Blogcoven

Okay, so it’s not all that glamorous. The past few days have been a little busy for me, in good ways, in fun ways, and in stressful ways.

Leprecon was fantastic, even though my work schedule interfered with any actual gaming other than the pub quiz. (We came in second place, but it was a good and fun pub quiz which is the important thing.) I finally made it to Goldsmith hall Sunday evening long enough to do a circuit around the main room then head across the street for a quick dinner with friends. After that I broke from the Leprecon party and hashed out the future of my weekly game, then met up with Himself for the walk home.

As far as cons go, I know nothing about how well it went or whether it was a Good Con. My part was essentially attending a party that went on for three nights. I love going out with my friends on “normal” nights, but there’s something extra special about the con setup where everyone in an extended social circle is in the same pub, and you can drift from group to group. I know none of this is news to people who have been here all their lives, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a Dublin con (9 years!). I got to hang out with lots of people I wish I could spend more time with, and that’s a good thing.

Crossposted at DixieStix.

I was out drinking both Friday and Saturday nights this week. This is not really normal for me, though that shouldn’t lead you to believe I didn’t enjoy it.

Friday night I attended a staff meeting, my first with This is Knit. We went over the stuff that needed going over, then we broke out the wine and pizza and crochet hooks. Our all-star crochet teacher had agreed to come and teach us to crochet, as most of us weren’t that familiar with the technique and we decided it was time for all of us to broaden our horizons. They were duly broadened.

Saturday night we had belated birthday pints for the Wanderer and cb, who share a birthday. I hadn’t seen cb since Christmas, so it was great to spend time with him and the clutch of other friends who showed up. I think everyone had a good time; I know I did, and I’m pretty sure both birthday boys did. I don’t go out as often these days as I used to, but nearly every time ends up being a great night. This is one of the many reasons I was so excited to get back to Dublin.

I’m very close to being done with the third log cabin block for my sock yarn leftovers blanket. I never photographed the second block, but I finally draped this one over a chair and took a picture for y’all:

The next block will be dominated by Koigu in the middle, as I’ve been swapping sock yarn bits with a friend. I’m excited about getting it started, and about retiring this block. It saw me through my thesis writing, and a lot of the stress of moving here. It deserves to rest a little while with the first two blocks.

I haven’t been blogging as much on Cobweb lately; when I end up blogging things that aren’t solely about knitting, I’ll crosspost them here. Otherwise, I’ll sequester them away at DixieStix so those who are not fibre-inclined don’t need to wade through endless knitting content.

I see cut price everything for sale these days – and some of them are frankly amazing – buy a space shuttle! Buy a missile silo! Buy all the cold war surplus modules that you need to build your own bond supervillains lair. Not that you’d want to, frankly the HR issues those Bond villains must have had would be enough on their own to put me off. But – you could have your own Tracy Island type base full of toys and I don’t know do good things? Build some sort of giant relic to confuse people who come afterwards? Read the rest of this entry »

The perils of blogging and generally sending information out of the shadowy damp ecosystem of ‘within’ to ‘the general public’ has been reiterated to me by a tale told by one of the contractors. In the incestuous world of the corp consultancy jet set (I’m not part of that, I’m oilfield) there was a girl in London who worked for a couple of banks during the boom and wrote a column for the papers. After the bust, she turned her columns plus bonus material into a tell-all book and now can’t get hired. Full stop.

Effectively all her time since college has evaporated – she has no work experience despite being 6-10 years in (not sure exactly). Rumour has it she’s working these days in a field that requires no higher education and given that my appealing physical attributes are nil, this for me would be bad.

Thus, the ongoing embargo of truly interesting stuff goes on. Apologies to all. Invite me over some time and I’ll tell you a story but I’m not putting anything online.

Over Christmas, my brother and I exchanged our traditional XBox 360 games. I got him Assassin’s Creed 2 and he got me Modern Warfare 2.

In both cases, these games demonstrate really nicely how developers should create sequels. the best sequel keeps the core feel of the original game, and adds new depth and interesting features.
Read the rest of this entry »