Royals Day

After spending most of the day cleaning the car, I decided to sit down and watch the Royals (the Rajasthan Royals) play the Mumbai Indians at T20 cricket.They are currently 56-2 having to beat 94. Well played, gentlemen!

Oh, apparently there's some sort of wedding going on, but, despite contributing to the cost of the event, I didn't get an invitation, not even to the reception. I did know how it was going to end, though, so it's not like I really missed anything.
Update: Republicans have held an alternative street party in Holborn, London, where you can pledge allegiance to anything you want, rather than the current monarch. So far they have "pledges of allegiance to English beer, test cricket, Dr Who on Saturdays and cake". Sounds like my kind of country.

Virus

As befits an Easter weekend, I've been laid low by a flu virus, or at least a bad cold. It's taken about five days to shake it off and I'm still coughing up yellow stuff, but at least I'm on the mend. One of the many undesirable effects of commuting into London.

I'm of the belief that people are susceptible to certain viruses which others are not. Either that the viruses are keyed to us or we are keyed to the virus. We are supposed to develop an immunity, but the virus mutates slightly and we become susceptible again. "Virus Wars: This Time It's Personal"

Holiday!

Eleven Days!!

Confused

As a Manchester City supporter, I am somewhat confused by what happened this weekend. On the one hand, I'm glad that City have managed to make it to the FA Cup Final for the first time in thirty years. On the other I'm even gladder that the Stretford team didn't make it. That it was City that beat them is just the world turned up side down. The only thing better than this would have been to beat them in the final. The final is going to be a bit of an anti-climax. For the record, the last time we played Stoke, we drew one each.

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

One of my favourite RSA animations.

RSA Animate - The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?

Salute 2011

I decided to go to Salute this year, which is the big wargames shindig at ExCel in the docklands area of London. What actually happens is that it ends up being a trade fair for wargamers and associated types, such as myself. As you may know, I'm an avid collector of Role Playing Games, especially sci-fi, as well as interested in the modelling hobby in general.

ExCel is a somewhat charmless concrete and steel structure next to the old Royal Victoria dock. It holds about a dozen exhibition spaces, which are just large aircraft hangers, and a long concourse joining them all together, which has seating and the usual franchised eateries.

I spent about an hour browsing the stalls and looking at the various displays. There was a particularly good diorama of one of the Gallipoli beaches and a wargame in progress of a battle of the second British Civil War, 1938 (imagine that what happened in Spain had happened here instead). I came away with a load of flyers for a steampunk wargame, called Dystopian Wars; a wargame based on 70's cult TV; a steampunk horror game and an MDF base specialist.

I also managed to pick up a few RPG's which I hadn't seen before. These are:

• Fiasco, what might be termed a party RPG, very informal and loose, based on the Coen brother movies such as Fargo and Blood Simple. Something bad happens and you have to somehow try to get out of the fix you're in.
• Diasporia styles itself as a hard sf game set in the far future.
• Spione, a spy RPG, of which there are surprisingly few. Spycraft is the only one I can think of, and there must be an espionage extension for GURPS and other games, but you'd expect more.

MongoDB: The Future of Databases?

I've been having a look at NoSQL databases recently, to see what all the fuss is about, and have become rather enamoured of MongoDB. It's early days, but I've found it to be rather intriguing. Throw away all you've learned about data storage and start afresh, storing data structures, rather than just data.

The Expendables

The Expendables has introduced me to a new experience: feeling sorry for Jason Statham.

How bad is it? Everybody has a walk-on part, even Sly Stallone; Mickey Rourke acts everyone off the set, including himself; Dolf Lundgren acts in it; Eric Roberts is quite good. So, yeah, pretty bad. It makes even "The A-Team" look good, and that was awful.

Ooh, yes!

I'll have one of those please!