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March 10th, 2008
12:29 pm - Monday links
1. Daylight Savings Time has now come into operation (i.e., the clocks have gone forward) for much of North America, but it doesn't do so in Europe for another three weeks. People with transatlantic family should therefore temporarily replace ingrained notions of "British = Eastern + 5 = Pacific + 8" with thoughts of "British = Eastern + 4 = Pacific + 7" until Sunday 30th. Traditionally there only used to be one week of this discrepancy, but this year there are three due to a combination of the USA's Energy Policy Act of 2005 and March having five Sundays. There'll be another week of this at the end of October and start of November, too.
2. I choose to believe that if any of you had known about the "Sandpit" monthly games meetings of London's Hide and Seek games festival, the London Games Fringe or Bristol's Interesting Games Lab then you would have told me about them. Yet another reason why I live in the wrong part of the country; Greater London has a similar population to the North East of England combined with Yorkshire and the Humber, and about the only other person I can think of within a hundred miles of here who might be interested is York's Thomas Scott, who is several times as creatively fecund as me. I shall merely have to admire rulesets from afar; I'm particularly taken with Texas Hold Me.
3.  whipartist points to an incredible piece of benign mischief - a two-minute musical apparently spontaneously breaking out in a food court, a bit like a low-budget Flashmob: the Opera. Not really very improv, but still extremely entertaining.
4. Excerpting from a longer article that I may or may not eventually get around to writing, I note that university sport has nowhere near the significance in the UK that it does in the US, even noting the traditional Oxford-Cambridge clashes. BUSA, the British Universities Sports Association, is the British counterpart to the USA's noted NCAA, and are holding as many of their national championships as they can this weekend in a single four-day Olymp multi-sport festival in Sheffield this weekend, the British University Championships.
The championship is dedicated to slightly over twenty old-fashioned sports, rather than delightful modern confections, with the possible exception of "Indoor Super8s". What is this, er, "Super8s"? I don't think it's the super8s.com Super8s, which seems to be devoted to the eighth grade at an unnamed school. Instead, it seems to be a rowing machine championship, which is possibly less fun. (That said, I do like the rowing machine manufacturer's "Stick With It" Challenge, a grown-up sticker chart for you to count up your exercise sessions using their device. Fun!)
I hope the championships are a major success and it looks like the sort of thing at which it would be great fun to volunteer, but in practice I think they will be doing well to get national press coverage, apart from through The Daily Telegraph who sponsor the event, not least hindered by the clash with Sport Relief. If the World Indoor Athletics Championship could only get a daily half-hour TV show, then I fear that TV for this must be some way off. Presumably this is the way that Sheffield can reuse all its Universiade infrastructure. How many UK cities would be capable of hosting this in future years? Possibly as many as six or eight... Perhaps Channel M might broadcast it when the event eventually comes to Manchester one year.
Current Mood:  dry, fortunately
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I'll believe it when I see it. :-)
Part of me thinks that the BUC staying in Sheffield and improving would be an excellent thing for the event to gain stability, but somehow moving around the country would be rather cooler. Perhaps ten years down the line it might make more sense for it to become more of a movable feast. Yay! That food court musical is brilliant!
I particularly loved the bit with the Janitor at the end. Genius!
He's the most singingest janitor I've ever seen! Same goes for you as for Dom; I'd love to see whether you and the London interesting games crowd could co-operate to create something espectacularrrrrrr. I don't have a good excuse like him, I'm just too lazy ;-) Incidentally, you were one of the people I had firmly in mind as "someone who should be paying attention to the interesting games movement". While you've made (some of?) your game design priorities pretty clear, I would love to think of you being inspired to come up with something really wacky and revolutionary. (And, probably, sadly, horribly non-commercial. But surely you're in it for the ♥ as well as the $...) I'd love to do that kind of thing.
But right now I can't. Physically going to places to do stuff isn't an option for me, so I'm unlikely to get involved in a movement which revolves almost entirely around meeting up and doing things.
Entirely reasonable; families must take priority, after all.
People can always take part remotely, by contributing to the conversation and generating interesting games and game ideas. Speaking of ways in which you are doing exactly this already, there are several Co-operative Board Game Design Project posts I need to reply to... Physically going to places to do stuff isn't an option for meSo noted, but I saw this and thought it might be sufficiently far up your boulevard that you might want to consider breaking your self-imposed rule. (Probably not in practice, but close enough that you would probably welcome being told about it...) Does indeed look fun, thanks...
What's the result of Indiana making the move to DST a couple years ago, after decades of being mocked for not doing so? It's costing us money!![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/45442530/598967) | | From: | rialtus |
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| Date: | March 10th, 2008 03:14 pm (UTC) |
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Not to pick a nit, but it's Daylight Saving Time. The saving is not plural. You are, of course, quite correct, but this strikes me as an ideal opportunity to quote Galaxy Quest: Gwen DeMarco: Take it from us. We've been all over the universe. Fred Kwan: But we've never never seen space-age values like the ones here at... Tommy Webber: ...Tech Value Electronics Superstore! [After a long pause, Gwen nudges Alexander with her elbow.]Sir Alexander Dane: [miserably] By Grabthar's hammer... what a savings. (Unrelatedly, I managed to get that last video to work; it was just my browser that was Wangernumbed.) ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/91990183/1149171) | | From: | jvvw |
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| Date: | March 10th, 2008 06:03 pm (UTC) |
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Just became aware of the all pervasive games folk the last month or two myself in fact... Yep yep, ought to be right up your collective boulevard.
Incidentally, I don't recall hearing anything from Guy LP after sending him mail. (Not to say that he didn't reply, but if he did then I have erred somewhere else along the line...) | | From: | jvvw |
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| Date: | March 20th, 2008 10:05 pm (UTC) |
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Sent you an e-mail but wasn't sure if it was to the right address - would you mind resending your e-mail to me? I'll make sure it ends up in the right place.
Gosh, hello there. I'm one of the Sandpit people; I came across this entry via Wordpress's "look, here are some people who have linked to you recently" page, but I've seen you around in people's comments for years. I don't think I realised you were another games person.
If you have any rulesets lying around but can't find enough people for a playtest, do send them over and we'll give them a run-through - and we'll be running a lot of the games that come out of the Sandpit at the festival itself in June, which runs for a few days, so if you were going to come down to London that would be a good time for it... And oh, the livejournal feed for the Sandpit is here - http://thesandpit.livejournal.com/ - if you're interested. It contains any new essays and rulesets - though also, admittedly, a lot of London-centric games news. Hello! The reverse is also true. We, indeed, have several mutual friends and I recall seeing you "around".
You have inspired me to want to do something a little more concrete with my game thoughts, but we shall see whether or not I ever bring this vague want into fruition. I have added your thesandpit link and shall follow it with great interest (and not a little envy) and likewise have started a syndicated feed for the Interesting Games Laboratory. ![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/25858883/1149171) | | From: | jvvw |
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| Date: | March 20th, 2008 10:34 pm (UTC) |
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Saw your comment here when I was replying to Chris and hope you don't mind me saying hello :-) I've seen your comments on various friends' posts too and was very sad when I wanted to show somebody your taxonomy of desserts thingy the other day and discovered that your site was down!) Are the Hide and Seek Sandpit sessions open to all and sundry? I'm organising a game for charity at the moment (Anna from Coney is involved too if you know her), and have suddenly discovered this whole new world of stuff exists that I wish I hadn't only just discovered. Hello! Yes, I really need to fix Raspberry Debacle, I'd quite forgotten about it (there's a copy of the taxonomy here, but I don't think it's visible at larger sizes to people without a flickr account). The Sandpit is very much open to everyone; one of the aims is to build up the local pervasive games community, and encourage more people to get involved in running games as well as playing them. We probably shouldn't carry on this conversation in someone else's comments, but do email me - holly@severalbees.com - to talk more about it. | From: | (Anonymous) |
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| Date: | March 27th, 2008 11:54 am (UTC) |
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TWATS |
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