I love my pets as much as the next pet-lover (our family includes three cats, four gerbils, three hamsters, a fish, and a sea anenome), but… I can’t help feeling two Fire Engines coming out to rescue a lost hamster represents a massive waste of manpower and tax-payers money.
Relevant reading:
I can’t believe we’ve come around to that time of year again when the days grow short and the driving grows dark. I hate driving headlit, ploughing through the gloom and darkness. Hard enough keeping track of all the idiots on the road when you can see them clearly.
In the UK, you should drive with headlights an hour before sunset and an hour after sunrise. Yet again, people fail miserably to remember anything they learnt while they had a test to pass. So, I found myself driving home at the beginning of the week gazing in disbelief at the three drivers I saw who persisted in keeping their lights off well into the late gloom period. I mean, I even flashed one of these idiots and nothing seemed to register. The motorway was filled with cars, all lit up - and yet it didn’t seem to phase these guys. It’d be like turning up at a fancy dress party dressed in shirt and jeans to find everyone else dressed in Halloween costumes… and then spending the entire evening utterly oblivious to the funny looks you’re getting.
I realise I should be concentrating on my own driving, but sometimes as I overtake on the motorway I glance across into the car next to me and I might as well be seeing something from a Romero movie. Drivers with vacant eyes, gripping the steering wheel with stiff fingers, focus unmoving. You might as well remove the mirrors and indicators from these cars, cause once they settle into the middle lane, that’s it until they get home.
Anyway… on the upside, I just went to the garage to get something from the fridge - and I found myself with a shadow. A moon shadow. I looked up to find the dark sky lit by a brilliant crescent moon, a scattering of bright stars dotted around the heavens between wisps of thin cloud. You can get a sky like that any time, but somehow I like them best in the autumn. Autumn and I get on just fine, because I’m not allergic to anything at this time of year and it isn’t so cold your extremities fall off after 5 minutes outside. Perfect.
Until I have to get behind the wheel of the car again…
In 1446, Wales perched on the precipice, faced with the prospect of a new rebellion by restless natives. Complacent English nobles, entrusted with expansive domains, stretch themselves all too thin, leaving stewards to run much of their lands and properties. In many instances, these stewards come from the local population, swayed by misplaced loyalties and the corrupting influence of power.
In the midst of this, a simple merchant requests the assistance of travellers in Swansea to drive, and provide escort, to a cartload of goods, bound for Pembroke. It seems a simple enough task, providing payment and transport for a couple of days on the road. However, how often do games present simple tasks that stay simple. Mixing legendary stones, agents of the Crown, bandits and stray sheep, ‘The Sward and The Stone’ is a new adventure for the classic ‘Maelstrom‘ role playing system.
You can download The Sward and the Stone now from Drive Thru Stuff and RPGNow. A 27-page adventure plus two maps, the booklet provides background, NPCs and a gazateer of the character’s route through the craggy, troubled landscape of south Wales in the mid-15th Century.
Once upon a time, possibly in or around 2004, I set up a site relating to my efforts in the world of web design. I have always swayed towards simple web design, because I grasp HTML and CSS fine, but have never used any of the fancy tools. I even use Notepad for my coding, never venturing to use FrontPage or Dreamweaver until recent pressures have demanded I become familiar with them. I use a little JavaScript, have dabbled in PHP, Perl and XML. I can set up a database and retrieve information from it, creating dynamic content. I can handle Server Side Includes and Webbots to insert content from one place into another, and even recently had a poke around with AJAX and ASP. I can manage just fine, knowing enough, but certainly not so much as to make me an expert in anything.
So, Back to Basics Web came about - and with the assistance of co-coder and marketeer Richard we put together web sites for Meeker Aviation and Apical. You can see a few samples of the work we’ve done, and that I’ve done since, on the Back to Basics Web site. I intend to continue with my web work on a restrained and moderate level - it can be tough channelling creatives juices in multiple directions at the same time. When I work on an advance with a focussed project scope, I need to be certain that I deliver.
Back to Basics Web uses the _base_ theme for Wordpress, which I intend to customise for the time being… A simple base, for a simple web site, offering a simple service - until I have a moment to create a theme from scratch myself!
I was just gathering up the recycling this morning (around half an hour ago), on an otherwise ordinary day. I had sat down with a pile of unread newspapers and made sure I hadn’t missed anything obvious to keep for a more detailed read later. Then, I dropped the papers all in a plastic bag, grabbed a soup can for the metal recycling box, and stepped out into the cul-de-sac… to see a black car, with a very large roof ornament, making a turn and pulling away. On the back of the car, a small logo proclaimed ‘Google’. I had witnessed the passing of the Google Street View Car, continuing an extended roam around Britain (and Europe).
It would seem spotting this elusive vehicle has become a bit of a sport. In America, Street View has raised privacy fears, catching fleeting visions of our streets, homes, gardens - and just what might be happening through the window when the car passes. In the UK, despite some initial concerns, the Information Commissioner’s Office approved Street View back in July.
So, that leaves me wondering now whether I’ll make an appearance myself, a vague shape in the porch gathering up the newspaper recycling bag, or just opening the door to step out into my drive way. Thankfully, I wasn’t doing anything too embarrassing - something others cannot claim across the Internet, like the Aussie drunk.
