This checkin to GL5HJDRG University Challenge 11 (The High) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
A quick lunchtime cache-and-dash around my workplace. Easy to find exactly where it’ll be, but very hard to find the right moment to snatch it (and return it!) without being spotted by the muggles who’d come out in force for this lovely sunny day. TFTC.
This checkin to GL5HJDQ2 University Challenge 2 (New College's Rear) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
A quick lunchtime cache-and-dash around my workplace. An easy find (but a great hiding place); I’m glad I wore laced shoes! Looked at the hint after I found it, though, and I’ve no idea how it would have helped me: maybe I just don’t “get it”. TFTC.
The other Earthlings, Statto, and I this week came up with a fun and topical variant of hit social board game Apples To Apples (which you might well have played with us at some point or another: if not, come over and we’ll show you). We call it AAV, or Apples To Alternative Vote, and it goes a little like this:
We have in mind a possible variant in which different voting issue (green cards) represent different numbers of voters (perhaps using the “values” deck from For Sale), and the aim is to have a majority of voters, not issues, won over by your policies. “12,000 voters desire things which are… scary!” Give it a go, and let us know how you get on. And don’t forget to vote on Thursday!
It’s was a busy weekend; the first of several, I’m sure. Mostly – put briefly – it’s been spent thusly:
Democracy: I’ll be voting “Yes” on Thursday’s referendum, and you should too (unless you’ve already been persuaded or are even helping with the fight). And while I’ve not had as much opportunity to help get this message out as Ruth and JTA have, I’ve tried to do my bit by joining them for a spot of leafleting over the weekend. I’m not entirely in favour of some of the campaign tactics being used (like the separate “Labour Yes” and “Conservative Yes” campaigns which act as if one another don’t exist: to me, whether or not we adopt AV has nothing to do with parties or candidates and everything to do with it just being a better way of representing the opinion of the voters), but I guess that they’re necessary to get the point across to some folks. And this slight spindoctoring quickly pales in the light of some of the lies that the no-to-AV campaigners are telling.
Injury: Not to me, this time, but to my father, who came off his bike while cycling around Scotland this weekend. I’ve not had the chance to talk to him since they pushed back his surgery (he’s broken parts of himself and they want to turn him into a cyborg put a metal plate in him, or something) until later this week. Right now, then, he’s confined to hospital, which I can’t imagine he’s enjoying very much. If they’ve hooked you up with Internet access, dad – get well soon.
Packing: Oh, so much packing. I got started on boxing up all of the board games, the other day, only to find out that there were quite a few more of them than I remembered. I’ve also started on my collection of cables and computer knick-knacks, and discovered that I have no fewer than five male-to-male VGA cables. Why? I’ve no idea. I’ve been gradually cutting down on my spare supplies (do I really need three spare floppy drive cables when I don’t use any floppy disks?), but it’s hard: the very next day after I throw them out, you can guarantee that’ll be the moment I need one of my many AT-to-PS2 keyboard adapters.
Friendship: A couple of weeks ago I met Adrian, an international student from the USA who’s been in Oxford for a year or so for the final year of zer* study. Ze and I ‘clicked’ and formed an immediate connection, instantly getting along remarkably well. We spent a little of this weekend together, and for a moment there, it seemed like there might be the potential for a romantic connection, too. But sadly, by the time we got into gear ze had only two days left in the UK before jetting off back home to the States… and 3,900 miles is a long, long way. We both agreed that we should have met a year ago, but c’est la vie: the world is smaller, these days, thanks to the Internet, so there’s every chance of building an online friendship, punctuated those rare occasions when we happen to be in one another’s country.
* It’s a gender-neutral pronoun, if you haven’t come across one before (and as I usually only find myself using them in the context of BiCon, you’d be forgiven). Aside from their linguistic benefits in politically-correct society, they’re often favoured by those whose gender identity is neither male nor female.
The title of this blog post is, of course, a reference to What I Learned About Ego, Opinion, Art & Commerce, a fantastic 2001 Goo Goo Dolls compilation album.
A a means to take a break from the code I was working on for half an hour (I’m doing some freelance work for SmartData in my spare time, since I left them to go and work for the Bodleian Library, in order to help wrap up a project that I was responsible for at the end of my time there), I decided to go downstairs and do some packing in anticipation of our upcoming house move.
I packed about four boxes worth of board games, and then stood back to take a look at the shelves… and damnit, they look just as full as they did before I started.
I swear that my board game collection must be breeding, somehow. “Perhaps that’s where expansion packs come from,” suggests Paul. Perhaps: but that wouldn’t manage to explain the optical illusion that makes it look like I’ve got four boxes full of games when in actual fact they’re all still on the shelves, unless they’re breeding as fast as I can pack them.
This might take a while.
Earlier this week, I went along one lunchtime to a free exhibition hosted by my new employer, entitled Manifold Greatness, dedicated to the history of the translation of the bible into English.
Of particular interest are the (never-before publicly exhibited) translation documents used by the actual translators who wrote the 1611 King James Bible, probably the most influential and significant English-language biblical translation projects ever undertaken. The exhibition includes the only known copy of a Bishops’ Bible (the earlier authorized text of the Church of England) with handwritten notes by the translation committees who were at that time writing what was to become the King James Bible. It’s quite fascinating to see the corrections they chose to make after consulting with earlier Greek texts.
They’re also showing off an original copy of the Wicked Bible in remarkably good condition (most were destroyed): this book, probably owing to industrial sabotage at the printers’ works at which it was produced, misses out the word “not” in the seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” If you’re going to commit industrial sabotage, it’s nice to do so with a sense of humour.
If you want to go and see the exhibition – and I’d recommend it; and I’m not just saying that because I work here – you’ve got until 4th September.
After hearing about the recent purchase of social bookmarking service del.icio.us by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, I remembered that once, long ago, I had a del.icio.us account. I decided to check if my account was still alive, so I trekked over to del.icio.us and took a look.
The site’s changed quite a bit since I last used it. It took a while for me to remember what my password was (it was an old, old one, since before I started using passwords the right way). It also appeared that the site still knew me by my former name (it really had been a while since I last logged in!), so I updated it with my new name.
The next step was to change the password. I generated a random password:
#AOOZ*Qs9xsj6^bT@MtN4rq1!0FK&2
But when I went to change my password, it was rejected. Apparently it didn’t meet their security rules. What? That 30-character, randomly-generated password, containing uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation, and special characters… isn’t secure enough?
A little investigation (and some experimentation) later, it turns out there’s
a reason: my password must be insecure, because it contains my surname!
I have a single-character surname. That means that a 30-character password will (assuming a dictionary of 26 letters, 10 digits, and let’s say 20 special characters) have about a 40% chance of being rejected on the grounds that it contains my surname. The longer my password is, the more likely it is to be rejected as insecure. My experiments show that “abcdefghijklmnop” is considered by delicious to be more secure for my account password than, say, “@Ubj#JeqPACrgmSQKn9qRYMBM9nPOj”, on account of the fact that the latter contains my surname.
Silly, silly, silly.
After delicious finally died a death, I retroactively imported all my delicious bookmarks into this
blog.
Having found by coincidence a (minor, perhaps exploitable as part of a more-complex attack) security problem with the website of a major high street bank, one would think it would be easier than it evidently is to get it reported and fixed. Several phone calls over a couple of days, and the threat of making a complaint about a representative if they didn’t escalate me to somebody who’d actually understand what I was explaining, I’ve finally managed to get the message through to somebody. How hard was that? Too hard.
If this still doesn’t work, what’s the next step? I’m thinking (1) change banks; (2) explain why to the bank; (3) explain why to the world. Seriously, I expect better from the people looking after my money.
And on that note: time for bed.
Edit: Meanwhile, we see that the PlayStation Network hack may have resulted in the theft of personal information from users’ accounts. While most of the media seems to be up in arms about the fact that this might have included credit card information, I’m most pissed-off about the fact that it might have included unencrypted passwords. Passwords should be stored using irreversible encryption: there’s no legitimate excuse not to do this, these days (the short version for the uninterested: there is a technique which can be used to store passwords encrypted in a pretty-much irreversible format, even if the hacker steals your entire computer: it’s very easy to do, protects against all kinds of collateral damage risks, and Sony evidently don’t do it). If any of Sony’s users use the same password for their email account, social network accounts, online banks, etc. (and many of them will, despite strong recommendations to the contrary), the hackers are probably already getting started with social hacking attempts against their friends, identity theft attacks, etc. Sony: you are a fail.
Warning: this blog post contains spoilers about the Murder Mystery Way Out West by Freeform Games. If you’re ever likely to participate in this commercially-available murder mystery, you might like to skip over this blog post.
A few weekends ago, as planned, we hosted Murder… Way Out West, the Earthlings‘ most-recent murder mystery night. My new job, among other things, has been keeping me busy at the moment, so I’ve not had the chance until now to really write it up: apologies to everybody who’s patiently waited to see the photos!
We’d originally planned to host Murder at the Glam Rock Concert, which I’ve recently been writing, but an increase in my workload towards the end of my job at SmartData had simply made it impossible for me to finish authoring it in time. Instead, we purchased a prefabricated “print and play” murder mystery kit from online retailer Freeform Games.
Compared to the unscripted “freestyle” murder mystery games I’ve written, there were a few differences in Way out West that made me slightly apprehensive:
Firstly: the majority of the characters start the game with all of the information that will be given to them. This differs from my unscripted mysteries, which have always introduced additional information at the start of a second act, at least. For example: in the successful Murder at the Magic College, Old Betty (Siân)’s second act envelope revealed that she had, between the acts, visited her greenhouse, which provided her with valuable information.
On one hand, I’ve always felt that drip-feeding information to characters in this way is somehow lying: in some of the less well-written “scripted” kits we’ve played over the years, the information that is introduced is pretty contrived – almost predictable, with some authors – and it doesn’t always flow nicely. However, it’s been my experience that it’s easier for players to get into character, faster, if they’re given basic information to start with and then a fuller explanation of their investigation once they’ve gotten underway (and have a couple of drinks down their necks!).
The other question that comes out of this discussion is should the murderer know that they’re the murderer right from the start? Freeform Games and I disagree on this one: they feel that the murderer should know. It’s my feeling, though, that this – counter-intuitively – makes it too hard for the murderer (who has to lie, more convincingly, for longer, unless he or she is given a sufficiently bulletproof alibi to work with), and it makes it particularly challenging to get into character (which many players already find hard).
Of course, there was one particular thing about this murder mystery that made this question somewhat redundant (and here’s where you really need the spoiler warning)… in this particular murder mystery… there is no murderer!
Wait a minute… what? Yes, it turns out that the “murder” victim actually died of a heart attack. Admittedly, he was probably under a great deal of stress after being beaten quite severely by Slick O’Hare (Kit), on the orders of Clem Parham (Matt R). And this may have contributed to his death; but let’s be clear here – the charges should be assault and manslaughter. And this isn’t a “Manslaughter Mystery”, it’s a “Murder Mystery”, damnit!
The author had obviously intended that Slick and Clem would want to try to cover their tracks (or else, failing that, to turn on one another in an attempt to save themselves). After all, the Old West probably isn’t that forgiving of the difference between murder and manslaughter! But by a combination of the broken concept and some slightly-sloppy writing, this wasn’t particularly clear. Despite having been with him when he died, I heard the culprits talking to one another early on, saying “Are we… the murderers?” You’d think that they’d know!
The others were confused and perhaps felt slightly cheated by this quirk, too. I’d once considered writing a “murderless” mystery once, myself, in which the victim’s death was unrelated to any of the characters (suicide, perhaps) but where they all had motive to kill them, but I eventually ruled it out based on the fact that it wouldn’t be very fun and that everybody would feel like they’d been robbed of the experience of deducing the murderer. It looks like I’d have been right.
Another thing that was unusual and different about Way out West, compared to our usual homegrown mysteries, was the emphasis that was put onto special abilities, item effects, and combat. In our previous events each character has had only two or three “special” things that they can do, whereas in this Freeform Games event each character had a great number of abilities, and most had a weapon and/or a special item (not directly related to the main plot, but possibly related to a subplot), too. I get the impression that these were initially a little overwhelming, but by the end people were using their abilities reasonably effectively (including a whole string of people pickpocketing one another!).
The combat aspect of the game was another unusual one. Aside from the actual murder (or not, in this case) and the tension-building, late-game “The Murderer Strikes Again…” cards in Magic College (carefully balanced with a number of characters who can and items that can be used to communicate with the dead), we’ve not seen much death during a murder mystery game before. Even sanitised as it was (most characters, most of the time, will recover from their injuries without assistance, eventually), I was worried that it might lead to griefing, but in actual fact it was used sparingly and people seemed to “get into it” pretty well (even going so far as to collapse with a scream, and those who discovered the body would express shock and concern).
Unlike most of our homegrown mystery nights, little guidance was given to players about the relative worths of their goals, but this seemed to work out reasonably well as players were encouraged to do “what felt right” to them: Deputy Dan Fairweather (JTA), for example, having won the heart of Lucy (Fiona), decided that the most important thing to him was to ensure that the Judge (Rory) wasn’t allowed to be compromised, even if that meant relieving him of his post (by force, if necessary). This wasn’t directly alluded to in his “things to do” goal list – just like Lucy’s plan for the possible division of her father’s land between Mel’s (Paul‘s) railroad company and her friend Blaise (Liz) as part of a deeper and more complex scheme by which she got hold of a map to a silver mine… couldn’t have been scripted, but fell together (with a lot of last-minute improvisation) without a hitch.
As usual, Ruth did a fantastic job of laying out a feast of thematically-valid food: drawing from a variety of American cuisine and sprinkled with a lot of love and imagination (and all alongside playing a complex character with a complicated costume: fake tan and all).
I was immensely impressed, yet again, as the players outdid themselves (yet again, again, for many of them) in terms of the dedication they threw at their characterisation, costumes, and performances. Clem was sickeningly evil and looked down on the other characters from the side of the room, flipping his (genuine) silver dollar from the actual year in which the event was set. Slick spent far too long (and too much pain) getting his scar “just right”. Dan Fairweather’s gun was only a little bit of drilling away from being a legitimate firearm, and had a weight to it that made you feel that he could actually club somebody to death with it. Blaise showed a lot of flesh, but also showed a lot of character with a faux Southern drawl and grainy photographs of the girls she had for hire. The characters expressed love and concern for (and hatred and disgust with) one another and all because the players worked so hard to bring them to life. It was beautiful to watch.
In the end – despite the fact that most folks were correctly pointing the finger at one or both of the culprits (not that there was a murder, but you see my point) – the deputy sheriff’s final decision was that “it would be too obvious” if the two most nasty characters turned out the be the murderer. Obviously he’d not picked up yet on quite how transparent and single-dimensional some of the writing was: thankfully we have such outrageously imaginative friends that they managed to pull the night off anyway! In any case, he decided to hang Blaise Sadler, so we all get to see a photo of Liz looking… what I think she wanted to come across as “shocked”, but which could equally be termed “blowjob-lips”.
Despite all odds and some mediocre source material, a great night was had by all. You can find a download link to get all of the photos in the sidebar of the official website.
Murder at the Glam Rock Concert will still happen, someday, so get those dancing boots and that glittery make-up ready (yes, guys too!) for the next Murder Mystery Night. Hope to see you there!
I keep getting caught up on small world coincidences, since I started working at the Bodleian Library last week. I know about selective biases, of course, and I’ve always said that coincidences happen nine times out of ten, but this is really starting to feel like some kind of amazing conspiracy that I’ve somehow wandered into.
The most recent chain of connected coincidences is also probably the most impressive. But to explain it, I’ll need to take you back in time by almost three years. Back in the summer of 2008, I went to BiCon for the second time, accompanied by Claire and Matt P. Among the various other things we got up to, we met a young lady called Ann (who, if I remember rightly, got along very well with Matt).
This morning I received an email from Ann. It turns out that she works in the Bodleian Libraries: she’s likely to be one of the very users who it’s now my job to provide training and technical support to! She saw my photograph in the newsletter I mentioned in my last blog post and looked me up: small world! I emailed back, suggesting that we get together for a drink after work, and she agreed: great! She also asked if she could bring a friend along, a colleague from the library. Sure, I said, sounds good.
This lunchtime I sorted out some of my holiday entitlement for the rest of this academic year. I booked off a few days for a Three Rings “code week” in the summer, and a couple of days around the time that I’ll be moving house next month. One of these days clashed with a meeting that I’d had planned with the Web/Digital Officer of one of the libraries (I’m doing a grand tour of many of the libraries that comprise the Bodleian, in order to meet all the relevant people), so I sent an email to this staff member to ask if we could reschedule our meeting to another time.
“Okay,” they said, “But I think I’m meeting you in the pub in 90 minutes anyway…”
It turns out that the person whose meeting I’ve asked to reschedule is the friend of the person who recognised me from the staff newsletter, having originally met me three years ago. Out of all of the people (I’m not sure how many exactly – it’s probably in the staff handbook I haven’t read yet – but I’ll bet it’s a lot) that are employed by this, the largest university library in the UK, what are the odds?
I know that there are about a million things I ought to be writing about; I’ll try to get time at the weekend. In the meantime, I thought I’d share with you this snippet from Outline, the internal newsletter of the Bodleian Libraries:
What does this tiny appearance on page three mean? Well; it means that the many libraries that I’ll be visiting over the next few weeks (I have a surprising number of meetings set up!) will know I’m coming, for one.
The article mentions geocaching, because the editor asked me for “something personal about me”, and it was the most family-friendly thing I could think of on the spot. I was also asked “what I did”, which I struggled with a little because, despite having been here a week, I’m still not entirely sure what it is that I do. That said, I achieved the first productive parts of my work, yesterday, helping a user with a self-inflicted (probably!) bug in the Libraries’ CMS system. Apart from that, I feel like I’ve spent most of my time running around the city meeting people and networking! Lots of new faces and names to learn!
Two things keep coming up in conversation with people, upon discovering that I’m new here:
On the other hand, I’m seriously enjoying the comparatively-relaxed attitude that everybody seems to have, here. And I’ve been given a bugs-list as long as my arm that I’m sure they’ve been saving up for me to arrive, so there’s plenty to sink my teeth into even if I will have to go through half a dozen committees before I can implement any of the new features that these websites so desperately need.
This checkin to GL5E1C9N University Challenge 7 (Sizzle Sizzle) reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Nice idea for a virtual. TFTC. (email will be on it’s way in a moment)
This checkin to GL5E1BYW Spies Like Us - Recruitment reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Easy find alongside fellow cacher fleeblewidget. Good hiding place!
This checkin to GC1Q1TW SideTracked - Oxford reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
It’s not been my day! With the help of the co-ordinates, the clue, and confirmation from another cacher, I’m pretty-much certain that I was in the right place, but it looks like it had been removed. Will try again another time…
This checkin to GC25WGX The ox-stream caching series - Osney Stream reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
Lots of muggles around which prevented me from mounting a more thorough search. My job will put me in this area from time to time, so I’m sure to mount a proper hunt sometime soon!