot (who won the approaching battle?) but I'm glad I've seen it. Resident Evil was more of a surprise as I rated it more highly than I expected to. Granted, it's not the most sophisticated plot ever and contains some unlikely costumes for entering a high security complex, but I thought the Red Queen, most (maybe all?) of the marines, the memory loss plot and the restraint on monster types were all good. Pity that the second one is supposed to be pants.
• Cooking with Bea - Our first huge, savoury success happened with home made pizzas which will definitely be on the agenda again. This was followed up with cookies (which don't really count as Bea was too ill to do anything than object at the prospect of not cooking with Mummy) and then with rather yummy home-made squash, garlic, thyme and onion soup which was - extremely - adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe. I am thinking that banana bread should be next weekend's project.
• Final Fantasy Advent Calendar - It had to happen some time, we were pants. We got the wrong end of the stick and proceeded to mess up our first mirror attempt at re-writing history (set in childhood). However chrestomancy found a cunning way of reversing the damage and so we will be moving ahead, hopefully with more success in the future.
• Bridge - zandev and glittertigger came over for tea and bridge and a fun afternoon was had. Rather unfortunately, rubber bridge is dependent on card distribution and I had the best deal averaging about 12-14 points a hand in an extremely uneven distribution, but I'm hoping there will be other games ahead which are a bit fairer on the other players.
• Birthdays - It's that time in March when my family all suddenly celebrate. We're due a chrestomancy tonight for some Norrething, food and cake and then my mum will be in the vicinity on Friday for food and her presents (although she'll be at chrestomancy's rather than here so I plan to send him off with her present). Then on Sunday, bateleur has agreed to play some form of Arkham as it's the one day of the year when I feel I can bully him into doing so. (And, Happy Birthday for Sunday, mrlloyd).
• Plant - For the daughter of a botanist, I have a real sucky record when it comes to houseplants. I concluded that after eight painful years of struggling the one bateleur's Aunt Carol presented us with had given up the ghost as it was all brown and wrinkled and... well... dead. So I put it into Emily's small room and hid it next to the fridge where my dad wouldn't see it when he visited until I got around to throwing it away and reclaiming the pot. Except, I got back to it this weekend to discover it has a green shoot. WTF? Well, I'll assume it's alive again, for now.

OK, it's Oslo rather than anywhere my F-list are based but I thought it wouldn't hurt to post a link to this ad. I thought it was interesting in its own right.

I got it from Ragnar Tornquist's site and he says: "The Secret World is looking for an ARG Manager (yeah, it says ‘Manager - Alternate Reality Gaming’ in the heading, but ignore that: it’s ARG Manager) to join us at our Oslo office.

We’re expanding the team, and there will be more related postings in the very near future, so keep your eyes on the Funcom site."

For anyone who doesn't know them - they did The Longest Journey which is how I ended up reading this in the first place.

...this was said over the loud speakers this morning.

"On arrival at Victoria there will be about a fifteen second delay before the doors open. This is because the driver needs to convince the train that we have arrived at the station."

There was much laughter in the carriage and I'd always wondered what caused that delay.

This must be one of the warmest Januarys ever. Having spent the first half of December staying in the office at lunchtime, I'm finding this month's mild weather very weird as I'm so used to it being the coldest month (or second coldest after February). It's definitely nicer like this, though.

Over the month I have:

• Played Infinity - Yesterday saw the start of the second min-arc of the campaign and a new team in play. Our group of experienced Guardians spent ages choosing super-powers before Plus One (sense and nano-tech), Cam (hitting and sneaking), Regent (our version of Face), Stone (hitting and hitting) and Moth (summoner) headed out and promptly drove our land vehicle into a lightning force field. The rest of the session involved a hidden city, a few "gods" and a lot of worrying history that suggests we may not be retiring in a couple of months after all. I want session two already!
• Read Small Island and Gifted - The former won Whitbread Book of the Year and the Orange Prize for fiction and is set primarily during and after the Second World War. It focuses on the position (for want of a better word) that Jamaicans held; welcomed to fight in the UK army (although not above a certain rank), but then expected them to go home and not come back. I found that it suffered from a lack of plot; the author was really just describing the historical situation. Which is OK I guess, but I'd rather read a historical account on the subject than someone's fictional account if there's no further story to it. The latter was shortlisted for Best First Novel in the Costa Book Awards and is an account of a girl, Rumi, who was mathematically gifted and ended up at Oxford at fifteen due to the efforts of her father. It's an interesting account although, again is rather lacking in plot instead it is all about the author's set-up playing out. It did leave me wondering what experience the author had or had heard of an upbringing like this as it seemed very plausible.
• Watched three Amazon DVD films - The first of these was The Prestige from the makers of Memento, it is about stage illusions and is one of the creepiest films I've seen in recent years. Angier's final scene in the film is plain disturbing and for an hour afterwards bateleur and I were talking about what had happened and why. The second film was Pitch Black and creepy in a very different way. It's a horror movie where the characters get picked off one by one on a strange planet. It owes a lot to Aliens and the like and it suffered somewhat from loving one of the characters far too much. However, it's not bad if you want to see that sort of film. The final film was The Bourne Ultimatum which I wanted to see in order (having only seen the second film last month) and was a decent end to the trilogy. Much of the action and special effects were amazing, although the plot was simply OK - it's more or less what you expect it to be. Definitely recommended if you've liked the previous two, though.
• Cooking with Bea - We've made orange cheesecake, orange and chocolate battenburg (my person favourite because it actually worked), profiteroles and another vanilla sandwich cake. Ryan is coming to watch every time now; in a couple of years I might be able to cook with him too.

Plus there's been much work and a bit of OU Economics. The latter has started OK; but I'm still glad it's only a two year course.

bateleur and I had decided to celebrate the New Year quietly with a meal in, our favourite bottle of red wine and an evening to ourselves (the duo were still in Cambridge). We talked about 2007 and vague (and not so vague) plans for 2008 and generally enjoyed a peaceful evening.

The following day, my parents brought the duo back; both having had an excellent extended holiday in Cambridge and Royston. However, soon after they arrived, my dad noticed that Emily was limping around the house; not badly, but noticeably. One visit to the vet's later and the Ems has some painkillers to take; the actual injury is a pulled ligament and should go away in time, although it will mean she's more vulnerable to injury (and possibly arthritis) after this being a cat in her senior years.

I've mostly enjoyed the last few days since New Year; I managed to take two weeks off work in total and I feel comfortable about going back now, as though I've had a decent rest. I have been pottering around, doing little jobs (such as tidying up my desk), doing bits of writing and playing computers games. I've also heard both twins read most days and yesterday was the regular Cooking with Bea event (orange cheesecake - which I didn't enjoy making because it looked too runny for far too long). However, I haven't made any progress on my roleplaying campaign, despite vague plans to the contrary. I guess there's no burning hurry to get it started, though, given that the Final Fantasy Tribute Game is coming back and the next Infinity arc is also about to start.

It does feel a little odd to be going back to work tomorrow. I guess in part because it's the first long break I have taken from that job and in part because I'm expecting it to be a complete change from my mellow Xmas as we're still in busy period. Also, I'll be opening my OU box of new course material tomorrow. It arrived before Xmas, but I decided from the moment it appeared that I wouldn't open it until after I got back to work so that I wasn't tempted to start up studying until I'd had a holiday. The actual course starts with February, but I'll be beginning before then, as it'll delay the point at which I start slipping behind.