Anotherblog

Sick

Sick
Yup, that’s me. I took half of Thursday and all of Friday off work sick, and then the worst of the cold hit on the weekend and I wasn’t able to breathe through my nose for three days or so. On the bright side, the illness got me down under 85kg thus allowing me to have sweets again, so yay. Enjoy them, no, have them, yes.

Also, I didn’t do any writing until last night. Fortunately, I was ahead in the writing to the tune of about three days, so I’m still on schedule, for what it’s worth. I’m not sure how long the novel will be.

The worst bit of not-writing is getting back into it again after having not-written for a while. The bit-to-be-written seems more and more insurmountable the longer I put it off, and (in this case) required that I sit down in front of the computer and not do anything at all for almost half an hour until I eventually stopped feeling sorry for myself.

Firefly
We watched some more Firefly at Jon & Kate’s on the weekend, and enjoyed it a bunch. I don’t think it’s quite lived up to the promise of the pilot - there have been a couple of fairly indifferent episodes - but I’m still happy with it and keen to watch it to the bitter end. Or sweet end, or however it ends.

Settlers
Played a six-player game at lunch today, and pulled out a very unlikely victory - I wasn’t doing particularly well throughout, and two people got very close to winning so we were all battling to stop them getting longest road (by stealing their clay, for example). And I managed to get largest army (nobody else was really competing for resource cards) and draw two resource card victory points and that was that. Andrew K. was righteously annoyed, as he was drawing six ore every time an eight was rolled - or would, if it ever got rolled when the robber wasn’t on the square.

Carcasonne

Carcasonne
We played some more Carcasonne at lunch today, and once again, it was dominated by cloisters. The player who turned over the most cloisters, won. The problem is, while large cities are potentially worth more than the nine points that cloisters can get, they are often difficult to complete and very often will share victory between several players. Cloisters are owned by one player at most, are usually not difficult to finish, and don’t suffer any penalty if they aren’t finished by the game’s end.

Perhaps we’re missing something. Funagain’s reviews seem to indicate that farmers and knights are overpowered compared with robbers and monks. I warned all the players about these factors, so there’s always a big competition for farmers, but cloisters - which are the only board pieces that are difficult to “spoil” - seem to be deciding the games at the moment.

We’re considering a house-rule that incomplete cloisters should only score three points at most.

Return of the King
The two-disc Return of the King DVD came out yesterday, so I snaffled it up and watched the rather pitiful extras, consisting of three promotional documentaries that were essentially the same material. A little disappointing.

Papa
Dad’s in town; he’ll drop in this evening and we’re having dinner on Friday with him and other Sydney relatives who we normally don’t otherwise talk to terribly much (like Aunt Elizabeth). They are interesting company, and I always resolve to get together with them more after these dinners, but we never get our acts together.

Anyway, there shall be more billiards playing this night.

The golden rule
We were having a discussion about The Golden Rule (Do Unto Others as you would have them Do Unto You) in my car-share group the other day, and were trying to work out its origin. I claimed it was Confucius, George suggested Jesus, and Lars thought it might be Buddha. Then we got confused about who came first. Anyway, thanks to some stellar research from Luke’s wife Stella, we have the answers, right here:

The Universality of the Golden Rule in the World Religions

Christianity All things whatsoever ye would that men should do
to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.
Matthew 7:1

Confucianism Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. Then
there will be no resentment against you, either in the family or in the
state. Analects 12:2

Buddhism Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
Udana-Varga 5,1

Hinduism This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would
not have them do unto you. Mahabharata 5,1517

Islam No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that
which he desires for himself. Sunnah

Judaism What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the
entire Law; all the rest is commentary. Talmud, Shabbat 3id

Taoism Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s
loss as your own loss. Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien

Zoroastrianism That nature alone is good which refrains from doing
another whatsoever is not good for itself. Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5

Fair makes you think, eh?
Also, Buddha lived around about 560BC and Confucius 551BC.

I suppose it’s one of those philosophies that is obvious once society hits a certain point. In a sense, it resembles the mental step a child makes when they realise that other people have similar minds to them.

Ends justifying means
After plenty of discussion of the faults and applications of the Golden Rule, the Iron Rule (The Ends Justify The Means) got thrown around the car a bit, and copped a bit of a mauling. I suppose it’s obvious, but we were of the opinion that people who use the iron rule frequently do not take into account all the Ends that the Means entail, such as “People don’t trust you because you’re a lying crook”.

By the way, I’ve never heard it called the Iron Rule before, but I think it rather fits, in a Stalinesque kind of way.

Dawn of the coconut

Dawn of the Coconut
Dave & Kyla’s party on Saturday night was excellent: good food, excellent company, and a succession of strange, disturbing and gross film-clips. The company was mostly of speculative-fiction writers - Dave & Kyla, of course, Jon & Kate, Kat Sparks and Rob Hood, Iain Triffitt, and a bunch of others who I am rather less sure of their full names, but were excellent fun. We had to judge the film-clips on their direction, dialogue, excitement and creepiness. Rather than go into more details, I should refer you to David’s weblog entry. I won a strange little Japanese toy, which resembled a transformer and shoots marbles from it’s belly. Or at least, I hope that’s it’s belly.

My award-winning entry was the section from Brazil from approximately 2:38 to 6:30. I think. It’s the bit where the department of homeland security - um, that wasn’t what it was called, but I’ve forgotten what it was - break into a flat on Christmas Eve and take away the father (”This is the receipt for your husband, and *this* is my receipt for your receipt.”)

And Jon showed the bit of “Curse of Delgaria” with me in it. I “watched” it in the foetal position, head buried in a cushion, then marked it 10 for creepiness. The horror. The horror.

Troy-hard
Sucks. Oh well, maybe it doesn’t, but I was thoroughly bored by the end of Troy, and mildly irritated by all the histronics. The one-on-one fights were pretty good, though. They put a bit of effort into making you feel what it would be like, particularly the walking-out-to-kill-or-be-killed bit. And Eric Bana as Hector, as many have commented, was rather OK, unlike the exceedingly unsympathetic Achilles, Paris, Helen, Agamemnon, etc.

Waiting for Guffman
Alright. In the end, I enjoyed it, but there was an awful lot of embarassing humour in-between. I had expected it to be a lot better, actually, but it was just a little too predictable. Not that I’m expecting great plot twists from a largely improvised comedy, but they gave away some of the fun of the actual performance at the end by telling us most of what they would be singing about (the history of the town) in advance. Having whinged about that, I’m not sure what they could have done about it.

Harold And Maude
Very good indeed. I’d gotten “Waiting for Guffman” and “Harold and Maude” as weeklies and they were already overdue when I finally decided to watch them. Harold and Maude is regarded as a bit of a black comedy classic, and I was quite delighted to find that it hasn’t dated at all. Black, funny, although the characters get away with somewhat more sticking-it-to-the-man that it would be possible to do nowadays.

Writing
Got the usual bit of writing done. It’s gotten easier since I *really* let go of quality and started trying to race to the finish. Today, I did 350 words in the car on the way to work. I’m getting towards the end, just a bit.

Badminton

Badminton
Played at lunch time today, and it was good. I’m by far the worst player, but the game is so much fun I don’t care, and I don’t think the other players minded too much. We played doubles and my team lost every match. This also happened with table-tennis for the first couple of months, though I was playing every day then so I expect I shall be a competent player in about a year’s time.

Health Check
We had a free health check thing yesterday, so I went along. Apparently, I am well, though a little overweight. Huh. For those fascinated by stats (such as myself a year from now when they do the next health check):

Height: 183cm
Weight: 89.1kg (!)
BMI: 26 (slightly overweight)
Body fat level: 20.6% (Acceptable)
Total Cholesterol: 4.02 mmol/L (normal, considering I’d just eaten lunch)
LDL Cholesterol: 2.63 mmol/L
HDL Cholesterol: 0.62 mmol/L
Blood glucose: 5.2 mmol/L
Triglycerides: 1.66 mmol/L
Spirometry result: 640 (which represents a vast improvement over last year, I think)

I was a little surprised at the weight, given that the scales at home were indicating 87kg, but I was wearing heavy clothes and after lunch, so I suppose that might account for the difference. That, or the scales being different.

Killing many people
I killed Alistair and George last night. I felt a bit bad about it, though they deserved it, especially Alistair. It was one of those 2nd Ed. D&D specialties: the sudden-death-trap, with many warnings but no saving throw, designed to kill the terminally curious.

George (despite the many dead bodies surrounding this mysterious pit from which seductive singing was coming) took a peek in, and was killed by a nasty Cthuloid alien that sucked his body dry and devoured his soul.

Alistair had even less excuse: he went in to retrieve George’s body, tried to leave, and found that the seductive singing was, y’know, trying to seduce him to take a peek into the pit. Still, he resisted the urge, retrieved George’s body, and made it back.

Then he cast “Detect magic”. As it happened, several of the other unfortunates had been packing magic, and there were a couple of magical weapons surrounding the pit. Alistair figured that with his magical resistance and some charm-resistance spells that he cast, he ought to be able to get them. To be especially safe, he had a rope tied around him so that if he looked like he was going to take a peek, the others could pull him back.

He went in, made his saving throw, and retrieved one of the objects.

The other magical object was on the other side of the well from everybody, so he took off the rope, and went for it.

Failed his saving throw by rolling a 1.

Died.

I am officially the most lethal GM of our playing group, now. And they called me soft.

Firefly

Firefly
Watched another episode last night with Jon & Kate: it’s the one in which the captain is challenged to a duel. Still good. Still addicted. Still can’t watch the others, ’cause Jon & Kate haven’t finished with them yet. We’ll just have to keep visiting.

Writing
We had such a slow trip home last night that I did all my writing sitting in the car with Luke, Lars and George, and thus had a very pleasant evening not having to worry about getting the words done before I went to sleep, as I usually do. Three out of four of us are writing novels; only Lars hasn’t succumbed, claiming lack of skill. He should probably read my novel before giving *that* excuse.

Chicken
There is a particularly gross kind of chicken that occasionally appears in chinese and thai food. It has the texture of rubbery gelatine and yet still somehow manages to have the gristly bits of the chicken without the actual meat. I am intensely curious as to what this stuff looks like raw. I imagine it looks like highly processed mucus.

Anyway, that’s what I had for dinner last night. It was supposed to be a chicken laksa, but I skipped out on the chicken, so it was really vegetarian laksa with chicken flavouring.

Music

Music
I had a very pleasant guitar lesson last night. It was mostly theory about the modes - Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian and yes, I did just have to look them up to get the spelling. But it’s all beginning to come together. I’m beginning to feel like I can do this stuff.

Writing
Yup, got another 400 words done. Yup, they’re still crappy. How’re you going, Dave?

Jon & Kate
Visiting Jon & Kate tonight so that Anna can watch “Glass Lampshade” and so that we can get some more Firefly. Fearfully addictive stuff, that. I don’t know what I’ll do when I’ve watched them all.

Sugar cravings
Not so bad today. Honestly, this journal is the worst kind of trivial personal stuff imaginable, and only even remotely interesting even to myself. Not that I’m going to stop writing in it - I need the practice, for one thing - but boy oh boy I’d better start thinking and doing more interesting things.

When Fork is finished. Then I’ll do stuff.

Writing

Writing
My writing am continuing to suck, but I’m getting through it. This weekend was particularly difficult because I had a headache the entire time, the withdrawal symptoms from sugar and caffeine. On Saturday I slept much of the day and only managed 200 words, but despite Sunday being even more headachey and sleepy, I got through the writing (including making up for Saturday’s shortfall) just before midnight. So, just over 95k words at the moment, of which at least 30k is emanantly cuttable.

Jon & Kate
Went over to Jon & Kate’s on Saturday and watched some of Rupert Booth’s recent film work - a protoverse film “Advent vs. the Cheesewoman”, which was quite fine, and an attempt at a comedy sketch program, called “Glass Lampshade”, which wasn’t so good. Apparently it was a bit of a rush job. There was an excellent running gag about duct tape, though.

Jon had also got the TV series “Firefly” on DVD, so we watched the pilot, which was quite excellent, and has me thoroughly addicted. Excellent characters, engaging plot, quite decent special effects, elements of the Western surprisingly well done and hardly tacky at all. I’ve only seen the first three episodes - and the writer/director/actor commentaries on the first two - and I’m already bitter about it being cancelled.

Guitar
I’ve been getting stuck back into guitar. Last week my tutor got me doing simple riffs, based around a single note and with the rule that I must start on, and end on, the same note. This is to avoid what he describes as “noodling”: playing a bunch of notes with no sense of conclusion to them. I applied the rules, and it was great - he played the background chords and called out the chord changes, while I did simple, short riffs that sounded quite decent, much to my surprise.

Anyway, I’m trying to work out how to apply this philosophy to writing. I’m definitely noodling in *that*.

Dinner
Went to dinner with Anna and Jon at Adrian & Eva’s restaurant on Saturday night, and it was excellent (as usual, I had the lamb, the potatoes with tomato, and the grilled mushrooms. Just superb.) and they refused to let us pay. Again. They are very nice.

Writing

Writing
My writing am suck. Still me get through wordcount. 93k and counting, and about 20k worth of notes about what I need to do to fix it. This first draft is absolute rubbish.

Nice to see Dave’s doing well, though.

Ethanthiol
I didn’t get to smell ethanthiol after all: Chris came over, and we played games and drank beer and had fun, but he couldn’t find his thiols. Oh well.

House hunting
Anna and I went to Dee Why and agreed that it seems nice but that the commute to the city would suck a lot. So we’ve decided against that one for the moment. We may, however, consider buying a flat in the city: it looks like they’re dropping in price a lot, and as long as we pick the right time, we could do well. Or get totally screwed over, of course, that’s the risk at the moment.

Funeral

Funeral
I took yesterday off for a funeral of one of Anna’s family’s friends. He died of a heart-attack at age sixty-eight. I had met him a couple of times (we had Christmas of 2001 at his place, a day the sun was blood-red from bush fire smoke) and he seemed very nice.

It was the first funeral I’ve ever been to, a fact that surprised Anna and, after some reflection, myself. Both my grandfathers died when I was in my teens, and I didn’t go to Brisbane with Mum & Dad for the funerals.

Anyway, it was a somber and thoughtful day until Chris came over in the evening (he’s back in Sydney for a couple of days to do the packing up), at which point we drank beer and played card games. I haven’t smelled that ethanthiol yet. That’ll probably happen tonight if it happens at all.

Story
Another 400 words, as you do. I discussed it and Chris’ story a bit last night, and got more cheery about it. Some of the university politics isn’t cynical enough. I’ve been thinking that if this isn’t a Doctor Who story, I may retool it as the first of a series of University stories, starring the Physics Department. In pitching terms, a cross between “A very peculiar practice” and Greg Egan. This thought made me cheerful.

Badminton
I played badminton at lunch today. It was fun, though I’m really not very good yet, and most of the other players *are* very good. I was hoping my squash skills would give me a quick “in”, but badminton is even more of a twitch reflex sport than squash. It made me think of my old room-mate at my old work, Matthew P., who was a South Australian champion (or something of that ilk.) I wander what has happened to him.

Virus

Virus
I’ve been getting virus emails for the last week, and I’ve started getting bounce messages from virus emails that were using my address as their return address. I checked all of Anna’s and my computers, and it wasn’t from our computers. So it’s just a mystery - whoever it is, has or had the WORM_NETSKY.Q virus and knows both of us, because we were both getting the emails.

Anyway, it’s stopped now. Presumably whoever-it-is has done their virus updates, or converted to Linux.

Writin’
Another day, another mediocre 400 words. There’s a big confrontation scene I’m kind of dreading, so I’m mucking around endlessly with the bit immediately before it, which is fine, but that’s all done now and there are no more excuses. I will write it. Badly. And then come back to it and fix it. That is how I will finish this bloody book.

Games
A record speed game of Settlers today, and a runaway victory. The entire game took half an hour including setting up. It would have been a quick game even without our “play fast” rule: I got two cities around an ore on #6, and an ore port, bought a whole bunch of development cards so that they couldn’t keep the robber on me, and that was it. Lucky. 6 was also rolled an awful lot.

Website
My website maintenance is a bit embarassingly bad, really. There are many, many areas that need a bit of attention, both graphically and in content. I’ve been kinda waiting for XSLT to take off, ’cause I know XSLT, but I’ve given up on that and decided to go with CSS. As usual, I shall crip mercilessly off Ted’s site.

Meanwhile, I’ve added some of Dave and Ev’s liner notes to the Spit area.