Alasdair Watson

I bought my first RPG supplement in something like three years today. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

Of course, I don’t think I’ll ever get any use out of the thing, but in so far as I have One True Game, White Wolf’s Mage is it, so I had to see how they’d packed it up. Haven’t read it yet, but a quick skim reveals that it is, at least, not awful, which is pretty good for an RPG supplement.

But now there’s a voice at the back of my head saying “Go on, run a Mage game. Just a small one. You can handle it.”

I’d like to note that I blame winterthing almost entirely for this. I suppose in fairness, I probably ought to blame davedevil as well, but he’s not exactly likely to be reading, unless it’s pointed out to him…

(Hypothetically, if I were to run a small game, say, once a fortnight, is there anyone in the London area who might be interested?)

So, after years of making “I’ll never be able to afford to buy property in London” noises, I finally did some actually investigating of possibilities. (Well, OK, what I actually did was say to my mother “Look, I don’t think I’ll be able to get anything, but if it makes you happy, then sure, go on ahead and ask some questions on my behalf.”)

It turns out that I probably can get a more-or-less affordable mortgage that would allow me to buy somewhere. In fact, as a quick look round property websites has just shown me, if I’d looked into this a bit earlier, I’d have had a good chance of being able to buy the (rather nice looking, from the photos) flat two doors down from where I currently live.

So, time get my finances in better order over the next few months…

Most of you can skip this quite safely, and I apologise for cluttering up your friends lists with it, but I’m hoping the IT bods in the audience can help me…

Well, despite my best efforts, it looks like my all in one network box just isn’t up to the job, even on a small house network like this – the port forwarding is shonky, and it falls over under anything that remotely resembles load.

So, boys and girls, I need product recommendations for the following:

An ADSL modem.
A router with built in firewall, DHCP and NAT.
A wireless hub.

If you can recommened me a different all in one box to the one I’m using (A Netgear DG824M), that you’ve used in anything resembling a serious manner, than that’s good too. My requirements aren’t vast, you understand – I wanted to hang a low-traffic server and network of a couple of personal PCs off the back of it, and be able to copy up to say, half a gig of data at a time from one machine to another without the whole thing grinding to a halt – I don’t even need the data to move fast, just to not kill the whole network. That’s all.

Suggestions for the nerd on a budget?

The other week, as part of that three questions meme, Andrew asked why I don’t write more comics. You can see the answer I gave him here, but it’s something I want to think on a bit more here, because I really haven’t written anything since last November, and other than that, I haven’t really written much at all in the last couple of years.

Introspective burblings

Except that, no, I really don’t. I think I broke the machine.

I’m going to be in Edinburgh from the 28th of May to the 1st of June – I’ve got wedding stuff to do on the Friday evening (the early part, at least, but I should be able to, ooh, go to the pub, or something radical like that) later on, and likewise on the Saturday, but the Sunday and Monday are more or less my own. Anything interesting going on?

(I may well need to sort out a couple of nights crashspace, since I think I only have a hotel for the Friday and Saturday nights, but I can sort that, or another hotel out later.)

Well, there was bmovie on Friday. That was good. I woke up in pain, which means I don’t need to feel guilty about missing the gym.

Then there was coffee on Saturday, or rather, a pitcher of “Woo-woo”. I am never ordering that again, no matter how many people want it. I’m used to barmen looking at me with expressions ranging from confusion to mild amusement, but not to having them laugh scornfully at me when I order drinks. I don’t think I like it. And after coffee, there was Colchester, to see The Last Dance and Bella Morte, who were both cracking, so thanks to marysiak for persuading me to go, and pixylatedpixie to driving us there and back, and providing us with somewhere to sleep before heading home at a more civilised hour of the morning.

Have resolved that I really must get around to seeing Devilish Presley live, too. Probably at one of their Shoreditch gigs over the summer, unless they play somewhere a bit more central. I have prejudices about the end of town, you see…

Shortly, I am off to the parental home for Sunday dinner. Unless I fall asleep first.

I stroll through battersea park at least once every couple of weeks, regardless of the season – I like to watch the Thames slip by for a bit. But it’s around this time of year that I start to get really smug about working so near the place. I’m sitting here in my favourite spot beneath the pagoda by the river – a gift to London from a Japanese buddhist sect in 1985 to commemorate Hiroshima – enjoying the sunshine, and watching the people passing by. Sometime in the last few weeks a place that rents out recumbent bikes has opened up in the park, and they look like the sort of thing I’ll have to try another time. I didn’t try the boating lake last year, either, and I quite fancy that, too.

For now, though I’m just going to indulge in my favourite bit of this time of year, and read my book in the sun.

You all know how it works by now: anyone that fancies it can leave a comment here asking me three questions, which I will answer. If you fancy it, you’re at liberty to bung the same deal in your own journal, although I think everyone else already has…

I suspect that only Thea Gilmore fans reading this are at the other end of the country, but you never know (hell, I can offer a comfortable couch, if anyone fancies a trip down South). She’s playing in London June the 10th. Anyone fancy going?