tired. Busy. More soon

For the past few years ive been to the rather fab nantwich jazz and blues festival for good blues and beer.

Ive been pondering eastercon though but not entirely certain if im enough of a media fan to go. The website isnt entirely helpful either.

Oh dw/lj is it a) too late to book and b) should I go or stay with the blues? Any advice/info welcome!

I dont watch much tv other than doctor who these days, am not up to date with sarah jane or that crappy torchwood mini series and one night of board gaming a month is probably enough for me - although maybe with different games and people id do a bit more

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I have been, as usual busy - work is annoying and I've been out every night on the basis that it's good to get out there whilst there's interesting stuff to do (This coming week will be a bit quieter..).

I've been rather lax with DW/LJ because of this, and also because both have in general been a bit quiet themself. This'll only get worse if no-one ever posts, so I plan to do a weekly list of new and exciting things (skipping over regular drinkies with friends/things I usually do)

This 'week' will comprise the last three weeks, however :

Seen Mission Impossible : Ghost Protocol with Manchester Film Fans. Actually quite good, not too silly and Simon Pegg is for once reasonably amusing.

Saw, the weekend before, The Artist - great lighting, decent acting and a dash of humour. Understandably silent films aren't made these days, so when a decent (mostly silent) one comes along it's worth a look.

Went to a talk with Manchester Skeptics - Professor Jeff Forshaw talking about his Quantum Universe book and other things. Interesting and amusing - he's a knowledge yet blunt northerner.

Discovered, again, how much fun Warioware is with a bunch of other retro gamers.

Spent more than I intended to on the Steam sales, but all items were reasonably cheap (most expensive was Sonic Generations at 7 quid). Most pleasant surprise has been Rochard - a action puzzle game using a gravity/object manipulation tool. Has a demo, so can be checked out!

Completed LIMBO - continually inventive, even if some of the timing really is a tad too precise for my liking. Also almost finished Super Mario Land 2 - unimpressed that it's not too bad up until the last level which ramps up the difficulty considerably, has no save points and requires several deaths to learn what you can and cannot do..

Finished Pride and Prejudice. Starts off terribly witty, has moments of brilliance but an awful lot of less than exciting interfamily politics and an ending signposted pages in advance. I wouldn't call it bad, but it's not about to go to the top of my reading list. Also completed Christopher Brookmyre's Quite Ugly One Morning, which has confirmed to me I don't enjoy mystery thrillers where the identities of the protagists are known and it's generally clear that all will be okay in the end. It reminded me in a few ways of the Millennium trilogy, which definitely goes downhill after the first book..

Had the first New Years Day for a while that did not feature a hangover. This is definitely an improvement. Drink less, enjoy the next day more..

My Dad found and gave me the tape drive for my MSX - no longer having to use a custom lead and huge tape deck to play retro games. Eeee!

Wasted far too much time reading about a) canalboats (interesting, amusing, re-inforces the fact I don't think I'd ever want to live on one) and b) Amstrad PCWs

Drank Cassis Beer for the first time. It's a very interesting fruit beer, but expensive at £3-3.50 per bottle in the shops (&deity; knows what it'll be if I ever find it in a pub). With 25% blackcurrant juice in the beer, it's got a sweet but sharp taste with none of the sourness that blemishes the peach offering somewhat. Interesting!

Probably other stuff. Will add it in if I remember.

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Saturday at ReplayExpo was awesome. Sunday was likewise damned good.

There were a number of amusing moments - seeing one of the people developing the spectrum emulation for the Chameleon FPGA based C64 emulator run Manic Miner and needing to be assured that yes, it really does sound that bad..

Played the latest Sonic Generations on XBox360 and was rather impressed at how the sense of speed had been preserved. Completing levels with the necessary number of rings can be tricky though.

Had an interesting chat with a guy that's used a very professional looking expansion module to an Atari 7800 to create new games - more colours, sprites and memory. Impressive!

It's also intriguing to see which machines have aged well, and which have not.

The Vectrex still rules. Most of the examples at Expo only had Minestorm installed, with another with Scramble. My favourite game is probably Space War though - stunning game. I suspect it's unlikely many other vector based consoles will exist.

The Megadrive with Sonic has aged better than the NES - it's still fast and colourful, whilst the Sam Coupé and Turbographx 16 impressed with their hardware. The Sam Coupé was pretty much a dead duck from the start, but its ports of Prince of Persia and Manic Miner do show what a custom chipset can do - achieving effectively 16 bit levels of performance. Elite on the Archimedes looked amazing although I couldn't remember all the keys.

Likewise, the Turbographx 16 is very able at throwing around large sprites. The only pity is that the game I tried wasn't particularly fun.

It was interesting to try the Enterprise which many people confused with an MSX. I can see why, as it's not dis-similar to an MSX2. Had a good long chat with the owner who brought in the Sam Coupé and Enterprise on the train journey back, especially about the fact emulation is never quite right, and that in the modern era of non CRT display devices, that games simply play differently, especially when designed to muck around with the CRT raster. Certainly, watching people play arcade Gradius it still seemed a bit different from the (mostly pretty good) emulation offered by MAME.

Some machines seemed to have aged badly, though, and I will probably be slated for saying that one of these is the Amiga, in my opinion. The hardware is very capable, but I've not seen much that's particularly standout recently. It seems to offer an uncomfortable space between the high end 8 bit computers and the older consoles. Perhaps I need to try an Amiga emulator again.

Portables are another area where things have radically improved. Having a Gameboy Advance here I can fairly firmly state that the best device for playing Gameboy games is a Gameboy Advance, or a Gamecube with a Gameboy Player attachment. Gameboys are good for playing Tetris and... Tetris. I never liked the Gameboy at the time (other than for Tetris), and still don't.

It beggers belief that in the same year the Tetris machineGameboy was released, the Atari Lynx came out with solid custom chips and a backlit LCD. For the next fourteen years practically all other handhelds lacked a backlight. The Gameboy color, PC Engine and Gameboy shown at the Expo were all but unusable.

On the bright side, I bought Crash Bandicoot XS and Super Mario Land 2 (Gameboy) - with the greyscales converted to colour and a decent backlit screen, it shows the games at the time really were much better than the faint smears bouncing around on the Gameboy..

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Other updates later, but for now Replay Expo is completely awesome. It's on for another day too, if you want to go!

For a while I've been going to the computer club (retro gaming) at the Lass O'Gowrie (last Tuesday and second Friday of the month. Usually I attend the Tuesday). From that and possibly other sources I learnt about Replay Expo, two days of gaming in Blackpool - both modern and retro.

Therefore this Saturday I jumped on the train and nipped up to Blackpool North, followed by a tram ride looking at the sea. Norbreck Castle Hotel is really rather large; rather necessary considering the amount of computing gear shoved in the conference room. This included in no specific order :

Vendors, including basic programmable circuit board computers, OpenPandora, a series of speccys networked to a VAX(!), Amiga emulation and the development of a single chip speccy. Retro consoles, games, etc - bought myself Crash Bandicoot XS for my Gameboy Advance.

Many, many, many retro computers including several I'd not used before : Dragon 32, Sam Coupé, Tatung Einstein, TurboGrafx16. New ports such as Prince of Persia for the Commodore 64 and Sam Coupé, the Manic Miner demo running on a ZX81.

Tournaments and Cosplay. Multi player gaming.

Lots of pinball machines including 'history of pinball' - old mechanical, electro mechanical and fully modern machines. This was really rather fascinating and fun too.

Then walking back home via the illuminations.

I'm going again tomorrow, and this time I'm taking my camera..

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Splendid party last night with decent chat, munchies and lovely cocktails. I may well have to make my own cherry margharitas in future :). Also good at reminding me that staying in Manchester beyond 11pm is practical, provided I'm prepared to pay the taxi fare from Bolton.

In unrelated news, tajasel has made a new virtual darkroom orgy. My thread in it starts here.

There may be the slightest possibility that I have my suspicions to who is posting the anonymous comments on my thread, but I'm maintaining the fourth wall for now..

Of course, there's always the small chance someone available might come along too..

Now time for long delayed tidying up and locating a copy of Solaris for Goth Book Group; I've been rather lax and need to start and finish it by Wednesday night!

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Bicon rocked, especially all the lovely people I chatted to, generally finding the right balance of long and short conversations, not drinking too much and pretending to be Blackadder the 2nd in Fictional Speed Dating.

More updates later, to pinch a post from other people, is there anything you'd like to say to me post Bicon? Comments screened..

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The holiday started with Colne Blues Festival and now im off to Manchester for a lunch time meal and drinkies with T.

Colne was interesting. Decided in the end to travel in each day rather than camp and not to bother with the international stage as that's £130 quid for the weekend whilst the remainder is only a £5.50 pledge badge!

Bought two t shirts and three cds, plus a sensible amount of beer. The long train journey (2 hours each way) let me finish Jill the Reckless and improve my skills at Gradius Advance.

Colne was a good experience but it was a pity to miss friends at Pride. Im still at the lower age range for Blues events attendance (there are several exceptions) and hat wearing is more common than usual. I wouldnt mind a hat if I could find one that suited me.

I did fall prey to new festival-itis by trying to fit too much in on Sunday and not eating properly. Fortunately I was more sensible on Monday and not knackered at the end of the day.

Next - onwards to Bicon!

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This weekend has been especially awesome. E came up to stay and chill out, and the visit was cunningly timed so that they could attend Ara, a goth night in a real church in Salford. I've been meaning to go for ages but have been frequently distracted by friends offering beer or, on two occasions, falling asleep and waking up early in the morning.

Ara was lovely; splendid people, a bit of dancing and someone offering free flapjacks! :)

Ara resulted in a 4am bedtime, so Saturday was quite chilled out and involved some chat and a bit of shopping for Teawitter ingredients for Sunday. There was insufficient time for baking as we had to go out and attend S' recommendation of Platform 4 in Castlefield after a quick Wagamamas.

My review of platform 4 can be summed up as : Go. Sell small children if you have to, to attend.

It was especially impressive that all this was free! Starting with a marching band (fun, but we didn't have a particularly good view) and then moving onto a stage with a large arch where Atempo Circ cavorted in perfect harmony. Starting off with interpretative dance and rapidly moving on to perfectly timed and choreographed acrobatics it was frankly an utterly stunning spectacle and I urge everyone to see it.

The evening completed with the wired aerial theatre - a large crane helped a stage move from a horizontal drama piece to a vertical projection screen where the participants interacted with the images hanging down by their safety ropes.

Grabbing the last train home and pimping computer games at E (including Machinarium[1], VVVVVV and Samorost 2) finished Saturday, then Sunday started fairly early to bake food for Teawiter, as mentioned in the last post.

I did intend to go for a run over the moors, but at that point late bedtimes caught up with me and a degree of sleep resulted. Now to make lunch for work and stock up on more zzz..

[1] If you've played the Machinarium demo and like it, drop me an e-mail. I have a spare copy :). If there's more than one response the most deserving/random person gets it.

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There has been an awful lot of food involved in my life as you might expect. Not only am I a fan of going out with friends and trying new culinary delights (especially when combined with alcoholic refreshments and conversations of serious and irreverent nature..) but also of cooking and baking myself.

Thus not only have I tried a few new restaurants in Manchester, but have also learnt a lot of new vegan food recipes (to the point where I could be vegan if I wanted to, but I really quite like my meat) and a few non vegan ones. I've developed a particular taste for using coconut milk (despite the fact it's more than double the price it used to be) and my collection of spices has increased even more. Next up is obtaining some ground cardamom - one of the few spices I don't have (or I could grind it myself, I suppose).

Baking has also featured somewhat - increasing my cake and biscuit baking abilities. I've been to both Cake Liberation Front (vegan) and Teawitter events. Today was a DIYBio and Teawitter crossover event - anything with bacteria in it was appreciated. I therefore made some Tomato bread, some alcoholic ginger beer and dark chocolate bread (very tasty, quite bready. Vegan if you use the right ginger beer), homemade tomato houmous, falafel and some goats cheese (I have found that I'm ok with goats and ewes cheese. Cows milk is still a particularly bad idea).

Finding new food and ingredients is always fun. The only limitation is with complex dishes that don't keep : for that I really need willing victims volunteers as spending large amounts of time on something for myself that doesn't freeze is beyond my level of cooking commitment.

I broke my soup virginity with the aid of a delightful stick blender (I have been so enthusiastic in this that the blender has in fact broken part of its plastic :( ) - spicy carrot and lentil is a particular favourite. My biscuit ability is increasing (although I really need some biscuit moulds), and I should really try and do pies beyond pasties at some point.

Any recommendations of new recipes or sites is most thoroughly appreciated.

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My ongoing intrepid culinary adventures with T have led to a challenge maintaining, as they put it 'a pie neutral lifestyle'. Rather like the rather dodgy carbon credits used to achieve dubious claims of environmental neutrality elsewhere, there are no genuinely safe shortcuts to maintaining pie neutrality, particularly when giving up the meals and beer aren't a favoured option.

I have been kayaking for nigh on two years now, biking for at least a few and walking for more than I care to count. These are all enjoyable activities but each feature difficulties.

( why kayaking, open boating, mountain biking and hiking are awesome but I've just started running again. Plus also, post party walking insanity. )
Since then I've been out at least a couple of times a week. Running has progressed to the point where I'm not stopping much, am actually enjoying the vast majority of it (other than the steep uphills) and can now tackle a moderate slope without stopping. Provided my legs and knees keep up, this rules! Most of my racing is off road, and my next challenge is to run the home to Darwen Tower route I walked earlier this year. Once I can do that without stopping I might start to consider myself reasonably fit.

After that, it's been suggested that as part of reaching the big 40 birthday year, I do a triathlon, with kayaking in place of the swimming. There's one in the Lakes.. I'm not discounting or confirming it entirely yet, but I may start aiming for it. Watch this space!

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