Esk

No really, it is. Well, there goes another year. Did you know that in September I’ll have lived in Aberystwyth for 10 years? Now *that’s* a scary thought.

Last night we went out for drinks and curry and more drinks to celebrate mine and Dave’s birthday, which was very pleasant indeed. This morning Jim brought me a cup of tea and various presents to be opened, and I got more and more excited with each one. Jim got me chocolates and the game Dominion, which I’ve been pining after for a while. Jim’s parents got me a Steelpan with which I annoyed him for most of the morning. My Dad got me a set of decent headphones and a flute of a type I’ve never seen before - will have to investigate. Kevin deposited a beer on my desk which I didn’t notice for ages as I’m highly unobservant. Sandy got me the Game of Life Adventures, which should be a laugh if I can contain my feminism/alternativism for long enough. (”What, you can only be married to *one* person at once?”, “What, you can’t have children unless you’ve had a wedding?” “What, the career cards are blue, and the family cards are pink? What are they trying to subconsciously imply?”) - You get the idea.

Today, I’m in work as usual, but I may be leaving early because, hey, it’s my birthday, I shouldn’t be here at all, right?

At the weekend I may be sponging a lift down to Pontypridd for a different Dave’s birthday if I can justify disappearing on Jim right before he buggers off to Belgium for a week on holiday for work.

This result, truly the first result from the 8ball, amused me:

This is the sort of thing I do with my day.

Hello again, blogosphere! I was gone, but I return.

Jim and I did a bit of a tour last week 2 weeks ago 3 weeks ago. We first travelled down to Hythe to spend a few days at his parents’ house, where…
…We did a lot of geocaching, including one bike ride out to the east. ‘Caching is so much easier on a bike, it seems the natural mode of transport for it. Thankfully I remembered how to ride a bike with little trouble (it was just like… itself) though I don’t seem to do very well with hills in either direction. I blame my place of upbringing.

…Walking the dogs by the rifle range, we found lots of spent ammunition which we carefully collected. (I could have spent hours doing that, I love finding things, unless it’s something in the house that I actually need, in which case I am incapable of using my eyes.)

…We took a trip to Ramsgate (which is lovely), where we ate a lot of seafood including whelks. I wasn’t that impressed, tbh. The prawns and tiny shrimp and cockles were excellent, especially with a bit of vinegar. Also in Ramsgate whilst sat for coffee Jim’s dad revealed that Jim’s great-uncle once worked on British rockets that were used to send up the only British satellite (it beeps like Sputnik apparently).

…We visited Canterbury. Jim and I went to the awesome museum there, it covers prehistory all the way to Rupert the Bear. I think my favourite bit was the 1980s mural in Bayeux tapestry style of the events leading to the death of Thomas Beckett. We also saw some street performers, and visited a slightly disappointingly warhammery gaming shop who only had expansions, no starter packs, for all the games we wanted.

Following our Hythe visit we headed over to Southampton where Andy and Faye’s wedding reception awaited. Our hotel was an old coaching inn, we liked it but you couldn’t describe it as modern! The reception was a blast, held on the Princess Caroline out in Southampton water, the water was fairly calm so it’s only the champagne I can blame for my unsteadiness at times! We danced the night away, and I think some people even went out for more drinks afterwards — I would have been there too but I promptly fell asleep on returning to the hotel to change my shoes!

The next day I was of course quite hungover, so the impending early morning ferry crossing did nothing for my stomach, though actually I survived the crossing without being ill, just sat by a table with my head on my arms the whole way. A ferry? Yes, for this is where our camping holiday began - we spent 3 days on the Isle of Wight.

Eventually I was a bit ill in the car, but we’ll skip over that part to say that driving through the Isle of Wight is really picturesque. Our campsite was in Shanklin, which had a nice beach, much nicer than the one at the Needles where there were more people trying to sunbathe. Fools. Campsite was a bit regimented, I’d have preferred slightly worse facilities in exchange for fewer rules about where you can park your car, and what time you have to be quiet. Especially since we were camped next to what can only be described as noisy toffs, who had visitors and totally ignored this rule in order to discuss which of their foreign holiday homes they liked the best. They did lend us a tin opener at one point though, so we can’t be too mad.

The first day we set up our tent (well, Jim did, I was still hungover) and then headed out to the Garlic Festival. This was much bigger than we anticipated, covering an enormous field and including a large stage for bands, a dog show, and lots of large tents with stalls inside where you could purloin any kind of food or hand-made craft object you desired. And yes, there was a lot of garlic about. We bought a bottle of garlic beer, but it was quite terrible so we used it in stew instead, where it seemed much more palatable!

The second day we paid a visit to the needles, probably the most touristy bit of the Isle of Wight. Highlights include watching traditional sweets being made, finding oh-so-many fossils in the mud and cliffs, and visiting the rocket testing site where apparently a relation of Jim once worked on the Black Knight rocket. I’m sure he can tell you more about the details, suffice to say it is very very cool indeed. There was also a national trust site on the old battery. If you go down into the tunnels they come out onto a searchlight and a brilliant view of the needles themselves, better than from anywhere else we tried. The cafe there also has free use of binoculars, and very good lemonade.

Day three saw us off Ryde on the train, which was an old London Underground carriage! This was an exciting way to travel on the way there, but on the return journey we were fearing for our lives on our sideways seats at the back of the train whilst the driver, apparently having a deathwish, sped all the way back to Shanklin. Anyhoo, whilst in Ryde we visited the Orrery Cafe, activating the planets that dangled from the ceiling whilst sipping tea and watching in the mirrored tables. Brilliant. Then we took a bus to Cowes for a quick look around, very yachty. The chain ferry was also an interesting experience - I guess it saves needing a rudder? It seems to be the only sensible way of getting from one side of Cowes to the other, and takes cars as well as foot passengers, who go free. Returning to Ryde by bus, Jim made me ask for “Two tickets to Ryde!” and the bus man was unexpectedly cheerful, asking: “Aren’t you going to sing as well?”

We struck camp the next morning in time to catch our ferry back, and the rest of the journey home was so uneventful I seem to have forgotten it entirely. I really must post this now, it’s been ages since we went and it’s getting silly.

PS: Congrats, Andy and Faye!

Dan and I broke up yesterday, and we’re both feeling frankly rubbish. I feel as though this has been coming for an awfully long time, and yet my mind keeps going over and over what we could have done differently to avoid this. However with me being me, and Dan being Dan, I doubt it could have panned out any other way. In the end, we are great individuals but we don’t actually function all that well as a couple, at least, not anymore. Hopefully we can keep our friendship, if we have the space and the will.

I’m so sorry everyone. Please help us make this transition as painless as possible.

Dan writes about it on his blog.

At the weekend I attended Herofest, a Live Roleplaying festival down in south Wales. I have up until this point never done any live roleplaying, nor have I really done any table-top roleplaying. I have played quite a lot of Oblivion, but that probably doesn’t count. Despite my complete lack of experience and my trepidation, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would really like to go again. It’s all Rich’s fault.

We travelled down on the Thursday as Rich was faction rep for the Dai Fae Dyne so needed to be there a day early. On the way we visited a Welsh cider mill where we spent copious quantities of money of even greater quantities of alcohol, some of which I have brought back with me, you’ll be glad to hear. After trying a few “tasters” of cider, which were about a third of a pint each, I was a little bit tipsy and might have sung all the way to Candleston, which is roughly here.

Having arrived we met with the few others who were that early, and tried to pitch our tents. Rich had brought a 5m diameter bell tent which proved not too difficult to put up once we found enough space for it, whereas I’d borrowed Jimmy’s 3-man tent. It’s a nice tent, but without any instructions I’m ashamed to say it took me probably 45 minutes to pitch. One reason might be that I started with the outer sheet both inside out and rotated 90 degrees from where it should have been. The other is that the double guy ropes confused me. Ah, it’s been too long since I went camping.

After that I think we went shopping for food that we never ended up eating because we were too busy to even keep a fire going most of the time. I did buy two fold-up chairs though. I spent most of Thursday and Friday worrying about my costume, which I’d basically picked up in a few charity shops at the last minute with the instructions “find something green and brown”. It was alright, not too obviously modern but I still ended up buying a few extra bits and pieces from the traders at the site. I now own a large brown cloak, which I might take to the beach and sit on to ensure it gets some real-life use.

I paid for the meal deal which was well worth it, as it meant we got Friday supper through to Sunday breakfast for £30 and no need to cook over the fire, and proper cutlery and plates and a tavern with a roof in which to eat and drink without getting rained on. The food was pretty good, especially the tasty chilli, and a full breakfast was plain necessary after a day of running around. Talking of the facilities, unlike mose camp sites the showers not only worked but were quite strong and plenty hot enough. The toilets even had loo roll. Whatever next?

The rest of our faction turned up a bit later, until there were 6 of us. Uglee (Shane) the half-orc warrior, Angus (Dave) and Haggis (Andy) who were wee free men warriors, Prudence (Helen) the witch scribe, and Fylgar (Rich), who was faction rep so automatically was a healer-scribe, and Esk (me) the bard healer. Since my guitar didn’t work properly, I ended up being Esk the cursed Bard for the duration.

(photo courtesy Tim Salmon, thanks Tim)

Our faction — The Dai Fae Dyne — are essentially neutral ruthless traders, so I spent a lot of time making series of lucrative trades so that we could get what we needed, but also what everyone else needed and then sell it to them at high prices. This was really fun and got me running around to see all the camps, some of which were impressively decked out, in particular the Wizards Concillium and the Dym Wan.

One thing I thought was a great idea was having each faction play some wandering monsters. Costumes were provided and there is very little that is more fun than running around looking scary and trying to hit small children with a sword. The kids’ faction, the Squires, was actually one of the most violent ones, as they seemed to lack the subtlety of diplomacy and intrigue and far preferred to beat people up. Can’t blame them, really.

The people were by and large less geeky than I expected, and yet the roleplay standards were higher, despite which I found myself welcomed by mine and other factions equally well. I threw myself into things on the Friday evening when I was left representing the Dai Fae in the Tavern accompanied only by Uglee, who being an orc was not a lot of use when it came to wheeling and dealing. Since I didn’t have the scribe skill, I couldn’t write anything down, so I had to remember 3 or 4 different trade agreements that I’d tentatively made before the rest of the faction came back and someone could make a note of it all!

Being new, I wasn’t entirely aware of all the rules, which meant that I’d made the assumption that you couldn’t be attacked in the Tavern. This is almost entirely true, however it turned out that there were certain exceptions to which I was not privy, with the result that I was coming back from the loo, spotted an enemy, went in to tell Haggis, and then we both turned round to find it raised up preparing to strike — I actually screamed and tried to run but failed and took a body hit - went down, crawled off to the side and waited for someone to come and heal me. Pretty much everyone had run off, but eventually someone, I think Uglee, came and fixed me up. It was a properly immersive scary moment, which pleased me as I’d clearly suspended my disbelief to the right degree.

The focus of the weekend was the ritual of the Wizards Concillium, which appeared to involve setting fire ineptly to fireworks and a big sigil dug into the ground and filled with cotton balls. It provided an impressive end to the Saturday night, especially when it inevitably all went horribly wrong and we had monsters coming out of our ears (well, mostly the rift gate, but y’know).

After we handed in our game money for safekeeping we sat around in camp for a good while chatting before going to bed. After going to bed, the Keepers sang “I am the Music Man” with their own instruments each round, so I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I didn’t mind really, if I had been a bit more awake I might have got up and joined in, but that would have involved getting up and out of my cozy sleeping bag. Not going to happen.

Sunday morning we were out of character again and made a leisurely day of packing up and returning home, stopping off at Dave and Helen’s for a cuppa on the way. It was quite odd getting breakfast called out in my own name, and I nearly forgot that ‘Claire’ — rather than ‘Esk’ — was me. That could have happened any morning though, I suspect. We made it back to Aber at about 5.15 and I still went to Buffy night despite being fairly knackered.

It was somewhat like a big murder-mystery with strangers and lasting over a weekend, but with subplots and sidetracks along the way, and a lot more freedom. So if you don’t like dressing up, or you don’t like camping, or you don’t like new people, it’s possibly not for you. However, if you like most of these things, and also cider, you should let me know and come along to the Interplanar Fayre in July! If you’ve managed to read this far down, that is. Sorry about that.

Telling BiCon stories is a bit like telling skiing stories, I reckon. In the case of skiing, there is an unwritten rule that you must relate only tales of horrific danger and fantastic injury, nevermind the fact that most of the time you spend skiing you’re not injuring yourself or doing crazy stunts. BiCon’s rule is debauchery — all the stories that make it out are ones that involve sex, nakedness, or at very least double-entendre. The truth is, like with skiing, it’s because they are the ones people want to hear about. No-one wants to know that you did some knitting or had a beer, just like no-one wants to know you skied uneventfully down a green run and had a hot chocolate.

The problem with this is that people get the impression that skiing gets you injured, and BiCon gets you laid, neither of which is entirely true. Nevertheless, here’s my list of memorable moments from BiCon 2008, in not really chronological order.

• Arriving to find so many people I recognise it was hard to greet them all before the bar closed.
• Playing Apples to Apples with a few friends on the first night as a great escape from the tiring socialising.
• Braving the naked lunch on the first day with some trepidation.
• Arguing with Dan in the ‘conflict resolution in poly families’ workshop, in a deliberately ironic sort of way.
• Being so knackered by workshop 3 on the first day that I took a nap instead.
• Experiencing my bisexuality through building a lego and plasticine model.
• Coming fourth most impure (out of about 8 people) in a purity test party that took about 4 hours. “Does it count if…” was asked probably more times than there were questions.
• Having overcome previously mentioned trepidation, playing naked twister in the naked chillout zone.
• Sitting in a paddling pool full of people (but not water) at 4am drinking terrible Zinfandel Rose wine and throwing cushions at people making bad puns. (mostly Dan — eventually Dan got hit even when it wasn’t him who made a pun just because it was expected to have been him)
• 300 tiny toy lions, one of which I have named Brian the BiCon Lion.
• Using tantra techniques to have a conversation with my masculine and feminine sides. No, I didn’t really know what the workshop was before I went in. However, it was relaxing, fun and an interesting bit of self-reflection.
• Eating ice cream naked, which I’m pretty sure I’ve never done before, at the last naked lunch of the conference.
• All the hugs. So many hugs. I like hugs.
• Failing to leave for about half an hour because of all the people I wanted to give my farewells.

And no, not so much as a snog from a pretty girl or boy — it’s just like all those times I went skiing without getting a concussion.

My absolute favourite thing about BiCon has always been the totally accepting atmosphere. This year I really felt I contributed to that acceptance, rather than simply basking in it myself. It is thanks to the efforts of everyone present that I felt so at home, safe, and able to be myself despite being surrounded by strangers with often very different interests and ideologies from my own. The atmosphere somehow engenders the temporary suspension of prejudice and assumption and even common sense, allowing all questions and answers to be valid. It’s a situation I couldn’t survive for more than about a week before I would have to punch someone for being so damn NICE, but it’s lovely escapism.

I met a lot of very interesting people, discovered some worldly truths and learned a few new things about myself in the process. Back to the real world for now, but I’ll soon be impatiently looking forward to BiCon 2009.

In about a month’s time I will graduate as Claire Q, MEng Software Engineering. Up until this point, I have felt that title to be mostly inappropriate. The parts of Computer Science which I have found most interesting have always been the more theoretical, conceptual or scientific bits, to the extent that I had assumed I was no good at the actual engineering and presumed I was simply so able at examinations that I had passed the relevant modules on that strength alone.

However, I currently have 2 jobs that are highly software engineering involved. Both are in academic departments, but in both cases I have been brought in as the “coding familiar” party to a more research-based set of colleagues. Finally, I have found use for all those modules that didn’t interest me much at the time.

As it turns out, I’m actually good at this. I know how to avoid security holes, how network layer interaction happens, how to properly specify, design, implement, test and maintain software, how client-server architecture works, how to design a database, how to implement many software design and architecture patterns, how to use a programming reference book, how to plan a project and use an established development process… And what’s better, is that I have actually applied this knowledge to real-world, used systems.

What’s worse is that I’m starting to find engineering interesting for its own sake. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always considered it useful, and certainly more important than science in the short-to-medium term, it’s just that I never really wanted to do it myself, until now.

My dissertation was very research heavy, and that has taught me a lot about how my PhD “understanding the beauty of music through machine learning computation” is going to be. I really do enjoy research and I expect it will be interesting and fulfilling. It’s just that lately, just sometimes, fully controllable, you understand, I have this urge to create a really well designed and documented program that will be truly useful to actual people in my lifetime. I know, I know. I try to keep these wrong thoughts at bay, and strive for the purity and safety of theoretical discovery. It seems, though, that despite my best efforts to ignore them, the principles and practices of software engineering have imprinted themselves in my brain. I can delude myself no longer.

Since high school I have considered myself a scientist. Today I am proud to say I am also an engineer.

An American explains Easter to a Martian

If you celebrate Easter, enjoy your festival, I’m afraid it’s quite alien to me. Mind you, same goes for Ostara and Purim. Higan also looks pretty interesting.

Still, happy Persian New Year(and beginning of the Bahá’í year), and happy birthday for yesterday, Mohammed!

For everyone else, (in the northern hemisphere) happy vernal equinox, enjoy Spring! (Autumn, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, driving around Australia in a car you bought on the first day you got there, for example)

Don’t forget to put your clocks forward on the 30th. Ah, British Summer Time. Because equinoxes weren’t confusing enough. I’m off to balance an egg on its end.

As Andy blogged, Arthur C. Clarke has died.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008), Clarke’s first law

Only a couple of days ago, I was talking with Dan about this quotation. I really hope I become so distinguished a scientist that when I predict something is impossible, my quotation ends up on a wall next to an explanation of the technology that has eventually proven me wrong.

His writings have been a constant source of inspiration for me both in science and philosophy. They will continue to do so, not only because a lot of his collection I haven’t yet read, but also because I keep going back to what I have read, seeing new things every time. I’m sad that he has gone, but his work will live on for generations to come — which is as good as it gets for us carbon-based bipeds.

Ok, so I get back to the cottage and find that Mario (one of my rats) is dead. This is a bit upsetting, but not ever so surprising, he was looking a bit ill for some time. The thing that was more upsetting was finding that Luigi had chewed his face off down to the bone.

Ew. I’m trying to pluck up the courage to do something with the rest of him. Feeling a bit disturbed.

…will be the Cambrian News Headline. On Abnib? Click the title to read more…
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