RichardD's Blog

Criminal Justice?

2008-07-09T13:48:00.002Z

OK, I have to admit that I didn't see a single minute of the BBC's "flagship" drama last week. But a number of colleagues did, and they weren't impressed by how the lega profession was protrayed.

Which brings me to my first message; never watch a TV program, or read a newspaper article, about a topic that you are already well-acquainted with. The writer will have got things wrong on so many levels that it serves only to irritate the already-informed, and mis-inform everybody else.

But in the spat between Bar Council and writer of Criminal Justice (one Peter Moffat, once - allegedly - a proctising barrister, though I suspect that he had the usual reason for pursuing an alternative carreer), I happened on this gem:

Moffat disagreed with his learned friend - as he makes plain in a letter in today's paper. "Timothy Dutton ... seeks to reassure us that defence practitioners 'act to the highest standards'," he writes. "Does this include the defence practitioner who sent documentary 'evidence' (in fact invented and drafted by himself) from an internet cafe in Oxford Street to his opponent?"

Fair point. Until you discover that the barrister in question, who forged a law report to trap his unrepresented opponent, was only called to the Bar in 2004 and had done very little legal work. In fact, he had made his name, reputation and living as ... a TV writer and producer.

Methinks Mr. Moffat needs to pick his examples more carefully in future.

Sir Ian Blair

2007-11-07T15:34:00.000Z

Time to get political again.

The man's clearly a moron, and the de menezes affair has put the seal on my opinion. t's hard to ignore the catalogue of errors coming from the Commissioner and his inner circle. He is presiding over a Force that manages through a series of errors that - whilst individually they might be understandable - add up to a situation where an innocent man lost his life AND got called a terrorist suspect in a press conference.

The man should go.

And that's before you consider his stirling efforts to block the POolice Complaints Commision's report.

While I'm on the subject, let's get shot of the Home Secretary too. Jacqui Smith has come out in defence of Sir Ian Blair, saying to her opposite number "You and I will never face the challenge of making split second decisions in life and death policing operations." Erm, excuse me. Exactly which of Sir Ian's decisions are split-second? As far as I can tell, although he's eager to trumpet what he sees as successes, or to criticise other Forces when they manage to arrest terror suspects without shooting them, they're not exactly "split second" are they? The blunders in the De Menezes shooting were caused by a variety of factors - and I believe that much of the root cause is the policies and atmosphere created from the very top. Fact was, some sort of accident was almost inevitable that July, with Sir Ian sending as many of them out there with guns, ready to jump at shadows. Split-second how, exactly?

Another lefty weighed in with this pearl: "Policing and politics make for a volatile mix." Might be worth his considering where both of those words originally stemmed from (I thought that despite their eagerness to close them, most politicians had a grammarschool - or public school - background, and could be relied upon to know a bit of Ancient Greek). The simple fact is that politics is how the citizens decides how it is to be governed and ruled. The Police are a body appointed by the citizens to oversee those rules - they cannot enforce anything without the goodwill and support of the citizens. It ought to go without saying that questions of politics should lie at the very heart of how we are to be policed. Especially when one is considering the Police's own policies. Do we not have a right - nay, a duty - to get "political" when things are done in our names of which we strongly disapprove?

Johnny-5's alive (and made of plastic)

2007-11-04T00:05:00.000Z

I've managed to spend the evening playing with the new Lego Mindstorms NXT robotics kit (OK, Lauren thinks that she was helping too). I thought that there might be an explosion from Jan at the sight of the new stuff, but she knows I've got loads of the old Mindstorms kit released 7 or 8 years ago, and she can't tell the difference between old and new (so she hasn't twigged that this is all new gear).

Although I owned the old Lego Robotics Invention System (two sets; the second one having been bought very cheaply in a PC World sell-off), I never managed to get a great deal built or programmed. The old software was VERY basic, but I've got absolutely zero programming in my background, and all of the homebrew alternative programming methods were WAY beyond me. And the basic programming software combined with the basic motors meant that it barely made it out of the box.

The new NXT kit is a different kettle of fish. Firstly it employs a very modern method of pinning everything together (after over 35 years of playing with lego, I'd got a handle on building stuff out of bricks and plates by aligning the studs; the NXT kit uses a newer "studless" construction technique that has me right back at square one trying to figure out even the most basic ways to build anything.

Secondly, the motors are VERY different too. The old Mindstorms kit came with two small and blocky motors that were pretty similar to the motors in the Technic line that Lego had been making for about 25 years; the new motors are HUGE in comparison, they're an odd shape with no studs at all (that "studless construction" again, chaps), but are true stepper motors so they know how far and how fast they rotate (unlike the old motors, where you either had to buy some extra, expensive rotation sensors, or you guessed and hoped for the best).

And thirdly there's the new software. The old set had a truly ghastly command structure, which managed to be both basic, restrictive AND confusing. The new programming suite is graphically-based once again, but manages to be much more comprehensive whilst at the same time being much more intuitive and straightforward. Lego themselves have realised that by embracing an adult fan community, and actively supporting the homebrew firmware and programming languages, they will sell more sets. So having released as much of the internal code as open source stuff as possible, there are already quite a few different programming languages out there based on stuff like Java and C. Like I say, I can't program much more than the ubiquitous two lines of Basic on a WHSmiths' display Spectrum, but I know that this sort of stuff is important to some people. Lego also involved some of that community to actually help develop the current kit, so the included programming suite is much more functional than the old one. Gripes? Just a couple in the ergonomics stakes at the moment. I'd like to be able to zoom in and out of the program area with the mouse wheel (or at all; the software doesn't support ANY zooming, and even a moderately-sized program can span several pages), and it only seems to support one-button mice (a sop to the Mac crowd no doubt, who couldn't run the old software at all; but it's a nuisance not being able to cut & paste stuff using just a right-click).

The new kit seems to contain fewer parts. The old set contained 700-odd parts, but that count included a fair few utterly useles decorative parts (bat wings, anyone?). The new kit contains just over 500, and it does feel like there is less to build with than the old kit. That is also down to the way everything is assembled - the old kit, brick connected to brick; now every piece has to be pinned to another with a couple of axles or pegs; and those pegs push the piece count higher. There are also some odd ommisions - no differential gearbox, for example. And the packaging feels cheap, cheap, cheap (not only was the old RIS box and printed manual impressively sturdy stuff, the NXT kit is decidedly not; it's possibly the poorest packaging for any Lego set I've ever seen. But having not bought much Lego over the last ten years, perhaps ALL the packaging and printed instructions are of this low quality now).

On the other hand, in terms of the premium-cost items in the box, it scores over the old set. The old set had two motors, with no way to count how many times they had turned; the new set has three stepper motors with in-built rotation sensors (so that's about £40-worth of more stuff than the old set straight off). Although there is one less touch sensor (the cheapest and most straightforward sensor in the old lineup), the new kit includes more variety of sensors - not only is there the touch sensor and the light sensor, there's a new sound sensor and best of all an ultrasonic sensor; with the old setup, you either bought an expensive third-party add-on, or you bodged one yourself using components bought off the internet. Added to which, the new programming suite caters for these additional sensors out of the box.

The long and the short of these improvements is that not only have I built two or three robots tonight (OK, all based on the same chassis, and all straight off the included Lego instructions, but hey, it's a start), I managed to work my way through all the simple programming exercises for the first robot myself, ahead of being shown what to do by the Lego software. I even managed to get the robot to behave in the ways that Lauren dictated ("He's got to move forwards, say hello, beep, then spin on the spot" sort of thing). Finally I had it running around the lounge, bouncing off the walls with it saying "ouch" each time before changing direction. The main thing that I learned was that our lounge floor is REALLY filthy, and needs a jolly good sweeping as soon as we can remember where the microfibre mop head is hiding.

Can't wait for my Bluetooth dongle to turn up from Ebuyer. The only major pain with the Mindstorms NXT kit is having to plug the programmable brick into the PC's USB port every time I want to upload a new program. And given that everything is a matter of programming, testing, rewriting the program, testing again, and repeating the whole cycle over and over (usually about 6 times to actually get everything to work well), the socket on the programmable brick wasn't going to last forever. but when I have the dongle, I should be able to send the code straight from the PC to the brick wherever it is in the house.

Just one more gripe. The NXT kit uses cables that are not compatible with the old style of motors and sensors (although conversion cables are available). Fine, I completely understand the methodology - the new sensors and motors need more separate strands as they pass different types of data to the programmable brick. but Lego are also introducing a new line of motors this year (in some Technic sets, and later into their trains), with a new wiring system that's not compatible with either the old wiring OR the new NXT wiring. And the latter incomatability is just daft.

Right - off to program the thing to try and herd Lauren round the lounge now!

What IS the point??

2007-10-27T22:46:00.000Z

It seems like our politicians, Police Officers, Councils and ACPO ask for some new power or legislation to restrict the way that people behave (the old rules of society, where you behaved properly because that was what you OUGHT to do having gone the way of the dodo some time back.

But what exactly is the point of them crying out for new laws and powers when they can't - or won't - use the ones that they already have?

Take fireworks, for example. No, please, take them. As far away from here as possible. And keep them away for 364 days of the year, if you wouldn't mind.

Now we had a new Fireworks Act in 2003, closely followed by some Regulations in 2004 (the Act was a pretty bland affair; the real meat and bones of our fireworks rules are in the Regs). One of those rules - fairly widely publicized at the time, oddly enough - was a new late night limit on firework noise. It was simple. Not after 11pm, except on a few particular dates, including - not so oddly, this time - the 5th of November.

Well, it's not the 5th of November yet. But it is after 11pm here. Well after. And once again, it sounds like downtown Beruit.

Enforcement action in evidence? Don't be so silly.

Perhaps it only works if we all carry ID cards?

More pictures as and when I take them

2007-10-17T09:50:00.000Z

Right, I've posted enough pictures of baby Shula for now. I'll keep updating my Picasa web page (because it's the easiest way to share them with family and friends), but I need to find something new to blog about.

Meanwhile, my photo albums can be seen here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/RDewsbery/Shula

A few more pictures now we're at home

2007-10-14T16:17:00.000Z

Here are a few pictures of Shula in our lounge, lying in a chair that vibrates (when the battery isn't flat, that is). Jury's out as to whether she finds it soothing or not.

Sleeptime now. Instead of using either the cot (because that's in the nursery along the landing, and I'm not running backwards and forwards at 2am having cracked my arm doing just that a few months ago) or the moses basket (because we've forgotten who we lent it to), we've bought another gadget.

this one is called an Amby Nature's Nest - apparently they are THE thing for your baby to sleep in if you're in Australia, being in widespread use in maternity wards and hospitals over there (I trust that my man in New Zealand can confirm if it's an Antipodean thing, just unique to the Aussies, or a load of marketting guff).

It's a sort of hammock-meets-sling, attached to the frame by a big spring, so any shuffling in the night is converted into a gentle rocking motion. The hammock has mesh sides for good ventilation, baby sleeps with its feet at the bottom and it's almost impossible to shuffle further down - or up - without great effort, and the way the sling gently curves around baby is meant to mimmick being back in the womb. So babies are supposed to go to sleep more quickly, and sleep more soundly, than on a conventional flat mattress. I'm not aware of any studies that put it in a better or worse light than conventional sleeping arrangements so far as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, but anecdotal evidence is that babies are more placid in a Nest than in any other sort of bed.

Oh, and they are eye-wateringly expensive. Still, it seems to be giving her a peaceful night's sleep (which should translate into a peaceful night's sleep for me, so well worth the money).

Verdict after two night's use is that it seems to work just fine, though right now we're still being woken every 2-3 hours.

Some more photos

2007-10-11T13:17:00.000Z

Six hours (and a couple of feeds) later, and we're all looking a lot more normal. Lauren was allowed out of school for a visit too.

I've dug out a picture of Lauren at the same age.

They both look pretty similar (I think the Lauren photo was taken about 24-26 hours after being born). Two obvious differences stand out when looking at the old photos of Lauren: firstly she had her eyes open much wider, and in more of the photos (which accords with my recollection, of a little baby who spend the first couple of days staring at EVERYTHING); and secondly, hasn't the quality of the output from digital cameras improved? The shot of Lauren was takenon someone else's camera - my own camera of the time produced nasty, noise-ridden and low resolution shots. Like this one:

New Baby

2007-10-11T08:34:00.000Z

We went to the hospital last night at 6pm, with Jan feeling fed up, full of headache and back-ache, and she was getting herself all het-up about baby, simply because the official "due date" was Sunday just gone. memo to the world - "due dates" are best guesses, not to be relied upon AT ALL. Baby will arrive when baby is ready, regardless of what some midwife with a chart says is the due date. And stressing about it when baby is "late" is a massive waste of energy.

Anyway, the trip to the hospital ended up being a 5-hour stay - being monitored, being monitored again because baby kept moving, bloot-tests, headache tablets, and more monitoring, before being sent home just after 11pm. "Not in labour yet - take two of these and see if they help with the headache".

Just after 12 midnight we were on our way back in, with Jan *sure* that she was in labour. (She's been wrong twice already this week; the staff had turned us away last Friday, and again on Monday.)

But guess what - she was right this time!

Booked in at 12.30, monitored, moved from room to room, and finally settled in the second or third delivery room about 1.30am. Jan decided to have a hot bath to see if it would help with the back-ache, as a prelude to asking to use the birthing pool. It didn't help one bit, so she decided not to bother with the pool either. Birthing ball requested and similarly discarded, as by the time they found where they'd hidden it, she was on the bed pulling on the gas & air like there was nothing else that mattered.

Waters broke sometime after 2.15am, and she started to push at 2.30. Baby Shula was born 30 minutes later at 3am on the dot. Which was actually pretty darned fast in my book, and largely fuss-free.

Shula weighed in at 7lbs 2oz. Baby was fairly quiet and tired after all the pushing and shoving, but was awake enough to start feeding about 30 minutes later.

Jan found the whole thing pretty tiring (and very painful - especially as she needed a few stitches), but she was very pleased to get through it all so quickly and with just gas & air as pain relief. She was up and about an hour or so later, and had a bath to get cleaned up (I can't remember the last time I saw so much blood, snot and tears). She was feeling perky enough to walk to the maternity ward at 6am, with baby Shula grumbling about wanting another feed.

Here are a few pictures taken at 4-5am this morning.

I'm A Fun Guy?

2007-10-10T09:56:00.000Z

So fun that I spent some of this morning out in the back garden with a camera.

It appears that one of the thinks that happens when a lot of building takes place on a plot of land is that all sorts of bits and pieces get dumped in the garden prior to being covered over with the topsoil. Bits of wood and timber being pretty much top of that list. And as the wood rots, it provides an idea breeding ground for fungi.

After a couple of warmish days, and a downpour yesterday, I woke up this morning to see a fine crop of assorted mushrooms or toadstools in the back garden.

We have two main types appearing. I'm fairly sure that the predominant type are coprinus micaceus - glistening ink caps. And they either go very dark as they mature, or we have another member of the coprinus family* growing alongside them.

* there is some debate about whether all the members of the ink cap family are in fact properly calssified as coprinus, the latest DNA evidence tending to suggest that there are at least two different species that have independantly evolved the deliquescing dark gills.

If anyone is 100% sure that I'm wrong, and they know precisely what I've got in my garden, let me know. Right now, I'm about 80% sure, and the websites are 80% sure that the fungi are "edible but not exactly nice". If it turns out that they are actually poisonous, I'll need to do something about them.

Halo 3 has stolen my life

2007-10-03T16:38:00.000Z

I'm sure that it's only temporary, but right now I'm rather hooked on Hal 3 - Microsoft's biggest title for the Xbox 360 games console. I'm not very good at it - certainly not against other people in online games - but it's proving to be hard to ignore.

Of course, it helps that the game has been the biggest and fastest "entertainment" package in history - it's "opening weekend" sales comfortably eclipsed any other game, but also every movie release in history too.

Other than a Halo 3 obsession (and before that, a racing game called Forza 2), my favourite games recently have all been of the traditional variety with a board. Phoenicia is - I'm told - a reworking of a much older game. I've never played its progenitor, Outpost, but I have played Phoenicia often enough in the past 3 months to know that it's very good.

And there's Duel In The dark. I know that at least one of my readers isn't normally interested in games, but this might be up his street. I'll try to make a longer blog post about it later in the week, but in essence it's a game of bluff, misdirection and reading you opponent right, with a theme of RAF bombing raids over Germany in WW2. The RAF player pre-plans his target and the route to be taken by the bomber, then uses a Mosquito to either protect the bomber and harass the German nightfighters, open a path in the ground defences, or misdirect the Germans as to the bomber's next move. The German player meanwhile lays out his ground defences once the RAF route has been planned, then uses four nightfighters to try to intercept the bomber on his way in and out of Germany, but has the added complication of managing the planes' fuel load. Each side scores victory points during the game based on how well then manage their roles. Takes about 45 minutes to play a game, so there's usually plenty of time for two players to swap roles after one game and try it from the other side's perspective. Oh, and unusually there's a very simple way to play a solo game (although this isn't as good as playing the game face-to-face).

More info here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/27048

Nobody here but us chickens?

2007-09-11T15:30:00.000Z

Gosh. A long post on the Expo, and not one comment. Did my prolonged absence drive away my last remaining reader after all?

UK Games Expo, June 2007

2007-09-05T13:06:00.000Z

OK, there have been no posts from me for three months, now two come along at once! For a couple of weekends this summer, I've been busy demonstrating Heroscape for MB Games. We've done the first UK Games Expo, held in Birmingham on the 2nd and 3rd of June, the Cast Are Dice in Stoke in August, and Beer & Prezels in Burton.

I'd heard that some local chaps were interested in trying to do a "British Essen". It's more properly called "Spiel", but referred to as "Essen" by every gamer in the western hemisphere; it's an annual games show in Germany held each October. It gets about 150,000 visitors over 4 days, and fills an exhibition comlex that is used to hold things like motor shows. Essen has a mix of big publishers, small publishers, retailers and second-hand dealers, all trying to get the public to look at, play, and ultimately buy their games. Fantastic event, and this year's will be the first one that I have missed in a decade.

Anyway, the call had gone out last November to people who where interested in helping out, traders and publishers who wanted space, etc. At that stage nobody knew what sort of event the UK Expo would be, how big or how much involvement they would have from the games industry.

I've been hooked on Heroscape for a couple of years now, and had taken a few sets along to local conventions to show it off, play demonstration and participation games, learning all the while about how best to show the game off (I wasn't a complete beginner at this; for the last 3 or 4 Essens, I have helped out on the Warfrog stand explaining their games to interested foreigners, and Martin's games are much more complicated than Heroscape). So I knew some of what worked, and some of what didn't, and when the Expo organisers said that there would be space for demonstration and partcipation games, I volunteered.

By the time Easter rolled around, it was clear that the Expo was going to be the biggest boardgames event in the UK; a lot of small publishers and traders had booked space, publicity materials had been prepared and sent out, and things were gearing up nicely.

The organisers held a sort of "preview" event at Birmingham's central Library about six weeks before the Expo, and I volunteered for that too. On the day, I found myself up on the top floor, in something of a backwater with some historical miniatures games, while the main event consisted of family games on the first floor. Not a problem, though - I took along two Master Sets, a blue background sheet, knocked up some flyers of my own advertising our presence at the Expo, and set up the Wellspring of Obsession map.

It was pretty well received, with about ten people sitting down to be shown the game (and about 40 flyers being handed out). How well did it work? I showed the game to one chap, who came back wityh his mates a few minutes later - "You've got to try this!" They all enjoyed it - how much was clear when they came over to my table 6 weeks later at the Expo - between them, they had bought FOURTEEN Master Sets between them!

A handy "prequel" event, that - it showed me that there were still some areas where I could improve on my presentation and make the game easier for new players to pick up. So over the next six weeks, I planned, prepared materials, ordered some extra bits and pieces to set off the presentation (including some excellent water mats, custom made by a US-based Heroscape fan), and I was all set.

The table was set up on Friday night. It took me and my helper, David, about two hours to put it together. I was frequently asked "How many sets?", so with hindsight I should have included this info on the flyers I was handing out (though I did remember to give www.heroscapers.com and Hasbro both a plug). The short answer is "Nine Master Sets." The longer answer is that I needed nine sets for all the water and crinkly bits, but in fact my 9 sets fill two large cardboard boxes in my games room and I only took one of those boxes to the Expo. So I only actually need half of the pieces from those nine sets to get the map built.

There was a definate idea behind this map. Firstly, I wanted it to make good use of the 6' by 6' table available to me. Secondly, it had to look stunning, and show off the flexibility of the Heroscape terrain system. Thirdly, I really wanted to play several simultaneous games on the one map (I've tried 4-player games with new players, and I'd rather stick pencils up my nose than go through that again). Fourthly, it needed to include water and elevation, but no levels higher than 10 (to avoid the need to explain the 2-dice height advantage rule, that I still don't really understand myself), and not have too many really big climbs or falls (it's possible to find places on the map where a figure can't climb or would take damage when falling, but they are "off the beaten track" - so that's two other slightly fiddly rules that can be skipped from the explaination). Finally it had to be made from Master Set terrain only, and be played with Master Set figures - this is all that is readily available in the UK, and I really didn't want to have to say to the public "Yeah, I ordered all the really cool stuff from America" - they had to be shown things that are actually in the shops here.

Of course, HasbroUK being what they are, they've since told people that they are discontinuing Heroscape in the UK altogether; I can only hope that this information is inaccurate, as the Expo showed me that people were very interested in the game. Perhaps the UK will follow in the footsteps of Australia, where recently Wizards of the Coast (a Hasbro subsidiary) has announced their commitment to making all the expansion sets available, through local speciality games shops.

Here's another shot of our setup from above. You'll notice that I had printed up flyers (we handed out about a hundred; again, with hindsight it would have been good to get one put in each of the 1200+ goody bags handed to visitors as they arrived at the Expo). We also had laminated rules summary sheets (not that anyone needed them, Heroscape is very straightforward), a banner wrapped around one edge of the table, my dice towers, and pre-selected armies laminated as one card.

The idea behind having pre-selected armies was to help new players get straight into playing the game. Although one of the key strategies in Heroscape is choosing an army of units that work well together (or ones that work well against the units chosen by your opponent), it is much, much easier to hand a complete army to a player and explain his strengths and weaknesses. I've tried the game out on new players having them choose units that "look cool", but it still takes a while to add up all the points.

I'd copied and laminated about two dozen armies made up from Master Set units, and I'd definately do it this way again in future, as it significantly reduces the startup time and complexity at a demo game like this. However, I did make one error - I'd originally planned a quite different map, where Mimring and Grimnak would have been severely hampered, so the armies had been made up without them. Due to the change of map, they would have worked fine, and might have added a bit of extra variety - though it did mean that I could skip explaining about how two-space figures move. So they were on display all day, but never got used.

Alan How (one of Britain's most influential games journalists, and a buyer of far too many new games) came over to the table. I've known Alan for about a decade (my first Essen trip was in a minibus with Alan and others), and he knew of - and lightly mocked - my Heroscape obsession. He then admitted that he'd bought a couple of sets himself, but had never played. Ha, a challenge! "Sit there Alan, and I'll teach you the game." He enjoyed it.

Alan was by no means unique. With the recent price cuts in Heroscape here in the UK, I found several people who had bought the game (sometimes just for the terrain) and had never played. I did my best to remedy the situation in every case.

Some games going on:

You'll have spotted my dice towers in some of the shots, although by Sunday I had abandoned their use (at Beer & Pretzels back in May, the towers were in danger of getting more serious enquiries than the game!).

I also abandoned the use of the "X" marker - although it's an important part of the tactics, allowing players to bluff and misdirect their opponents, for the target audience at the Expo it was a distraction - I simply explained that there were a number of rules like drafting and the "X" that I had omitted but made the full game even better.

Me teaching the game.

One of the three prize winners.

Hasbro UK had kindly donated three Master Sets to be used as prizes (as well as providing two MB Games T-shirts). I was a little disappointed though that Hasbro UK had never contacted me about the Expo despite my efforts to open a dialogue with them via a number of channels. I know that they aren't interested in marketing direct to the public (though how the Hasbro webshop fits with this philosophy I don't know), but these events do have an effect. Quite apart from the MINIMUM 14 sets sold as a result of my library visit, having over a thousand people see the big Heroscape setup can't help but boost the game's recognition factor - and consumers prove over and over that they like to buy products that they recognise (otherwise advertising would be a waste of time). A moot point, though, if the UK is not going to be receiving any more Heroscape.

At the Expo, I was the closest thing that there was to an "official" Hasbro presence, which was a real shame (and somewhat frustrating - they had sent the T-shirt & games to the Expo organisers, but didn't do anything else - for all they knew, I could have been some nutcase with bad teeth and a surly attitude who could have done no good at all). Hasbro Germany take up a reasonable slice of floorspace at Essen each year - why not do the same at the Expo?

They weren't the only big names to stay away - there was no Wizards of the Coast (OK, technically part of Hasbro too), no Ravensburger (though they are better known for puzzles instead of games here), and no Games Workshop either. Shame on you, guys, and hopefully you will all be there next year. Wizkids showed up though.

Finally, a pic of me with my partner, Jan. I couldn't have made it through the whole weekend without her - she did a fair chunk of the demonstrations and explanations (indeed, I'd almost lost my voice by Saturday evening, so without her help there might not have been any Heroscape on Sunday). It helps that she shares my love of Heroscape.

Okay, then, if I must ...

2007-09-03T17:14:00.000Z

My reader* has delivered a gentle reminder that this blog has not been updated in a while. Well, in my defence I did say that it would only ever be an occasionaly thing, when the fancy takes me.

* unlike Terry Wogan's single "listener", I genuinely believe that I have only the one reader.

So to rectify the situation, here's a brief summary of what I've been doing this week. Or at least the interesting part of the week when I wasn't working for a living.

Lauren wanted a climbing frame for her birthday (which was at the start of August). Now I'm not the sort of chap to wander down to Argos with fifty pounds in my pocket for some tubular steel rubbish, when a few hours' research on the 'net will allow me to spend a whole order of magnitude more.

Very quickly, it seemed that wooden was the way to go. Especially in the "spend unfeasibly large amounts of money" stakes - if you're insistent upon emptying the bank account really quickly there can be no better route. Of course, I justified it to myself on the grounds that we'd not really had much of a family holiday this summer, and a good quality climbing frame would be used by not only Lauren but sprog number 2 (due at the start of October).

After looking at a great many climbing frames (far more than can possibly be healthy), I decided on a Jungle Gym Cabin with optional Monkey Bars (from which two swings can be hung) and a Rock Module (a sort of climbing wall for tots).

I bought it from http://www.activegarden.co.uk/ - based mostly on the fact that they had everything in stock, answered my emails promptly, and looked to be bona fide experts on the subject of climbing frames.

The kit arrives in a series of brightly packaged boxes (containing accessories, nuts, bolts, drill bits and instructions), the slide, and a whole lot of wood. Although the wood was already pressure-treated (to stand up to the rigours of being outside 24/7), we decided to paint everything before - or sometimes during - assembly. Partly to give it extra longevity, partly to make it blend in with our fence, and mostly because it looks good.

The main tower is supposed to take two people two days to assemble. Well, we spent all of the Bank Holiday weekend building it and then some - Friday evening, all day Saturday (starting at 9am, an ungodly hour for a weekend), all day Sunday, much of Monday, several hours during the week of an evening, and some of a second Saturday.

But Lauren thinks that the results are well worth it.
post scriptum: the next camera that I buy simply MUST have some guidelines in the viewfinder. I seem to have real trouble keeping the horizon horizontal :(

UK Games Expo

2007-05-17T19:29:00.000Z

OK, in an attempt to kick some life into the UK boardgames industry, two chaps have organised the first UK Games Expo on the 2nd and 3rd of June. That's just a fortnight away.

http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk

I've mentioned before that I'll be there, running a demonstration and particiption game of Heroscape.

I've seen too many wargames shows where someone's idea of a "demonstration" game was to have lots of pretty things for the public to look at, but get too close to the action and they'd just growl at you. Almost as bad are the "participation" games where you have to give up three hours of your day to play something ill-thought out, untested, and where the organiser just tells you exactly what to do turn-by-turn anyway.

Thankfully Heroscape lends itself to both the people who want to just look, and the people who want to get stuck in but can only spare an hour.

Now I've been taking Heroscape to several local cons and events over the last 12 months, including Beer & Pretzels last week, and the reaction has always been very positive. In the meantime, I think I've managed to pick up a few ideas and avoid a few pitfalls in ways to get people to play and enjoy the game in the confines of a public event. I know for a fact that my efforts have managed to sell more than a few games (though you're never going to empty all the local Argos stores on the back of one public event).

Anyway, my preparation for the Expo is largely done (though I'd love Hasbro to wake up and contact me about the event, given that it is their product I'm showing off). I've accumulated a rather daft NINE sets of Heroscape, and designed a map that will allow several games to be played at once (as well as providing what I hope is something of a "wow" factor). Various bits and bobs have been purchased or prepared to make the whole thing look as porfessional as possible, because professional-looking is often approachable in the minds of the public - I've seen how they react at Europe's biggest games show (Essen, 150,000 attendees, which usually includes me trying to demonstrate something) to organised exhibitors, and how the same public shuffle past anyone who looks like a clueless amateur.

The centrepiece to make Heroscape look good will be the map itself. As I say, nine sets have gone into this; all the necessary pieces are all boxed up in my games room, to help with a smooth setup on the day, and there are just a couple of small details to iron out (one being how we're going to allocate the copies that Hasbro have promised to send as prizes).

Anyway, here's the map:

Although I had a last-minute idea of getting some new dice towers together and trying to sell a few at the Expo, that's not going to happen. I contacted three firms that do acrylic cutting for a quote at the start of the week, and so far none have got back to me with numbers, let alone enough detail to put me in a position to place an order for the components. I'm still hoping to make some more, but there won't be any for sale at the Expo.

Open Letter to David Cameron

2007-05-17T07:41:00.000Z

I was going to blog about boardgames, but I think that this is rather more important.

Dave - I hope you don't mind my calling you Dave, it seems like everyone else does), I simply must take issue with your latest policy change.

Had I been a party member, I would be cancelling my membership (it seems like every time that I have got close to signing up over the last 20 years, the Conservative Party has gone ahead and doone something stupid to push me away again). Had you announced this policy change a fortnight ago, you wouldn't have received my vote in the local elections.

Of what do I speak? Your new stance on selective education and grammar schools in particular.

I think that I would be categorised as "middle class"; University-educated, professional career et cetera. And a product of the grammar school system (at a time when it was under fierce attack from Labour-run local councils). Although my parents can never agree as to which "class" they belong to, one of my grandfathers was a postman, the other a milkman; as the first member of the family to go to University, the first to obtain a degree, the first to achieve a professional position, I might be considered an example of social mobility at work.

Now perhaps that might have been achieved if I had not gone to a state-funded grammar school. But going to such a school guaranteed that it was probable, and not merely possible.

One of the striking features of the school that I attended was that it is exactly the sort of institution that permits - nay, encourages - eductional opportunities for all. It is non-fee paying. It is located in the inner city of a large metropolitan area. It has a very wide cross-section of pupils from all different backgrounds. To illustrate the last point, I was considered "posh" at school because my family owned their own home in the right part of the city.

Yet you want to throw this away, in favour of promoting a model of education that isn't working despite it's place at the heart of the Labour Government's education policy.

You're crackers.

If there is a problem that too many of the "middle classes" are able to shoehorn their offspring into selective grammar schools, then it is a problem that can and should be tackled by promoting the aspirations of the less well-off; it should be done by providing them with the positive assistance that you fear the middle classes can buy for their children, by providing the extra tuition and extra-currular activities (that you fear weigh so heavily in favour of the worng sort of people getting into the schools) at inner city junior schools, by targetting funding and assistance at the level where it is most likely to promote a commitment to educational achievement and success. You don't solve the perceived problem by doing away with the schools themselves.

I presume, by the way, that when you point to perceived problems in the schools' intake, you are excluding all the fee-paying grammar schools. Because although the Conservative Party has had some very able leaders to have come from modest backgrounds, helped along by the grammar school system, I understand that your own educational experiences were somewhat different. You are, are you not, a product of a school system that is completely closed to the less well-off, that has for decades (if not centuries) been seen as positively reinforcing barriers to social mobility.

In fact, by not encouraging state-run grammar schools you are destined to pile injustice on top of injustice in the educational system. Parents with the means - and the drive - to influence their offspring's choice of secondary school can easily side-step the failing inner city schools by moving house - something that the housing market has reflected for many years. You don't "fix" that by denying the less well-off entry into the best schools, schools where it is ability and not wealth or catchment area which determines who can attend and who cannot.

Instead, tackle WHY some families don't put their children forward for such places; look at providing the means for the child to achieve DESPITE parental antipathy. Because for the United Kingdom to succeed in this century it will need to get the very best from its citizens, promoting ability and hard work. The grammar school system has always done that.

As it is, you may be right to identify a problem (though it is not one I recognise from my own experiences); your solution is to throw the baby out with the bath water, when it would be far more efficient to just shake the water up a bit.

If I get a response, I will post it here.

2007-05-15T14:08:00.000Z

After this weekend's Beer & Pretzels (which I'll blog about later this week), I've thought about sorte=ing out another batch of dice towers. They were getting more attention than anything else at the weekend. So, I've put some enquiries out to see if anyone can supply and cut the components at a decent price. If anyone wants one, drop me a line.

A total lack of activity?

2007-05-09T10:42:00.000Z

OK, so it's been over a month since my last post, so both of my readers have probably got bored and wandered off now.

It's hard to remember all the completely inconsequential stuff I've done recently. A fair bit of Ebay activity (because I've set myself the task of selling stuff before buying new any new toys this year; so far it's worked well). Some gaming. Nothing exciting.

"Some gaming" started with Baycon at the start of the month, at the close of which I came home with the bits to playtest a new board game. As it's not my project, it's also not my place to talk about it, butthe game is heading for a commercial release later this year or early next. I really enjoy it, but the gamers up at Spirit Games in Burton (where I go most Wednesday evenings to play a game or two) have started backing away when I put the box on the table. The good news is that the game - and the rulebook - are almost finished now, with just some final polish needed on both. Then it's off to the publishers, for them to arrange artwork and components.

I also managed to wheedle myself a copy of Risk Express - one of the first in the UK. Now I know that it's been released in Germany, but Hasbro UK don't have the best record when it comes to picking up games published by Hasbro in the US or Europe. Hopefully the Risk name will ensure that not only will they import the game, but that it will be on the shelves in Argos, WH Smiths et cetera. It's a good little dice game - much more appealing than something like Yahtzee. Risk Express reminds me a lot of another great dice game published a couple of years ago, called Pickomino. Unfortunately the long distribution chain (with everyone taking a cut) meant that whilst it could be bought in Germany for about a fiver, in the UK it was very hard to track down (specialist games shops only) and sold for £20! If Risk Express sells at the same price point as Yahtzee, you're looking at a very reasonable £8 for a more substantial game.

As well as spending time helping out with the rulebook for the playtest game, the other thing that has occupied my spare time this month has been Heroscape, and particularly planning and preparing for the first UK Games Expo. I'll blog something about Heroscape (with pictures) after the Expo itself; for now, it's enough to know that it is probably my favourite game of all time (and I've played more of them than is than my fair share).

The Games Expo is going to be held in Birmingham in three weeks' time, on the 2nd-3rd of June. http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

The UK boardgames scene is quite small at the moment - maybe a dozen or so specialist shops, very few quality boardgames in the High Street, and a few events that usually pull in 100-200 people. That compares poorly to Germany, where good quality boardgames can sell tens of thousands of copies, and a big hit will clear half a million in a year (Settlers of Catan is the best-known German boardgame export - they's sold 11 million Catan-based games, and there's now a version available for download on the Xbox 360). Germany's main boardgame event is the annual Spiel fair in Essen - for 4 days, the industry takes over an area the size of a Motor Show at the Essen exhibition centre, and approximately 150,000 visitors go through the doors.

The Expo is an attempt to bring a smimilar sort of event to the UK. What has made Spiel so good in the past is the mixture of publishers, inventors, retailers and members of the public who attend. Events in the UK always appeal to a certain sort of person (usually someone who is carrying a few extra pounds, sports a beard or a ponytail, and thinks that cardboard counters are cool); Spiel is very different, with an emphasis on family games and participation. Of coure, it's easy to see why there's been so much success on the continent when you see how much better the games actually are; a quick flick through the Argos catalogue reveals that here in the UK the mass-market games publishers have little to shout about. But there's been a growing appreciation of what can be achieved by new publishers and distributors, and they've been bullied into coming to Birmingham next month to show off their wares. Hopefully the very low entry price will encourage lots of bored families to take a look at what is on offer.

Of course, if it is to succeed, the Expo needs to follow the German model in getting people to actually sit down and play games (rather than following the wargames show tradition, of having people wander around, looking at all the pretty displays). It is only by engaging with the public, by showing them what they have been missing when they first see something like Settlers Of Catan, that things can move on from year after year of Monopoly re-issues, Connect 4 and Risk.

To that end, I volunteered a while back to host a game of Heroscape. Now it's something of an exception - a game designed for the mass market, that is readily available in the UK (OK, it's absent from the current Argos catalogue, but it was in the 2005 and 2006 Autumn/Winter books), which is actually a very good game. How do I define very good? Well, it needs to have lots of meaningful decisions, some (but not too much) luck, lots of interaction between the players, and plenty of variety (in any given game of Monopoly there are probably 5 important decisions made; in a game of Heroscape, you probably make 5 every turn).

In terms of having a participation game for the public, it is important that the game looks good, that it be relatively simple to explain, it should look somewhat familiar, and it must look fun. Heroscape ticks all the boxes - and it's visual appeal is particularly high. We tried it out on the public a couple of times last year, have largely ironed out the kinks in the way in which we explain the game and get people playing, and the reaction has been universally positive (it helps that although the game is simple enough for children, there's enough depth for adults to sink their teeth into).

So I've been planning and thinking about how to show Heroscape to people at the Expo - we had a small trial run at the Birmingham Central Library the week before last http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/library.htm I think what we've got planned should be good fun, as well as having a certain "wow" factor. It's a shame that its left to individuals to publicise good games when they come along, though - Hasbro in the USA has marketed Heroscape much more aggressively, as a result of which it is widely available - and pretty popular.

If you're in Birmingham on the 2nd or the 3rd, do make sure that you pop by and say hi. I'll be the looney next to a table full of robots, vikings, paratroopers and samurai, trying to stop the dragons and elves from taking over the world.

I'll make sure that I do a proper blog post - with pictures - when we're done.

We're all going to the zoo tomorrow.

2007-04-08T08:53:00.000Z

OK, it was actually yesterday. Hey, maybe it's a British thing, but I find that places like zoos, DIY stores and lawnmower museums have an almost irresistable pull on a Bank Holiday weekend. And it's hard to resist when you have a family to entertain and a new lens to play with.

Twycross Zoo is one of those places I went to as a child. Not much has changed - except that they don't do chimps' tea parties, the enclosures are all modern, and the prices exhorbitant. OK, so everything's changed except the location, which is about 25 minutes away.

So me, my D40, and my new 70-300VR went to the zoo yesterday (on the pretext of it being a family day out. The deal was I keep my little girl well supplied with ice creams, and she doesn't tell everyone that Daddy spent the whole day taking photos).

I really enjoyed using the 70-300VR. In an ideal world, it'd be a couple of stops faster, would cost half the price and weigh a third as much, but for wandering around the zoo it did just fine. Actually, if I could change just one thing about it it would be to have it focus closer. I shot about 200 pictures, got maybe 20 "keepers". Most of the best shots were around 200-250mm, but occasionally I used shorter or longer focal lengths. I'm sure that everyone has their own idea of an "ideal" zoo lens, but this worked well for me.

Most of the pictures were taken through glass (actually scratched, mucky perspex, but it's quicker to say "glass"), and some of them have suffered from colour-casts, reflections and a general lack of punch. The sun was strong and the sky clear, and trying to get the sun and the subject and the enclosure windows all in the right place was somewhat tricky (hence the harsh lighting). These are a few of the good ones. No PP, just straight from the camera. (They look a touch "washed out" on my PC monitor, but look fine on my CRT. Neither of which has been calibrated.)

Meerkats on guard:

These guys looked real old - I just forgot to check exactly how old. The giant tortoise:

Bonobos, our closest living relative.

The orang utans were what made the zoo worth the price of admission. The gorillas were just lazing about in the sun (and the photos were pretty poor). The chimps shouted and screamed a bit, but were clearly taking the weekend off like everyone else. The bonobos were pretty active, unlike their chimp cousins. But the stars of the day were the orangs.

The group consisted of an elderly female, two younger females and a baby. The two younger apes spent most of the afternoon squabbling over a sheet that had been hung over a tree to make a hammock. They tipped each other out of the hammock several times before it fell down. Then one of them grabbed the sheet, headed up the tree, and slung the hammock over the branch again. Quite smart, I thought. At one point it did look to get a bit nasty between them, but the old girl strode over and quelled any trouble with a glance.

The youngest was about two years old. At times, quite needy, clinging onto one of the adults. At others, quite adventurous. Sensible enough to stay out of the bickering over the hammock.

Apparently they're going to be wiped out in just a handful of years. Mostly due to our obsession with palm oil (and particularly its use in bio-deisel). Bio-deisel has got to be the single biggest con of our time. Save the planet by chopping down rainforest, to plant a cash crop that gets burned so that some moddle-class morons in their Chelsea tractors can feel good that they're not using deisel pumped from the desert. And still our politicians talk about bio-deisel like it's a good thing.

I swear, this little chap shows more sense (and does a lot less damage) than either our Government or those ghastly 4x4 drivers.

Books

2007-03-16T17:56:00.000Z

Finished reading "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch. Rather good. Found on the "fantasy" shelves (where almost all of my reading material comes from), it's about a long con expert grifting in a city almost indistinguishable from early Renaissance Venice. With a revenge plot thrown in.

Though I bet my "summon author" spell fails miserably :)

http://myelvesaredifferent.blogspot.com/2007/02/summon-author-is-good-term-for-common.html

Right now I've got a big pile of books to get through.

I read George R R Martin's "A Feast For Crows" at the start of the month; at the second attempt. I don't know why I never managed to get into it when I first got the book, as this volume is as good as the rest of the series so far. However, there is a definate "slowing down", both in terms of the pacing of the story and the appearance of the actual books themselves. Hopefully he's not coming over all "Jordan" on us. Though I still hold the Wheel of Time series in high regard, I just hope that RJ manages to get the epic finished.

Just finishing the Jasper Fforde Thursday Next sequence. Silly stuff. And a return to the sort of exchanges that opened the series, after all the BookWorld stuff in the previous two volumes. Not a series that I will feel compelled to re-read in the future, though.

After that, well I'm waiting on the first two books by Joe Abercrombie to arrive from Amazon (who are currently reporting a 4-6 week delivery window, unfortunately). If they don't turn up on time, then it might be K J Parker's previous paperback that gets read next. I really enjoyed her first trilogy and the second was also very good - but she does lose a few points as a result of my suspicion that she might be married to Tom Holt. Not so much because I don't like his books (I don't, but can't hold that against anyone), but because I didn't like him - or his views about my field of work - very much when I met him a few years ago.

I have some Games Workshop "Warhammer 40k" books to read at some point. Bought on a whim because from time to time, their background material could be quite readable - nonsense, but readable (and certainly better than most of their games). They are probably just the thing to read post-lobotomy.

And finally there's Understanding Exposure, by Bryan Peterson, which I am getting through at a rate of a few pages every few days. Highly recommended to all budding photographers who want to move the dial on their camera away from the "auto" setting once in a while. I'd recommend his "Understanding Digital Photography" over this one, though. There's enough repetition of material between the two books to make reading both unnecessary, but either gives a very good grounding in some of the technical aspects of photography using SLR-type cameras. It certainly helped me to understand what I was trying to do with my moon shots the other week.

I don't know if I mentioned at the time, but I was using an old 300mm telephoto lens. This meant that not only did I have to focus manually, I had to shoot in manual mode - setting an appropriate aperture and shutter speed, without the benefit of in-camera metering. Knowing not only what all those settings meant, but how to actually manipulate them to get the image I wanted, was pretty important.

Lunar Eclipse

2007-03-04T00:53:00.001Z

OK, forgive the broken links of a couple of days ago. I wanted to get something posted quick, and always planned to come back and do a proper job. We had a lunar eclipse last weekend. The Moon was full, totality was between 10.45pm and 11.45pm, and for once the skies stayed clear. It wasn't even that cold. It doesn't get much better than that. I stepped outside with the Nikon D40, a 300mm manual focus lens, and the world's worst tripod. I got some nice, sharp pictures at high shutter speed, but as the light from the Moon dimmed I had to use longer and longer exposures - at which point, a thumping heavy lens without a tripod collar on top of Jessop's finest £20 tripod was *never* in any danger of producing good images. Ah well. I clearly need a better tripod and some more lenses. Obviously. During the longer exposures I was getting a few dots on the screen. I had written them off as some sort of stuck pixel fault with the camera - they were in the same position vis a vis the Moon in each shot. Then I noticed they were in DIFFERENT positions on the actual image. Hmm, not a camera problem then. Turns out that the one nearest the moon is actually Saturn. Neat, huh? Oh, and I've just realised that I've missed tonight's episode of Life On Mars :(

Snow!

2007-02-08T17:22:00.000Z

Ha - bet you don't get THIS in New Zealand! (Actually, I think that they probably do - in fact, it'll be cleaner, drier, and possibly ski-able. But I bet that they don't make really tall snowmen).

Sorry about the hopeless pic - new camera, left it on ISO1600 by mistake. (GRR - either use MANUAL mode and THINK about what you're doing, or leave it on AUTO. Mucking about in P mode without checking stuff like this leads to hopeless snaps. Ah well.)

Back garden before we started:

Dice Tower Construction.

2007-02-03T15:58:00.000Z

First of all I started with an outline plan. I wanted something that was at least bigger and sturdier than the first dice towers I had made. I liked the arrangement of rods placed horizontally across the tower instead of the usual fixed slopes, but the original design only worked well with one size of dice and would "trap" larger dice within.

Those early efforts were 3mm thick acrylic - on the limit of what can be scored and snapped by hand. Going up to 4mm thick meant that everything was going to have to be cut with a jigsaw - no worse than score & snap, but still a pain.

While looking at materials on the supplier's website, I noticed that they did a laser cutting service. Not cheap by any means, but it would eliminate the need to lots of tedious sawing. And the laser cutter could pre-form the holes for me, so no drilling either. Of course, to keep the price as low as possible, they needed a CAD file (to send them hand-drawn plans would have pushed the cost sky-high).

So, the next task was to learn how to use some CAD software. While honing the design - both were worked on in parallel. There were wrong steps along the way with both. For example, I wanted a wider tower, but the rod placement got complicated. Too wide, and you could only fit the outline of one tower on a sheet of plastic - I needed to get two out of each cut sheet.

Finally I had a design that looked fine. It would clearly handle a range of dice sizes and it had a fold-out tray at the bottom. There was no chance to "prototype" it - either the design was right, would work, and I'd be happy, or I would be spending almost £200 on plastic fit for the landfill. The designs were sent off, credit card handed over, and fingers firmly crossed.

Disaster In The Making

The courier arrived with a big package a few days later. In it were 4 sheets of immaculately-cut 4mm acrylic, and enough 4mm diameter acrylic rod to make up 8 towers. Time to assemble the first one.

I had used a glue called Tensol-something-or-other for the earlier towers. Superglue is right out - it leaves a nasty "misting" effect around the join. Tensol is a thick solvent that "welds" two pieces of plastic together, taking about ten minutes to set, and over the course of about 24 hours creates an insanely strong bond. How strong? Well, I tried to snap the ramp out of the tatty test-piece I'd done some time before, and the plastic broke down the middle - and not along the weld joint as I had expected.

The drawbacks are that it has to be applied by brush, and then the pieces held together precisely while the joint set. This was OK for the joins of my 3mm towers - none of the edges were truly square anyway - but it wasn't going to be good enough for towers that I wanted to sell. The other problem is that it was very difficult brushing the glue onto exactly the right places - any excess etches the plastic surface. The benefit of using Tensol is that the joint is nice and clear, though.

The solution lay in using the same solvent in a much thinner consistency. The solvent is sold in the UK under the name "Fusion", and has the same viscosity as water. So if you have two closely-matched components, as my laser-cut pieces were, you can just introduce the solvent to the edge of the join and capillary action causes it to wick into the whole joint. As a result, the tower sides can be clamped together and squared up before the glue is introduced, so the finished towers are less likely to wobble! It's also easier to use the right amount of the solvent (though spills have to be wiped up in a split-second, or they will mark the surface of the plastic. Downside is that the joint isn't quite as clear as with Tensol - but it's still very acceptable.

The first tower of the batch was assembled by hand, with Tensol, while I learned what order things had to be assembled in. I wouldn't perfect the process until tower 7 or 8, but that first tower taught me a few things - ditch the Tensol, and use the "clamp & wick" principle; clean all the parts of fingerprints before you glue them together, because it's well nigh impossible afterwards; and also that I'd made a mistake on the plans.

This was a big set-back. Not a total disaster - the first assembled tower would indeed function with various different dice, and the "ramp" made from a row of rods worked well. But I had got the size of the tray wrong - it was 8mm too narrow, and couldn't be assembled as designed. I tried a bodged solution, but it looked like a bodge. There was no alternative - another £80-odd to get a sheet of replacement parts cut.

Unfortunately the Christmas holidays intervened. Instead of having a few leisurely days to assemble the towers during the break, the request for more plastic languished in someone's in-tray until their return to work after the New Year. Ah well. It was all sorted by the end of the first week of January, the replacement parts had arrived, I'd tracked down a supplier for Fusion (and the necessary syringes to apply it - despite the relative ease that addicts seem to have when it comes to sourcing their syringes, a hobbyist faces a much more protracted search, aided by an overly-aggressive spam filter on my email account).

The most tedious part of the assembly process is cutting the 4mm dowels to the right length. It took over two feature films to get them all done (using a simple "measure, score and snap" process). The New Year television schedule wasn't a total waste of time, then.

The only really tricky part is clamping the pieces together prior to introducing the solvent. I tried a couple of different clamps before hitting on a style, and method, that worked. The tray needs careful handling to get the sides on square (and the tiny G-clamps I had were only just big enough to do the job); the tower itself was easier, but had a nasty habit of collapsing suddenly as I made fine adjustments or tightened the clamps up too much.

Once everything is clamped up, actually injecting the solvent is pretty easy. Almost entertaining, even, watching it wick along the length of the join. This is where having the pieces laser-cut would really score heavily - it made straight, square joins much easier to achieve, and the finished edges were straight without being sharp (on the 3mm thick acrylic, some of the edges were very sharp).

15 minutes later, release the clamps. Glue the base onto the tower, slide the rods into place, and use a bit of solvent on both sides of each rod to fix them permanently in place. The folding tray hinges on the bottom rod of the ramp, and was the only really tricky join - it's important to get enough glue in to fix the rod to the tray, but a tiny bit too much and it will start to wick along the side of the tower, and weld the hinge so it won't work. Thankfully this didn't happen to any of the 8 (one got a tiny bit of solvent in somewhere it shouldn't, and the hinge squeaks a bit as a result, but this will ease with some use).

There we are. Job done. Each tower probably took about 2 hours to prepare and assemble, although having got the technique sorted now I reckon I could probably do a tower in about 45 minutes.

By making 8 of them, I had made 7 "good" ones and one that might be described as a prototype. Although it probably had a value (it's mostly square, reasonably tidy, and works fine) I destroyed what worth it had when I attempted to learn some polishing skills to remove some noticeable blemishes. As a result of the disaster that unfolded, leaving deep scuff marks on the back of the tower, I elected not to try to polish out any of the much less noticeable scratches and marks on the "good" towers. Hey, they're plastic. Although acrylic is pretty tough and hard-wearing, they will inevitably pick up a few marks along the way. Mine just come with a few built-in.

Actually, I think I'm over-stating the problem. You'll not notice any blemishes on the finished towers apart from on the test piece. I am, by nature, something of a perfectionist, though. For the same reason, I'm still not completely happy with the joins. Using Tensol did provide an almost invisible bond between pieces; the Fusion bond is good, but visible. I suspect that the solution may lie in controlling the atmosphere in which the bond is made, using applicators which are perfectly clean and unaffected by the solvent itself - a solution that lies way outside my means.

If one day someone wants to order several hundred of my dice towers, the answer will be to out-source production to somewhere that they perfect the assembly. And flame-polish the finished item. Does the world need several hundred deluxe acrylic dice towers, though?

Dice Towers Done!

2007-01-14T20:43:00.000Z

I'll do a full post tomorrow, but I just wanted to say YES! I've finished all eight of the dice towers.

Now it's a matter of finding homes for 6 or 7 of them. I wonder what people will think they are worth?

True cost - in terms of materials and tools, but allowing nothing for labour - probably amounts to about £45 each. Labour-wise, each one probably took about 2-3 hours (including the design work - by the end, I'd got assembly down to under an hour).

One of them squeaks a bit when folding up the dice tray (I'm guessing some glue got into the hinge part), and another just looks a bit scruffy around the joins (better than all my previous dice towers, but not as good as it's 7 siblings - I'll sell it half-price as a "factory second").

But overall I'm very happy with the results.

A week speeds by ...

2007-01-13T22:28:00.000Z

Was it really a week since my last post?

Seems like 3 days at the absolute most. Weird.

OK, work was pretty busy this week, and gaming was limited to giving my father a brief kicking at Battlelore, but still - a whole week? Are you sure? Wow.

I'm hoping that tomorrow will remain dry (somewhat optimistically, given the way it's been tipping it down ever since Christmas) so I can take Lauren to Sutton Park. As a thinly-veiled excuse to take some outdoor pictures, obviously. If it manages to stay dry for the requisite amount of time then I'll be back on here sometime later with the results; and I'll also put up a few shots of the finished dice towers (boy will I be glad to see the back of them).

Does anyone know if I can post movie clips here? I'm just thinking that one of the tower "at work" might be a good idea.

2007-01-13T22:13:00.000Z

No photos today - I've been staring at transparent plastic for hours, and can't face getting the camera out.

The good news is that I have managed to assemble five out of the eight dice towers, and should get the rest done tomorrow - then I need to work out what people will actually pay for these little beauties.

The first one was a little ropey, thanks to poor preparation (fingerprints on the insides) and learning what order, and with what glues, they need assembling (I'll keep it as my "spare"). But I'm very happy with the other four (none of them have been flawless, flawless being defined as "Kohinohr diamond" standard).

I'll take a "family photo" of all eight tomorrow :)

Here's another pic of the tower

2007-01-06T23:28:00.000Z

There we are - this photo shows the hinged dice tray.

Dice Towers

2007-01-06T23:07:00.000Z

I enjoy boardgames. Many boardgames employ dice. Some of the best boardgames employ many dice. And one of my favourite boardgames uses a LOT of dice.

Now it's not the cleverest game in the world, or the most intellectually challenging, or even paticularly "grown-up", but I do like Heroscape. A lot. But I got bored of the dice scattering all over the board every time they were required, so I started to think about dice towers.

Dice towers were invented by the Romans (who knew a thing or two about dice games; in particular they knew that the average Roman legionary would rob his own grandmother, and given half a chance would even cheat at dice). The typical design is a square tower about 8" tall, which contains three slopes inside. Dice are deposited in the top, bounce off these internal slopes, and roll out onto a tray at the bottom properly randomized.

Well. I wanted a dice tower. Except I decided that ordeinary, "start of the first millenium" designs were not for me. I wanted something different.

I also like the visual appeal of pachinko machines. Pachinko is a Japanese gambling game, their equivalent of the slot machine or one-armed bandit (only with even less skill as far as I can tell). The machines look like big bagatelle boards, and work by bouncing lots of ball-bearings off lots of little pins. Visually and sonically appealling or jarring depending upon your point of view.

So I decided to design a dice tower using the same basic idea - instead of slopes it would have pins or rods to bounce the dice off. ANd of course it had to be transparent, to show off the dice as they counced around inside.

The first version I made was from balsa and thin dowel, just to prove that the idea was sound. It took me about 20 minutes, and demonstrated that yes, it would work, but careful placement of the internal rods would be cricial to avoid dice passing straight through the tower without being randomized, or worse, getting stuck.

So next I ordered some 3mm thick acrylic sheet and rods, and some rather expensive plastic welding glue, and made four towers to a carefully thought-out design. The first one was a complete mess (learning to handle the glue, and also what order things had to be stuck together in), but the other three were pretty good. And they had been carefully designed to work extremely well with the dice provided in Heroscape.

Hasbro decided to release a new expansion for the game, with larger dice. Disaster - the new dice would just get stuck in my dice towers - they were too large to fit between the rods. So, it was back to the drawing board.

The basic idea was sound, but it was time for a design that could handle any size of dice, small and large. It had to be stronger and more substantial than the "mark 1". And it needed to look really good. Those factors determined that the new tower would be made from thicker acrylic, with stouter rods. But I couldn't cut thicker plastic (3mm is JUST thin enough that you can score it with a knife, then snap it along a straight edge - most of the time. But it didn't often leave a perfet 90 degree angle).

I drew up some plans and sent them off to be laser cut. I used this place - http://www.modelshop.co.uk/services/s_07.htm - and I was very happy with teh service. I might detail here all the tribulations I had getting the design spot-on, and the costly mistakes I made along the way, but the long and short of it is I have a "kit" of parts upstairs to make 8 new dice towers from, and I've just finished gluing the first one together.

Improvements over the "mark 1" is that it's thicker, heavier, handles any size of dice, has a fold-out dice tray, and nice straight edges! I'm still getting the gluing technique right, but this first one was *almost* perfect. The next step is to assemble the other 7, then sell most of them to try and recover some of the material costs.

OK, Just One More ...

2007-01-02T17:52:00.000Z

In an effort to break the Blog's bandwidth limit on the first day, here's a full-sized, straight from the camera pic of Lauren plus Polo (the bear, not the mint - hey, she chose the name, I had nothing to do with it).

No post-production at all on this one - you're getting the JPG as the camera intended, all 6 megapixels.

OK, the levels are a little off - blame the photographer (who in turn will blame the harsh, pop-up flash). Of course, I can probably fix this by spending more money.

The colours seem OK (except the oak floor - in reality it doesn't look quite this good), but the background is a little dark. On the other hand, if the shot brought out the detail of the TV cabinet and contents then you might stop looking at Lauren, and as the whole point of the shot is to show off our little stunner (yes, and Lauren), there's not much point in my worrying about the background.

By the way, the polar bear looks miserable because Lauren's right cheek is covered in chocolate spread, and she's in the middle of smearing it all over Polo's face. I look just as unhappy when she tries to do the same to me.

A Photo Of Lauren

2007-01-02T16:56:00.000Z

If there's a point to this post, it's (i) to see if I CAN actually post a photo without bringing the net to a grinding halt, and (ii) to announce the fact that I now own a DSLR.

WHY I need to own a DSLR is a different matter, given that I only ever take what could politely be described as "snaps", and spending money on a new Nikon is somewhat unlikely to actually improve the objective quality of the snaps. But right now, I am enjoying owning a camera that takes the picture when I press the button, and not a geological age later. And there's all that wonderful "window shopping" that I can do for new lenses (I gather us serious photographers actually call lenses "glass" - helps differentiate us from the snapping oiks, I suppose).

Anyway, here's Lauren on her scooter. Taken with the new Nikon D40. Redeye (I thought that I'd escaped that particular bane of compact cameras, but it still shows up in a small percentage of photos) removed using the in-camera software, then (again, in camera) reduced to 640x480).

One of the things that I rather like about the D40 is the way that I can get away without having to load up Photoshop for simple tasks like this. Of course, no amount of in-camera work or post-production can alleviate the effects of poor composition. So I apologise for the inclusion of the door frame, and the discarded coa in the background that makes Lauren look like she's got some sort of growths sticking out of the top of her head. I have taken better photos, honest, but this was chosen because of the red-eye fix (I thought that the camera handled it really well; I remember back in the day having to use Photoshop to recolour each and every pixel on the pupil - so if you think that reading the Blog is tedious, spare a thought for people who had to retouch digital photos by hand).

So that's me playing with my favourite Christmas present, taking a picture of Lauren playing with hers. After spending the last 7 days zooming round the lounge on the perishing thing, it's now been banished to outdoors.

No harm was done to the skirting boards during the making of this movie.

First Blog Post

2007-01-02T16:37:00.000Z

Lord knows why I've started a blog - I'd promised never to bother, as no-one will be in the slightest bit interested in what I have to say, and frankly 99.9% of blogs are self-indulgent tosh anyway.

And this blog will not be one of the 0.1% worth reading, I promise you.

So why bother? Well, I thought that it might be a handy page to upload various bits of junk to that would otherwise only clutter up my desktop. Photos that the family might want to see (if ever they manage to use a PC without formatting the HDD). Recipes that Jan has tried that - despite all her best efforts - didn't poison me. Projects that I'm working on (wasting money on, more like). In short, stuff.

I might post self-indulgent blatherings one day, snapshots the next. Memoirs of a games player. A book review. Or more likely I'll forget all about this place. I hope for all your sakes' that it is the latter.