Corrosive Shame

Just two more sets of photos to pimp, but in the meantime I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I'm not in work to do a bit of an update.

Firstly thanks to all for kind birthday messages. I feel very much of the age where a birthday becomes less of an event, so that people sent best wishes and came out last night to watch me fall asleep in my curry was appreciated. I get the impression from now until about 65 it's the wilderness years of increasing bitterness about lost youth and other opportunities.

The weekend itself was spent in a muddy field. Sometimes this is just shorthand for "LRP" but in this case it's true. Though "cold muddy field" would be more accurate. The advantage of modern/sci-fi LRP is that wearing layer upon layer of technical ski thermal is not only permissible, but advised. At least (with a nod to a Labyrinthe experience) the "cold moon" was represented by a "cold campsite" and very little imagination was required.

The game itself had a slow start for us, but Saturday picked up and there were lots of bits and pieces to play around with to keep us busy (or not). My fear of dancing kept me (literally) in the cold for brief periods but at least my reputation survived. Do spare a thought for poor bacony though who had to drink two bottles of port on her own, then was literally rained out of bed by a hole in the tent. One new crew member recruited and if the MIA ever do return it's going to be very cosy onboard.

After the game were brief moments of "Oh, I recognise your shape - you normally wear a big pointy mask" and "You made me a cake - and I have only just realised". Unfortunately these were in the car on the way home so I must try and be more observant in the future to avoid appearing rude. Thankfully being in an observant mood by this point meant that I was able to survive the driving snow and rain.

Sheffield tonight is off, which saves me some driving - so more chance to attempt to absorb my OU course by staring at the covers. I must take some more photographs (concluded over curry) but at least it's nearly time for skiing. At which point I'll disappear from LJ again but suspect few of you will notice!!!

Oh yes, photos under the cut from (other) LRP.

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This week has been one of endings – though not of life, pets, hobbies, computers or even phones; but of television. The end of Rome (forever) and BSG (series 3) leave a hole in my viewing schedule that is unlikely to be filled by Lost (getting a bit rubbish) but may be by Heroes (which has taken 6 weeks off while they celebrate having a whole series and desperately try and write some more story).

Rome seemed to go out with a little bit of a whimper – mainly due to my knowledge that it is not going to get another series. That’s a shame because although it’s a bit odd in places and Series 2 has not been as exciting as Series 1 (we’d seen it all before tbh, and even the abundance of orgies didn’t excite) – it was worth watching.. If for not other reason than it reminded me about Odyssey.

BSG was an odd beast. Old friends returned as expected and the missing Cylons appeared to (maybe but lets not get carried away) be uncovered. The court scenes were tremendous though – brilliantly done and worth watching for the “let’s catalogue the plot holes in the series to date and use them rather than do like every other TV show would and ignore them” speech. I wasn’t sure about the end of the last series and that turned into something very powerful, so I suppose I should have faith.

Perhaps one of the reasons I don’t is last weekend. A visit to Preston coincided with Matt crewing Vikings so I packed a shirt, some woollen trousers and a couple of stabbing implements and went with him. On paper it sounded reasonably fun – a chance for some relatively relaxed roleplaying (try saying that when you’re drunk). However despite some highlights it suffered for reasons both in and out of the organisers control and basically overall didn't impress me. I like to think it wasn’t just because my shoulders aren’t used to chain mail for extended periods. Mind you, elsewhere people are raving about it, so perhaps my “good” and other people’s “good” is a completely different thing and I should stop moaning.

Of course it’s likely I’ll never get invited back there now, after having committed the cardinal sin of criticism.

One surprising discovery, visible from the motorway, was the 52nd Mormon Temple near Chorley. It’s a very impressive building – a classical cathedral style, simplified, that looks like it’s made of concrete. I’d love to get a closer look but you need a letter from your bishop to do so and I’m not sure I know any who are the “right kind”.

Today I’m in London, enjoying the benefits of a little laptop with decent battery life. Except I can only see out of one eye due to a dodgy contact lens so focussing is especially tough. To add insult to injury I didn’t get any Brown Sauce with my veggie sausage sandwich earlier and this evening’s train is “old-style” so might not even have any catering. I was down for a sustainability conference. My organisation now has an active policy in this area which should allow me to claim carbon footprint reasons for working from home… in my dreams at least.

This evening I will post this journal entry and share some pictures, before doing a bit of freelance work. What a life eh!

Next financial year I hope to spend £5k on a new laptop and camera. It will both make me a better photographer and allow me to carry two phones and two laptops around with me. I will then write long epic livejournal entries on the train and maintain a pretty reasonable policy of not abusing work’s laptop too much. Now all I have to do is find the £5k before claiming some of it back from the taxman.

Which reminds me, I’ve just been playing with Adobe Lightroom and I like it. I possibly even like it enough to buy it. It runs, does what I want and while it isn’t as good a UI as Potatoshop it is pretty much there.

And I’ve booked some more skiing. Dark City be damned.

I really must do these earlier than Thursday each week. Anyway, I went to an LRP event, shared a room with a re-enactment of the geological history of California and took some photos.

Politics threatened to rear its ugly head but I managed to stay disinterested, overconfident and didn't beat anyone to death. I was hardly even rude...

Some photos under the cut, though the competition is hotting up...

Full set at http://www.disturbing.org.uk/images/lrp/pd/matrimony/index.htm.

( Photos )

This last week has been a veritable musical adventure - from installation to emo via ebm and noize. Oh yes - and some snuffling - but that's not very musical at all.

Neither kantti or I knew quite what to expect from the Laibach premiere/exhibition last Friday. but we set off with an open mind and vague incredulity that such a thing could happen in sunny Birmingham when the rest of the world was an option. It was interesting enough though the art installation is quite small - it was an intriguing hour of industrial noise. By that I mean Neubauten-style "proper" noise, not "noize" that makes your ears bleed and I didn't even need my earplugs. In matters of art I tend to trust my nose - I tend to sneeze when exposed to pretentious artw*nk. Friday I did sneeze, but not a lot and I did have a cold. So the jury is still out.

After the Laibach install there was a bit of drum'n'bass and appearances by smittumi and philoko. The first act was four drummers and 2 bassists as far as I could see. The first 5 minutes were ok, but they actually seemed to play identical repeating cycles of the same "music" for about 45 minutes by which time I was bored enough. We hung around a bit to watch photographers try and make any sense of it, then gave up and went home to sneeze.

Saturday night was Kryogenix in Nottingham which was ok, but a underattended and the sound was pretty terrible. skinfitz did an admirable job attempting to wiggle some cables into co-operating (as far as I could tell) but with only limited success. Still, berrega seemed to have his chin up.

Sunday was a lazy day, Chinese food and then as I settled down with my backlog - my PC crashed. I spent much of the week trying to recover from this which wasn't helped by the fact I've lost my XP Professional CD and my XP Home CD seems to have been crushed in its box and is now in a number of pieces.

The rest of the week has been some badminton, some mixed music at the Barfly on Wednesday and a functional if unexciting curry last night for stelmaria_clg's birthday and I seem to have been persuaded by a charity call to start a direct debit to Sustrans. The Barfly extravaganza, Gym Class Heroes + Fleeing From Finales + The Mid-L-Men was, in order, "Not bad, but seen it done better", "Like a college band with a record deal" and "Oh dear. Even if you do sing about the Lickey Hills you are not black and cannot rap".

Still, exposure to new things is important right? Photos soon no doubt.

Some final work to do then off to Maelstrom which may be interesting.

Oh, if anyone is interested - my ebay purchases turned up. But being worried about fraud I noticed that the serial numbers on both cards and both CD software registration details were identical so I phoned the manufacturer's technical support. They confirmed they are counterfeit goods - so now I get to explore the delights of the PayPal and ebay dispute resolution systems. More soon no doubt...

While the rest of the world seems to have rediscovered Maelstrom, the rats have made their opinion clear. The clever little buggers have eaten most of a Maelstrom t-shirt that I foolishly left drying near their cage. It's now rather more suitable for summer wear due to the number of holes in it.

quondam will be amused no doubt.

When I was a student you could pretty much guarantee that ever weekend I'd be playing LRP linears; every day I'd be socialising at the university Student's Union and every evening I'd be eating junk food and chewing the fat with the same people. Eventually my LRP drifted into other places and my enthusiasm for badly written, badly costumed cross country pantomime ran low.

So, perhaps ten years on I surprise myself with a small but growing amount of enthusiasm to spend one of my few free weekends, rather than processing photographs, running around the woods in search of my youth. I promised myself that I'd go if it was sunny and probably leave it if it was raining. Of course, it was sunny when I left the house and tipping down with rain by the time I got to the Lickey Hills.

Change is a funny thing and I was most intrigued looking around at the others who turned up and performing mental comparisons about how our lives have gone. Most of us were less fit, most of us had less hair but most importantly I think we'd pretty much all grown up. What was once a hobby based on bitching and infighting was now a lot more relaxed and instead about "some people" having "some fun". This was a double-edged change. It meant there was a lot less passion for me as I didn't "care" particularly about the experience as a whole; but on the other hand it meant that I took it all in my stride and saved my blood pressure a few points.

There's no doubting I can blame me going on NWO - I was left with a cancer of enthusiasm growing at the core of my being. Trap was simply the most convinient way of dealing with it. My expectations were pretty low but it was better than I feared - so I can't complain. Still the next time I LRP for all I'd prefer a better looking game, a more engaging game and just a bit more substance - I can't fault the good-nature and heart.

Now, what else haven't I done for 10 years...

Kudos to rinkyandmerlin for cat-herding.

... is off.

Many thanks to those who helped me bounce my thinking over the weekend, but in the end my sheer capitalist greed prevented me from taking a significant paycut for a job with less leave and pretty much zero flexibility...

It was still very tempting, but it made me realise that I actually do value the ability to work evenings and weekends in exchange for time to go to music festivals and photo shoots.

I'm sure something else happened at the weekend, but more on that later no doubt.

I have a renewed enthusiasm for "something-LRP". I'm finding this quite strange - but I know it won't be pretty and won't involve camping.

Last weekend was LRP-related oddness near Bromsgrove, following a very interesting night in town with someone who looked and sounded a bit like pax_draconis. Tonight I'm off to Whitby, back on Monday; then off to France on Thursday.

It's all go here! Speaking of which... I should be doing something else right now...

So, next year I'm going to Orkney on a little trip with some special friends. This is fine, except there's a chance it'll clash with Maelstrom on one weekend or the other.

Ok I think, there are airports in Orkney and airports in London and various other places on the way. I'll do some research and see how much it will cost to drive to Orkney, then leave the car for someone else to bring back while I fly to the likely event site.

Cue a jaw-on-floor moment. I could fly half-way to Australia for the £300 price of a Kirkwall to London flight, or save about £50 by flying to Scotland then taking a 6-8 hour train journey to London.

Just how much do I love LRP...?