Duke Street Alley

It's already starting to feel more and more autumnal in the mornings, and we've lit the fire twice during August so far. I'll usually light a fire before I'll turn the heating on. However, good and all as firepacks and briquettes of various breeds are, very little beats an actual wood fire. So, does anyone know of a place within (preferably South) Dublin that's selling firewood by the bag yet?

Before y'all start bombarding me with texts and email, yes, there is a Big Easy game tonight.

The server we play on is down, so I'm not actually playing at the moment. I'll take this oppurtunity, then, to be incredibly geeky, and link to the Allakhazam profiles for two of my characters, Wormson and Ezraki. Ezz is a capoeira-dancing Cariabbean-accented tailoring enchanting troll. Wormson's just this dead guy.

Today is the last day of work before a week off, in which I intend to do very little indeed. Sleep, catch up on various aspects of game-writing, do some stuff around the house... ordinary things. I haven't had a chance to do "nothing" in my own house since I was about 17 for more than a day or two, so I'm grabbing this one with both hands. I haven't looked forward to time off so much in a very long time.

We have no dictionary in the house. Sure, we have many, many translating and specialist dictionaries, but no plain English dictionary. An offer has come up through work for the Penguin English Reference Collection, which contains: Dictionary Of English Grammar, Guide To Punctuation, Dictionary, Guide To Plain English, Dictionary Of English Idioms, Thesaurus, Dictionary Of Abbreviations and Crossword Dictionary, all for the princely sum of €16. Worthwhile? Or should I just go and buy the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and have done with it?

[Poll #534897]

There seems to be no hangover. I woke up at ten, reasonably refreshed, lay reading for a while, showered, and had a solid breakfast. I'm not feeling like doing anything strenuous, but I'm not dead either. This is an improvement on the ordinary post-late-night situation.

Fibbers last night was in some ways strange. There was a definite feeling of being 20 again, and there were an awful lot of the same faces around - some of them have to be younger siblings, though, as they haven't aged at all. The music was different in content if not in tone and there was no smoke - though there was a godawful stink from somewhere in the downstairs area. I think I must have spent the best end of an hour on the dancefloor, and my neck is telling me a bit about it.

There was one point, with the floor about half capacity, when Europe's Final Countdown came on. I turned to see who else was on the floor, discovered three other long-haired and/or bearded guys doing the same thing - so that we had formed a spontaneous circle. We all looked at each other, grinned - and proceeded to headbang through the entire thing. One guy was grinning maniacally throughout; you could see his teeth glowing in the UV light each his head swung up. Green Day and System of a Down were additional opportunities to hurt myself, although things stayed just short of a full mosh.

Aside from the beer garden, which was full, they had opened up part of the car park behind, with one or two security guys to stop people from wandering too far away. It was quieter out there, you could breathe a bit, and have conversations. LJ saturation was at its usual level, and I had meandering conversations with mr_wombat, pardina, tobinjt, yrthilian, darskyl, and one other guy who I know from Redbrick, but whose LJ username I'm having trouble finding. eng_monkey was lurking somewhere, too, as were various other folks. I spoke to various people about various books; if I said I'd lend you something, remind me and we'll make arrangements for a handover.

mr_wombat, olethros and I walked most of the way home before we got a taxi. Navigating the streets of Dublin to avoid nightclubs at three in the morning is an interesting route.

Job always struck me as a very Zen kinda guy. And I'm trying hard to maintain that meditative, patient, if-it-be-your-will attitude. However, Job never had to deal with the utter gods-be-damned mess that is cross-browser issues in CSS.

I believe it may finally be cool enough to sleep. And believe me, if I can't get to sleep, there's something odd going on.

inannajones is going away to Oxford for ten days, leaving tomorrow. I intend to be an anti-social bastard for the duration, with intention to play a great deal of Dark Age of Camelot, and read the vast pile of books I have. Therefore, if I don't answer the phone, don't acknowledge you on talker or IM, don't post to livejournal, and don't answer your email, that's why.

Of course, having stated my intentions thus, I'll probably suffer from an intense need to be sociable.

caturah and others who pointed me at Steven Erikson - thank you! My review on dukestreet of Gardens of the Moon will tell you how much I liked it, and if you could see your way clear to leaving the other books in the series where I can get 'em, I'd muchly appreciate it.

For those of you who didn't already know, dukestreet is my other blog - scifi and fantasy and gaming mutterings. You can read it without leaving the comfort of LJ at dukestreet - I usually just put the first paragraph or so in the feed, so your friends page won't be jammed with it.

I'm somewhat bemused, somewhat amused, and somewhat despairing over the number of people who are saying "Live 8 is [insert negative] because any amount of money collected will make no difference in the long term".

People, you clearly didn't notice, but there was no money collected. The tickets were free, there was no donation method. That was not the point. Those people who are saying that corrupt governments in Africa are the problem - yes, that's what Live 8 was saying! Those people who are pointing to third world debt and trade barriers, yes, that's what Live 8 was saying. It really does your credibility no good when you rail against short term money collections by rich pop stars when there weren't any.

Let me summarise: Live 8 was about putting pressure on the G8 leaders to:

Drop third world debt
Dispose of trade barriers preventing Afican nations from exporting
Lend support to getting rid of corrupt governments in Africa
Increase aid to an actual meaningful level

Four items, very few of which have been comprehended by the naysayers. I hope the actual G8 were paying attention, but given the obtuseness of much of the population who were aware of Live 8, it's not awfully hopeful.

[Edit: hkim points out re: collecting money - That's not necessarily true. Each text for the London gig cost £1.50. I think about £3 millionw as raised. £1.6 million went to the Prince's Trust, a pay-off for cancelling Party in the Park. The rest covered costs, AFAIK.

So money wasn't collected for anything more than running costs.]

Sting is onstage, singing "Every Step You Take" while the screens in the background show the faces of G8 leaders. Fantastic.

Gratuitous Icon post to show off my new Nightwish icon, courtesy of bluebird_icons. To be used along with my equally new System of A Down icon for posts about music and such.

I do wonder at the way in which the US Supreme Court situation and some missing troops in Afghanistan are getting more coverage in the US media than either G8 or Live 8. The term "liberal media" that gets chucked around looks like more and more of a red herring.

Two artworks I'd like to draw your attention to you, while you're all thinking about my previous questions.

.queen.of.the.eternity by noah-kh - a very Planescape-ish image.

Cap Negre by sanchezfrance - my new desktop.

[I don't usually go for these "describe me" things, but this one seems more interesting. Distill me, I dare ya!]

From puritybrown: Word meme.

Please leave a one-word comment that you think best describes me. It can only be one word.

No more.

Then copy & paste this in your journal so that I may leave a word about you.

olethros has set up a wiki for Davon, my campaign world. I'm not linking to it yet, though, because there's (almost) nothing in there. It will work as a kind of encycopedia for the world, in both the modern and old eras. I'd like to get content in there, and will be starting to transfer stuff from other media fairly soon. I'd appreciate, though, if players past and present could give me a list of entries they'd like to see soonest. Essentially anything that's a proper noun for now; entries on things like "Magic", "Economics", and "Travel" will come later. So, what would ye like to see?

(The icon is Mardoc, btw, for those who know him.)

Big Easy Players - my schedule is becoming rather jammed, and this Thursday's game is going to be the major casualty. Sorry about this; the schedules should settle down again soon. I'll see most of you at the barbecue, anyway.

tribe.net seems to have resurrected itself a bit, with profiles now available. Here's mine.

Home sick today, watching Cabaret. They don't make movies like that anymore.

Last night, bringaisce mentioned the "Joss Whedon is my master now" tshirt. Tonight, I saw again the work of Russell T. Davies. I am deeply torn.

I suppose I could construct myself a sort of two-deity concept.

A conversation yesterday brought up a dream that bluedevi remembered I had had, years ago. olethros thought it might be in the archives of a mailing list we used then, and I went looking. Not only was it there, but it's exactly five years today since I posted it. Excuse the line breaks; I was being post-modern or something.

Date:         Fri, 9 Jun 2000 10:23:25 +0100
From:         Gothwalker <gothwalk@starflung.com>
Subject:      Dreaming Strange Dreams
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii



  This morning, early, about four or five o'clock,
  I awoke from a dream.

  Normally, I'm a lucid dreamer.
  I know when I'm dreaming, and I can control the dreams.
  This dream was illucid, and as is normal for this, scared me.
  (The transition in environments, without an "explanation",
   when I go from dream state to wakefulness, is terrifying.)

  In the dream, I was sitting in the corner of the room,
  in front of a computer.
  (The computer is currently downstairs;
   it will be where I dreamed of it when the new one arrives.)

  It was running Linux, themed to a biomechanical look,
  Gigeresque or like the Mechalus in Alternity.

  I was sitting back, staring at some code,
  in TCL, which wasn't working (normal for my TCL...).

  And suddenly words started to spew onto the screen.
  They said
  "I am the Loa, the heart of the datastream.
   I am your god and the god of your gods.
   I am the locus of the dreams,
   the curve on which wishes climb.
   I am conciousness, I am the network."

   Nothing happened while I boggled at this.

  Then; "Pick up the phone"

  I did so. There was a howl of static,
  and behind it, a voice, but not behind so much as composed of,
  speaking a series of numbers
  - three five three one two nine six two two four four -
  which is my phone number, from an international call,
  and then more numbers, all the numbers of my life,
  home phone number in Bunclody, bank account number,
  old work number, new work number, PIN, and on and on.

  And then I woke up.

  Drew, who just remembered all this in a burst of clarity,
  having forgotten it since this morning.

Set the weekend of Saturday 25th June aside in your diaries, and make your way to Hollybank for the:

Midsummer Barbecue

All details at the above link, RSVP here or there, though we'll not turn you away if you just arrive on the day.

I've been reading boards dedicated to MMORPGs, like Freddy's House, and boards dedicated to Tabletop RPGs, like ENWorld. The difference in communication skills is stunning, all the more so when you realise that some of these are the same people. The MMO boards are all "Like OMG, WTF! W@nker!" and the ENWorld site has discussions on the thematic and genre differences between science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

I need some way to communicate laughing out loud that is not "LOL!". Because "LOL!" no longer really means "laughing out loud", it means "You said something funny, and this is my acknowledgement." This can be seen when people, for emphasis, use "LOLOLOLOLOL!", which means "You said something very funny, and this is my acknowledgement." The related acronym "ROTFL" still holds its meaning, but when was the last time you actually did that?

At a DART station recently, I overheard a teenage girl say, aloud, as a response to someone else's comment, "Loll." It took me quite a while to work out what it was, and if I didn't know someone else who says "grin", rather than grinning, I'd probably still be wondering. Her friends seemed to know what she meant, and nobody said anything that would have indicated it was out of the ordinary.