Q

I finally started putting my new computer together from its constituent parts, and I bought DDR3 to go in it. Well, I should have looked harder at the motherboard spec, evidently…

Anyone:

a) want to buy 4GB (2 sticks) of DDR3 RAM from me, I paid £83, make me an offer.
b) want to have for free the old DDR1 RAM (2 1GB sticks) from my old computer, oh yes, it was time for an upgrade. (plenty of other bits going spare, including a *single core* processor, how retro.)
c) want to sell me at least 2GB of DDR2 RAM for less than the market price, let me know quickly as I’ll probably cave and go to Crosswood tomorrow otherwise.

On the plus side I’ve sewed up a hole in my coat, and Jimmy and I got another 5 geocaches today, bringing our total to 22. Lots of fun!

Was great to see folks from out of town visiting last week. Sorry I was so snuffly. Jimmy and I went to see Electric Six for his birthday (yes, they are still going and have released 6 more albums (of varying quality) than when I last paid any attention to them) on Saturday in Birmingham. Our plans were thrown awry at several points along the way…

1. I was so ill Wednesday evening that I almost didn’t make it out for Jimmy’s birthday meal. That night I didn’t sleep a wink and was feeling far too hot but also shivering, leading me to believe I had fever. The next day I convinced myself I had swine flu, which, given the symptoms *at the time* was fairly reasonable. I got myself a useless swine flu number for England and started thinking I might not be ok for the concert.

2. I stayed off work the rest of the week, causing me to leave the tickets on my desk.

3. I decided to print out the tickets again Saturday morning, only upon arriving on campus, we discovered the entire network down, so we couldn’t use Jimmy’s computer or a 24hr computer room to get anywhere.

4. I have no key to my office, where the previously printed tickets were, so I had to get a friendly gent with a key to let us in.
First success of the day here, we get the tickets from my desk, noting the address of the venue, O2 Academy, Dale End so that I could plan a route with my phone.

5. We head back to Jimmy’s car to discover a flat tyre. He changes the wheel whilst I try to buy some lypsyl at the union shop, as my lips are still killing me from the cold. Shop is shut.

6. I get lypsyl from Morrisons in Newtown. We have a fairly uneventful journey to Brum. We go round in only a couple of circles before finding the car park to Birmingham Central Travelodge. We park. It is £6 for 24 hours, which is what we thought, and Jimmy was prepared enough to have brought it in change, the clever bunny.

7. We can’t check in until 3pm, we are told. We wander off to the german markets and I soothe my lips on some lovely mulled wine.

8. We do a bit of looking at shops and fighting through crowds and then return to our travelodge, only to be told at checkin “you’re not staying here, you’re at Newhall Street”. Whoops, my bad. Off we trot to our actual hotel, leaving the car where it is. We find our actual hotel (much nicer and closer, in fact), check in, and have about a half hour break before getting changed ready to go to Dale End for the concert at 6, as it states on our ticket.

9. We wander back out again, arrive at the venue obviously too early as it all looks shut. We go for a pint and a bit of grub, and come back at 6.

10. Venue is still shut, despite sign outside suggesting it is the correct location. Two other groups of attendees appear. Only one of these thinks they are going to see Electric Six, the other has Shed seven tickets for the same venue. We begin to feel mild panic. The Electric Six group say “Oh, it must be over at the new place” and proceed to hike across town. We follow, seeing no better option. The Shed Seven people follow too.

11. After a long walk, we discover they were right. The O2 Academy has moved to a new location, and has 2 rooms. Both Shed Seven and Electric Six are on. There are 2 shortish queues and they haven’t even opened the doors yet. We get in with no hassle, get pints in, start looking at the youth of the crowd and feel old, deride the first act, love the second act, enjoy Electric Six but feel knackered by this point and the room is like a sauna. I think I was about 2 songs away from giving in and dancing in my bra. Didn’t help that the setlist was so long!

So thanks, Ticketweb, for making our day just that little bit more complicated, by not informing me in any way that the venue on the bloody ticket was not in fact the location of the concert. If it hadn’t been for the group ahead of us, we’d probably never have found it. Genuine thanks to those knowledgeable people, whoever you are.

Despite all the aggro it was actually a nice weekend, we did a little shopping, raped Borders for cheap books as it’s closing down, and ate at the cute Mount Fuji cafe that Penny recommended to us, where I had the tastiest Miso soup and a lovely chicken bento box, whilst Jimmy had an even tastier pork bento box with delicious sticky sauce. It’s round the corner from Wagamama, good for small lunches and devoid of queues — or at least it was at 12pm on a Sunday. I want to go again already.

I’ve not updated in a while, and since last time I’ve got my own flat, been to Portugal, been to Bicon and released a survey for my research. It is the latter to which I draw your attention at this very moment:

Compare Music (go on you know you want to)

Please rate some music, if you have the time. I am working on a reward system to encourage you all, possibly in the form of a shiny facebook trophy to display to all and sundry from your profile. I am also working on a non-facebook version for those of you who are anti-social-networking!

Again I find myself with little to say that hasn’t already been said by Dan, but Bicon was fab as always, Portugal was fun but not warm enough, and my flat is still on the wonk, and still nice to have.

At the weekend I attended Herofest, a Live Roleplaying festival down in south Wales. I have up until this point never done any live roleplaying, nor have I really done any table-top roleplaying. I have played quite a lot of Oblivion, but that probably doesn’t count. Despite my complete lack of experience and my trepidation, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would really like to go again. It’s all Rich’s fault.

We travelled down on the Thursday as Rich was faction rep for the Dai Fae Dyne so needed to be there a day early. On the way we visited a Welsh cider mill where we spent copious quantities of money of even greater quantities of alcohol, some of which I have brought back with me, you’ll be glad to hear. After trying a few “tasters” of cider, which were about a third of a pint each, I was a little bit tipsy and might have sung all the way to Candleston, which is roughly here.

Having arrived we met with the few others who were that early, and tried to pitch our tents. Rich had brought a 5m diameter bell tent which proved not too difficult to put up once we found enough space for it, whereas I’d borrowed Jimmy’s 3-man tent. It’s a nice tent, but without any instructions I’m ashamed to say it took me probably 45 minutes to pitch. One reason might be that I started with the outer sheet both inside out and rotated 90 degrees from where it should have been. The other is that the double guy ropes confused me. Ah, it’s been too long since I went camping.

After that I think we went shopping for food that we never ended up eating because we were too busy to even keep a fire going most of the time. I did buy two fold-up chairs though. I spent most of Thursday and Friday worrying about my costume, which I’d basically picked up in a few charity shops at the last minute with the instructions “find something green and brown”. It was alright, not too obviously modern but I still ended up buying a few extra bits and pieces from the traders at the site. I now own a large brown cloak, which I might take to the beach and sit on to ensure it gets some real-life use.

I paid for the meal deal which was well worth it, as it meant we got Friday supper through to Sunday breakfast for £30 and no need to cook over the fire, and proper cutlery and plates and a tavern with a roof in which to eat and drink without getting rained on. The food was pretty good, especially the tasty chilli, and a full breakfast was plain necessary after a day of running around. Talking of the facilities, unlike mose camp sites the showers not only worked but were quite strong and plenty hot enough. The toilets even had loo roll. Whatever next?

The rest of our faction turned up a bit later, until there were 6 of us. Uglee (Shane) the half-orc warrior, Angus (Dave) and Haggis (Andy) who were wee free men warriors, Prudence (Helen) the witch scribe, and Fylgar (Rich), who was faction rep so automatically was a healer-scribe, and Esk (me) the bard healer. Since my guitar didn’t work properly, I ended up being Esk the cursed Bard for the duration.

(photo courtesy Tim Salmon, thanks Tim)

Our faction — The Dai Fae Dyne — are essentially neutral ruthless traders, so I spent a lot of time making series of lucrative trades so that we could get what we needed, but also what everyone else needed and then sell it to them at high prices. This was really fun and got me running around to see all the camps, some of which were impressively decked out, in particular the Wizards Concillium and the Dym Wan.

One thing I thought was a great idea was having each faction play some wandering monsters. Costumes were provided and there is very little that is more fun than running around looking scary and trying to hit small children with a sword. The kids’ faction, the Squires, was actually one of the most violent ones, as they seemed to lack the subtlety of diplomacy and intrigue and far preferred to beat people up. Can’t blame them, really.

The people were by and large less geeky than I expected, and yet the roleplay standards were higher, despite which I found myself welcomed by mine and other factions equally well. I threw myself into things on the Friday evening when I was left representing the Dai Fae in the Tavern accompanied only by Uglee, who being an orc was not a lot of use when it came to wheeling and dealing. Since I didn’t have the scribe skill, I couldn’t write anything down, so I had to remember 3 or 4 different trade agreements that I’d tentatively made before the rest of the faction came back and someone could make a note of it all!

Being new, I wasn’t entirely aware of all the rules, which meant that I’d made the assumption that you couldn’t be attacked in the Tavern. This is almost entirely true, however it turned out that there were certain exceptions to which I was not privy, with the result that I was coming back from the loo, spotted an enemy, went in to tell Haggis, and then we both turned round to find it raised up preparing to strike — I actually screamed and tried to run but failed and took a body hit - went down, crawled off to the side and waited for someone to come and heal me. Pretty much everyone had run off, but eventually someone, I think Uglee, came and fixed me up. It was a properly immersive scary moment, which pleased me as I’d clearly suspended my disbelief to the right degree.

The focus of the weekend was the ritual of the Wizards Concillium, which appeared to involve setting fire ineptly to fireworks and a big sigil dug into the ground and filled with cotton balls. It provided an impressive end to the Saturday night, especially when it inevitably all went horribly wrong and we had monsters coming out of our ears (well, mostly the rift gate, but y’know).

After we handed in our game money for safekeeping we sat around in camp for a good while chatting before going to bed. After going to bed, the Keepers sang “I am the Music Man” with their own instruments each round, so I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I didn’t mind really, if I had been a bit more awake I might have got up and joined in, but that would have involved getting up and out of my cozy sleeping bag. Not going to happen.

Sunday morning we were out of character again and made a leisurely day of packing up and returning home, stopping off at Dave and Helen’s for a cuppa on the way. It was quite odd getting breakfast called out in my own name, and I nearly forgot that ‘Claire’ — rather than ‘Esk’ — was me. That could have happened any morning though, I suspect. We made it back to Aber at about 5.15 and I still went to Buffy night despite being fairly knackered.

It was somewhat like a big murder-mystery with strangers and lasting over a weekend, but with subplots and sidetracks along the way, and a lot more freedom. So if you don’t like dressing up, or you don’t like camping, or you don’t like new people, it’s possibly not for you. However, if you like most of these things, and also cider, you should let me know and come along to the Interplanar Fayre in July! If you’ve managed to read this far down, that is. Sorry about that.

I’m not going to witter on about this because there’s not a lot to say, but I did indeed go without buying clothes for an entire year, with the exceptions of a) a fancy dress costume and b) A pair of shoes because I was getting blisters going up the hill. These shoes were £7 from Barnardos, so not exactly a big spend, eh?

[edit]:Of course, the next bit was an April Fool!
Having done so well at renouncing worldly things, I have decided to convert to Buddhism. Following the 8-fold path and the 5 precepts, I shall be renouncing both alcohol and meat, and will speak only truth from now on.

Because it’s as good a time as any to set some goals. In the spirit of S.M.A.R.T. objectives, (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely):

1) Get a bit fitter. The specific goal is to be able to get up the hill without being out of breath. I think this will take about 3 months, and I plan to use Wii Fit when we can find a copy to hurry this along a bit.

2) Record some music. Specifically, get at least one song to completion (recorded, mixed and put somewhere public on the internet) within the next 2 months. I have 3 candidate songs so this should be achievable.

3) Improve my credit rating. It’s a bit crappy at the moment but with a proper regular income I should be able to fix this. Target is to have a rating in the green (experian) within 6 months, using powers of “paying things off on time” and “setting up direct debits on the right account” and even “not using credit cards unless absolutely necessary”.

4) Over the coming year, cook for myself at least twice a week. Cook for someone else at least once a month. (This second part gives me the fear like you wouldn’t believe. The first part I have already achieved this week.)

5) Contact my Dad every week, whether it be by phone, email, SMS or IM.

Regarding the last challenge I set myself on here, I’ve only once broken my “no buying clothes rule” which times out in April. I bought 2 bras for £6 when I was back in the fens, because I needed new bras, and they were too cheap to pass up. I hope you can all forgive me. I think this “no buying clothing” rule will slide into a generally frugal sense of purchasing afterwards. There’s an outside chance it will instead result in a massive spending spree at the Trafford centre. Bet now!

The current worst problem is that I don’t really have a pair of day to day shoes that aren’t a) full of holes, b) have big heels and look like school shoes, or c) cheapo white trainers that make me look like a chav. I’m sure I can last out the next 3.5 months with these 3 pairs, though. If not, I could start wearing my hiking boots everywhere…

Nurofen Tension Headache and Nurofen Express contain *exactly* the same ingredients. (324mg Ibuprofen Lysine) However, the one with “tension headache” on the box is £2.99, rather than the £2 the other one costs. This advice brought to you by Claire, who has had the same headache since Monday. In related news: Ow.

Devil tooth has been removed. I’m not posting a picture of my mouth while there’s a gaping hole in it, however. My face was numb for several hours after the procedure, which was painful during the injections and after then just slighty creepy, and then after the anaesthetic wore off, painful again, which it still is a bit.

I have the tooth at home but I don’t know what I am going to do with it. I’m going to have to learn to reposition my tongue a bit further forward now that I have the space to do so, but I can still talk pretty much as normal so that’s a good thing. The weirdest sensation I can report is being able to touch the inside of my bottom teeth with my tongue, which is something I haven’t been able to do for about 10 years. It feels really weird.

I’m going to try a hot drink now for the first time in over a day. On the plus side I discovered I can make really nice cold lattes with the compsci coffee and a huge amount of milk. They probably won’t appreciate me doing that a lot, though.

Telling BiCon stories is a bit like telling skiing stories, I reckon. In the case of skiing, there is an unwritten rule that you must relate only tales of horrific danger and fantastic injury, nevermind the fact that most of the time you spend skiing you’re not injuring yourself or doing crazy stunts. BiCon’s rule is debauchery — all the stories that make it out are ones that involve sex, nakedness, or at very least double-entendre. The truth is, like with skiing, it’s because they are the ones people want to hear about. No-one wants to know that you did some knitting or had a beer, just like no-one wants to know you skied uneventfully down a green run and had a hot chocolate.

The problem with this is that people get the impression that skiing gets you injured, and BiCon gets you laid, neither of which is entirely true. Nevertheless, here’s my list of memorable moments from BiCon 2008, in not really chronological order.

• Arriving to find so many people I recognise it was hard to greet them all before the bar closed.
• Playing Apples to Apples with a few friends on the first night as a great escape from the tiring socialising.
• Braving the naked lunch on the first day with some trepidation.
• Arguing with Dan in the ‘conflict resolution in poly families’ workshop, in a deliberately ironic sort of way.
• Being so knackered by workshop 3 on the first day that I took a nap instead.
• Experiencing my bisexuality through building a lego and plasticine model.
• Coming fourth most impure (out of about 8 people) in a purity test party that took about 4 hours. “Does it count if…” was asked probably more times than there were questions.
• Having overcome previously mentioned trepidation, playing naked twister in the naked chillout zone.
• Sitting in a paddling pool full of people (but not water) at 4am drinking terrible Zinfandel Rose wine and throwing cushions at people making bad puns. (mostly Dan — eventually Dan got hit even when it wasn’t him who made a pun just because it was expected to have been him)
• 300 tiny toy lions, one of which I have named Brian the BiCon Lion.
• Using tantra techniques to have a conversation with my masculine and feminine sides. No, I didn’t really know what the workshop was before I went in. However, it was relaxing, fun and an interesting bit of self-reflection.
• Eating ice cream naked, which I’m pretty sure I’ve never done before, at the last naked lunch of the conference.
• All the hugs. So many hugs. I like hugs.
• Failing to leave for about half an hour because of all the people I wanted to give my farewells.

And no, not so much as a snog from a pretty girl or boy — it’s just like all those times I went skiing without getting a concussion.

My absolute favourite thing about BiCon has always been the totally accepting atmosphere. This year I really felt I contributed to that acceptance, rather than simply basking in it myself. It is thanks to the efforts of everyone present that I felt so at home, safe, and able to be myself despite being surrounded by strangers with often very different interests and ideologies from my own. The atmosphere somehow engenders the temporary suspension of prejudice and assumption and even common sense, allowing all questions and answers to be valid. It’s a situation I couldn’t survive for more than about a week before I would have to punch someone for being so damn NICE, but it’s lovely escapism.

I met a lot of very interesting people, discovered some worldly truths and learned a few new things about myself in the process. Back to the real world for now, but I’ll soon be impatiently looking forward to BiCon 2009.

Not as exciting as the title may have led you to believe, but I’m having a tooth out.

Many of you have become aware that I have a tooth in virtually the middle of my lower jaw which has been affectionately named “Devil Tooth”. Clearly visible in the above pic, I’ve had it since I was about 14, but the dentists and orthodontists of the time kept refusing to do anything about it. Not only would they not remove it (because it’s an adult tooth) but they would not remove the milk teeth (I still have 3) that are in the place it should be, citing “we have to wait until the rest of your teeth grow through” as a reason for doing nothing. Well, come my 16th birthday, (still no more teeth, mind) they decided that yes, now they could do something about it, but since this was a cosmetic issue and I was suddenly over 16, I’d have to go on a 2 year waiting list, and pay for the privilege. I was so annoyed at being messed around I decided I’d just not bother having anything done.

Since that time, I’ve never really trusted dentists, and indeed didn’t have one for the 7 years I was an undergraduate student. However, the looks of shock and fear from those to whom I have revealed the tooth, not to mention it causing me a few annoying problems, led me to finally bite the bullet and decide to have it removed. This has taken so long mostly because NHS dentists are hard to come by in this area and they don’t take kindly to students who say “but I do live here, I just happen to also be a student…”.

Walking down the hill I spotted that Denticare on North Parade were taking new NHS patients. Booked an appointment, got seen, got told that the price of this checkup and the extraction all told would be £39, and that it could be done as soon as next week. That was so easy I should have done it years ago, it’s a lot cheaper than I thought it was going to be, and I don’t have to go into hospital or have a general anaesthetic.

Now I’m just petrified about the actual procedure. Prepare the soft non-threatening foodstuffs and the saltwater for the 2nd of September. Eeep! Anyone else had an adult tooth extracted without general anaesthetic?