<insert crazy ramblings here>

Anyone fancy joining me at an up-coming sandpit?

The evenings I've been to have consisted of a couple of newly designed games they are trialing (sometimes involving running around outside), and a few perenial favourites like Wearwolf, and Dadist Trivial Pursuit to pass time while waiting for you slot on a big game.

Monday 22 February on the Spirit Level at Royal Festival Hall. All Free! I know a couple of people who are going to this, so anyone else fancy turning up?

Friday 26 March 2010 at the Victoria & Albert Museum for their monthly late-night opening. Almost certainly a free games, bigger ones may have a small charge. Don't know anyone who's turning up yet, but Echo Bazzar (Victoriana text adventure RPG, twitter login) are running something there!

Saturday 12:30, Ex-movie military uniform sale North Wembley Station (Not a lot of women's stuff apparently).

Saturday 15:00, Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academey of the Arts. AKA the one with big gun that fires blocks of red wax every 20 mins.

Sunday, day: Frantic last minute sewing.

Sunday evening: The Grand Cosplay Ball.

In case anyone's interested there's a small Stitch 'n' Bitch meeting in Islington tomorrow. It's moved from weekly to monthly, and is about the only place I manage to find time to knit these days.

Or crochet even. I think I'm going to try and knock up a design for a small Amigurmi on the bus ride there, and see if I can finish it that evening.

Last night I went to sandpit #10 for some unusual games.

Aside: Hmm, I'll need some new nicknames here.

Aside2: Just realised I never wrote up Sandpit 8. hawkida, stefzilla, Ladybird, and Chef went then.

• We signed up for Mexican Thumb Westling, which took all night, so we didn't get to do any of the other big / outdoor games.
  
  Instead we played some of the pick up and play games. First of we played Exquisite Corpse story. Write a line and word or two, fold over and pass on. One of these was brilliant. Two were funny, and one made no sense at all.
  
  Then we got into a fairly large round of werewolf (about 20 people), in which Chef accused me of having hairy hands, and that I must be a wolf. I wasn't but Ladybird was, and IIRC won!
  
  stefzilla made it to the final of Mexican Thumb Westling.

Floo, StarShirt and Ladybird were there for sandpit 10. This time they had ticketed it, and set each game to last an hour, so you could get three in. However they had sold out.

So back to the pick up and play games.

Dadaist Trivial Pursuit was surprisingly good. One person reads out a random question from a Trivial pursuit card, and the others then read out the most surreal answer on their cards.
"What colour are all snakes eyes?"
"German"
"A Cow"
"Michael Flatly"

Next I rounded a few random people who were waiting 20 minutes for their game to start and tried to host a quick game of Werewolf (which I ought to explain here, but don't have time. Read more if you want). No one there had ever played before, and I'd never hosted. It went okay, but not great. StarShirt was lynched straight off as the Villagers thought he was smiling too much, so must have just killed. He was innocent.

Then we tried to play a simplified version of Mao, a hidden rules card game, but that didn't go so well.

At this point we were thinking about leaving when the game of "Super Secret Robot Werewolf" descended on our table, so we snuck onto that. It was a Werewolf variation set on Battlesta a space ship, with crew, cylo super secret robots, a security officer, and a science officer with a cylo robot detector. StarShirt was lynched early on as the Crew thought he was smiling too much, so must have just killed. He was innocent.

I was not. For the first time ever I was a werewolf cylo robot. I think the highlight of the game was when someone announced that they were the science officer, and they knew who a robot was. The certainly convinced us, so the secret robots all backed up each others arguments, and convinced the crew to lynch him. At the end of the game it turned out he'd been lying anyway!

Oh and we won. 3 cylo super secret robots took out the crew of 13.

Anyone care to join me at a pervasive games night next Wednesday?

Last time I went to Sandpit, I ended up in a Mexican thumb war, so missed out on the pervasive outside round London stuff.

Wednesday 22 April 6:30 at the ICA. It'll cost £4 this time to be guaranteed a slot on one of the 3 biggest games of the night. I'll buy my ticket tonight.

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Oh, and current to-be written posts:

Eastercon - Utterly utterly fabulous weekend. Don't think I made it to a single thing that was directly about SF. Oops. ToDo: Programming I did make it to and highlights. The in-depth report will go into a fanzine I appear to have announced I'll do by Plokta.con. bohemiancoast, Bill Burns, johncoxon, ceemage, agreed (in principle) to write something for it :D

Reading List. Two Novels. Two Fanzines. About 10 Comics.

Currently to-be written posts that are looking like they won't get done:

Webcomix Thing con-report.

Picocon con report.

Finally found out what that flag was:

As part of The [latest exhibition at the Hayward Gallery], Wallinger's 1996 work, Oxymoron - a large Union Jack flag that swaps the traditional British colours of red, white and blue for the Irish flag colours of green, white and orange - will fly on the Jubilee Flagpole on Jubilee Gardens, Southbank Centre.

In my defence it is a very bluey green.


The only place I could find online that mentions this London art, is Yorkshire Evening Post. Huh?

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More internet fail:

Web 1.0

http://london.iop.org/meetings.html

Web 2.0

To find out details of meetings at the branch centre nearest to you, visit the London and South East Branch website at www.iop.org/activity/branches/London_and_South_East. From the menu, select "London and South East Branch Calendar" then "Map". On the map, select the drawing pin where your nearest centre is shown. The dates of forthcoming meetings will be displayed. Click on a date to find full details of the meeting.

Yay! Replacement copy of the DFC heading my way. An what a nice reply I got from them.

"We are so sorry that this misfortune befell your Issue 37!"

( World Domination Meme )

Heading to a pervasive games night tomorrow, with hawkida and potentially a few Joinees.

or what I did in 20 mins this lunch time.

( Yog-Snowthoth the snowman )
{ETA}
( Bride and Groom spotted in the snow )

I've spent lunch time sorting out plans for the coming month or so. Let me know if you're interested in any of the below.

Avenue Q, the adult musical version of sesame street finishes it's long west end run in March, so I'd like to go see it before it goes. Cheap tickets seem to run out by February. The cheapest January ones I've seen so far are £20 for the Friday 23rd matinee but I can't make that. So £30 {edit: Looks like £25 should be possible} on another evening. Anyone interested?

On Friday the 23rd I'm planning to go to Shunt. An nightclub cum art venue under the vaults at London Bridge. Since a mate will be doing circus stuff there that week.

I read jabberworks's LJ for three reasons. Firstly she's a brilliant illustrator, whose daily doodles are simply fantastic. Secondly she draws one of my favourite DFC strips. Thirdly she really has her fingers on the pulse of the UK small press scene.

Alternative Press Fair, Euston, Sunday 1st February 2009, 12pm to 6pm.
I think I'll aim for around 2ish.

St. Jude's Gallery
Details: Mon, 2 Feb, 6-8pm opening; exhibition runs until Thurs, 12 Feb.
Bankside Gallery, 48 Hopton Street, London SE1 9JH. Open every day from 11am-6pm.
Anyone work near the South Bank and feel like having a look one lunch time?

I can't make late night Science Museum or the BSFA's Michael Swanwick Interview on Thursday 28 January, as they clash with a Karaoke thing I'm going to with a few mates from a previous Job. Grr. In fact they both seem to be on the last Wednesday of the month.

I want to go see Yes Man, but suspect it'll be out of the cinema's soon, so have probably missed the boat on trying to organise that one.

Sudden realisation: Some people born in the '90s are old enough to drink now.

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I ran into an old friend I haven't seen since University on Regent Street the weekend before last.

We spent about 5 minutes catching up as we walked round to Oxford Street. Realised that we both knew a reasonable chunk of what we'd been up to since Uni via facebook and went our separate ways.

It's kind of sad really. Social networking sites mean you never completely lose touch, so you can never really serendipidously reacquaint.

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Should I get the time I want to write up my thoughts on a couple of books I read recently. I usually don't get around to it, so I'm hoping that putting this here will prod me into action.

Special Topics In Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womak

They're sort of related, in odd ways. Both are "written" by teenage girls about a year of their life. Both books change character as the book progresses, so you feel you're not reading the same book you started out with.

They're also very, very different. I don't know if I'd have related them to each other, if I hadn't read them (almost) one after the other,

Anyway, I enjoyed them both, and would recommend them.