May2005

Cowshed and Waynne's Birthday

22 May 2005

Cowshed:

• We missed the afternoons activities because we were shopping for presents. Also picked up a Thai cookbook which is from the same series as the Chinese one we received from Vera and Austin. Woot.
• Closed faced pies triumphed over open faced ones 9 points to 6 in the boffer war.
• Our singing of Mille Morosi Lacci and Alle Psalite seemed to be not to shabby. Double woot.
• Food was good and included apple sauce.
• Guntram cleaned up in the Rapier and Arts and Sciences competitions.
• There seem to be a growing number of non-European personas.

Waynne's:

• We missed the early evening because we were at Cowshed. :)
• Numerous people reached the very drunk stage shortly after we arrived.
• An overlapping set of people were having fun with balloons and nitrous oxide.
• We got Waynne a miniature foosball set. Kinda like a foosball executives toy. Very cute.
• J and W have a swing chair. It swings.

Time for sleep.

RotS Been and Gone

21 May 2005

Have just awoken after a long night of roleplaying. Adrianna wrote the mini-module which was set in the country-side near a Lord's estate and ran it for us. Very much an investigatory module despite the DnD setting. Had lots of fun attempting to determine what exactly was going on the in the small town of Redcreek and in particular, what the hedge wizard Altas had been up to and whether it had killed him.

Saw RotS on Thursday evening with bunches of people. It was fairly cool - I'll leave the review? for the ReViews/ReViews section. Had a fun and very geeky postmortem session at the Coffee Bean afterwards. Ran into ex-digsmate, Sarah, beforehand. Never really want to see Woolworths' Peanut Buttercups again.

In other news, we have put in an offer on a duplex ¹ in Kenilworth Village. We should hear whether it has been accepted within the hour. Holding thumbs.

[1] duplex seems to be estate agent speak for a sectional title unit which is not a flat.

4 days to Episode III

15 May 2005

Weekend round-up:

• Friday - watched directors cut of Donnie Darko and played Munchkin Blender with Neil and Kevin. Still find Donnie Darko but vaguely disatisfying - I think because the mechanics of the timeloop are put slowly disclosed as though understanding them represents some kind of revelation when in reality they are arbitrary. The characters and details added to the setting are very cool though.
• Saturday - played second Flower War LARP. Much more enjoyable than the first . Congrats to David and Tim on ironing out the bugs. :)
• Sunday - Re-playing Star Control II. Memories from the first time I played keep slowly dribbling back to me. Extra singing practice was productive. Finished tweaking ola for the Polish Soceity library catalog.

Upcoming Events:

• Thursday - watch RotS.
• Friday - DnD once-off.
• Saturday - Cowshed.

Addendum: Accidentally left my car lights on on Friday but Kieran helped jumpstart the car (Thanks!). Have now had battery water topped up and all seems to be good. :)

9 days to Episode III

10 May 2005

Played in the VtES tournament at Outer Limits on Saturday. Although I didn't do too well in the winning stakes (however I did make it to the top table) the number of different political decks made both games quite interesting.

On Saturday evening we watched Ginger Snaps and The Secret of Nimh with Neil. Ginger Snaps was awesome - a thoughtful, coming-of-age, female werewolf movie. Now to find the sequel and prequel. We didn't get to see the last bit of TSoN because the DVD died. Thankfully we found an online script to fill in the last few scenes.

At around 2:30 on Sunday morning someone tried to fish my cellphone out of our window with a crude wire basket attached to the end of a long spikey pole they had obtained from the building site next door. Since this is the fourth or fifth theft or attempted theft this year we have redoubled our house hunting efforts. :|

After spending most of Sunday looking at flats to buy we saw Kingdom of Heaven with Philip, Jo, Waynne, Jean, Steve and Jo. It was a decent enough film with plenty of cool costumes and other details to look at. Orlando isn't the best of actors but at least he seems to have broken out of the pretty-boy mold to some extent.

Bubble Brothers

6 May 2005

Yesterday I downloaded Bubble Brothers. It's like Bubble Bobble, but mad.

Today my Redland mini-patch which fixes the MySQL storage hashes on PPC was put into Redland CVS. Hooray!

P.S. We have now finished Bubble Brothers.

Holidays

5 May 2005

Back at work after a five day holiday in Arniston. Arniston is pretty sleepy - especially on weekdays - so be sure to take lots of stuff to do. We played lots of card- and boardgames (Munchkin, VtES, Lord of the Fries, Fluxx and more traditional things like 30 Seconds, Pictionary and Hollywood Rummy), took a long walk along the beech (where we saw numerous bits of marine life, both dead and alive), got smoked out by the fire, cooked, ate and read (I finished Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson). I managed to mostly avoid playing on the Game Boy (man, the graphics are so crap).

On the Sunday after we arrived we attended Ty and Diane's farewell and got to talk to numerous people we haven't seen in quite a while.

Our Cthulhu Dark Ages / 1920 (we're as confused as you are) campaign also started up again after a week's hiatus. Now with added players (Lucas and Mike). The first full 1920s session went kinda pear-shaped after five unarmed investigators (included as the most skilled combatant a young ballerina) where jumped by three knife weilding cultists in a darkened hotel room. Hopefully the next session will go better. ---- (:commentboxchrono:)