Friday, May 26, 2006
rainman
What the hell is it that makes people huddle under their umbrellas when it's not frigging raining??!?
Oh my fuckaroo, I literally passed about 40 people walking with their brollies up on the way to work this morning, and there wasn't even a lick of rain about. FFS, how thick are you? How very very little attention are you paying to your surroundings that you can't even notice that a) there is no water falling from the sky and b) the ground is dry???
Jeezahz. Honestly.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
I spy, with my little mouse..
Can you spot the avo tree? I can.
Ain't technology wonderful? There's no better way to make the world that bit smaller.
At a whim, I downloaded Google Earth. What a cool toy :)
I've spent the last hour or so checking out Baghdad, the Forbidden City, Cairo, Rio, New Orleans.... and of course, my house. Pity, the satellite took the snap while we were out so I can't see my car :P
At a whim, I downloaded Google Earth. What a cool toy :)
I've spent the last hour or so checking out Baghdad, the Forbidden City, Cairo, Rio, New Orleans.... and of course, my house. Pity, the satellite took the snap while we were out so I can't see my car :P
And at last, I could find out what's behind the 15ft wall at the back of my garden. Disappointingly, its only more houses. No secret weapons labs or trainee playboy mansion in sight.
And of course, trying to find the houses of friends and family. It takes a bit of mental exercise to interpret places and routes from directly overhead, but if you're relatively familiar with roads and landmarks, you can.
And of course, trying to find the houses of friends and family. It takes a bit of mental exercise to interpret places and routes from directly overhead, but if you're relatively familiar with roads and landmarks, you can.
Now that I know the exact longitude & latitude, I will be able to direct my missiles with pinpoint accuracy when I receive the signal to begin my campaign for world dominance. Huzzah! The time of Al-Geckaeda is nigh!
Thursday, May 18, 2006
And not a drop to drink..
Ah, what a funny place England is.
Here we are, being continually reminded to save water because of the big bad drought looming on the horizon, yet you can't risk leaving home without a brolley!
A quick visit to the met office paints a different picture of our little island.
Go figure.
Monday, May 15, 2006
the picture what I wrote
I've been an avid gamer for many, many years.
I was cursed with being shy during high school. Breaking the ice with someone new would have neccesitated me waiting for global warming to catch up with me. No, I was the weird kid who went red and mumbled something before running away.
On Friday nights, I'd babysit my cousin while my sister came to visit my mom. He was annoying but at least he had an imagination.. one night he didn't bring any toys over. So I improvised; I found a dice that had fallen out of the compendium of games that lived on top of my mom's wardrobe (we weren't allowed to play with it unsupervised in case we ate the tiddlywinks or drew on the ludo board). As I rolled the little cube under my fingers, ideas came to me. I started concocting scenarios; one the first was that my GI Joe figure had to cross a valley and fight his way through the terrorists (in those days, terrorists were either Angolan or Mandela & his cronies...yes, boys and girls, Mandela is still a filthy little terrorist in my book) but anyhoo....
The rules were simple. Guv was GI Joe. He'd roll the dice to see how many steps he took. Then I'd do the same for the terrorists. And if they got into hand to hand, a five or six would kill the other guy. And that was my first step. I started making up lists of bonus items he could pick up from the bodies.... machine guns, knives, grenades, etc.
Which brings me back to where I was. Shy. Yet, somehow, gaming drew me out. Its a very social hobby (read: obsession) yet at the same time its 'safe', since you're not being you, you're being Mustafa the camel thief, or Vorpulus the Legionnaire, you know?
I became a DungeonMaster (a.k.a Games Master a.k.a Referee). I'd plan and run the games for a motley collection of fellow nerdlings.. the bug didn't just bite me, it savaged me with sabre like teeth the first time I took the rickety lift to Wizard's Warehouse up in the dingy corridors of the CTC building in Cape Town. The point of this is that, being a DM, you have to paint the story in your players imaginations. You don't tell a story of high adventure and courage with words, you do it with pictures.
When I designed a dungeon or enemy lair, I could see it in perfect clarity in my minds eye, and it was glorious. The trick was to bring the players into the same vision.
Skip forward to this year and the book on screenwriting the missus gave me.
I've been reading it slowly, and the more I read, the more it seems to click. I love the idea of telling a story in pictures, rather than in words. Worth a 1000 words and all that. I'm enjoying it so much I'm thinking of giving it a serious go, to sit down and share all these hundreds of stories, quests, terrors and cataclysmic struggles that live in my head with Joe Public.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Going down
I'm a bit of a history nerd, me. Especially WWII. It fascinates me, especially old wartime footage and war stories.
Like this little nugget that I happened across, the adventures of the German u-boat U29. It was commissioned in 1936, and saw acive service right through the war until it was eventually being scuttled in May 1945. During that time it sunk over 62 thousand tons of shipping, as well as the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous, for the loss of 518 men. The entire crew of U29 were decorated for that action.
But throughout all those years of combat service, there are no records of any crew member being lost through accidents or enemy action. Now that's pretty impressive.
And yes, this was just for you. You know who you are ;)
Hey..
Got a light?
Killer Rabbid
Fat Gecko
Recent Stuff
In the wind
Tasty morsels
randoms