Marsden was Here

Gothic Vampire Mega Birthday Party of Doom

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:55:29 GMT

Just a reminder and an addition to the schedule - There will be a screening of 'The Crow' from about 7:30 while the final setting-up happens, for anyone who would like to turn up & help out :)

[x-posted all over the place]

From: marsden.marsden@gmail.com
Event: Gothic Vampire Mega Birthday Party of Doom
Starting: 2009-11-13, the Evening of Friday the 13th of November 2009
Ending: 2009-11-14, the Pre-dawn of Saturday the 14th of November 2009
Location: Christchurch, Gladson Ave
Contacts: Robert, Marsden, Chris ph 942 1585
Notes:

1. It's Friday the 13th!
2. It's about that time of year again!
3. It's the end of exams!
4. We haven't had a party here in ages!

What more do you need?

"Would you die for love tonight?"

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:42:37 GMT

Brother update - had the halo & vest off yesterday, final checkup in a month assuming he doesn't do anything stupid in the meantime.
~~~

For a day where I did hardly anything, and which included a nap, I'm exhausted. Probably I just need the chance to slow down for a couple of days and crash safely.

I socialised a bit and caught up with a couple of people I haven't seen in ages, and it was good. Met P & L's youngling for the first time, seems a cheerful and easygoing little chap.

Stopped by a local fish & chip shop I've been visiting for ... going on 20 years now (and the decor hasn't changed in that time...). It was dead - 7:45 on a Saturday night, no other customers. The drinks fridge was bare (not that I ever bought from it), I got the impression they've stopped selling fresh fish & it felt like I could have been their only customer for the night. The food was as one would expect when the heat was turned back up immediately to cooking - not the best.

I wonder how long it will keep ticking over - it'll be a bit sad to see it go.

What does google know about you?

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:32:27 GMT

https://www.google.com/dashboard/

Log in for a summary of all the google services you use.

Springy cleaning

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:53:26 GMT

Mother delivered the Kirby yesterday so over the next couple of weeks almost every bit of furniture in the house needs to be a) dusted, b) moved, c) carpet shampooed under, d) moved again.

I also need to make that trip to Molten Media with the pile of computers cluttering up the hall. that may even happen this afternoon, if I can stop procrastinating on LJ and actually get some work done this morning.

Photos: The Ric halloween party

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:27:40 GMT

The 4th annual The Ric Halloween party

While photos are uploading...

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:53:11 GMT

I nearly filled my card at the Ric Halloween party last night - 194 photos + a few deleted. As always there were plenty of people and some stunning outfits.

It was a good party - I didn't hit any highs, but I didn't crash either.

- my costume went down a treat. Surprisingly there were still a handful of consumables attached to it at the end of the evening
- it managed to make Storm feel dirty (apparently), which is not an insignificant achievement.
- the not-really-sober young lady who tried to insist I give her my camera for the rest of the evening and go and have fun was not successful (counter-productive), but the thought was appreciated. As was her offer of lining up anyone I ... particularly wanted to raid my costume who hadn't.
- there were a lot of attractive young women present, were I not not still in flu-recovery mode [hack, cough] I might have tried to flirt with some of them
- I'm interested to see if the other not-quite-sober young lady who asked why I didn't turn up to kaosish events at her place follow through on her promise to make sure I know about them in future. There's a nice buzz of feeling ... acceptable/invited right there.

A couple of links

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:44:47 GMT

Something for the library geeks (although you probably already have it)
LibraryTechNZ blog
~~~

And for the postgrads (via RWW)
Deep Dyve (the scientific journal search engine) Launches Rental Service for Research Articles

Buying a single article from a scientific journal is usually prohibitively expensive if you are not a student or teacher at a school that subscribes to the journal. Most academic journals are available only behind these paywalls, but Deep Dyve just announced a new product that could radically change the marketplace for scientific, technical and medical articles. Until now, Deep Dyve only indexed articles and directed users to the journal's own site. Starting today, users can rent articles from Deep Dyve. Accounts start with a pay-as-you-go account, by which users are charged $0.99 to keep an article for one day, and go up to an unlimited account for $19.99 per month.

The fog is lifting, slowly

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:18:38 GMT

Despite a very interrupted nights sleep I'm feeling remarkably alert this morning and the lurge is starting to recede (starting).

Yesterday was solid work/chores with little in the way of breaks and definitely not the nap I wanted by late afternoon. At the end of the day gaming was great and I'm glad I made the effort of turning up rather than flagging.

~~~
Enough people turned up to boardgames on Monday for critical mass. We played a couple of games of Dominion before dinner and broke out the Good, the Bad and the Munchkin after. jomas_45, your coat is still hanging in my laundry.

OK, quiet board games here this afternoon/evening

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:37:24 GMT

For those who are willing to brave the [hack, cough]. Comment/message if you need the address.

Edit: any time after lunch is fine

Photos: Mad Hatters Tea Party

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:49:06 GMT

Mad Hatter's Tea party

Hoping to add photos of the earlier happenings from others later.

Update: Added photos from becky1 to the start of the gallery
Update:Added photos from slothphil

Photos: Whitt's 21st / Mythology party

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:17:01 GMT

(I only stayed for a couple of hours, which was probably long enough to infect everyone there [cough, wheeze])

ZOMG! XKCD animated!

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:07:35 GMT

The Good, the Bad, and the Munchkin

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:35:24 GMT

I may have succumbed to temptation and decided to make a purchase at Comics while I was in town collecting a new laptop battery...
Also thinking about hosting board games here on Monday (public holiday) if people are interested.

~~~
We played the first couple of scenarios from Traders and Barbarians at SAGA last night, they do add variety and a slightly different feel/tactics to Settlers.

~~~
... I may now be poor enough to stop spending money again.

Head cold - do not waaaant!

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:00:41 GMT

I've apparently become run down to the point that the head cold which has been lurking at the back of my throat for the past two weeks felt it could launch a full assault overnight. So I woke up this morning with a lung full of crap.

Not what I need just before a weekend of multiple social events.

Photos: Slosh's burfday party

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 01:50:25 GMT

Belated birthday party

UP, down

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:03:59 GMT

I'm having one of those 'feel like I've been run over, complete with aches & pains' days.

~~~
Went to UP with niennahirifea & others yesterday. Shared someones conclusion that it's really an animated movie for adults because it uses pure visuals to convey a lot of things which actully require adult life experience to interpret. The small girl two seats along constantly asking questions 'why are they getting older', 'why is he sad', what happens?' wasn't entirely unexpected.

Another conclusion was that the title doesn't actually refer to the flying house but to the growing up that both the main characters do over the course of the movie.

Also, was that a Foo-foo bird?
~~~

Arrived later than usual to the party last night but time passed pleasantly enough until I got home about 2am.

~~~

~~Digitise video for sister~~
~~Process last night's photos~~
Wash dishes
Groom & bandage cat
Try & fix brother's laptop
Play Civ II

Young Immortals

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:36:25 GMT

Turning over the Highlander Conundrum
~~~
Potential campaign blurb

In the end there could be only one, and that one was MacLeod. But part of the Prize was mortality, and nature abhors a vacumn. Now new immortals are rising and banding together for protection - in the modern world powerful organisations hunting for the secret of immortality are the greatest threat to your Quickening.

~~~
Mechanical notes

The immortality thing is actually a bonus for a campaign containing violence - damage slows an immortal down and massive damage renders them unconscious while they regenerate but it's written that you're never going to accidentally kill a PC.

The 'years of accumulated knowledge' is not a major issue in the above scenario because young immortals don't have centuries of experience, but is easily treated as a pool of plot-points which can be spent on
- 'Yeah, I know something about this / once beheaded someone who knew about this'
- or temporary bonuses to a skill/stat/roll.

These should recover in two ways
- slowly over time
- all at once and possibly increasing the pool during a Quickening

And the power level of the game can be set relatively easily by adjusting the cap and recharge rate.

There would have to be a duelling sub-system encouraging burning off points in anticipation of the Quickening or death, because it wouldn't be Highlander without an occasional epic sword fight with bad-guy immortals.

Web creator sorry for slash

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:30:12 GMT

Not the complete Herald title (slashes), but funnier in a sick sort of way. I'm left wondering whether someone at the Herald is clueless, or has the right sense of humour.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10603341 , or the original, http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6872873.ece

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, said there was no good reason for them.

"Really, if you think about it, it doesn't need the //. I could have designed it not to have the //", The London Times reported.

He said he could not have predicted 30 years ago that the two small marks would cause so much annoyance.

"There you go, it seemed like a good idea at the time," he said.

Afternoon of stuff

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 06:06:55 GMT

- went up the hill to C,J & Z's house & baby warming.
- played Dominion, which is a nice fast-moving game except when one of the players has been struck by decision paralysis
- waiting on dinner to reheat
- planning to catch that Batman movie on 'Sky' tonight.

Spent money

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:28:12 GMT

A substantial invoice came in so I decided 'blow it, I'm going to blow some of it'.

Cutwells was actually the least expensive place I visited today, picking up 25ish metres of black fabric from the 99c/m bin. The velcro dots I hope will suffice to hang it were $42 from Warehouse Stationary. I'll have to have a trial run or do the hanging early in the week so I can go back in if that's not enough.

I dropped $200 at Timeless Trinkets - $100 on a picture that caught my eye back at Xmas time, and $100 on assorted other posters to hang at the Vampire Gothic.

A visit to Comics was a bit disappointing - the selection wasn't as good as I'd hoped. Pandemic was tempting but I eventually found myself deciding between 'The Good, The Bad and the Munchkin' and the Traders and Barbarians expansion for Settlers of Catan, eventually settling on the latter ($80 after discount). It has 22 wooden camels, apparently.

Having a LARP

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:41:47 GMT

http://tvnz.co.nz/20-20-news/coming-up-20-having-larp-3047776/video

Apparently 20/20 did a segment on LARPing this week. It's about 13 minutes, and a really positive portrayal.

HT: adrexia via FaceBook

Quirk of the language

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:03:04 GMT

In English: "My elder sister" is not necessarily the same as "My eldest sister" (the oldest of my sisters) - a subtle difference which could easily be overlooked by an inattentive listener.

No, it hasn't actually happened to me it was just one of those thoughts.

Helpful, not helpful

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 03:38:55 GMT

Helpful: the supermarket putting cost/per standard volume on all price labels.
Not helpful and ethically dubious: using NNc/100g on store-brand items and $N:NN/1kg on the equivalent name brand items.

It was the total incongruity between ~45c (Home Brand cornflakes) and ~$5.00 (Sanatarium cornflakes) that made me take a closer look.

Implications of build-on-demand

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:23:39 GMT

In the comments to my Rayne does TED post* adrexia inadvertently touched on an interesting point.

We're one or two technology breakthroughs away from dropping the cost of production and distribution of manufactured goods (like cars) to practically nothing relative to current expectations. Are we then going to start seeing the same sorts of issues around material products that we currently see around mp3s online?

If so, hadn't we better take the opportunity to sort them out while the only rubbish we have to worry about is electronic? Or will they sort themselves out through the business models developed for intermediary products like print-on-demand?

I'm not thinking matter transformation ala Star Trek, but supply pattern + raw material to fabber, stand well back seems reasonable within 10-15 years commercially. It's already being done in limited instances.

~~~
* an unusually busy (but profitable :) ) work week diverted me from joining in the conversation, sorry guys

*I wasn't too surprised that it was the piracy aspect that was taken up rather than the fear aspect.

Photos: Sci Fi Soc Quiz, SAGA board games

marsden.marsden@gmail.com — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:23:03 GMT

Quiz the Fourth

Boardgames