Archive for December, 2009

I had a slightly odd experience shopping on New Years Eve 1999.  I was visiting some friends for a new years party and needed supplies so I nipped round to the local superstore, at the time it was a Co-Op.  It was pretty late in the day and the first thing I remember was that the car park was really empty.  The store was the same.  There were more staff than customers.  Just going round ahead of me were a couple of groups of customers who have stuck in my mind ever since.

The first group of customers was a group of five nurses who must have come straight from work as they were all in uniform.  From their (loud) conversation it was clear they shared a house and were getting supplies in for a party.  They had a three trolleys and a system.  Trolley one was for regular food.  Trolley two was for snacks and party food.  Trolley three was for drink.

The second group of customers were a pair of male students who each had a trolley.  From their equally loud conversation it was pretty clear they’d been partying hard for a few days and they’d just realised they’d no food in the house and they’d heard something about all the world’s computers going wrong at midnight.  Someone had told them it was going to happen and it was going to be like a bad 1970s disaster movie.

A few things rapidly became apparent…

First the students started filling their trolleys.  They had a simple mantra.  They wanted it cheap.  They wanted it with a long use by date.  They wanted lots of it.  Since all the computers were going to fail though the cost of it wouldn’t really matter.  I watched them take six cardboard pallets each of canned potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, corned beef and tuna from the shelf as I went past them.

Meanwhile the nurses had decided that the priority was trolley three, then trolley two and then trolley one.  Trolley three had gained a twin trolley 3a.  Trolley 3 was for beer while trolley 3a was for wine and spirits.  Trolley one gained some mixers, soft drinks and a variety of fruit juice for drinking when they had a hangover on new years day.  It also gained a few packs of aspirin and paracetamol.

I’d picked up some cheese that the price had been slashed on (I think it was brie) and needed some bread.  The bakery had three staff on it.  Two I’d seen on previous visits.  The other had to be their manager.  They wanted to leave early.  He said they couldn’t go till all the speciality bread they kept behind a counter in a cabinet was sold. There was one loaf left.  It had seeds on it.  Really special.  Special price (reduced to clear before the almost end of the millennial sell by date) £0.50.  They offered to buy it – he refused as staff can’t buy stuff on sale while working.  They offered to pay full price.  He wouldn’t have any of it.  I bought it.

Behind me some strife had broken out.  The nurses had a problem.  They needed a bottle opener and a cork screw.  They were buying everything else from a shared kitty but the implements would last – who would get to keep them?  These were there millenium cork screw.  What if them had a special visitor and wanted to have a bottle in private.  What would the others use to open a bottle.  Two cork screws should be acquired but only one bottle opener was needed.  I picked up something to drink and never heard the solution to the cork screw situation.

I had a choice of checkout.  Like the bread counter management was enforcing a no one leaves till it’s all sold policy.  Outside in the car park the students were emptying four trolley loads of canned goods; sacks of potatoes; loaves of the cheapest nastiest bread; tooth paste (civilization might have collapsed but they’d still have clean teeth) and other supplies into the boot of a beat up hatch back.  All they needed was a chain saw and a shotgun to complete their outfitting for the apocalypse.

I expect they felt that way in the months to come as they lived on their supplies and paid off credit card the bill for it all.

It was all slightly odd and I always ment to turn it into a story but I’ve never found the right angle to take on it.  One day I might.

Have a happy new year.

Astonishing Adventures Magazine #8 is out now.  Find out how to get it at DirkDangerous.com.

• Snow in Sheffield, Manchester and points between. A bit of slush in Liverpool. Poor Go Penguins http://bit.ly/6DoYsv #uksnow #
• That's my address book updated – the old fashioned book made from dead trees variety. #
• Australian Rich Fruit Cake http://bit.ly/5eqaVy #recipe #
• Ad tells me a collection of 250,000 animated clip art will Inject FUN and COLOUR into my design. Doesn't say it will make my design #fail #
• @DanDiplo New TweetDeck is great isn't it. Close means Close in reply to DanDiplo #
• listening to ""Weird Al" Yankovic – Christmas At Ground Zero" ♫ http://blip.fm/~i4wn3 #
• @alyankovic I made fruitcake with no literary devices last week. Maybe I was standing ironically without realising? http://bit.ly/5eqaVy in reply to alyankovic #
• Alien white stuff falling from the sky in Liverpool. Wonder if the buses are still running? Was going planing on Go Penguin hunting. #uksnow #
• Last part of Games Britannia last night was fun. Cool they interviewed creators of Elite and of Games Workshop in a proper documentary. #
• One thing though BBC pushing BBC Micro v Spectrum. I remember Spectrum v Commodore 64 playground debates. BBC was just not in the running. #
• @DanDiplo I've never accused the BBC of bias but I think the pushing of the BBC micro lately might make me go there. in reply to DanDiplo #
• I can only remember two games for the BBC micro. To be fair both are classics but still only 2 – Elite and Thrust #
• @ehlanakovas Repton was good but I don't remember it breaking out from the BBC onto other machines in a big way. in reply to ehlanakovas #
• Need a new gallery lightbox plug-in for WordPress – any suggestions? #WordPress #WP #
• @jearle It is often laziness but can help to avoid train wrecks. Too many new writers try to break the form but they're not that clever. in reply to jearle #
• I'm sick of the Hero's Journey. Its become a universal shoe horn with the use of lots of grease for uninspired character development. #
• Today's snow in Liverpool and Keyser Söze have something in common… And like that, they're gone. #
• Found a new WordPress lightbox plug-in. Better than the last one. Not referencing lots of missing images and dragging site speed down. #
• Pictures from today's Go Penguin Hunt in Liverpool http://bit.ly/7bj3Yb #
• RT @DanDiplo: I can't believe somebody has written this software and it's not a joke – http://bit.ly/5jbyEU – I can and I don't have a cat #
• Got to say @KimKnox the cover for Breaking Chance is excellent http://bit.ly/8NasFe #
• Quick photo from my window of latest snow in Liverpool http://bit.ly/4oDBWB #uksnow #
• I dreamed about a machine that sorted socks last night. Amongst its many stranger features pre warming for days like today. #
• Happy Christmas http://bit.ly/4qJ3M1 #

Christmas Bauble

Have a happy Christmas!

First I knew of the latest snow in Liverpool was the announcement on the news that Liverpool Airport was closed.

A quick shot of the snow on the tree in my back garden taken from a window so I didn’t have to go out in it.  Taken without flash, camera clamped to the window frame and with a long exposure.  Click for a bigger version.

While doing a few bits odd an ends of Christmas shopping in Liverpool I did a bit of Go Penguin hunting. They’re sneaky and elusive creatures that like hiding in crowds of children. Here are the ones I managed to get shots of. The first few shots hint at the heavy snow that blanketed Liverpool briefly but had already vanished by the time I reached the city centre.

This moist, rich, fruit cake recipe was given to me by a friend from Australia.  Serves 12.

Ingredients

• 175g Pitted Dates
• 115g  Ready to Eat dried prunes
• 200ml Unsweetened Orange Juice
• 2tbsp Molasses or Black Treacle
• 2tsp Candied Peel
• 225g Self Raising Flour (White or Wholemeal)
• 1tsp Mixed Spice
• 115g Seedless Raisins
• 115g Golden Sultanas
• 115g Currants
• 115g Cranberries
• 3 Large Eggs

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 170ºC / Gas Mark 3.
2. Chop the dates and prunes and place in a pan with the orange juice.  Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes until very soft.
3. Meanwhile grease and line a deep 20cm round cake tin.
4. Remove the pan from the heat and beat the mixture with a fork till it is puréed.
5. Stir in the Molasses and Candied Peel then leave to cool.
6. Sift the Flour and Mixed Spice into a bowl.
7. Mix the remaining Dried Fruit into the flour and make a well at the centre.
8. Separate the Egg Whites and Yolks into separate bowls.
9. When it is cool stir the Yolks into the Prune and Date mixture.
10. Spook the Prune and Date mixture into the Flour gradually working them together with a Wooden Spoon.
11. Whisk the Egg Whites until stiff.
12. Gently fold the Egg Whites into the mixture using a metal spoon.
13. Transfer to the baking tin.
14. Cook for 1½ hours.
15. Leave to cool in the tin.

• Sorted out the outline for an adventure. One problem: got to figure out how to get the players involved. #
• @aniakovas A little bit extreme but I like your thinking. Better than hitting them over the head with clues till they figure it out. in reply to aniakovas #
• 4K words of adventure done. Plans & stats to do + character naming. I wish I could just call them Bad Guy A, B & C. Would my players notice? #
• @ehlanakovas Hmmm. Think they'd notice after Eff, Gee, Iye, Jay, Kay and Elle. in reply to ehlanakovas #
• Four hour baking, cooking and washing up marathon done. Cakes in the oven. Now to conquer France before bed time. #
• @KimKnox Gratz on the kindle jump in reply to KimKnox #
• Scale Office Chairs for action dolls is action man having a mid life crisis? http://bit.ly/7wZbh0 #
• Choosing which robot to have to dinner was difficult till I spotted that cyborg. And I don't mean Data lol. http://bit.ly/5HbvEg #
• @KimKnox He's Behind You!!!! Have fun. in reply to KimKnox #
• Wow @KimKnox Congratulations on Weaving Words making it to #1 on the Kindle Romance Bestseller List http://bit.ly/5d3WeP #
• You're thinking too much about Multivariate when you wonder if the covers of The Mail and The Express are an A/B test… #
• @aniakovas I stopped reading BBC Have your Say. I'm happier for not seeing the ill informed, bigoted and nasty attitudes that lurk there. in reply to aniakovas #
• I love email from bots. Just had one that would have caught me had it not thought Gobos for Vue was a recipe and not virtual lighting gear. #
• Edible Gobos: quite possibly as Tasty as Edible Underwear http://bit.ly/4njr3I #
• RIP print Technology Guardian You've been a good source of information and in your Computer Guardian day's QIish fun #
• @aniakovas Today's Tech Guardian is the last. They say there isn't enough money from job ads for a separate supplement anymore. in reply to aniakovas #
• @aniakovas Sad but Tech jobs have gone online. The Standard is paid for by general advertising that hasn't all vanished onto the internet. in reply to aniakovas #
• @aniakovas They're moving Tech news online and into the paper so it will be more up to date. Regulars like game reviews are going into G2. in reply to aniakovas #
• Amusing short film 12 Ways to Say I'm Sorry http://bit.ly/8aaiyl #
• Back from great works Christmas night out. How could I have not been to Rococo before? Will be going back. http://bit.ly/5iP3Gg #

Allegedly.  I’ll come to that in a minute.

Most spam is annoying but once in a while the bots assemble two random concepts that make a slightly surreal or scary combination.  Once in a while those are so out there and look so like real messages that they make it past the spam filters.  Here’s one I got today (I’ve pixellated out the site’s info not because I don’t want to embarrass them but because I don’t want to give them any publicity) about my post about gobos the other day…

I’m not going to go into the rubbish about SEO other than to say if they’re link building this way how do I know they’re not doing all sorts of black hat SEO that’s going to get them blacklisted as a bad neighbourhood and do me more harm than good.

In this case the bot found some of my recipes and some of my stuff about gobos and decided that there was a chance that there was some sort of long tail search that it could optimize for.  Given the money being mentioned for some of that kind of automatically written content it’s no wonder that companies are trying to get in on the act.  This one though takes the biscuit.  Or as the American’s might say the cookie.  Cookies are made with Cookie Cutters which is a term sometimes confused with gobos although strictly speaking cookies and gobos are not the same thing which is why I think the bot may have made its blind leap of machine logic.

What I find funny is the idea that they would include gobos in a recipe database.  Gobos.  Pieces of glass that are etched or otherwise treated so as to project images or patters from lights.  I can’t help thinking they would be a little bit chewy and might cause some indigestion.  Not quite as funny as Monty Python’s Albatros or Crunchy frog but not too far away.

Anyway it amused me but I’ve not explained the Edible Underwear connection.

So what does any of this have to do with Edible Underwear?  Not a lot really other than something that happened when out drinking with some friends who do a bit acting.  They’d been eating the left over sugar glass props (bottles and some glasses used in a fight scene) from a play to see how one of the bar staff they knew would react.  One young lady who was normally quite prim and proper who had probably had a bit too much to drink said it tasted like edible underwear and promptly went a fetching shade that matched the beetroot red of the wine bottle she was nibbling on…

• 500 words describing the location for playtest scenario I'm writing needed 2 hours of research for authenticity. Done for tonight. #
• Dirk Dangerous web site almost ready after 4 years. Washing up then a sanity. Then press the big red go live button. #
• Four years in the making DirkDangerous.com is now live http://www.dirkdangerous.com/ #
• Ooops 1 glass of wine while cooking dinner wasn't supposed to hit this hard. No more tweeting or writing for me for the rest of tonight. #
• Thanks to everyone who took a look at http://www.dirkdangerous.com/ yesterday. It's great to have the site live at last. #
• I'm thinking of producing a list of the 10 laziest lists of 10 things from 2010 and 10 things from the noughties. #
• Wondering if the d12 in the titles of Games Britannia is a hint or just something the designer rolled in for a bit of colour #
• RT @Delicatesa: http://twitpic.com/snm4i – exactly! via @ghostwoods – although the spikes are just overkill #
• DirkDangerous.com got listed in Google earlier according to WM tools. Log files show hacker bots charging at the site & failing to get in. #
• I've drawn plenty of maps for games before but never one based on a 1960s concrete jungle. The BPN Blues Day 1 map for SLA was close… #
• Adobe sent me a 30% off offer as an existing customer. It's on full version not upgrade of software so saving would be less than 18% #fail #
• Half way through updating training videos in English. Tomorrow updating the Welsh versions. An interesting exercise as I don't know Welsh. #
• Vue 8 Infinite and xStream PLEs and Artist Trial versions are now available from e-on software http://bit.ly/4QX5oM #
• Can I just thank all the Welsh speakers and friends of Welsh speakers who've offered their help – I didn't know I knew so many! #
• Could someone explain the point of blog comment spamming with random content and no links? #
• There is always something oddly satisfying about creating villains especially when they don't think of themselves as villains. #
• Next company to send me a 12 deals / 12 days of Christmas email gets unsubed. Why are email marketers such sheep? #
• Spectacular mist as I walked home. Started ankle deep, 5 min later it was @ the tree tops. Then as quickly as it came it melted away. #
• The Littlewoods building is almost lost in the fog. #
• Making my first Google Wave… #
• Strange – I was Follow Fridayed (is that a very now) by someone who doesn't follow me. #
• Didn't get twitter in 06. Signed up in 07. Didn't rate it. Now in 09 the mass makes it make sense to me. Will Google Wave be the same? #