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Brian cancelled on us, but Roman was not to be denied!  Two-hander evening was declared, and on the basis on "most time served on shelf without any plays", A&A:Pacific was nominated.

( War stories )

According to the RTE Six-One News:

• The economy is banjaxed;
• It's been deuced wet.

I imagine they just need to sit back and wait for the journalism awards to roll in.

I do like the CSI: Fruit'n'veg trailer, though.

Thought about investing in some of that "spray on closed eyes" Optrex stuff recently.  Found it in Tesco:  a small bottle cost over 20 metric quid.  Somewhat hilariously, the tag also displayed a price per litre -- €2280.  Expensive little lipids.  In theory it might have been worth it:  the conventional drops cost over a fiver anyway, and have a shelf life once opened of a month.

Saturday afternoon boardgaming!  Origins!

( Or to slightly expand on that )

Or in this case, dangerously overexcited.  Listening to Zane Lowe's BBC R*d** *n* show from Wednesday on iPlayer (time index 30m), which was apparently the first play of Biffy's new single...  and the second too, it seems.  Bit silly, given things like iPlayer, which mean we can replay it to death for ourselves, but it's fun to see he's that excited about it.  (Or maybe the show needed padded out that night, for all I know.)  To say nothing of how fissile things are getting at the Bifforum.  (I assume at BiffierThanThou they're still bemoaning they've-gone-too-commercial-by-half era, and working on that time machine back to2005.)

Not at all sure about El Si's claim it's the "heaviest thing they've ever written".  Bit more like one of the louder Puzzle tracks, with an extended borderline-cello-metal bridge/outro.  Not quite what I'd have expected from the various murky-sounding bootlegs I've heard -- they and the string quartet parted company for live shows at the SECC last December, sadly, for one thing, plus this seems to be a different edit for the single.  Definitely starting to get little quivers about seeing them again, later this year.

(Or even moreso, I suppose one could say.)  See for example the BBC's take. That's as in "adult males" -- this route still relies on Y chromosomes, and is essentially "fast-tracking" embryonic sperm development by a decade or so.  Speaking hypothetically, since using it reproductively is presently illegal in the UK (and presumably most other places).

In other news, have another puncture.  Discovered this on my way home at stupid o'clock last night.  Just a slow(ish) one (for now), but it'll be a bugger to change the tyre -- it was infeasibly tight going on, and I doubt it's slackened very much.  Maybe those new tyre levers will make a difference...

Tuesday night boardgaming:  Shogun.

( Medieval mayhem, with pics )

Wow, what a final.  Could have made -- or lost -- a fortune "day trading" on the odds for that match, as it progressed.  Definitely mixed feelings about the outcome: happy that Federerererer has broken the Majors record, and has gone back to #1 (boo-hooing in the Balearics!);  sad for Roddick, who's played out of his skin both today and on Friday, and may have missed his chance to win Wimbledon (or maybe even another major).  I think he's assured himself of a place in the "classic repeats" reel, if nothing else.

Stephen Fry splurge continues:  I just sneaked in under the "listen again" cutoff for I'm Sorry, I Haven't A Clue (which annoyingly, doesn't work under Fedora -- seems to be a lose-lose proposition with BBCi stuff at the moment, between player requirements and IP-locking!)  I especially enjoyed "The Devil Wore Primark", Slayer's "Evil Has No Boundaries", to the tune of "Wonderful Copenhagen" ("Thank you, Graeme, you have pleased the Dark Lord."), and perhaps most close to home, Boardo ("17 the hard way."; "'Scuse me, how long is this supposed to take?";  "It says on the box 5-7 years.")

Whether here continues to depress.  I'm sure it makes it that bit worse to be watching people basking in sunshine in SW19.  There was about a minute or so during which there was shun here, and shade there, but that was about it.  I think I saw a little shiver of clear skies predicted on the BBC forecast for Monday and Tuesday in the extreme SW of Ireland, but I'll believe it when I see it.  Right now we have sun...  and lots of rain.  Though just as I press "post", I see some blue sky, and signs of drying up -- woo-woo!

Feeling more or less "settled into" Fedora Core 10.  Seem to have all my data, albeit crammed into lots of nooks and crannies of the internal HD.  Reinstalled various "key" bits of software, it's all much more stable, and it must be said various things now work "straight out of the box" that were much more of an effort, Back In The Day.  The "Solar" theme is a bit much, though.  (Big swirly light blue sun.)

Definitely felt I'd "arrived" when the auto-update started to prompt me about FC11...  Maybe I'll wait until FC16 or so.

Now to finish sorting out the muddle I've gotten into with the small pile of variously wonky external HDs...

Quick roundup of June's boardgaming over at Sam'n'Myles' place, as already LJ'd by the latter: Trias, Union Pacific, RftG and RTfA, TransAmerica, Settlers, RftG and RTfA and Ticket to Ride: Europe.

I also recently noticed I'd entirely omitted to post about our play of Le Havre.  However, Roman had the presence of mind to write up the session, here, complete with a pic.  Not much I can add with any reliability of memory at all, but I'll add an out-of-order post as a placeholder, along with my own session photos.

Brian and Roman around for boardgames: AoS had been flagged in advance, so I'd given the rules a goodly read-through in advance, punched some bits, and was generally ready to roll.

( Murky details and pics )

Just caught the tail end of the last Q&A.  Quite a sentimental moment as John Bowman received a standing ovation from the audience (and a handshake from Biffo Clyry, or someone like that).  His replacement has a hard act to follow, though I guess expectations are lowered across the board by this point. 

( Some pictures alluded to in various earlier posts )


In other news, bought a new backpack.  This one really does have notions of being a real rucksack: I'm sure everyone will agree my previous one wasn't nearly big enough (and is slowly falling to bits, too).  About half the price, too.  Sorry, Bag Shop, Tesco made me an offer that I couldn't refuse (though given the comically long queues, perhaps I should have -- wasn't willing to abandon my hard-won two litres of low-fat milk, however).

Partly inspired by some comments I happened across on andrewsherman's blog (offsite; I'll find the exact link if and when I get around to Opus 2!), about whether the "power trio" was the perfect format for a rock band, and partly just my own random thoughts...

I can't help notice that the vast majority of string quartet/sections playing live with rock bands are all-female.  One might even extend that to BSP (otherwise all-male band with female viola player, Abi Fry), and to the Grammatics (two female cellists in succession), and such instances where the stringists are actually permanent band members.

But...  Regina Spektor's backing band at Glastonbury was two blokes on violin and cello (and an equally male drummer, IIRC).  Florence and the Machine had a male harpist (of all creatures!).  So...  maybe it's more like an anima/animus thing?  (Or less poetically, somewhat symmetrical gender tokenism.)

BSP's violist is actually a former exception to all of the above, since she used to play in Bat for Lashes' touring band.  Oh well.

Lazy Saturday watching some Wimbledon and Glastonbury.  Popped out to get rid of some recycling;  the tin cans have to go a short distance up the hill, so I decided to "turn my legs over" by continuing up Spur Hill, and back by Chetwynd and Bishopstown.  Gasp.  At some point it's supposed to get easier, I'm sure that's the theory...

Was going to rip my new Feeder CD (which must have arrived on Friday, unnoticed by me), and upload assorted pics to post here, but we seem to have fresh batches of technical hitches.  Ho hum.

For dinner, took a gamble on Mystery Meatsicle from the freezer.  Chili!  I really ought to get some sort of freezer labels, mind...

From a guy called Kele in a John Peel t-shirt, to a buncha chaps from Wilmslow in the John Peel Tent.  It must be the Glastonbury, and more particularly the BBC coverage thereof. Leeds/Reading might have the lineup I'd darkly consider illegal and immoral acts for this time around, but this seems to be the weekend of the year that tends to produce the most aimless wistfulness.  Shouldn't I be there.  Shouldn't Peely still be with us.  I'm sure all sorts of romantic Arthurianesque notions about the location are in there someplace too, and maybe something along the lines of Eavis being an anti-ticketmasterish figure of some sort.

OTOH, I'll happily take my comfy armchair over a cheap tent in a field of mud, right now.

It's a bad day Tom McSweeney's on the RTE News: he has the most dreary voice, he's a rubbish reporter, and he's not above throwing in his own "this is what they're saying down the yacht club bar" opinions into what's supposed to be journalism.  Tonight, we got two such "reports" in the one broadcast.  What really got me was his pronunciation of the name of capital of Sweden, though.  Has he never heard anyone else pronounce that word before he was unleashed on our TV screens, or does he somehow imagine that "stock-home" is a worse solecism than "stock-hole-um", if you can't say "holm"?

(Comparisons with pronouncing "world" with an actual "r", and with two syllables need not apply!)

Romanian tennis player on the telly right now by the name of "Sorana" (Cîrstea, admittedly, rather thanTor).  One wonders if as well as a pretty heavy serve and solid two-handed backhand she has powers over dinosaurs, and scary sovereignty magic.

Which lyric reminds me that I should really have remembered to take a camera with me on recent cycle outings.  While my legs are indeed still bending in the middle, they're sufficiently "heavy" that another trip across the Passage ferry doesn't seem that likely this side of the end of the ten-day summer.  Just going the hillier way home yesterday via the Lough (bye, infeasibly large amounts of stale bread!) and Lidl was a bit of struggle, in fact.  Shame I didn't have the camera for Lough, too: a momma swan came over with four rather small, photogenic cygnets. And distinctly hungry ones (I resisted saying "peckish" -- until now, anyway.)

HQ went well enough, though with hindsight I'm not sure it was worth spending so much time on the Clan Questionnaire -- is this the fourth or the fifth version we've reverse-engineered for the same player group?  (Two different clans, admittedly.) I wanted to get it done because this seems to be the version with everything, including the kitchen sink..  Both both personal-level "virtue" tags, and clan resources -- now that there are proper rules in HQ2 for handling those, unlike the earlier version that generated the numbers all right, with a ruleset that had no way of handling them; or the subsequent versions that didn't even bother with them at all.  Hopefully these will pay off the (repeated) effort. Am very pleased that we seem to already be getting some mileage out of the new "mythlet" feat rules (admittedly we'd some advance wind of this, following the previous Tentacles' foreshadowing of where these were going).

Abortive half-game of Union Pacific at S'n'M's tonight.  Which reminds me I also should be cross-linking to Myles' results posts for those (at least when we get a result, and I'm finding some excuse to bang on about something anyway).  More fun TBH was the earlier trip to the park for a picnic with the same bunch, avec kids. Hummusy week continues.  Fortunately I like hummus.  Ask me again in another three mini-tubs' time. Shame I missed most of it due to on-going struggles with laptop, data wrangling, and quarts and half-pint pots.

Had vague thoughts of holding forth on the twin subjects of Nicolas Sarkozy ('having a go at Islamic dress isn't about religion') and Nick Griffin ('by Welsh I mean "has been living there since the last Ice Age"'), but am filing for now under 'the least said about ethnological shit-stirrers called Nik, the soonest mended'.

Random conversation with a fellow cyclist on the way home.  Very random, really, as it was about 2am, and I'd never clapped eyes on him. Yer man observed what a good "slipstream" I was -- I'd like to think that was a function of the excellent pace I was setting, but maybe it's more to do with the larger-than-ever "hole" I'm making in the air these days.  Assorted comments about seat pillars and the quality of various Cork cycle shops were exchanged before he peeled off.

This post is getting a bit random itself.  Should probably have LJcut for excessive wandering off the point (if point there actually was).

If I might go against the wisdom of Grant Nicholas (whose Comfort in Sound starts to sound even better whenever there's a glimmer of sunshine, I'm finding).

Around lunchtime I was wondering where the glorious sunshine I was promised was, but I didn't need to worry for long.  By the time I'd cleared out of work and cycled off eastwards, it was definitely off-with-shirt weather, much less the raincoat.  Out as far as Little Island, back past Fota and across the ferry to Passage West.  They must have been an audit there:  first time I've actually been charged a fare!  At Douglas I went onto the ring road.  Not very scenic, but by that stage I was thinking "path of least resistance".  Enjoy endorphin afterglow for now; hope the legs still bend in the middle come tomorrow.

Some encouraging noises about progress on both my intractable expenses and my wonky laptop.  On contract renewal past September, though, things are if anything murkier than ever.

Discovered I'd about a third of a tub of sour cream in the fridge...  from over two months ago.  Out of morbid curiosity, I looked in, expecting "green and explosive".  But...  it just looked a little bit more 'set'.  I gave it a stir, and tasted a teeny little bit.  Seemed completely fine (though I threw it out anyway, I hasten to add).  The onions of the dairy product world, perhaps?