Gaming

Just a quick update on gaming since I havent posted about it in a while:
I'm still meeting with the group every week which totally rocks. I suppose there's always a fear that after the first few weeks people will get bored and not bother but there's a definate core of players that come almost every week* and a good few players that come occasionally as well.
There are some really nice people from different age groups and different walks of life and it's great to hang out with them.
The gaming itself is introducing me to lots of new games that I would never have played otherwise and that's a really good thing. Also the games we are playing are more "for the family" which means if I play one I really like, I can buy a copy and play it with my family** which also rocks.
The one downside is that most people aren't interested in the stuff I own which is a shame because it means that I cant really play any of the stuff that I loved enough to buy over the years but it's ok because I'm still loving the upside :-)

*i have missed 2 weeks so far and i was gutted about both
**most of the games I have played over the years aren't really family games***
***hmm, i seem to be using astericks quite a lot recently - is it annoying? let me know if it is and i'll try to write better :-)

T Minus 2 Days...

Just two days to go until the due date for the baby. It's weird, people ask me if I'm getting excited yet and I dont know what to say. I'm not lying awake at night in anticipation of the big day or anything but I am happy the day is finally (nearly) here.
I think I've been really caught up the name saga* which has come into my mind any time I've thought about the baby. Also I suppose I'm concerned that I will have forgotten everything from the first time round although logic dictates that if I worked it out last time then I'll probably be ok this time as well :-)

*we still havent 100% decided on a name...

Bathroomio

Yeah baby! The bathroom is now officially finished!
It's totally cool and I highly recommend coming over and using the facilites ;-)
I'm so glad we got it done and even though it cost more than I've ever spent on anything ever before in one go* it was well worth it. Also we probably did it for far less than could be expected by shopping around and by using a friend of a friend of a friend** to do the actual work :-)


*the house doesnt count since we're still paying for that....
**actually i'm still not sure who he is - i think laura's mum knows him

First kiss?

There was a song on the radio this morning on my way to work which had some line or other about the singer's first kiss. (specifically the line included the phrase "with tongues" which is possibly a bit too much information but there you go). It got me to thinking, although I can remember who and where and lots of other things about my first kiss, I can't remember how old I was.
Tracking back through various childhood relationships I can narrow it down to me being 12 or 13* (in fact I can narrow it down to the first three months of me being 13) but I cant pin it down further than that. Maybe reading one of my old diaries will give me a clue but I didnt keep a diary that far back so it's unlikely.
Anyway, the only reason I mention it is that something which was such a significant event at the time has dwindled away into the far reaches of my memory. It makes me wonder what else I will forget in the future that seems of great significance now. It's a real incentive to keep blogging so that one day I can look back and remember things that my memory has forgotten.


*laugh if you will - it seemed like everyone else beat me to it at the time although in retrospect it seems completely irrelevant...

Colour

In some ways I really love my drive to work. I also really hate it - who wants to spend 30-60 minutes every morning on the motorway?
Some mornings though my mind just wanders and I start thinking about some really weird stuff.
This morning I started thinking about the lunar eclipse (I'm not sure how i got onto it but my mind was totally wandering around the whole subject of the universe and stuff) and how amazing it is that the moon turns red. I dont know if anyone saw it but it was really cool. And now comes the science bit...
When the earth is directly between the sun and the moon, the moon should logically be totally black. After all, there is no light landing on the moon because the earth is in the way.
Anyway, what really happens is that light is refracted (more simply it is bent) as it passes through the earth's atmosphere and therefore some light does make it to the moon. Long wavelengths* of light are less likely to be scattered by the particles in the atmosphere and therefore the predominant wavelength of light that makes it to the moon is the one that appears red to our eyes.

Then my mind wandered again. How amazing is it that our eyes receive all this light which is broken up into different wavelengths* and make a distinction between those light waves that gives us a clear image that we use to navigate the world? It must be an incredibly complex process and it's a really good example of how our biology has adapted to the physics of the universe.

Anyway, I just thought it was something worth sharing. We kind of take our sight for granted but it is an amazingly complex system of biology and physics coming together to provide us with what is probably the most important of our 5 senses.**

*complicated science: light is actually made up of "waves". just like waves on the ocean, some are short and frequent whereas some are long and less frequent. our eyes interpret different wavelengths as different colours from long (red) to short (blue). there are wavelenghts that our eyes cant see which is why you can use special cameras to see in what we interpret as being completely dark.

**hearing is equally amazing to me. when we speak we basically vibrate the air in our mouth which vibrates the air in front of us which vibrates the air around it. eventually the air around your ear is vibrated and your ear is capable of picking up those vibrations which your brain can decode into speach.
Interesting fact: light travels at 299,792,458 metres per second (about 186,282 miles per second) which is just stupidly fast. sound travels at 344 metres per second (in air) which is significantly slower but it's interesting to note that when you speak (loud enough), one second later you have disturbed air 344 metres away.

Kevin Smith

Last night I had a quick stop off at the Trafford Centre to give Laura a bit of a break from Anya. The long and short of it is that I totally should not be allowed to go shopping. I suppose that's what credit cards are for...
Anyway, one of my purcahses was Clerks 2 which we watched last night and I can highly recommend. When I say "highly recommend", there are a few Terms and Conditions: if you havent watched and enjoyed most of Kevin Smith's other movies then dont watch it and if you have a weak stomach and dont approve of highly vulgar humour then dont watch it.
I also bought An Evening With Kevin Smith 2 which I'll probably watch this weekend some time. The first one made me laugh more than I remember laughing in a while. You know it's funny when you're crying from it :-)

Pictures Update: Update

I've just noticed that once you are viewing a picture you can also run a slideshow of all the pictures in that section.
How cool is that?
:-)

Pictures Update

I've switched the pictures section of my website over to software generated pages.
For me this means less work when generating the pages ;-)
For you this means lots of good things (hopefully).
1. It looks different. It's up to you whether this is good or bad but I think the new design is fairly slick.
2. Navigation is easier. Go take a look and see :-)
One thing that isnt immediately obvious is that when you click on a thumbnail and get a bigger version of the picture, you can click on various areas of that picture to do different things: Click at the top to go back to the index. Click at the bottom to view the original picture at its full size. Click at the left to go back one picture. Click at the right to go forward one picture.

I hope everyone likes the new navigation. I was aware that the pictures section was getting overcrowded and this software breaks it down much better so that rather than a huge index page with nearly 60 lots of photos you get three pages of index and rather than a huge page with thumbnails of all the photos you get various pages to scan through.

Anyway, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts so that I know if it was the right decision to switch. I'm unlikely to change back now anyway but if you think I can improve it at all then let me know :-)
ttfn