Duke Street Alley

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“…a moral conundrum and forty-five cents will get you a cup of coffee.”

– Bruce Sterling, 1998.

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You know that cold weather over Russia? It may well be coming this way… although, of course, it won't be nearly as bad by the time it gets here.

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The coffee machine in here has broken down again. It's a Saeco machine, with the words “Incanto Sirius” on the front - whether that's a model name, or what, I don't know. We're looking for recommendations for a new one.

It has to be able to make black coffee, espresso, and cappucinos. It has to be able to cope with making about a hundred mugs a day. Ideally, it'll be a bean-to-cup system, but we can cope with loading ground coffee. It'd be best if it didn't have to be plumbed in, but we can handle that. Any other features are a bonus, but most of all, it has to not break down.

So, anyone know anything about these beasts?

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I've done some work on a logo for my epic science-fiction setting. For once, it's pretty much exactly as I wanted it.

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If you removed the phrase “Oh baby” from the vocabulary of popular music, how much would be left?

(Been listening to some club mixes that a colleague made available; there are several tracks that consist of someone whining “Ooooh baby” over a beat, with some flying saucer noises, and that's it.)

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It seems like a good time to post plans for the next while.

The major thing I would like to do this year is to go back to college, and do English and some other subject in UCD's modular evening courses. The “some other subject” is under debate, but at present in order of priority, it goes: Geography, Medieval History, Any Other History. This is all dependent, however, on the no-college-fees things extending to the modular course, and there are indications that that's not the case. If it doesn't cover that course, then it's simply not affordable, and that's it. It says on UCD's Horizons FAQ that “at present, part-time students are not funded by Government”, which is not encouraging. And the Department of Education and Science site (after considerable searching) says “Under the free fees initiative, the DES meets the tuition fees of eligible students who are attending full-time undergraduate courses”. I'm going to make a few phone calls tomorrow to confirm or deny this.

However, one way or another, I do intend to take a break from running games (it'd be impossible while doing an evening course). While I'm not burning out on it yet, I can feel burnout lurking nearby. I'll finish out the currently running campaigns, and Age of Legends events will still take place occasionally, but I'll not be starting any new campaigns for about two to three years. After that, I plan to run some space opera material that I'll be developing in the meantime.

Not running games (which currently takes about 9 hours a week, on average, in running games, and around 25 in preparation and plotting) will free up a lot of time. If I'm not doing the course, I'll be moving some of that time toward A Political Education and dukestreet.org. Expect me to become opinionated on politics and even more opinionated on science fiction and fantasy.

And finally, we'll be going to India in September, for a bit over two weeks. I'm really looking forward to this, and already doing some research (which, as will tell you, is only just short of a miracle). It'll be just after our five-year wedding anniversary, too. I may be cheeky and set up a paypal “India Fund” that people can chuck some money into rather than giving us anniversary or birthday presents, because it's not going to be a cheap trip.

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Happy New Year!

I made an attempt at a Summary of 2005 List a while ago, but to be honest, it basically came down to “stood still and provided support”, which is in no way a bad way to spend a year. 2006 will include, among other things, a trip to India, so it's bound and determined to be a more landmarkish year.

And I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that is quite completely wonderful, and the best possible person to have beside me as the New Year rolls in.

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If you can spare a prayer, a spell, a candle, or even a thought, head it this way.

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Several times over the last couple of weeks, I've gone through a list of traditional Christmas dishes in my head, mentally ticking off things for acquiring or ignoring. We've spent a good number of Christmases in Finland, so things like maksalaatikko and rosolli join turkey, mince pies and sprouts on the list on in my head. I am a little bemused, though, to find that lasagne has snuck onto my mental roll-call of Traditional Christmas Food.

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At 16:30 today I completed the last bit of work I'll be doing this year. A meeting, a couple of emails, and some general tidying up to do, but none of that is actual work.

Huzzah!

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What time would suit people for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? 19:00, 19:30, 20:00, and 20:30 are available in UGC (or Cineworld, or whatever it is this week) in Parnell St. Is it necessary to book, or would just turning up suffice?

Aside: TLtWatW is a damnably ugly abbreviation, and it's harder to type than the words. Ain't gonna be using that one.

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Possibility of going to see The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe this evening. Anyone interested?

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Brainslur

Looking for some free publicity, ?

Brainslur is a musical project, the work of 's husband. It's very good music, and very hard to place in a particular genre - there are elements of rock and electronica, and influences from classical and other genres entirely. Interested because, well, it's good music.

Cities as Creatures

An area of science, or an aspect of science, that I like, is something like an applied analogy. “What if we assume that economies are like ecosystems?”, and the like. One of these assumes that cities are lifeforms. If you take the rough definition of something that reacts to stimuli, reproduces, consumes and excretes, cities can definitely be considered alive.

However, it's the next step in the thinking that's good for me - if a city is alive, then it has health, and organs. So you can consider the new shopping centre in Dundrum, for instance, as an organ that enables a flow of necessities in the city, taking in one kind of good and putting out others. The DART and Luas lines become blood vessels, ambulances, fire brigades and wrecking crews are white cells, building contractors are like bone marrow (or cancer cells, in other cases) and so on. You can actually arrive at useful conclusions a lot faster this way - for instance, considering it thus, it's rather more essential that blood clots and cholesterol (traffic jams) be prevented, because they impede the health of the city on an ongoing basis, and can lead to heart attacks (sudden decay of urban areas, or massive emigration to the suburbs).

eBay

eBay fascinates me in much the same way as all virtual communities do. It's the first proper global marketplace - we have global shops, and have had for years, but that's not a marketplace. Marketplaces have stalls, not shop windows, and stallholders you can talk to. You've a better chance of finding a real bargain - and a better chance of being swindled as well. And there are whole subcultures within eBay - folk who scour junk shops and markets in real space in order to resell goods online, and an even more refined breed who scan eBay itself for goods going at under the normal price in order to resell, or sell on different, more specialised sites.

There's almost nothing you can't get on eBay, if you have the cash, and possibly a US postal address.

Otters

I was told I had an otter totem, many years ago, by a guy who claimed to be an Ottowa shaman, in the town of Mystic, which is in either Rhode Isalnd or Massachusetts. While the cynicism of later knowledge leads me to doubt his Ottowa-ness, let alone his shamanism, the otter is still a good totem, representative animal, or spirit guide for me, and I've grown into the habit of it by now.

Besides, otters are incredibly cool animals anyway - there are a few in Dublin Zoo who I could happily spend all day watching.

Oneiromancy

Oneiromancy, the interpretation of dreams. Dream interpretation fascinates me, because it's one area that I can't look at and apply a bullshit filter. I don't think you can predict the future from dreams, but since they're coming from the subconscious, you can probably work out things from them that you haven't consciously realised. Except that there's no pattern, no reliable mode of interpretation - there isn't even a set of archetypal characteristics to riff off, as there is in rune reading, astrology, tarot, or the like. So they're this huge, floating set of differing interpretations, Jungian and Freudian material, folklore, superstition, and then the edges of science, with REM sleep monitoring and so on.

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“Angst is not the ultimate method of good roleplaying”. Discuss.

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People asked about:

The Weather

Weather has fascinated me for many years at this stage. My homeplace is on the side of a hill in Co. Wexford, and is situated in the landscape so that almost every kind of weather comes in from the South-West - which is the best view, the direction in which we could see about twenty miles, out past Mt. Leinster. So from about the age of eight, weather wasn't a thing that just happened, but something I could see coming.

That led into reading about meteorology, and learning how to predict a little further than the few hours ahead. Extreme weather is fascinating for everyone, of course, but I'm interested in the minor features as well - grey days, and why we've had so few this year, for instance, or why there seem to have been more puddles with ice in them in the winters when I was small.

The fact that the weather is a huge system that has rules and patterns and yet is not predictable more than a few days in advance is something that I really like, that keeps me looking at it, since I like to know what's going to happen. I do obsess over it, and am likely to tell almost anyone I'm talking to about forecasts, because, well, how could you not be interested?

HTML
Guh. HTML is no longer the bane of my life, because I'm pretty nearly on top of all the necessary tricks to make it work with the current crop of browsers. This will probably change when IE 7 comes out, of course… but in the meantime, Javascript is the one that gives me trouble.

HTML is sort of a basis for everything I do in work, and while everyone tech-oriented in my current workplace has SOME idea of what it does and how it does it, I'm the one who has to work out the Stupid Browser Tricks that sometimes crop up. I can't help but be interested in it on that basis, even if it's no longer vastly interesting. CSS and XSL as offshoots, though, those are still fascinating.

Virtual Community

Obviously, Virtual Community is a huge topic. I'm coming 'round to the way of thinking, though, that says that like economies, there are no closed communities, online or off. So this is a shorthand, in some ways, for “community activities online”.

Everything in this area has changed hugely over the last five years, with the rise of blogging, sites like livejournal, MMORPGs and other online games, discussion boards of many kinds, and now dedicated networking sites like tribe.net, as well as odd items like flickr and delicio.us. All these allow a level of participation that wasn't available to the average user even three years ago, and they overflow and merge, one with the next. The Red Branch guild and its allies on Argent Dawn are elements of an MMORPG, but there's a message board as well (which has a small blog facility), and some of that spills over into mailing lists and other blogs and private correspondence, and from there into conversations in the real world, and back again to the game, and screenshots appear on flickr… and so it goes.

So trying to track the dynamics of virtual communities has become several orders of magnitude more difficult - you can't just subscribe to a mailing list and lurk anymore, but have to follow things from place to place, and particularly with regard to livejournal, you have to participate to gain access.

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From :

Pick one of my interests - one you'd like me to explain, or enthuse about, or rant about, or whatever - and I'll write about it. Then put this in your own journal (if you're so inclined).

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It was a glorious 0.2°C when I was leaving the house this morning, and there was a fine frost on the way in. Well below the forecast temperature of 2°C, which is unusual. A squirrel in Herbert Park looked utterly disgusted with it. And Friday's Metcheck forecast now has snow on all GFS member readings - it's as certain as a forecast can be, basically.

( - GFS is “Global Forecast System”)

Woot! Snow! In November!

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There were predictions of a cold winter. Here's a screenshot of Metcheck's prediction for next Friday:

We don't usually get weather like that in January, let along mid-November…

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First frost of the year this morning; 0.9°C as I was leaving the house. Warm socks and a brisk walk over to Lansdowne Road - excellent start.

Big Easy Players, no game tonight. Watch this space for further info on the game.

I have a tendency to read bits of a random book while I'm waiting for the computer to catch up or load stuff. 10-second burst of reading over a few evenings add up quickly, so I figured I'd use this resource on non-fic, and started Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon last night (a book every pagan should read - I've read it before, but it was a while ago). This morning, Metro quoted him in an article on vampires. Synchronicity FTW!

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ArtByTheInch is not going as well as it might for me; I've had less time available for it this month than last. BUt I'm getting stuff done, and I'm thinking about it, which is probably the more important element. Here's the first product of it that's good enough to show people: Flight of Venice.

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It came up in a pub conversation last night that there are people out there who don't know about my politics blog, A Political Education. It's not a venue for political thoughts of my own - at least, not yet - but for careful investigation of geopolitical issues that I don't quite understand. I've just finished a set of research on agricultural subsidies, and I've a few more such sets brewing.

For those of you in Dublin, I'd like to draw your attention to the free Metro newspaper, available on the streets in the morning. It's well worth looking at, and it covers most issues with an admirably neutral voice. I've seen several articles in it that touch on topics I'm researching. There's the Herald AM as well - avoid that, unless you need fire-lighting material.

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One of my co-workers really wants to get to the Dublin premiere of the new Harry Potter film. This seems to be something to be encouraged, as I figure Harry Potter is a gateway to real fantasy, and corrupting my co-workers is important to me. So, any idea how one gets hold of such tickets?

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This is rather strange. Firefox seems to think the bit of Javascript I'm debugging is in kanji (or something).

Anyone seen anything like this before?

(apologies for blurred URL, but I don't fancy showing the world our test server and dev directory structure)