are you bored yet?

Tension mounts, well for me at least, interest wanes, for Jason. A massive 4 wins in a row has set me up for "2 match points".  All I have to do is win 1 or more of the next 2 games and victory will be mine.  Of course if I lose both, then on goal difference Jace wins.  I lose.



"In many ways you're both losers", anonymous

The Comeback kid

Having managed to squeeze in two more games yesteday, the score now stands at 3 all.  With an almost unassailable 60 points in goal difference - its all or nothing in the last few games of the series for Jimmy Mac!

What's that you're choking on Jace?  oh a piece of humble pie.....

Lessons from Mary Shelly

Two blogs in one day. There must be some drama. Well there is of sorts, for all us gaming types. I've coerced one of my colleagues to start playing board games, it may have been the bright shiny iPad (what still no product review?) version that drew him in but now he is in, well lets say he's hooked. After many games where the student has performed well and the patient but sage old master has coaxed and mentored him, and sufficient games were under the belt, the student declared its time to score - a true gamer at heart. This week we have set ourselves a challenge, play 10 games of Small World on the iPad and record the scores. In case of a draw we'll use point "goal" difference to declare the champ. Monday was a washout - too much work for both - yesterday saw us manage 2 games over lunch with a draw and Student up on goal difference. All fine so far. Today has been an humiliating defeat for the old master, 2 - 0 to the student. Faced with this stunning performance, the student was gracious, and courteous in victory and with self effacing humility reinforced the quality of the lessons he has received. Not. With taunting and jibing, and claims of "you're finished old timer", we have engaged in a little email debate. The scene is set, justice must be metered out, the universe must be brought back into balance. Game on for tomorrow :-)

Sent from my iPad

"Honesty makes people sad"

To all my software development and project management pals.  Being on the bow wave of technology and technology adoption by corporate entities can be tough ;-)

Check out more Dilbert

Its about time

So I have had a self instigated moratorium on blogging for a while. Largely due to good weather (don't fancy being stuck at the computer for too long), good wine (couple of 'scoops' at the end of the day and I'm poleaxed), too much work (although I am conscious of the Steerpike maxim from my last attempt at this excuse - "you choose how much you want to work" - a little simplistic for my ethos but a grain of truth nonetheless) and too many end-of-term events. Anyway, with holiday season almost upon us I thought I'd better get this one off my, errr..., chest.

I've recently downloaded an app for my iPad (device review is long overdue - suffice to say 10:10) and it has pushed many buttons for me, the app I mean. I find a great satisfaction in knowing that mechanical watches with ever miniaturised and complex, accurate movements are manufactured - yes I love watches - I am also fascinated with Astronomy, thats the study of celestial objects not the study of terrestrial newspaper fillers. If you were confused by that reference you're probably a sagitarian - they always struggle with concealed irony. This app then, observatory, is designed for people like me - in fact its so perfect I sat there wondering for a brief egocentric-moment if I had actually commissioned it.

I'm not sure the purpose of the app is immediately clear, nor should it be, I have used it to marvel at the differences in various measures of time, to explore the heliocentric movement of the planets, to examine the "accuracy" of time at different points in history, to discover the position of celestial bodies at specific historic events and finally and most importantly to explore the physical, conceptual and philosophical nature of time. I have flicked back and forth between graffiti-pedia and the app grappling with the meaning of Solar Time, the Solar Day, Sidereal Time, The Equation of Time and now I am astounded by the complexity of evaluating what we simply call "a day".

Eventually, as is its wont, my mind drifted off to the subject of time perception. I remember reading that in reality our brain processes a sequence of images and uses "trickery" to make us believe we are seeing a continuous stream rather than this continual stream of separate stills. If one were able to process more images, one would in effect see the world in slow-motion (relatively speaking). This is one reason why we can't catch the fly with chopsticks, it processes many more images per second than we do. So where did this lead me? beyond the capacity to reason is the honest answer, so I was able to experiment - the app can "animate" the solar system with a number of different frequencies. Year, Month, Phase, Day, Hour and Minute. Enough for eons of experimentation. I'll publish the results when I'm done.

Sent from my iPad