Palfrey's Life

WARNING: Spoiler alert. I'm specifically spoiling about things in 2x22 ("New York"), but may well jump around elsewhere. I'm not specifically intending on spoiling other earlier episodes, or touching on big plot items, but I'm also making no effort to not do so if it serves my point. You have been warned!

So, I've been curious for a while about the notion of the real world behind Glee. Or, in other words, what actually happens, away from all of the flights of fancy. It seems to me like a fascinating discussion within the diegetic world of Glee, and most probably in other series. There's probably a good word for what I'm talking about, but I don't know what it is yet. Feel free to enlighten me!

All of Glee is (fairly) realistic, but not connected. This is very much in the mainstream musical tradition from which it draws, but I'd like to explain further what I mean (again here with the lack of vocabulary, being a non-scholar in this area). It's realistic in the sense that pretty much everything *could* happen (in the sense that given sufficient planning and orchestration making all those singers and dancers appear out of nowhere could be done), it's just not connected (e.g. if someone breaks up with someone else, the chance of them having a bunch of their mates around to do a dance number about it implies a level of narcissism not present even in the average teenager).

This implies to me that the diegetic elements are split: there's what actually happens, and there's the flights of fancy and musical theatre emphasis. Both are needed to build the full story, but I'd still like to see them occasionally split and know what the darn term is for the split!

( spoilers... )

Thoughts anyone?

If you go along to a tech event (like say OpenTech this last weekend), one of the first things you'll probably be directed to on entering (other than the bar) will be a stack of sticky labels and some pens. This is intended to solve the dual problems of not everyone knowing everyone else, as well as some of us possibly knowing each others Twitter names but not what some folks look like out in the real world. It does fix the problem pretty well, but there's a few flaws.
Enter a solution I've had in my head for a while, but just got around to building this week:( Read more... )

So, I'm in the market for a new flatmate. Actually, I should have tried to locate one quite some time ago, but my (limited) efforts have failed so far, partially because there wasn't that much pressure to locate one, but I'd still quite like to pay less rent...

So, here's the situation. I'm currently short one flatmate, and paying all the rent. This is bad, but given that's possible, I'm willing to be flexible on the level of rent paid. The only restriction here is "no randoms". Ditto for no friends-of-friends: if I haven't met you already, don't bother. There's more uncertainty in that sort of situation than I'm comfortable with, and I'd rather live alone than with someone I don't know.

Officially speaking, the rent is £617 pcm and utilities are ~£50, but quite frankly at this point, make me an offer! Preference will be given to folks who I know better/willing to pay more/move in sooner, but lower offers may well work!

It's in Bow, just around the corner of Bow Road station (prod me for full address if you don't already have it) and the transport links are great (DLR, H&C, District within 2 minutes, Central 10 minutes, many buses inc. 24 hour). It's a lovely flat!

There is the little issue that I'm probably moving out in mid-September when the rental agreement finishes as I'm intending on buying somewhere, but the estate agents we're dealing with seem pretty happy with letting me/whoever else stay on for as many years as you'd like, so you could stick around for as long as you like after that.

Um, help!

Earlier tonight dylanbeattie started tweeting a few things with the #compoundmovies hashtag. Basic idea is that you take two films, where the first ends with the same word as the first word of the second and mash them together, and some of them are pretty funny.

Of course, this obviously lends itself to automation, and my suggestion of trawling IMDB got the response from him that they've already supplied the data for me, so no trawling needed. However, IMDB contains far too many movies, most of which have names I don't even know the meanings for, and generating the data for this from the IMDB data will take an insane amount of time. However, there's also Wikipedia, which despite some complaints I'd heard about it's API, appears to be pretty easy to use.

So, here we go, a #compoundMovies generator. Either run it as "compoundGenerator.py imdb" if you've got lots of time, or as "compoundGenerator.py wikipedia <some category name>" (without the "Category:" bit). I tried it out on "British_films" and got back a few interesting things:( Read more... )

Tonight I was at the launch thing for Soho!, a board game about being editors at a small London literary magazine. I'm not entirely sure if I managed to piss some people off slighty, but it was pretty much that or shut up entirely and I'll pick honest criticism over that any day.

The core mechanic was not bad. You're wandering around London, trying to track down a bunch of writers in pubs, while navigating via various means of transport - walking, boris bikes, taxis - and that basic idea of switching between different methods was pretty good. There's a trade-off in that there's a continuum between slow methods that can go anywhere (walking) through to fast methods which will run into the one-way system and more obstructions (taxis) with bikes as a middle option.

The problem was that there was all this other crap: lots and lots of extra rules tagged onto this mechanic; overly complicated methods that take many turns to switch between transport modalities; an awful lot of board changes without sufficient player moves inbetween; etc.

I had a bit of a chat with the author, and he admitted that it's entire playtesting was him and his girlfriend repeatedly going over it again and again. It's possibly quite funny to readers of Smoke (the literary magazine this is being done off the back of), but it's not worth it for the rest of us. Given the cool shit going on with boardgames in London, this was somewhat disappointing...

I've been listening to all the talk about the cuts recently, and hearing the various ways it's going to screw over various people I know. I've just had a quick dig through all the so far listed stuff myself, and although I agree it's a fucked-up situation and I'm annoyed that I indirectly voted for this, I'm not seeing much that'll hit me. I'm seeing a rise in tube fares, possibly a bit more tax, but not much else. This is partially due to getting out of academia at what turns out to be pretty much exactly the right time, but my other things of a financial nature are also generally in the best state they've ever been, which is a big insulating factor here.

Net result is that this all feels a little distant. It'll probably feel less so once I actually see all this kicking in and the consequences hit my friends, but for the moment it all seems unreal, and that's what I'm wondering about. If it seems unreal for me, given I'm listening to various folks and hearing about what this will do to them, how does it feel to others without that level of political interest/social groupings? More importantly, how can it be made to feel more real (short of a coup d'etat and rewriting of the budget) so maybe we get more people annoyed and possibly shame the Tories out of a bit more of this crap and/or make sure the fuckers don't get back in next time?

Ideas anyone?

Today has been a day of ups and downs:

( Read more... )

(For those of you in the pub earlier some of this will be familiar, but here's the longer version for the benefit of everyone else).

After yesterday's post, somehow the time when I should have been sleeping last night instead had my mind running around plotting the possible conversations that could occur from discussing such matters (this is something I seem to do reflexively when bored). I eventually reached a discussion about the game Fat Princess. It's basically a Capture the Flag variant, except that the 'flag' is an enormously fat princess who can be fed further slices of cake in order to make her heavier and ergo harder to steal. Not having a PS3, I haven't played it myself, but it comes up in discussion on various video game sites every so often, and it seemed like a interesting variant gameplay-wise on a rather tired genre.

I started considering a male equivalent of this, given that the 'joke' can be considered in somewhat questionable taste given the intersection of standard gender roles and weight. A "fat prince" quite frankly isn't as funny, and making any of the other related male archetypes obese (knights, wizards, loveable rogue, etc) also didn't work. Somehow I ended up with the idea of vast sumo wrestlers, and instead of the multiple players trying to save the princess, I'm thinking the best defence is a good offence.

So here's the plot/game running through my head in the wee hours of the morning: it's the nearby future, and sumo wrestlers have gotten even bigger. They've also gotten rather sedentary, and no longer care about the traditions of the sport. It's therefore up to their handlers to save the traditions and bring victory once again to their metabolically-challenged masters. Hence, the cattle prods.

Basic gameplay is as follows: two handlers and their associated wrestlers, who given no other motivation will simply sit there. A handler can however prod a wrestler with his cattle prod, and if he prods them enough then the wrestler will get a bit pissed off and start to turn towards the source of the minor irritation (they've got too much bulk to be really harmed, but they can get annoyed). If you keep on prodding the wrestler, they'll go into a bestial rage and charge straight forwards until they either hit something suitably solid or get bored after a bit. Effectively you're herding your wrestler such that they eventually shove the other one out of the arena, and thus get a traditional sumo victory! Of course, you can also prod the other wrestler and distract them if you're feeling creative...

There's a lot more possibilities that can be added to the basic concept (prodding the other handler to stun them temporarily; lures for wrestlers - I'm thinking a ham sandwich with mustard; setting the entire thing on a platform that shifts according to where the enormously fat wrestlers move; etc) but the basic idea sounds quite fun. This sort of action game with the ability to set stuff in motion but then be forced to deal with the consequences of your choices is ripe for unintended consequences and emergent gameplay scenarios IMHO.

Spoiler warning: Unless you've already completed Halo: Reach, there will be spoilers within. I'm going to spend some time wittering on about other stuff first, but there will be spoilers later on. If you're intending on playing it, I'd advise doing so before reading this. I'M NOT KIDDING HERE. I WILL BE SPOILING THE ENTIRE PLOT INCLUDING THE ENDING.

New vocab warning: There will probably be words here you haven't seen before, or at least haven't explored properly. For some of you this won't be true (congratulations, have a gold star), but for the rest of us, don't worry. They're not that scary, and they actually turn out to open whole new areas of really cool conversation (for heavily geeky values of cool), and I'll be linking to Wikipedia as appropriate and/or discussing the terms.

( Read on... )

Currently I'm in possession of a number of excess items. Excess, in the sense of "I don't need them any more" and I'd like to remove them from my household in some manner. Now, some of these I could just put on eBay, but some of them I'd have difficulty transporting, or I'm just feeling lazy. Any reasonable offer will be accepted, prices start at 1 "beer" (or equivalent). Note that I may well accept offers well below the actual value of goods, especially if someone's willing to turn up at my place and take the sodding things off my hands...

Think that's about it. Let the bidding commence!