Articles – Page 50

The Game Disbalancer

Coming to an Arkham Horror game near you… never.

Click for large-o-vision. You know, I think that having this guy on the team might just make the game winnable. Maybe.

Vulva

Just when I think that I’ve gotten the hang of humans, they do something even stranger than ever before.

There’s a new fragrance for men that’s about to be hitting perfume counters around Europe: Vulva Original [NSFW]. Just… click the link, and watch the video that appears. Your first thought will almost certainly be: “They’re selling a perfume… that smells like sweaty vagina?”

Continue to explore into the site and you’ll see that this is exactly what this product is.

I agree with Alex Day: unlike every other fragrance ever marketed at men, this perfume isn’t about trying to attract women (well duh: I’m pretty sure that walking around smelling like a vagoo will only attract a particular kind of woman, and it’s not the kind that’ll be interested in you as a man)… this product can only be targeted at men who just want to be able to sniff the back of their hand in a crowded elevator and pretend that they’re nose-deep in pussy.

That’s probably a fetish in itself.

The Best Mouse In The World

This was one of my most-popular articles in 2010. It continues to be popular in Spain (¡Hola! Mucho gusto). If you enjoyed it, you might also enjoy:

Why I believe that it’s wrong to lie to children about Santa (2009).
The Ten Weirdest Sex Toys I’ve ever seen (2009)!
A dirty-looking calendar I found at work (2011).
My beliefs about why it’s wrong to lie to children about Santa (2009), complete with pictures of naughty elves.
An argument I had (2011) with the Office of National Statistics about nonmonogamy and the census.
Open Source Shaving (2009).
The moment, 8½ years later, that an even better mouse came along (2019).

The Old

Back in 2006, I ordered a new mouse for my computer. Previously, I’d been using a series of mid-to-high-end five-button optical mice, like Microsoft’s IntelliMouse series: when you’re doing a lot of coding, websurfing, and video gaming, “extra” buttons make a big difference, and the IntelliMouse is fast and responsive and usable in either hand: a perfectly good all-rounder mouse. But when I destroyed my last mouse with a little too much overenthusiasm in an Unreal Tournament 2004 deathmatch, I thought it might be time to look for something a little… sturdier.

Relatively new to the European market at that time was Logitech’s new MX1000: the world’s first generally-available laser mouse: instead of using a little red LED, these mice use an invisible laser to track movements, which apparently makes them far more sensitive and accurate on a wider range of surfaces. As an ultra high-end premium mouse, the MX1000 also came with a wheel that was not only clickable but “rockable” for sideways scrolling and five other buttons (aside from the wheel and the usual three), but it was wireless and used it’s own special “cradle” to recharge. I bought one, and for years I’ve described it as the best mouse I’ve ever owned.

This mouse was so good, in fact, that I’d always planned that when it finally kicked the bucket, I’d replace it with another one exactly the same. When I said that this was the best mouse I’d ever owned, I wasn’t kidding. It fit my palm in a way that I’d never experienced before (I have pretty big hands, and I find that those piddly little mice that are so popular to be just useless for me, leaving me with my wrist dragging around on the desk like a beaver’s tail). I genuinely like the quirky bonus selling points of this mouse, like its unusual “thumb rest” and its wonderful little LED gauge that tells you when it needs recharging.

My MX1000 is still going strong, despite years of heavy (ab)use. I use my mouse for hours a day, every day, and it needs to not only feel great but be rugged and durable, too. But the time comes in the life of every mouse when it’s time to be retired to less-intensive duties. Here’s the underside of my MX1000 today:

See how scuffed and worn it is from the hundreds of miles it’s travelled back and forth across my desk? Even the non-slip teflon pads are beginning to wear down! And the two little copper contacts on the right, there, are tarnished – sometimes it takes a couple of attempts, these days, to get the pins to make a connection when dropping it into the charging cradle. It’s time that this little mouse was put out to pasture.

But my plan – my plan to replace it with another one just the same – can’t come to pass: Logitech no longer manufacture the fabulous MX1000! Oh noes! I know it’s still possible to buy old stock or unopened second-hand ones on eBay, but this feels to me more like the universe’s way of telling me that it’s time to look for something new.

The New

So I’ve gotten myself the successor to the MX1000: a Logitech Performance MX.

And here are my observations after using it for a few days:

Pros	Cons
It’s just like an MX1000 – ludicrously accurate, sensitive, and fabulous to hold and use. It’s slightly lighter than the MX1000. Rather than charging in a cradle, it charges via a MicroUSB cable (either from a computer or a supplied power adapter), so you can continue to use it while it charges (I’m just using the cable I sometimes use to attach my phone to my PC). Even more buttons! All configurable by application or usable for their default functions. The wheel can now operate in “clicky” or “flywheel” modes, and the “flywheel” mode – in which the wheel just keeps on spinning freely – is very nice. The “Unifying” USB receiver can apparently have up to six devices connected to it (although why you’d have six mice/keyboards, which are the only devices yet to use the technology, is beyond me). The teflon pads and even the rechargable battery are now replacable, to keep the mouse running for longer. The mouse now uses “Darkfield” technology, which allows the laser to work even on transparent or reflective surfaces. I have no idea how this black magic works, but it’s cool: I’ve tried the mouse on mirrors and on glass and it genuinely does seem to work, but I can’t work out how! The new texture of the thumb rest is more pleasant than the plasticky feel of the MX1000 (which becomes apparent if you have sweaty hands). It’s possible to change the mouse sensitivity “on the fly” using pre-configured button presses, which JTA tells me is useful (I’ve never had a mouse with such a feature before, so I’ll reserve judgment).	Charging using a cable isn’t quite so cool nor as convenient as just dropping the mouse into a charging cradle. More of the MX1000s buttons “just worked” without the special driver software installed. It’s still using a proprietary wireless pairing and communication system. Seriously, Logitech, would it have been so hard to use Bluetooth and save me from using up another USB port? The battery gauge only turns on for a few seconds after you first start using the mouse in a long time, or when it’s getting low: I suppose this must be a measure to conserve battery life, but it does make it slightly harder to tell the battery level “at a glance”. The “rocking” of the wheel to scroll left and right no longer produces an audible “click”, depriving you of feedback. The driver package is 25MB. Seriously: why does it need to be this large? Perhaps a little too big for some people’s hands? This isn’t a mouse for people with a small hand.

Pros

Cons

It’s just like an MX1000 – ludicrously accurate, sensitive, and fabulous to hold and use.
It’s slightly lighter than the MX1000.
Rather than charging in a cradle, it charges via a MicroUSB cable (either from a computer or a supplied power adapter), so you can continue to use it while it charges (I’m just using the cable I sometimes use to attach my phone to my PC).
Even more buttons! All configurable by application or usable for their default functions.
The wheel can now operate in “clicky” or “flywheel” modes, and the “flywheel” mode – in which the wheel just keeps on spinning freely – is very nice.
The “Unifying” USB receiver can apparently have up to six devices connected to it (although why you’d have six mice/keyboards, which are the only devices yet to use the technology, is beyond me).
The teflon pads and even the rechargable battery are now replacable, to keep the mouse running for longer.
The mouse now uses “Darkfield” technology, which allows the laser to work even on transparent or reflective surfaces. I have no idea how this black magic works, but it’s cool: I’ve tried the mouse on mirrors and on glass and it genuinely does seem to work, but I can’t work out how!
The new texture of the thumb rest is more pleasant than the plasticky feel of the MX1000 (which becomes apparent if you have sweaty hands).
It’s possible to change the mouse sensitivity “on the fly” using pre-configured button presses, which JTA tells me is useful (I’ve never had a mouse with such a feature before, so I’ll reserve judgment).

Charging using a cable isn’t quite so cool nor as convenient as just dropping the mouse into a charging cradle.
More of the MX1000s buttons “just worked” without the special driver software installed.
It’s still using a proprietary wireless pairing and communication system. Seriously, Logitech, would it have been so hard to use Bluetooth and save me from using up another USB port?
The battery gauge only turns on for a few seconds after you first start using the mouse in a long time, or when it’s getting low: I suppose this must be a measure to conserve battery life, but it does make it slightly harder to tell the battery level “at a glance”.
The “rocking” of the wheel to scroll left and right no longer produces an audible “click”, depriving you of feedback.
The driver package is 25MB. Seriously: why does it need to be this large?
Perhaps a little too big for some people’s hands? This isn’t a mouse for people with a small hand.

In short, the verdict is that the Performance MX is a worthwhile successor to the MX1000, and a great replacement when the time comes. And if you’re still using an LED or even a wired mouse (trust me, when you go wireless and lose the “tug” of the cable pulling your mouse back, you never want to go back), perhaps now is the time to upgrade.

Update – 8 March 2019: it took a while, but an even better mouse has now dethroned this one.

On This Day In 2006

Looking Back

On this day in 2006 I’d just come to the end of a long weekend of coding and socialising. The code project was, of course, Three Rings, and Bryn and Gareth were helping out with the big push to make the initial release Three Rings 2 a success.

Three Rings is, of course, a project to streamline the administration of helpline services (like Samaritans) by making it easier for them to manage their rota and volunteer resources. I kicked the project off back in 2002 (based on an idea that Kit and I had discussed as early as 2000), initially only for Aberystwyth Nightline – with whom I was then a volunteer – but it quickly spread and within a few years had become the de facto system for Nightlines everywhere. Later, my work with expanding and enhancing Three Rings comprised a part of my University dissertation.

Among the problems with that early version of Three Rings, though, was that it had never been designed to scale, and so eventually the time came to throw it out and develop a new one, from scratch, in the then up-and-coming Ruby on Rails framework. Gareth was a huge help in the early development, and Bryn got burdened with the task of coming up with a means to convert the data between the old system and the new system, migrating our users across: a horrendous task, because the two systems used completely incompatible data storage mechanisms, and the old system was riddled with quirks and workarounds. This weekend, back in 2006, was the cumulation of that work: Bryn hacking away on his Project: Rosetta system, a stack of Perl programs to translate the data… while Gareth and I made progress on redeveloping features for the new system.

It wasn’t all work, though: we also all took a trip up to nearby Ynyslas, a little way North of Aberystwyth, for a barbeque on the sweeping sand dunes there. As my blog post for that weekend reveals, this involved a fantastic prank in which Claire and I “hid” Jimmy by burying him under the sand, covering his face with an upturned cardboard box, and then frightening the shit out of Gareth when he – having been told that Jimmy hadn’t come – lifted the box to find Jimmy’s disembodied head staring back at him.

Looking Forward

Since that day, Three Rings has continued to grow and expand – it’s now used by a number of charities nationwide, and exists as a company in it’s own right. Gareth and Bryn are no longer directly involved with the project, but parts of their code live on in the system, ticking away in the background.

Ruth now plays a major part in the development of the system, and it actually formed part of her dissertation, too, meaning that my dissertation (which Bryn still has, after he borrowed it to help him write Rosetta) was actually cited as a reference in another document: something which pleased me inordinately.

Claire and Jimmy got together a year and a bit ago, and they’re now living together, still in Aberystwyth (not that you’d know from reading either of their blogs, slackers that they are).

And we haven’t had a barbeque yet since moving to Earth, but weather-permitting, the plan is to do so this week!

This blog post is part of the On This Day series, in which Dan periodically looks back on years gone by.

Updating WHOIS Records With Easily

I’ve recently undergone an ordeal with Easily, with whom a number of my domain names are registered, that involved a process so painful and convoluted that I couldn’t help but share it with you. All I wanted to do was to change the WHOIS data on some of my domains, because they were horribly out of date. Here’s the process that seems to be standard at Easily:

I log in to the Easily web site to change my WHOIS information. If this were any of the other domain name registrars I deal with, this would be the only step in the process, but Easily don’t seem to think that their customers want this functionality, and so they don’t provide it.
I use the contact form to send requests that they change the WHOIS information, providing all of the information necessary to facilitate the change.
Easily e-mail me, informing me that requests have to be made by fax or postal mail. Muttering under my breath about this being a little like the dark ages, I send them a letter spelling out my request. The letter also includes three characters from my password, which apparently is all it takes to impress upon them that I am who I claim to be.
Easily e-mail me, thanking me for my fax (it was a letter), and informing me that a change of ownership of a domain requires that a £15 fee is paid. I reply to point out that no change of ownership has occurred; although my name and my address have changed, and I can supply proof of both if required.
Proof of these things isn’t required: my word as a gentleman is good enough, it seems. Easily change the WHOIS information, but mis-spell the name of my street.
I e-mail Easily to inform them of their mistake. Several days later, they e-mail me back to say that they’ve corrected the typo, along with a terse apology.
It turns out that they’ve corrected the typo, but somehow managed to introduce an even more significant one: now the house number is incorrect. I double-check my letter and all of my e-mails so far to ensure that this mistake couldn’t possibly be my fault, and it’s not. I e-mail Easily back and request that they have another go at typing my address correctly).
A week passes. With no response, I wonder if I shall have to write another letter. Don’t forget that this is an Internet-based company selling Internet services. I send another e-mail, asking whether the previous e-mail is going to be handled any time soon.
Easily reply, with no apology this time, stating that the typo has been corrected. I check the WHOIS records: it turns out that they’ve only corrected their (second) typo on one of my domain names, and not on all of them. I write back to ask when they’re planning to correct the others, and list them.

We’re coming up on one month since this ordeal started. For reference, when I used GoDaddy to do the same operation, I had it done within five minutes, and I could do it all online.

Easily have really, really gone down in my estimation.

Banquet In A Box

Earlier this week, Ruth and JTA were away, and evidently Ruth thought that I wouldn’t be able to look after myself (usually she’d just leave out large bowls of kibble and water), because on Tuesday lunchtime I heard a knock at the door. When I answered, a deliveryman gave me a large parcel clearly labelled to say that I should be near a freezer before I open it.

Once I’d gotten past the “WTF?” of this unexpected delivery, I opened the box, and – within the insulated polystyrene box within, found a “heat and eat” gourmet meal from Banquet In A Box.

Each item was clearly labelled with it’s cooking instructions (or defrosting instructions, in the case of the cake). The meal it eventually produced was surprisingly good, although everything took about 25% longer to heat than was estimated on the packaging.

I skim over all of that – cool though it was – because the real treat was that the box was chock full of slabs of dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide). It being years since I’d last had the chance to play with dry ice, I immediately started messing about with it: making fog, bubbles, a small and unsuccessful bomb (I didn’t really have a suitable container and had to improvise), and noise… and also keeping my drinks cool and awesome-looking for the rest of the day. If you can’t see my video, below, you can view it on YouTube.

Busy Weekends Part III

As if we hadn’t been busy enough the weekend before last and the one before that, there’s more that I’m only just getting around to blogging! It was only when I thought about writing this up that I realised how much I’d neglected to write about already (and had promised people would be “coming soon”). So, without further ado; here’s what Ruth, JTA and I got up to last weekend.

Aside from our two attempts to conquer the Dunwich Horror (both attempts were failures, although the second was ever so close, ending with Ruth’s character in a one-on-one deathmatch with a Great Old One), our major event was a trip down to London on Saturday. After all, since the move to Earth, London feels like it’s pretty-much on our doorstep: so there’s no excuse not to take in a bit of culture once in a while in the heart of the capital. Of course, when we say culture…

Ye Old Cock Tavern

We started out in Ye Old Cock Tavern on Fleet Street, because – hey – early afternoon is a perfectly good time to start drinking on a weekend. They did some pretty good chips, too, which we picked at as we drank our pints and watched a crowd gather for a wedding at the church up the road, nestled between the old newspaper buildings.

Volupté

Next up was Volupté, a burlesque club with a bi-monthly lunchtime Afternoon Tease. We started with a few fabulously-mixed and ludicrously ornate cocktails: only the first of many. The bar staff are simply entertaining to watch

Aside from the ongoing stream of cocktails (I particularly enjoyed the Porn Star Martini – which I’m seen drinking in the picture above – I don’t even remember what was in it, except that it came with a “shot” of champagne to drink before starting it), Afternoon Tease consisted of:

Drinking champagne and eating finger sandwiches
A guy dressed as Elvis, spinning hula hoops in ways that I didn’t think possible, to a medley of Elvis hits.
An extraordinarily erotic, genuinely tantalising peacock dance from a young lady going by Vicky Butterfly. She later returned for a second, different performance; not quite so arousing but equally mesmerising. That’s her in the picture, above.
Volupté’s special take on traditional tableaux vivants – gateaux vivants: a wonderfully mischievous woman posing behind little more than suspenders and a cake (with a fabulous parody of M&S food adverts gone by).
Scones and tea
A Miss. Rose Thorne, performing a tribute to Doris Day; and I can honestly say that I’ve never before seen a pair of gloves removed with such… deliberate choreography. Very impressive.

By the time we staggered out into the afternoon sun, we were very entertained and quite spiffingly drunk. Volupté gains my recommendation, although I shall have to check the state of my bank account before trifling with their cocktail bar again!

The Golden Hinde

Next up, we made our way over the Thames to visit the replica of the Golden Hinde, the ship in which Sir Francis Drake completed his famous circumnavigation of the globe.

Yeah, it’s just a big boat (and not even that big). Ruth was pleased, though, but she is almost a big a fan of boats as she is for optimised road junctions. Of course, not to break the theme, we stopped for a drink in each of the two nearest bars to the vessel, as well as a snack to give us the energy for the next leg of our adventure, when we whipped out our Oyster cards and zipped down to Hammersmith for…

Penn & Teller

Yes, the Penn & Teller, during their 4-day-only visit to the UK (the first in 15 years), doing their usual mixture of magic and comedy in their in-your-face style, in a spectacular London show. If you’ve gotten this far down the post before you realised how awesome my weekend was, well, what took you so long?

I couldn’t even pick out my favourite part of the show. Perhaps it was one of these:

Teller “drowning” at the end of the first act as part of a card trick (yes, really!) gone wrong.
A whole series of fabulous tricks done with evidently-confused members of the audience (especially the one with the woman they had blindfolded and throwing knives towards Penn, and narrowly missing – it was all done with electromagnets, see?).
Stunning examples of cold-reading done using jokes randomly selected from joke books, with a predictive “hot reading” twist at the end.
The thought-provoking ending, in which Penn (between bouts of fire-eating) asks the audience to think not about how they do what they do, but why, along with some clues related to his experiences as an audience member of various shows.

Sundeep!

By remarkable coincidence, Sundeep and her partner, Ashley, were also at the Apollo to see Penn & Teller! Wandering back from the bar during the intermission we just bumped into her. As she doesn’t blog these days, for the benefit of those who might be wondering: she’s doing well, still on maternity leave and looking after Vanessa, her daughter (who’s looking quite cute in many of the billion or so pictures she carries around with her on her phone), and both are happy and healthy. Ashley – whom we hadn’t met before now – seems nice: he has a certain rugged-but-cute French look and he works for a very worthwhile charity, both of which give him good points in my estimation.

Mexican Tapas

After leaving the show, we were peckish again, so we went around the corner to a cramped but wonderful-smelling Mexican restaurant for a round of Mexican-style tapas, which was delicious. By this point, we were just about ready to settle into a bus for the long but comfortable journey home, when…

Penn & Teller, Again

…wandering back, we spotted a small crowd of people near the Apollo. Wandering over, we discovered that Penn & Teller themselves were hanging out with folks outside the theatre, signing things and answering awkward questions.
Needless to say, we hung around for a few minutes and got the chance to meet the magicians themselves.

Ruth – perhaps as evidenced by her expression in the photo, above – did her usual thing when in the company of a celebrity (as those of you who knew how she behaved around Lloyd Kaufman will know) of becoming a giggling little girl. She also managed to make a fool of herself by mumbling a question about the stage lighting to Teller, to which he didn’t have an answer (not a result of his on-stage muteness, though: he’s certainly happy to talk in person).

Meeting some of the most fabulous (and eccentric) magicians in the world is perhaps the best way to end a night out in London. But there was one more stop on our journey as we worked our way back to a Oxford Tube stop (avoiding the Circle Line, which wasn’t running):

White City

Yeah; perhaps not actually the highlight of the night, but as we were passing, Ruth insisted that we should get one more photo – for Adam‘s sake:

In case your eyes aren’t up to it, or if you’re simply unable to recognise this iconic London landmark, that’s the White City BBC Television Centre in the photo.

We got back to Oxford a full 15 hours after we’d first left: considerably more exhausted, more drunk, and merrily surfing the buzz of all the fabulous things we’d gotten up to over the course of the day. Sunday became very much a day of rest (and recovery) – we’re not as young as we used to be, as I discovered to my horror during my last party-sized jaunt into the capital. Exhaustion aside, however, this was a fantastic day out.

How’ve your weekends been? Not as legendary as mine, I’m sure.

Busy Weekends Part II

Following up on my post about the weekend before the weekend before last – here’s what I got up to the weekend before last (i.e. the weekend after that). You can see why I’m confused:

Ruth’s Family Picnic

The weekend before last, JTA and I joined Ruth and her family at their “annual family picnic”. This family reunion really shows quite how numerous Ruth’s relatives are, and I’m pretty sure that even she had to stretch her memory to recall everybody’s names as she introduced me (and, sometimes, JTA) to them all.

This year, they’d held the picnic in a wonderful National Trust-managed country estate called Cliveden. If it weren’t for the roasting temperatures, it could have been better still, but the sheer heat made it exhausting just to be sitting down, never mind walking around and climbing trees. Nonetheless, we got the chance for a good explore of the grounds, found the Secret Garden (their mistake was putting signs to it), and clambered around on the remains on the Canning Oak, a tree that lived hundreds of years and was a favourite spot for former Prime Minister George Canning… but which had been felled in 2004 after its roots threatened the structure of the slope on which it stood.

Apart from the ludicrous temperatures – suffered mostly during the journey in the sauna that is the car – it was a fun little trip. There was only one moment of awkwardness at the revelation that both of the men Ruth had brought with her were her partners. It’s often a difficult thing to bring up with more-distant relations, especially when you’re not sure who knows what already, and you don’t want to hide anything from anyone but there are few social norms about how you’re supposed to say, “So, you know what the deal is with us three, right?”

One response, though, was particularly fantastic, and so I thought I’d publish it here: upon being introduced to JTA and I as “her fiancé, and her other partner,” a particular relation of Ruth’s replied “Lucky you!” That’s a nice, positive response that I can get behind.

Busy Weekends Part I

The weekend before the weekend before last, Ruth, JTA and I went up to Preston, for:

My Sister’s Birthday

My sister, Sarah, turned 21 at the start of this month, and we – accompanied by her friends and family – went out to a new Punjabi restaurant called East Z East. The food was fantastic (although in hindsight we probably should have adapted the formula as far as naan bread is concerned, at least – each naan bread was about three feet long!), but the restaurant was a little full! Perhaps be better on a midweek night.

And…

Hoghton Tower

As has become traditional (see blog entries for 2009, 2005, 2003), the next stop was Hoghton Tower for their annual concert and fireworks display. As usual, this event began with the erection of a gazebo in which to have our picnic.

The instructions for the gazebo clearly stated that it was to be constructed by two adults, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to help Ruth and JTA building it, except in a supervisory capacity. I helpfully assembled the first deckchair and sat in it, drinking a beer and overseeing the process.

My management skills paid off, and soon we had a gazebo, tables, and a (huge) picnic.

Some of my sister Becky‘s friends had brought face paints and brushes with them, so we formed a line of people, each painting the face of the next. My mum painted mine: she asked what I wanted, so I told her that I wanted a narwhal, breaching the water and leaping for the sky. I think she did a pretty good job:

Then came my turn. I was to paint Ruth, but she didn’t know what she wanted. The suggestion came that I should paint a rubber duck on her forehead, and so long as you don’t mind ducks that look like they’re from canary heritage:

The concert itself was even better than normal – the arsenal of fireworks was even huger than we were used to, and was supplemented by the addition of a laser show, too! I was slightly disappointed that God Save The Queen wasn’t performed (not for any patriotic reason, I’m sure you understand – I’m just used to them playing it!). Still, a great night, and a fabulous excuse for me to re-educate Ruth in how to count to three (in order to waltz, you see: it’s incredibly difficult to dance when one participant is counting to three and the other is counting to two).

Offshore Oil Strike

The Metro have a fabulous article about this board game:

Yes, it’s a game about drilling for oil using offshore digs. With a remarkable picture on the front of a rig in distinctly stormy seas. And look – there’s BP‘s logo on it: yes, Offshore Oil Strike got their official endorsement when it was released in the 1970s, but it’s coming back to haunt them now as board game collectors dig out their old copies and give it one last go (apparently it never sold very well, not least because it’s a dull and uninspiring game).

I was particularly amused by the card which reads “Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1 million.” – one of the worst cards to draw as a player. A whole million dollars?

That diversion aside, there’s more fun and games here on Earth:

The other night, we got the chance to try Fat Boyz Pizza, our second-nearest local pizza place (after the Pizza Hut Express just around the corner). I was reasonably impressed: good-sized pizza at a reasonable price, very tasty, and only slightly too greasy (we’re talking a little bit too much grease, not Hollywood Pizza – from ~~whom~~ whose menu we ordered for many, many years back in Aberystwyth – here).
We have a green woodpecker who visits our garden. I’ve never seen a woodpecker in an urban environment before, but this one certainly seems keen. We speculate that his appearance right after we overturned a couple of ants’ nests while digging the garden is not a coincidence, though, but rather a tasty treat.
We’ve started planting! Only herbs and flowers, so far – and we’re probably too late in the year to kick off many vegetables – but it’s a start. Our garden still has a long way to go.

Kitty

~$ sudo gem install kitty
Successfully installed kitty-0.0.2
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for kitty-0.0.2...
Installing RDoc documentation for kitty-0.0.2...

~$ kitty
     ____
    (.   \
      \  |
       \ |___(\--/)
     __/    (  . . )
    "'._.    '-.O.'
         '-.  \ "|\
            '.,,/'.,,

~$ kitty
         /\_/\
    /\  / o o \
   //\\ \~(*)~/
   `  \/   ^ /
      | \|| ||
      \ '|| ||
       \)()-())

Kitty. That is all.

Disc Golf

After moving to Earth, one of the things I thought might be fun was to use the excuse of being in a new place to try out some new things. A quick Google around the area uncovered OxDisc, the local Disc Golf society, who meet once or twice a week in a park less than half an hour’s walk from my house. Given that all I knew about disc golf I learned from the summary at the top of the Wikipedia page for the sport, I knew… well, basically nothing except that it was like golf, only with a frisbee and target rather than a ball and cup.

Accompanied by Ruth and JTA, who I’d somehow persuaded to join me, I set out to try to meet some strangers in a park. Having only spoken to anybody associated with the group online (all of whom subsequently turned out to be on holiday or otherwise unavailable), all we knew was vaguely where we were headed and that we were looking for a guy called George: sure, no problem – how hard can that be?

Luckily, it turned out to be reasonably easy to find our contact: once we were in the vicinity, all we had to do was look for the guy carrying a bag full of frisbees. Here came my first surprise: players don’t use just one disc. Three is pretty much a minimum – a long-range, high-speed “driver”, an easier to control but still pretty fast “approach disc” (or “mid-range”), and a slow “putter”. Only the putter looked like any kind of frisbee I’d ever thrown before: the others looked more like a rubber discus that had been given a lip to make it throwable in the same way as a frisbee is. George lent us each a set of three discs, explaining some of the differences between them. Professional players can be found carrying a variety of different drivers with different weights (and weight distributions) to make them tend towards understability or overstability or be more or less suitable for hyzer, anhyzer, forehand, elevator, and other varieties of throw. Yes, they have their own lingo: and I thought that this would be like throwing a frisbee around a park.

We teed off on the first hole of one of the courses that the group sometimes take around the park: markers like a protruding tree root or a gap between a path and a tree marked the tees, and the targets were all particular trees. Some of the courses were set up such that it was actually impossible to see the target from the tee as a result of the intervening trees, and so – without a profound knowledge of the course nor the sport – I had to fall back on a strategy of “throwing it sort-of in the right direction” as best I could and hoping.

Needless to say, my very first throw was a disaster. Unfamiliar with the unusual weight balance of the faster discs (some of which were “overbalanced”; that is, if you throw backhand using your right arm, as most people normally throw a frisbee, it will tend towards the left given an even spin and a level takeoff… are you following all of this? I certainly wasn’t), I was doomed to balls up my first throw… it rocketed forwards and then suddenly flew off to the left, diving deep into a forest of waist-high nettles. About 30 seconds later, I began to really regret choosing to wear shorts for this particular adventure, as my lower legs were rapidly becoming a mass of nettle stings.

Some of the other folks were obviously far, far more accomplished than any of us. Several times, we saw frisbees thrown end-on, like darts, flicked into the air where somehow they’d magically stabilise at exactly the right height to clear a particular obstacle. On a few occasions, the other players would fling their discs in physics-bending ways, turning right to avoid an obstacle then slowing down and turning left to clear the other side of it. Once, I even got to watch a guy deliberately throw his frisbee upside-down in order to “skim” it under a bush and right up to the target tree!

I was pleased with myself that by the end, I could generally throw the mid-range approach disc in a vaguely straight line, some of the time, and that once, I managed to pull off a hook shot up and over (and around) an inconveniently-placed copse, landing the frisbee almost exactly where I wanted it. But just the once, mind.

JTA seemed to pick up the sport pretty quickly, and on the long straight sections easily outperformed me (although I think I had more accurate “putting” ability). Ruth had somewhat more difficulty: the difficulties with her wrists left her unable to “snap” the disc out of her hand, which resulted in far slower throws. Nonetheless, we all had a good time and we’re talking about going along again… right as soon as we’ve had the chance to get a bit of practice in, so we don’t look like quite such wallies!

At the end of the evening, we were surprisingly more well-exercised than we expected (considering that it’s a sport of 5% throwing, 95% walking), and enjoyed the opportunity to calorie-up on ale and crisps at a nearby pub before making the trek home in the sticky warmth of the low sun.

There’s Somebody At The Door

I was hacking away towards a deadline, this afternoon, when I heard a knock at the door. It’s not so unusual at the moment – we’ve had a lot of packages delivered to our new house over the last week or so – but what was a little strange was that today’s visitor was a County Court bailiff here on behalf of Her Majesty (okay, not her personally, I assume, but her courts at least).

Thankfully, it didn’t take much persuasion to get him to see that I wasn’t Mr. Parakesh, and he went on his merry way. And so, we learn a little more about the last occupiers of this house.

Weddings and Secret Gardens

Ruth, JTA and I – later joined by Matt P – went to Jen & Nick’s wedding over in Belfast this weekend, and it was awesome. They’re an amazing couple and it was great to get to be part of their celebrations, to meet the fabulous folks they’re related to, and to drink ourselves under the table. Ruth has already written a little about it, so I’ll just point you in the direction of her blog.

In other news, I’ve been exploring OS maps and it turns out that the garden here on Earth is actually about 20-24 feet longer than we’d previously believed! There’s a fence at the “end” of our garden with a concealed mystery gate, behind which is land overgrown and bramble-filled… but a little research indicates that this, too, is our garden, and we’re now preparing to mount an expedition (with machetes!) to explore and conquer this new land. And then turn it into a vegetable plot.

Right: time for lunch and to register with a local GP.

The Shark

This morning, I left Earth to go to nearby Headington. This trip was primarily to put money into the back, register with a GP, and get some keys cut for the new lock in the garage door. However, I also took the excuse to re-assemble my bike since the move and get out and about because it occured to me that, through working from home (as I now do), I hadn’t actually been outside at all in several days, and I’d be at risk of some kind of cabin fever if I didn’t get some sunlight once in a while.

Headington’s perfectly nice, and an easy 10-minute cycle away from Earth: there’s an uphill section which I was ashamed to see other cyclists pushing their bikes up, but having spent the last ten years in a hilly Welsh town, there was no such nonesense from me. It’s nice to be living somewhere with cycle lanes pretty much everywhere, and motorists who pay attention to the bicycles that weave amongst them: having cycled along the unlit A44 at night and narrowly avoided being cut down by the speeding lorries that frequent that road, it’s a relief to be somewhere where cyclists are better-protected.

While running my various errands, I also took the time to visit the Headington Shark.

Yes, I now live a short walk away from one of Britain’s most unusual art pieces: a 25-foot fibreglass shark stuck head-first through the roof of a small terraced house in Oxfordshire. It’s supposed to be some kind of protest against nuclear proliferation, and it first appeared on the 41st anniversary of the atomic boming of Nagasaki, but I’m not sure that I “get it”. It is kind-of awesome, though.

In other news: this weekend Ruth, JTA and I will attempt to go to Jen & Nick’s wedding, in Belfast. I say “attempt” because we’ve not had a lot of luck with weddings, recently. Last year, Ruth managed to upset the bride at a wedding that she and I went to. Then, this year, the three of us failed to get to Andy & Siân‘s wedding when we had a series of car-related problems, and then the bride and groom didn’t make it to Adam & Emma’s wedding reception, after they got stuck in the USA when an inconsiderate volcano caused their flight to be cancelled. We’re hopeful that we’re not going to bring our string of bad luck to this wedding, too!