tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89382217567306371772011-11-28T00:19:54.487ZA blog about geekery. Larp, science fiction, tech, new media and anything else that draws in geeks.Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.comBlogger281100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-77674489925091217462011-10-10T23:39:00.000+01:002011-10-10T23:39:13.767+01:00

One of the things we do at work is to have small bursts of work known as "sprints". We plan what we'll cover at the start, work on it, then present it with a demo at the end, to all interested parties. On Friday they asked me to do the demonstation part of our presentation.I went in with no preparation beyond writing down on a post it note the four things I wanted to show people. I stood up

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-27624224304641501022011-09-15T22:37:00.002+01:002011-09-15T22:41:56.449+01:00

This piece is written primarily as a feedback exercise for the people who created and ran Wasteland UK's first event, Brum. As such, it will be most meaningful to them and to other players I roleplayed alongside on the field. However, it should still be accessible to others, and I hope it offers an insight into the game and some of the considerations involved in running a larp system.

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-681499524711263252011-06-27T12:55:00.000+01:002011-06-27T12:55:54.297+01:00

Jonathan Coulton sang: Well it's gonna be the future soon And I won't always be this way When the things that make me weak and strange get engineered away I actually feel like I'm living in the future already. Over the weekend I finally purchased an LCD television. I've noticed that Freecycle has an endless stash of old style CRT televisions to offer, and people carefully make it clear that

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-69084096899629615162011-02-16T10:05:00.000Z2011-02-16T10:05:36.633Z

For a long time I wanted a Tivo, and in December my wish came true when my boyfriend told me he had one stashed at home that he'd not set up and I could have it on long term loan if I wanted. It was a goodun, a series 1 with a Lifetime subscription. It took me a while to get it set up, partially due to discovering that not all telephone cables are created equal, but eventually I had it sitting

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-20062977124871314182011-02-04T13:47:00.000Z2011-02-04T13:47:48.421Z

Thrilled to have discovered the Infinite Gateway blog. I think I'm going to pinch a load of their subject lines for my own musings in the future. Check them out if you're interested in larp. http://infinite-gateway.com/

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-29712227431460480242011-02-04T13:40:00.000Z2011-02-04T13:40:26.775Z

Last week I went along to the Geeks of London meetup that I happened across on Twitter. As it turned out, it was the first such meet, and as such it was very successful. Melinda and Christian organised the whole thing, with help from others and a clearly generous donation from Nokia Ovi who not only put money behind the bar for drinks and some nibbles, but also offered a prize of a new phone

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-44787049020697869472011-01-28T10:05:00.002Z2011-01-28T10:05:57.439Z

Things to write about when I have time: Using ifttt.com The Geeks of London gadget meetup of last night

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-23643050944832871632011-01-24T13:13:00.000Z2011-01-24T13:13:23.333Z

I bought Bizarre magazine this month at there was an article in it covering the larp system I play. It was a good article, quite sincere and interested rather than piss-taking. Shame it was surrounded by a huge number of pages of adverts featuring scantily clad women and cost over four quid. Still, I did get an article on Neil Gaiman in there as part of the bargain.

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-82874792660533225852011-01-24T12:37:00.000Z2011-01-24T12:37:07.700Z

I've just discovered a forthcoming tool by the name of "If this, then that" which is all set to start connecting together the social networks that are pervading everyday life. It looks pretty cool and I've signed up to be part of the beta as soon as they send out new invitations. My primary reason is that I want a simple way of archiving my Twitter feed in perpetuity without annoying other people

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-16777400705881107392011-01-14T10:38:00.000Z2011-01-14T10:38:47.489Z

So, we've moved offices. At least, my team has. We used to work in central London, colloquially known as W1 due to the postcode, and we're now in W12, White City. As an annoying consequence of this, my commute has grown significantly worse. For the first couple of weeks of the new regime I found that my commute was taking longer than it used to take me to get into work when I worked in London

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-52944123153656156702010-09-13T20:34:00.003+01:002011-01-14T10:21:43.804Z

I've been away from the blog for a while. First of all I went to a larp event (The Gathering) that totally shook the world's foundations for my character, meaning that despite the system officially having no down-time, the forums have been full of chatter, further roleplay and general frothing about the events. Outside of work that pretty much filled an entire week and it's not over yet. After

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-49670417735198798462010-08-15T21:45:00.002+01:002011-01-14T10:20:57.361Z

As I mentioned previously, having noted that Barcamp London is coming around again, I decided to get a little more involved this time and attended one of the recent meetings. It was an interesting experience. I hope to stay involved although I'm not being awfully useful to the team at the moment as the major focus is on earning sponsorship for the event. And that's what's actually so interesting

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-57382186919601335442010-07-26T22:42:00.000+01:002010-07-26T22:42:38.013+01:00

I played a new game this weekend, it's called Cathederal. A quick search around the internet informs me that the game first came out in the 70s and upon opening up the game I suspect my copy is about that old. It came from a car boot sale, you see. While the 'retailer' asked for the princely sum of 10p, as i took it and one other game from a vast pile of the usual fare (Monopoly, Go For Broke and

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-57733829121459557442010-07-21T11:28:00.001+01:002010-07-24T01:16:28.297+01:00

As I mentioned previously, I went along to a talk entitled Playing with Brains on Monday evening. It was given by Peter McOwan, Professor of Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London. I guess it was very much a lecture for the ley person but I found it very interesting and for a fleeting moment considered taking up studying part time. I won't, though, I simply don't have enough spare

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-47220182353597070202010-07-19T13:30:00.003+01:002010-07-24T01:16:53.141+01:00

As the song goes, “We bought it to help with your homework!” It was the 80s, and home computing was taking off slowly. While people marvelled at the ability to do home accouting on their TV screen rather than the 100 times faster method of scribbling in a book, kids were getting into the likes of Jet Set Willy and The Lords of Midnight. Home taping was killing, not only music, but software too,

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-83500615652034297612010-07-18T21:01:00.000+01:002010-07-18T21:01:09.882+01:00

I'm planning to head over to this event tomorrow after work: What's in a brain? Bring yours and join us as we explore vision and perception through a series of interactive brain-bending games and experiments, and hear about some of the cutting-edge research helping us understand human and computer intelligence. Our guide, Peter McOwan, is Professor of Computer Science at Queen Mary, University

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-21583783994796631202010-07-13T22:39:00.000+01:002010-07-13T22:39:26.256+01:00

In my email this morning came a message: BarCampLondon8 will be held at City University in Clerkenwell this November 13th / 14th I'm thinking of getting more involved this year, and plan to head over to the planning session. I'm not quite sure in what capacity I'll be useful but it ought to be interesting and hopefully I'll get to know a few more of the blogger types who frequent these events.

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-91603998014658879592010-07-13T13:36:00.001+01:002010-07-15T19:21:48.469+01:00

I've been away over the weekend at an event hosted by my own faction. It strikes me that people don't tend to write about the out of character logistics and how an event comes together, so I'm goin to write a few pieces intended to address that gap. As always, I'm talking about my own personal experience. This definitely differs from system to system and probably within the system between

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-66843614879637751262010-07-08T16:15:00.005+01:002010-07-08T20:07:08.336+01:00

Below, you can see a strange green and orange button. Well, unless you turned off JavaScript and that would be a little bit odd. What's it for? What does it do? How should we react to this strange new phenomena? In their own words, "Flattr is a social micropayment platform that lets you show love for the things you like". I'm not sure when it became trendy to drop the letter E from the end of

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-79615680092578899672010-07-06T21:59:00.001+01:002010-07-08T14:32:54.519+01:00

I remember seeing Back to the Future for the first time. I was thirteen and stuck for what to get my best friend for Christmas. I told her that rather than a present, I'd pay for us to go to the cinema. Secretly I was really keen to see The Goonies, but she watched an episode of Film 85 and was keen to see Back to the Future. Since it was her day out, I complied and loved the movie. I had major

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-13310432376431545502010-07-05T21:12:00.001+01:002010-07-05T21:12:00.108+01:00

Another import from the old, dead blog, this time from last May. On the internet nobody knows you're a dog. So goes the old adage. The thing is, it doesn't matter. What sets apart online activity from everyday activity is that if you do nothing you might as well not be there. You're not even a part of the scenery, effectively you are absent. It is by your actions that you're recognised and

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-89824864389701799772010-07-05T13:20:00.001+01:002010-07-05T13:20:53.837+01:00

One of the things I've always though an important feature of blogs is linking outwards to other content. The name itself came originally from "web log" which to me suggests you're meant to be logging things elsewhere on the web, not solely creating your own content. With that in mind I'm making a conscious effort to share some of the things I come across whilst "surfing". First case, this

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-83270789524281221382010-07-04T20:09:00.000+01:002010-07-04T20:09:25.701+01:00

Last year I went to Social Media Camp in April, and I wrote the bulk of this post directly thereafter. I was inspired to start up a blog but I was unfocused and didn't really have anything in particular that I wanted to write about. I also caught a very nasty illness which in retrospect I think was swine 'flu and the whole blogging thing never really took off. I'm going to kill off that quickly

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-83265917924060822682010-07-04T19:54:00.001+01:002010-07-04T20:02:53.218+01:00

My friend, Anthony, put together a number of short YouTube videos that cover the way that a few things work in our system. Below is the one in which he describes a character card. He's taken to filming early of a morning before things get going at the event and this video touches on a few things. - The rules and the honour system we're bound by - What's on the character card - The concept of

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-63058890251441419792010-07-02T20:05:00.000+01:002010-07-02T20:05:22.830+01:00

Ask old enough players and they'll tell you larp is an abomination and we should be referring to lrp. Ask others and they'll talk about "larps" as plural items. It's both, neither and all these things depending who you ask. Larp stands for Live Action Role Play. Older players don't bother to mention the Action part, after all, everything is action once it's live, whether it's the action of

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-26134559104426590832010-07-01T12:34:00.002+01:002010-07-04T21:18:18.595+01:00

Back in January I met a man named Steve who had a website and he told me that it was doing very, very poorly in the search engine stakes and since I was a web developer, perhaps I could help him improve things. Somebody told him his site was invisible but he didn't know what that meant. I looked at the website. It was quite nicely designed and comprised about forty pages. Every one of them was

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-21817226155487156112010-06-30T14:39:00.000+01:002010-06-30T14:39:59.337+01:00

I want an iPhone. I don't want an iPad. Until the advent of the iPhone I'd largely given up on Apple computers. As a kid I had the standard issue ZX Spectrum for a while, and the first time I did any real desktop publishing it was on an Atari, but my first forays into the world of the internet and the World Wide Web happened on a Mac, a Performa 475 that needed a software update in order to

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8938221756730637177.post-80525306973086899832010-06-30T12:43:00.001+01:002010-06-30T13:04:12.546+01:00

Hello. This is a blog about geekery. All the strange hobbies that used to be shunned are now celebrated, and the world is hungry for the next techie toy. I am unashamedly me and I don't shy away from admitting to my passions. From a solid love of science fiction with Red Dwarf at its heart through my teen years and beyond, to a minor obsession with Little Shop of Horrors and a recent discovery

Maxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16066401212782370695noreply@blogger.com0