Ok. I’m a bit hungover, and I’ve been hinting at stuff for a week now. For those of you who don’t know, Polli and I have split up. She’s in the process of moving stuff to her new flat.
Not much more to say really.
Thoughts on ID Cards
Last week this article about the new Coalition ID Card scheme was pointed out to me. I went to read it in a rage that calmed down somewhat. As it was mentioned again on Twitter this morning, along with jibes at the Lib Dems I’m going to quickly note down my thoughts and why I’m less angry about it. First reason is this new scheme is aimed at online logins, it’s not an ID card you have to carry. Also the idea is that you sign up with an ID provider who verifies your ID and passed this verification to various websites, there isn’t a single point of verification but a selection to choose from. And chances are you’ve already signed up with one one of them as they are punting this to banks and credit card providers who have a vested interest in verifying your ID. Final point of difference, there is no central government database holding all your identity details. This was the main thing about the previous scheme that annoyed me, from both a civil liberties and technical perspective. Even if this was a full ID card scheme if it didn’t include said database I’d be less resistant to it.
Hope that helps.
On forums
Here’s a little thought, I was going to tweet it but it’s a bit too big for that. See here’s the thing, I understand when you’re on a chat system or IM you type fast and don’t worry too much about grammar and stuff. And again, when you’re using Twitter or texting you’re constrained for space and need to shorten things.
But why, oh why, do people write so god damm badly when posting on web forums or comments or such like? There’s really no need. It just makes you look like a gibbering moron.
Oh wait….
Mental note
Ok me. I’m on holiday next week so the big fight scene we were running last night won’t be finished for two weeks.. a few things to remember:
- There’s one Gutter runner left, for some reason the PC’s have been hitting them first. Wonder why?
- The Rat Ogre is only a little bit hurt, Tanky the dwarf is starting to panic though
- Tanky and the high priest of splattin stuff have had their actions this round.
- As have the gutter runner, three of the squishy and (f)Rat boy the ogre
- The photos were a good idea but didn’t turn out that great.
Yeah, that should do it.
Note for anyone else reading this, Tanky is a Dwarf Ironbreaker in Gromril armour who is learning some of the downside of singing the Song of Grungi all the time (or the song of hit me as the party have nick named it). Turns out having ALL the opponents having to target you can get a bit wearing. On the bright side they haven’t died yet…
Tidying up
One of the most visited pages on my site (and there’s stuff on here going back over 10 years if you know where to look) is the section about MI8. I think a lot of this might be be people searching for information on Russian Military Hardware or the REAL information about WW2 British signals intelligence or maybe information on Microsoft web servers… Due to the sites age some pages on it come up quite high on Google Searches, which is nice.
My version of MI8 started with a joke I came up with back in the mists of time (or the mid 90′s if you want to be picky). It came from the idea that the British Department that dealt with things that go bump in the night was MI8. They met up with some guys from the CIA one time and happened to be wearing conservative black suit and because it was in Utah sunglasses. One of the CIA guys misread a badly photostatted document about them and the idea of the MIBs was born.
I never said it was a good joke.
Anyway, after that I started to develop a RPG campaign idea based around my general dislike of the Cthulhu Mythos and the World of Dampness plus my desire to do a modern day horror setting. Hence MI8 was born. One core concept was that the PC’s started out as normal people not super agents, but due to circumstances beyond their control they got inducted into the division.
Later Charles Stross wrote The Atrocity Archives and sequels and later still Cubicle 7 published a game based on the books which actually made me like the Mythos. I also got round to running a MI8 campaign which went quite well and bounced of on various ideas.
So I figured it was time to get back on it, first up I’ve brought the MI8 campaign background page back into the mix and I plan on doing some more about it. My main thought at the moment is either flesh it out as a campaign background with notes for the GM and such like or write some short stories based on the idea. Either way, the base page it up, feel free to take a look and tell em what you think.
Wish I had a hangover
I’m sitting outside the doctors waiting for a blood test listening to the election results. Not up there as a happy bunny this morning.
See here’s the thing. I’m not a fan of the Tories, I just don’t like the whole greed is good thing and don’t think the markets can solve everything. Hence the coalition has not made me hugely happy on a visceral level. Still I’ve tried to give it the benefit of the doubt.
As for Labour, I was happy in 1997, when they won. But the years after soured me to them. And they don’t seem able to let go of their statist tendencies. I dislike people telling me what to do at the best of times. Their ongoing assault on civil liberties wound me up the wrong way.
And finally, here in Scotland, you have the SNP. I have a couple of issues with them, first up I think of myself as English and British, but despite living here almost 20 years now I’m not a Scot, so I find anti English and anti British sentiment hard to take. Secondly they need to crap or get off the pot on Independence, either roll out a referendum and explain how it’s going to work or shut up about it.
So that’s why I voted Lib Dem again, though I was torn, and why I’m not that chipper this morning.
As for AV… well there’s lies, damm lies and the No to AV campaign.
Shameless Plug
Little known fact, I have no shame when it comes to plugging stuff I like. Mainly because I find it easier to talk to people about stuff if they know what I’m talking about. Hence I shall now plug the new website for Dark Harvest : Legacy of Frankenstein. See what I did there?. Despite the fact that this is the book that made me try and read Frankenstein (and thus discovered I’m not a fan of the original) it’s grand. I mentioned it on the old blog, before it died, and ran some Demos of it as Conpulsion this year which were fun.
And here’s the good bit there’s a competition design a character and get signed art of them. Which, you have to admit it pretty neat. Now I would enter myself but what with the whole tangential connection and everything it probably wouldn’t be fair, I shall have to continue with my unspecified plan instead. If you ask me really nicely, and you know you see me on some kind of regular basis I’ll even lend you my copy of the game so you can marvel in it’s brilliance, design a character, win the competition and dance a happy dance. Then give me back my book and buy your own copy.
See it’s a great plan with no drawbacks.
The day today
Well I’m off to GUGS in a sec, I may try posting something from there via my phone app, just to see if it works really. There’s a Gugathon that can run late and I might get a game of Civilization going (the original) if we can get started in time. In which case I may whip up some posts about the game.
Thanks to the wonder that is the iPlayer I can also be assured that I won’t miss Episode 2 of the new season of Dr Who. This is a good thing.
Shiny
Well the blog is back up, and this weekend I plan to do some work on back ups so if I do screw the server up again I’ll be able to bring it back. Please note the design is going to be changing a bit as I tweak it. It may also look a bit ropey in older browsers, but frankly, keep up people.
More soon, right now I’m wanting to test if the updated site is going to suffer from the shotgun to the head problem the old one did. I’m hoping not.
Back with added not breaking
Look ma! No History.
Sigh
A month or so ago I did something a bit dumb, a thus stuffed up the VPS I run this server on. My dumbness was compounded by my failure to back up the site. So while I had a lot of the old static content the wordpress database? It went bye bye. Ooops.
So I’m back, with not much. More soon.