aberystwyth

What I’ve Been Up To This Weekend

This post should have appeared on Monday 24th March 2008, but owing to technical difficulties didn’t make it online until Thursday 27th. Sorry!

Like many others, I’ve had both Good Friday and Easter Monday off work, and as I haven’t blogged enough recently, I thought I ought to provide a quick update about the things I’ve been up to:

Aberystwyth Goes Silent

Okay, so that happens about this time every year: the last week has been the usual lull between the disappearance of the majority of the students and the appearance of the Easter weekend tourists. But this year it was particularly quiet, because even many of the people I’d sort-of expected to be around are elsewhere: Matt‘s still in Cornwall, Sarah‘s also absent, and of course Ruth and JTA are away on a skiing holiday with Gareth and Penny. So it’s been even quieter than we’re used to at this time of year.

Bedroom Tidy-Up

It’s been long overdue, but anybody who ever went into Claire and I’s bedroom at The Cottage will know that it contained bags of clothes that we’d never got around to unpacking since we moved in, over a year ago. So, I finally unpacked them: many of them right into other bags which made their way to the nearest charity shop.

Why do I share this with you? Well, because it leads to an interesting guessing game. You know how Claire pretty much never, ever wears a dress or a skirt (and makes a point of mentioning this to people). Well, having unpacked/washed/sorted/re-hung all of her clothes, take a guess at the exact number of skirts and dresses (total) that she owns. I’ll reveal the actual figure (assuming there aren’t any I’m yet to discover in the final bag) a little further down.

Troma Night Lite Ultralite

Pretty much every Saturday for about four years, we’ve held Troma Night, our film night of the best and the worst films ever made, and, over the years, it’s gathered a number of interesting traditions. One such tradition is that it only counts as a Troma Night if there are four people present. That’s fine and dandy, and there have been a number of three-man Troma Nights, which we’ve instead called Troma Lite. But this Saturday was the first ever (that I’m aware of) Troma Night with only two people present.

That’s right: only Claire and I were there. We’ve now dubbed this event Troma Ultralite – a Troma Night with only two people present. So we (re-)watched the RiffTrax‘d version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, followed by Watership Down, which I hadn’t seen since I was a small child (it gave me nightmares, I seem to remember).

(A Very Small) Geek Night

Yesterday brought us a Geek Night, of course, hosted by Rory, but only he, Claire, Paul and I were present, and Paul had to disappear before then end because unlike the rest of us, he’s still working his usual crazy number of hours this Easter weekend. Unlike last week, when I played like a complete moron, I rocked last night and thoroughly trounced everybody, which I shan’t be letting them forget for a while. Well, until next week.

Turning Point: Fall Of Liberty

I got hold of a copy of Turning Point: Fall Of Liberty, a new video game, and played through it this afternoon. In it’s favour, it’s a very clever idea for a game. Apparently, in 1931, Winston Churchill was hit by a taxi cab while in New York, which gave him a characteristic limp for the remainder of his life. In the game’s alternate-history universe, this accident killed him, and he never went on to lead Great Britain during the Second World War. In 1940, Britain surrenders and comes under the occupation of Nazi Germany, who never forge a wartime alliance with Japan against the United States, and do not turn their sights on Russia.

We’ve seen this kind of thing before, of course. The time travel of the Command & Conquer: Red Alert series of games played the idea to death (of course, they instead had a young Adolf Hitler killed, but the principle is similar). But there’s something quite well-executed about this particular alternate history. In 1953, Greater Germany and Japan launch a combined surprise attack against the United States, capture key cities on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and force the President and Vice-President to step down so that they can replace them with a “puppet President” during the first part of the occupation.

The game plays as a first-person shooter: the player’s character is a New York construction worker who for some reason is highly proficient with a huge variety of firearms and can withstand several simultaneous bullets to the chest time and time again without dying. The game opens as bomber and paratrooper blimps, accompanied by bomber wings, attack New York, and it’s here that you really see how beautiful the game can be. The draw distance is fantastic: you can see the distant planes passing over Liberty Island as they get closer and closer until eventually they’re strafing the buildings you’re above. And so your adventure begins.

Unfortunatley, it is – at heart – a console game, for the Xbox 360, and it shows. The controls are somewhat clunky and ill-described (and why oh-why are you forbidden from using the mouse to navigate the menus?), the aim “assist” that’s so essential on most console shooters feels out-of-place when you’re playing with a nice accurate mouse, and it’s impossible to save the game except when you pass a “checkpoint.” Worse yet, these checkpoints get further and further apart as the game goes on, as if the developers couldn’t think of how to make the game challenging any more so they just made it more frustrating: here’s a clue – doing the same thing over and over isn’t challenging, but it is boring. They’ve tried to make it not feel exactly like Half-Life 2 (even some of the scenes seem to be copied directly from the game, like the Tower Bridge mission) by adding in the “plant a bomb” minigame, but this is about as challenging as picking your nose: all you have to do is press the appropriate coloured buttons in order. There isn’t even a time limit to doing so – at least not one that I ever found.

The middle of the game draws on and somehow skips over the key elements of the story, which could otherwise have been fascinating. Perhaps I’m looking at the “wrong” things, but I’d really like to have seen more of the politics, the formation of the resistance movement, and the German propoganda slowly appearing on the walls of the city. Oh, and the civilians! Where do they all disappear to? When they’re not part of the plot, they disappear after the first chapter never to be seen again.

And then the end brings it all back again – those huge draw distances, those beautiful wide fight scenes, and the (really cool) blimps (including a fucking flying aircraft carrier – how cool is that?). It’s a bit easy at the beginning but it makes up for that by being really quite hard towards the end, except for the very final scene which was a bit peasy (although I don’t think the level designers expected me to have saved myself an anti-tank rocket launcher and a dozen rockets from way earlier in the level, the use of which was my entire strategy for defeating the Third Reich).

So, in summary: it’s a good way to waste an afternoon if you “do” WWII first person shooters, and you’re interested in alternative history, AND you can put up with the fact that this is, in the end, a console shoot-em-up that’s been half-heartedly ported to the PC.

Fire! On The Beach!

Not-gay Gareth’s free tonight for the first time in ages, so he and Paul have organised that we’ll be having a fire on North Beach tonight when Ruth and JTA get back into town (or maybe starting a little before then). There’ll be a barbeque, so if you’ve got anything to grill, bring it along. It’s on Abnib Events, of course, as well (which I fixed last week and is now working properly again – sorry about that!).

So, How Many Skirts And Dresses?

And the answer to the earlier question? 24. Yes, 24 skirts and dresses are now hanging in the wardrobe of a woman who never ever wears any of them. How did this happen? I’ve known Claire for six years, and I’m not sure I can count 24 times I’ve ever seen her in a skirt, never mind some of the things in her wardrobe which I’ve never seen before in my life. How does she manage it?

A Comment From Thailand

Oh yeah, and you’ll remember a while back I blogged about a postcard from Jimmy in Thailand. Well, it turns out that somebody from Thailand (allegedly, at least) found the page and corrected his spelling of the name of the island he was on, in a comment on this blog.

Right; that was longer than it should have been. I’ll try to be less of a sloppy blogger.

Quickly, Before They Turn The Glass Into Lesbians!

So, what have I been up to this weekend, you ask. Well…

“Cover The Mirrors” Launch Party

On Friday I took the train up to Preston. The train I was on broke down at Machynlleth when they linked it up to the carriages that had come down the Pwllheli line, and the repairs set me back by almost an hour, but it turns out that the rest of the rail network was running behind schedule that day, too, and so I didn’t miss any important connections. I arrived in time for a quick “birthday tea” with my family (for my dad’s birthday) before rushing off to the Waterstones for the launch party for my friend Faye‘s first published novel, Cover The Mirrors.

I drank as much wine as the store were willing to give me and bought myself a signed copy of the book. I even managed to get the photo, above, under the proviso that it’s only allowed to appear on the internet thanks to the fact that I’m holding a carrier bag in front of Faye’s face (she’s more than a little camera-shy). I haven’t started reading Cover The Mirrors yet, because I’m virtually at the end of The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, and I’d like to finish that first, but little doubt you’ll hear about it here in due course.

Dad’s Birthday

After the book launch, my sisters and I took my dad out for a few drinks to celebrate his 51st birthday. It turns out that, in my absence, Preston’s nightclub scene has really taken off. We started out in an 80s-themed bar which is part of a chain called Reflex. It’s so 80s it’s unreal: all 80s hits playing, David Hasselhoff and Mr. T decorating every wall, glitter balls and spots and mirrors everywhere… deely-boppers available at the bar… and so on. Really quite a fantastic theme venue. Then, under my sister Sarah’s recommendation, we tootled up the street and into a cafe/club called Manyana, where my dad got hit on by somebody young enough to be his daughter.

I snatched this picture. I’ve no idea who she is – we didn’t get her name – but she seemed genuinely surprised to hear my dad’s age. So I had the DJ announce it, just to make sure there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that there was an old person on the dancefloor.

This influx of Preston nightclubs is making them all remarkably competitive with their drinks prices, too. I bought a few rounds for the four of us and none of them ever came to over a tenner, and one – thanks to the “buy one get one free” policy at Manyana – came to under £6, which is quite remarkable for a city nightclub on a Friday night for four people!

Back To Aberystwyth

On Saturday I had brunch with my sister Becky, my mum, and her boyfriend and then got back onto the trains to head back to Aberystwyth. Owing to line maintenance, the stretch of track between Crewe and Preston is unusable every weekend within sight, and so I was re-directed via Manchester Piccadilly. Yet again, my train ran late, and I found myself sprinting across Piccadilly station, trying to find a train that was heading Shrewsbury-way…

…meanwhile, my friend Katie, having slept through her stop, woke up in Manchester Piccadilly and, not quite awake, clambered off her train in an attempt to find a connection. I’d apparently featured in her dream, and so she was quite surprised (and not quite sure if she was seeing things) when I sprinted past her. She sent a text (which I chose to ignore: my pocket beeped but I was too busy looking for a train to take the time to get my phone out) and then phoned me before she was able to confirm that yes, it really was me.

As we were headed the same way, she joined me on my train for one stop, which was a nice surprise for what was a long and overcomplicated train journey. A few folks have suggested that this might not be a coincidence, and that she might be stalking me, but I’m yet to be convinced.

In any case, I don’t have a picture to go with this part of the story. Sorry.

Jimmy, Beth, and Troma Night

YATN. If you were there, you know how it went. Big thanks to Jimmy and Beth for coming along.

Lloyd Kaufman’s Visit

In case you’ve not been anywhere that I can pounce on you and go “squee!” recently, here’s what you missed out on. You’ll remember that last week I mentioned that Poultrygeist – Troma‘s new movie – was coming to Aberystwyth. Well, it did. And it rocked…

…and better yet, Ruth, Claire, JTA, Paul and I got to hang out with Lloyd Kaufman, president of Troma Studios and producer of The Toxic Avenger, for a couple of pints and to share a bowl of nachos. The guy’s fabulously chatty and friendly, and if it weren’t for the awestruck feeling of “wow, we’re just sat here chatting with Lloyd Kaufman in Lord Beechings” we’d have probably been more interesting company.

Dan, Claire, !!!LLOYD KAUFMAN!!!, JTA, and Ruth

When he said goodbye, kissing the cheeks of each of the girls, I genuinely thought that they were in danger of exploding with excitement. Thankfully they didn’t, because I’d already bought them tickets to see Poultrygeist later on.

Which was, as I’ve said before, fantastic. It’s even better seen with a nice, energised audience, and better still when the director and several other people who worked on the film are hanging around afterwards to answer questions, chat, autograph things and so on. There are apparently 15 prints of Poultrygeist and the capacity to make more on demand, so if you want to see it and can’t wait for the DVD release, go speak to your local cinema now and ask if they’ll show Poultrygeist, even if only for a week (as Lloyd himself said, it’s better than showing Transformers on all 24 screens of some soulless megaplex). And hell, with Troma’s current financial situation, they could probably do with a helping hand with getting into as many projection booths as possible!

The title of this post – Quickly, Before They Turn The Glass Into Lesbians! – is a reference to one of my favourite lines in the film.

Paul might have bitten off more than he can chew, though, as he hinted on his blog. After some discussion with Lloyd, Paul is likely to be responsible for:

Re-establishing the UK division of the Troma fan club.
Acting as president of the above, for the forseeable future.
Investigating UK distribution of Troma films.
Oh, and making an official DVD subtitle track for Poultrygeist: Night Of The Chicken Dead, which describes the Troma Night drinking rules and reminds you when you should be drinking. He’s got a few ideas about things that should be in such a subtitle track, too, and if you’re familiar with the rules you’ll probably be able to guess what he’s thinking about.

I’ll leave it to him to go into detail, if he wishes.

Matt In Hospital

Between places, we also joined a growing crowd at the foot of Matt‘s bed in Bronglais Hospital. His operation was a success, but he’s reacted unusually to the general anaesthetic and they’re likely to keep him in for observation for another few days. If you haven’t had a chance to visit him already, he’d probably appreciate the company (although Sarah seems to have barely left his side): visiting hours are 3pm-5pm, 6pm-8pm: just ask if you need to know what ward he’s in and how to get there. If you’re feeling particularly cruel, mock him by talking about how well your bodily excretions are working, or swap his drip with his catheter bag while he’s not looking.

But seriously: I’m sure we all wish him well.

Curry!

Finally – as if we weren’t full enough from a large Sunday lunch – after leaving the cinema, Gareth, Penny, Amy, ~~Ruth, JTA~~, Rory, Paul, Claire and I slipped down for a late-night curry at the Spice of Bengal. Which was delicious, although there was a little much food for those of us who were already quite full.

Nonetheless, a fantastic end to a fantastic weekend! I’m sure everybody else will have a different story to tell (Paul spent longer with Lloyd and went to more films; Claire and Jimmy got horribly drunk together on Friday night after she, Ruth and JTA failed to see a Meatloaf concert; Matt’ll have his own morphine-fuelled tale to spin, and so on), because it’s been a rich, full couple of days for many of us abnibbers.

At Last

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At Last (matt-inthe-hat.livejournal.com)

In the same vein as I had the previous month and Matt promised to for a long while, Matt eventually completed the meme in which he replied to me, and various other friends, with (1) something random about me, (2) a challenge, (3) a colour, (4) something he likes, (5) an early or clear memory, (6) an animal, and (7) a question he’d always wanted answered. He wrote:

I responded almost immediately:

Update – 27 February 2019: I replied again, to update on progress.

So yeah. Still can’t unicycle.

Aberystwyth Webcams Widget

There’s a reason that people shouldn’t show me new programming languages and development platforms: I try them out. Even when I’ve got other things I should be doing. Ah well.

And so I’d like to present: the Aberystwyth Webcams Widget [update: link dead], which collates the images of the three Ceredigion Country Council webcams into a little widget that sits on your desktop. It works in both Windows and MacOS X (on MacOS, it integrates quite nicely with any other desktop widgets you’re using), but you do need to install the Yahoo! Widget Engine version 2.0 or above.

Aberystwyth Webcams Widget (165KB) [update: link dead]

Never written a Yahoo! Widget before, so I’m interested in any feedback you care to leave.

Holiday (The Aber Effect)

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Bobble (The Aber Effect)

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Dan (The Aber Effect)

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JTA (The Aber Effect)

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Claire (The Aber Effect)

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Ruth (The Aber Effect)

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Paul (The Aber Effect)

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Not Quite Where We Planned To Be

Claire and I are in Preston. Let me explain how this came about.

As I mentioned, we spent Friday night and most of Saturday in Gregynog, a beautiful stately home owned by the University of Wales and used as a conference venue. Every year, the Computer Science department ships almost the entirety of the second year out there to learn how better to get a job, in anticipation of hopefully getting an industry year placement the following year. Claire, as a department staff member, was invited along to help organise a group of students. I was invited along as an representative of the computer industry, there to give mock interviews to students of the kind that they might expect when applying for computer science related jobs for their industry year or for graduate positions.

It was a lot of fun. I met some interesting people and, with their help, got to grill students. Perhaps my favourite part was successfully catching out students who had… how shall we say it… exaggerated a little on their CVs. One fellow, I remember, had, while boasting about his web development proficiency, stated that he was familiar with HTTP. So I asked him what the fundamental differences between a GET and a POST method were. I’d have accepted something about request parameters being visible on the address bar, but no: no such luck. It was also good to be pleasantly surprised, such as by the database-proficient claimant I met who successfully, with a pause, disassembled the huge database relationship diagram I gave to him. My co-interviewer says I’m evil. I replied that I was merely thorough.

On Saturday night, in accordance with our plans, we continued on to Warrington to visit Gareth and Liz‘s new place. Gareth didn’t seem quite ‘with it’. But the food was good and I regretted eating so well at Gregynog that I couldn’t guzzle more, and the company was even better. After the party came to a quiet end, we dropped off Jimmy at his home in Runcorn, and decided to move on up to Preston to say “hi” to my folks.

Needless to say, my mum was at least a little surprised when Claire and I waltzed into her bedroom. We didn’t waltz, mind. More of a polka. But she was surprised, regardless. My dad returns from Vietnam today, so we’re hoping to catch him and have lunch before we return to Aber.

Paul: I bet, despite her trying to remind herself on several occasions, Claire’s still forgotten to call you to tell you that we’re unlikely to make the 2:30 screening of Howl’s Moving Castle at the Arts Centre, so I hope you read this before then.

Fresh Ground Café

Hot on the heels of the news that the café below us is for sale, a new café has opened just across the road, where Serendipity (a restaurant I never got the chance to go to) used to be.

Fresh Ground Café can now be found at number 14 Cambrian Place. Claire thinks it’s name is clever because they’re on new and on the ground floor, but that seems a little contrived to me: rather, I think that they’re trying to play upon the fact that they feel they’re bringing some “fresh ideas” to the Aberystwyth coffee shop ‘scene’.

And they’re certainly giving “fresh ideas” a go, at least as far as Aber’s concerned. They open from 10am ’til 11pm, so you can have a late-night coffee and cake before getting back to a long night’s code-hack/NaNoWriMo-writing/Civ IV game. They’re getting wireless internet access, so you’ll be able to surf the web while you much your croissant. They do hot and cold food (both light meals and snacks) throughout the day. They have board games to play. They have huge leather couches. And most of the produce seems to be organic and/or fair trade.

Bryn, Paul and I each ordered the soup of the day – tomato soup – which turned out to be a deliciously thick and delicately spiced soup that was more filling than we’d expected. Claire ordered a cream cheese bagel. Bryn and Claire tried out the coffees, Paul had a warm-milk-with-syrup drink, and I sampled the hot chocolate, which sent me giddy for most of the evening.

Later, we examined their selection of board games: just the typical “family games pack” affair: a chess set with plastic pieces, a copy of “snakes and ladders”, Chinese checkers, backgammon etc. I taught Bryn to play Arimaa while Claire and Paul played checkers. Not much to excite board game geeks like ourselves, but the large tables and availability of freshly ground coffee might make the cafe a suitable venue for games of Chez Geek, Chrononauts, Fluxx, and other (friendly, civilised – Munchkin is out!) games.

It looks like this new café is trying to tap into a so-far-undiscovered market in Aber: for an evening venue without alcohol or smoking in which one can enjoy a civilised drink with friends. The prices are a little more than we’re used to – we paid just under £20 for 2 coffees, 2 teas, a hot milk drink, 2 hot chocolates, a ribena, three bowls of soup, and a bagel – from the likes of MGs or The Mecca, but are still quite reasonable. The venue itself is pleasant, although it may be a little “out of the way” for some patrons and will certainly have to compete with MGs for some of the business lunchtime traffic (I note that the Fresh Ground Café has already launched a reward card scheme very similar to that of MGs).

Worth a look.

Words written: 1000 / target: 50000

The Flat Is Tidy

Tidy living room/Troma Night space at The Flat

Thanks to JTA for his help. Huge thanks to Matt (temporarily minus his hat) for his help: feed the guy oatcakes and rum and he’ll mop your floor! Winnage!

This is, of course, a result of the anticipated sale of the building we live in. The owners of MG’s cafe, below us, and – in fact – the whole building, are selling up and leaving. I’m not sure if this is what they’d planned all along – to buy the building, renovate the café, and sell it at a profit – but it’s at least a little bit inconvenient for those of us who live there and don’t know if and when we’ll have new landlords and whether or not they’ll want tenants (for instance, one of the prospective buyers when the building last came up for sale would have wanted to turn The Flat into a home for themselves).

But hey; The Flat is clean. Come see.

The Aber Effect

Last night really works as a great example of the ‘Aber Effect’. Claire and I went along to Sundeep‘s housewarming party, where she was feeding curry to her housemates and those of us who came along to welcome her back into Aberystwyth. I’d also promised to help sort her computer out with an internet connection, but I’d forgotten to take the network card I’d agreed to lend her.

Having eaten, as some folks were packing up to leave, I suggested that Claire and I go and pick up the network card from The Flat, then come back and install it into Sundeep’s PC. That’s when we heard about Sundeep’s flatmate, who’d managed to lock himself out of his room. So we went back to The Flat and picked up the network card and also a set of lockpicks and a can of oil, and so when we got back Claire was able to install the network card while I picked the lock of the housemate’s room.

Having succeeded in my lockpicking attempt (after some jiggerypokery with the lockpicks and a filed-down Somerfield saver card [knew those things would come in handy]) and opened the room, the housemate offered Claire and I a pint in Scholars, which we accepted. Leaving Sundeep, we joined him and some of the other housemates in the pub for a congratulatory pint each of Old Speckled Hen.

And that’s where we bumped into Matt (in the hat), Andy K, and a friend of Andy’s who will henceforce me known as MOT. Jokes about having to renew him every year aside, we explained our plan to return to The Flat and decant the wine we’ve been brewing in our wardrobe for the last fortnight, and invited them to come join us when they’d finished their drinks. Then, needing to get a head start on them so as to start processing the wine, we set off.

On the way home, we were greeted by two separate groups of strangers, the first of whom overheard our conversation and with whom we briefly debated “the Aber effect”, and the second of whom wanted to use their camera phone to take a picture of Claire and I (although we’re not quite sure why).

We siphoned the wine into bottles, dissolved some fine sugar into it (the yeast had been somewhat overenthusiastic over the first few days and had made the wine slightly bitter and extremely alcoholic), and corked them, right on time for Matt, Andy, and MOT to arrive. We lounged, and drank wine, and were joined by JTA and Gareth, with whom we watched a few episodes of American Dad and listened to some music while the wine kicked in. Which it did, quite remarkably.

So, from a housewarming in Llanbadarn we met a guy who’s lock I picked for which he bought me a pint at a pub where I met some guys I knew and a guy I didn’t who came back to my flat where we drank homebrew wine with some folks who were at the party to begin with. This is the essence of the Aber Effect. And I love it.