After a quick whizz around Holt centre where we are stayng, Evie wanted to see the beach so up the road to the seaside town of Cromer
Category Archives: Fun
RRR and C?
Rest, Recuperation, Recreation and Consolidation.
Well, that’s what I’m hoping to get out of this here family summer holiday, which I’m now on. We are staying in a Georgian Town House in the North Norfolk town of Holt, a place that I bet we’ve either visited or been through many times before. Since we had many holidays in this neck of the woods when the children were small. Mainly because of the beaches, and it’s amongst the driest parts of the country, which was a big draw for my wife Rachel in the 2010s when we came regularly when summers in the North West were almost constant rain! The house is big and spacious, and slightly quirky in layout because of its age. Its also very white and beige, which is a nightmare for clumsy old me. I’ve already broken a toilet seat! But it also brought to mind, the episode of Dr Who from the 80s, where the Dr is regenerating into Peter Davidson and most of the episode is spent putting the recovering Doctor into a very white neutral space, to get a definite sense of who this new incarnation is. That’s where I’m at. In a spotless environment, without my pack of animals (we now have yet another cat, for reasons I’ll go into) and the distractions of my daily life. There’s been a five major family crises in the last 6-7 months, and while it’s left me stronger overall, I’m still catching up with myself. Hence Consolidation.
More about the actual holiday, since the weather is gorgeous and I’m in the heart of historic Norfolk, so there will be all manner of photos and holiday journaling!
Recently Its Been a Bit Like This…
Me with hot weather, fecking Tory Leadership Circus, kittens pooping in corner of H’s Bedroom (and he only noticing tonight, after it’s been doing it for five days ), and listening to goth music.
To expand…
Hot Weather – Last couple of days its been 34-37 degrees celsius. Yesterday was a record-breaking high. Apparently, we are going to have heatwaves like this every three years now, unless we get the Climate Emergency sorted.
Tory Leadership. So Boris has resigned, and we have to put up with a leadership contest splashed across the Media, in to appoint yet another unelected Primeminster – of dubious character. Whoopee.
Kittens pooping. We have a new cat, Max, who everyone loves dearly, but needs to do its poos outside!
Listening to goth music…it was an accident, sometimes the YouTube algorithm gets it so wrong.
Posistive thing, I learnt that there’s a movie from 2011 that mixes Sean Penn being an ageing Robert Smith Goth with Talking Heads music, called This Must Be the Place.
On the Bus, into town
It’s a lovely day popping in to town to pick up tea and drop off some post.
Here’s a TV show I’d love to see
A Dr Who spinoff version of The Thick of It, based entirely on Gallifrey. There could also be “rediscovered” a spin-off of this spin-off based on Classic Who, based on Yes Minister.
Dealing with Mr Angry
So I went to Angrytown this morning and brought Mr Angry Newt home with me. He was great pain in the ass while he was here. Shouting, scaring everyone, simmering with resentment, and being an all-around grumpy sod. Logical reasoning wouldn’t make him go away.
Until I realised even Angry Newts just need an open forgiving heart, and to be hugged in warm unconditional love. Then it turns out they will go meekly away mumbling sorry 😀
My Best THINGS OF 2021
I can’t believe that 2021 is nearly over. It flew past. So before they ring out the old and call in the new, here’s my list of things that were high points in the world of stuff this year.
Best Film: Dune, so good I saw it twice for my 50th birthday. Once with Evie and once with Henry. They loved this fantastic version, as did I. Although I still love the 80s David Lynch version (more like a Shakespearean take). Yes, I will be buying it the moment it comes out on blue ray/4k 🙂
Runner up: The Suicide Squad.
Best LP: Gengis Tron- Dream Weapon.
Swirling ambient, techno beats dreamy vocals all mixed with urgent metal guitars. The sci-fi soundtrack to a world after us.
Favourite Music Video: Sphinx by Gojira off their new lp “Fortitude”, which also features the epic song “New Found“.
Favourite You Tuber (new category): Joshua Weissman, a twenty-something chef from Austin, TX, that kind of reminds me of a young Mike Patton (Mr Bungle/Faith No More singer). Amongst many other things, he is responsible for introducing me to making Kimichi at home (although I substitute apple for the pear and soy sauce for the fish sauce).
Runners up: Vincenzo’s Plate (for Italian, I now can do spaghetti in tomato sauce right and omg I’m never going back), Aaron and Claire (Korean) and Will Yeung (Vegan, mainly Asian).
Best computer game, Far Cry 6. It may not be the most original game. Detracters are getting at it because it rehashes lots of stuff from previous incarnations of the franchise. Still, it is the highly polished version of the Far Cry experience, the story flows nicely, and it has got that baddie from The Mandolorian and Breaking Bad. Its been my holiday in the sun since I got it for my birthday two months ago. Oh, and it’s got Danny “Machete” Trejo in it. Winning 😀
Best RPG this year: I’ve been even more obsessed than usual with my stuff this year (mainly OpenQuest), but the Fallout RPG by Modiphius rocks my boat being a huge Fallout 4 fan. Even if it turns out to be a bit dodgy as a game, it’s a huge setting and equipment guide, lavishly illustrated with concept art from Fallout 4. Sure I could probably rip the illustrations off the net from various Fallout wiki’s, but it’s lovely to have it all in a properly printed hardcover book. Honourable mentions Dee Sanction (All Rolled Up), Mythic Babylon (by my friends at the Design Mechanism) and Beowulf (by Jon Hodgeson and his ferociously talented team at Handicraft games). I should probably do a round-up of cool RPG stuff that has come my way this year.
Best RPG related moment of this year. OK, this one of mine, but seeing 300 copies of the nicely printed OpenQuest (with colour plates and ribbons!) turn up outside my house on a big fuck off pallet and the resulting Great OpenQuest Mailout that occurred back in July/August rocked hard.
Don’t Let the Krampus Grind you Down
D101 Games’ e-card, art by Dan Barker, soon to be a freebie adventure (I’m writing it on my jollies, because its fun), but too cool not to share here 😀
Christmas 2021 Decompress
My dog Callie, goes for two-kilometre long walks1 over local farmland. Afterwards, once the adrenalin fades, she lies down and has a big long deep sleep. During which she processes everything she’s seen/done on the walk. Sometimes you can see her dreaming. Her legs twitch and there are little barks – it’s very cute. This is how I feel about this year, completely shattered and in need to take some time off from writing/developing stuff for D101 Games, have Christmas with the family and have some fun. Also, have some space to take in everything that has gone on in 2021, and to a lesser extent 2020, and work out where I’m going in 2022.
So my dreaming (and twitching) is to get back into blogging here. It’s been something I’ve wanted to do all year. Instead, I’ve been distracted by Farcebook and to a lesser extent Twitter. Farcebook is almost at the stage where I’m going to sack it off. It’s dying a gruesome death, and its usefulness as a way of staying in touch with people is rapidly fading because the algorithms no longer show my friends. Just loads of adverts/sponsored content. Twitter working better for me. In that, I have a chat with a bunch of friendlies before starting work in the morning and people follow me to see what I’m working on for D101. But I can’t write more expansive pieces like this, which I miss. So I’m going back in time (I started blogging waaaaaaaaaaaay back in 1999 on Livejournal.com) and making this my main form of social media 🙂
Things to do in a determined (yet fun manner) over Xmas break:
- Watch tons of Kung-Fu movies
- Organise the RPG reading pile
- Do a review of the Kickstarter RPGs that I’ve received this year
- Get into mapping
- Run some online RPGs (possibly test driving The Forge as I do it) and grok 4th Ed D&D
- Start painting miniature figures.
Notes:
- I hesitate to call them walks, runs would be more appropriate. Because she is a Spolie, a mixed breed of Border Collie and Springer Spaniel, with a quarter of whippet on the spaniel side. Here’s a pic of her, we’ve had her 3 years now – I’ll do a post on her “gotcha day” which is New Year’s Eve 🙂
The Suicide Squad
So I finally got round to watching the second DC Universe Movie about this group of villains, turned sort-of-heroes, as part of my Christmas 2021 decompress.
First off, it grabbed my attention in the first act, and while the pace did slack off, the direction was polished and the whole thing flowed. If I wasn’t tired with the end of year burnout, I would have watched the whole two hours plus in one uninterrupted sitting on the edge of my chair viewing.
Second, it’s a war movie, about a squad of soldiers who just happen to be lower-end superheroes, which draws a straight line for inspiration from the Dirty Dozen, through Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. That’s a good thing in my book since I grew up with and enjoyed such films. Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron is my favourite of this genre. In my book director James Gunn gets this in spades.
It’s a lovely ensemble movie too, with a large list of fantastic actors, all of whom get their moment to shine – even if that moment is cut short by a gruesome but quick death. There are lots of witty dialogue, cool character development (the ending with Blood Sport is just the coolest thing ever in this department) and laugh out jokes, big explosions.
In short, it just rocks and makes it onto my perfect movie list 🙂