Category: Personal

Okay, contrary to what was advertised earlier, there won’t be a Geek Night this week (unless Claire or somebody else wants to run one), as I’ll be going to the open mic night at The Angel, where Matt’ll be doing his stuff. If you were going to be coming to Geek Night but now (obviously) won’t be, please consider The Angel as a second option.

If you’re concerned that the cancellation of Geek Night is a crafty way of us denying you access to the tasty brew I was giving out last night (which was unanimously named Yeast Infection – Alec‘s suggestion), fear not: folks are more than welcome to come by before The Angel and tank up, or there’ll be enough to save for events during the coming week (there’a about 18-20 pints left, not to mention the other beverages that went down surprisingly well amongst the non-beer drinkers last night).

Right: got to get on with some work.

For the benefit of the Abnibbers (and the other folks that hang around The Place), here’s a roundup of some of the events of the rest of the week:

Thursday
Naruto Night from 8pm, as usual. Proposed anime for the night includes Bleach and Excel Saga, with the possibility of Full Metal Alchemist if the appropriate episodes can be obtained; Naruto otherwise.

Friday
Geek Night has been moved to Sunday this week to make room for Link Night: Claire, Paul, JTA and I, infused by the power of the Four Sword, will continue our quest to free Hyrule from the clutches of an evil Bad Link (and Ganandorf) and free yet more maidens and stuff. Yay. Player slots are filled, but spectators are welcome (and are certainly allowed to entertain themselves with, for example, the other GameCube). In addition, it’s proposed that Binky use this evening to perform the first part of his distillation experiment, as at least two of his experimental samples will have reached maturity by this point. =o)

Saturday
Troma Night as usual. The theme this week is “Bring Your Own Pint Glass” – all attendees are requested to bring a pint glass with them (buy one, steal one, whatever – I don’t care), in exchange for which I’ll repeatedly fill it with any one of a selection of the various beverages that I’ve been brewing for the last few weeks, including wines made with grapefruit, peach, pear and pineapple, a spirit of Binky‘s devising (made from one or more of those previously mentioned, but probably the grapefruit), and lots and lots of cask beer. Bring your own bottle, as usual, if you think you’re going to need it, but a pint glass and a sick bag should be sufficient for most. Proposed on the film agenda is “a good old-fashioned Troma Night”-theme: a good film; a bad film; and an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

If you enjoy what you drink on Saturday, please consider donating a pound or so into “the tub”, the proceeds from which will be used to buy further materials for the making of more communal alcohol for Troma Night. Making alcohol in large quantities is cheap (on money – most of the investment is in time spent washing things, shaking things, boiling things, etc), but not quite free. And if you don’t enjoy what you drink or you’re as skint as I am, just consume anyway. Mmm… beer.

Sunday
Geek Night. In accordance with the prophecy, this week’s Geek Night takes place on Sunday rather than Friday, to make room for questing and merriment on the part of the four incarnations of Link in it’s place. Usual deal this week.

Curry at Cafe All Spice tonight. All welcome. Geek Night moved to Sunday this week. Jon, Hayley, and TGB in town. Time not yet certain, so meet at The Place during the evening or get a message to Claire or I and we’ll let you know when we know… but it’s likely to be about 9pm (when TGB expects to arrive in town). Also; keep an eye on this blog post for updates.

Be there, or be sober and hungry.

Special instructions –

• Alec and Suz – we’ll phone you before we leave The Place and pick you up on the way through. Testicles permitting.
• BYOB. Usual drill.
• Gareth seems confused by my agreeing to organise this, though. Hmm.
• UPDATE: Meet in Scholars at 8:20pm for pre-curry drinks.

In actual news, Abnib Gallery now carries 877 photos. My efforts to keyword/caption them all is going slowly, so if you want to help, please do (just sign up an account on the site then contact me to get your permissions sorted out).

You’ve all seen nanofiction before (which must, of course, have no more than 55 words of text plus no more than 7 words of title in it), as is used in games like Chrononauts and some of the other Geek Night favourites, but I’ve only recently discovered the idea of a drabble – a work of fiction totalling exactly 100 words.

I thought I’d share with you all a drabble written by a friend of mine (she’s put it only in places it’s hard to find, so I’m duplicating rather than linking).

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
From the day we were born, my twin sister was always the one people noticed. In our first photograph, just hours after our birth, she looked rosy, while I looked pale, like a wax doll. She grew into a beautiful and talented young woman – her singing voice was quite something to behold. I have no doubt that my mother loved me – although my father’s discomfort and disappointment in me was fairly blatant – but I remained something that was discussed as little as possible. I didn’t want to envy my beloved sister. If only I had been born alive, too.

© Faye L Booth 2005 – used with permission – no unauthorised reproduction, in whole or part

Fabulous, I thought, and so I got permission to share it with you lot, too.

Wanted: one competent video games player with free time on Saturday daytimes (and probably at other points during the week) to waste a couple of dozen hours over the next few weeks playing The Legend Of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures alongside me, Claire and JTA. We’ve come into possession of (or will have, very soon) a copy of the game, a gamecube, four gameboy advances (or SPs), link cables, etc. Hopefully, we’ll be ready to kick off this coming Saturday afternoon.

Why do we want you? Because Zelda: Four Swords is blatantly best-played with four simultaneous co-operative players making a collaborative effort to save hyrule/banish demons/rescue Princess Zelda/whatever the plot is this time around. This game is getting good-to-great reviews, but every reviewer is saying that it’s best to play with the full gameboy/four-player affair, so we’ve decided that this is what we’re going to do!

Why is this game special? Well; it’s a truly co-operative RPG which feeds upon the puzzle-solving and co-ordination abilities of a group of people. It’s fluffy and friendly. And, coolest of all, it really does make use of the four (eek!) GBAs we’ll be throwing at it… if your character is seperated from the rest of the party, the adventure continues on your own little screen, right in the palm of your hands, until you can rejoin the main TV screen. Secret voting on each other’s performance, puzzles which require synchronised efforts on the part of the team members, and other goodies, make this a very promising little game.

Provisos:

You probably have to like Zelda games, or, at least, the idea of them.
You’ll need to drag your arse around to The Place to play it with the rest of the group on a regular basis (schedule to be determined), or we’ll happily replace you with somebody more interested.
BYOB.

Want to join our ragtag band (or even come along early for Troma Night and spectate/shout abuse/complain that “it’s not like the Zelda games you remember – that’ll be you, Paul)? Let me know. And may the triforce be with you.