ceb's Big Log

I have finished my masters' group project, which greatly resembled a 6-week long uphill trek whilst dragging the rest of the group most of the way. Anyway, it is now done, and my enthusiasm for the subject surprisingly remains.

I've just finished reading _Das Boot_, which is traumatic but excellent.

Yesterday we marzipanned the New Year cake (like Christmas cake but we want to be able to show it off to more people). For reasons which will become obvious later, it's marzipanned in stripes. I was expecting this to be a bit of a technical challenge but the stripes sit on top of each other very conveniently and it was no harder than normal marzipanning, if a little more cutting-out/colouring faff. (The cake's hexagonal and I think this also made it easier to marzipan - no need to handle long strips of the stuff to go round the edge, I did it in six short strips instead.)

I have almost finished my Yuletide story (just got some editing to do following beta comments) and am mid-beta for someone else (and I have at least one more short thing I'd like to write).

Speaking of Yuletide, I am currently being delighted by the rather glorious _A Complete History of the Soviet Union As Told By A Humble Worker, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris_: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8 (not least for the line "Can I have a long one please?" which is so plausibly the genesis of the whole idea), and by _An Incomplete History Of History, As Written For Yuletide, In Five Acts And An Epilogue_: http://archiveofourown.org/works/138991

Yesterday I went to the International Roguelike Development Conference, a select affair which this year hit the dizzy heights of 25 attendees. Much interesting discussion on the topics of the roguelike renaissance, appealing to a wider audience, making a living, designing for mobile devices, etc. It was great to put faces to names and especially to exchange tridude anecdotes with the lovely Mr Lait.

In the evening we went to Slimelight to see my current obsession, Pretentious, Moi?, who were amazing as ever (I won't go on), and bonusly Ghost of Lemora, who were on fine form and in a jolly jubilee mood. I spent part of the changeover between the two being a guitar stand, which is a step up from the last non-Leipzig gig I was at (The Brains) where I had to repurpose myself as a crash barrier half way through the set to defend a microphone against the depradations of over-enthusiastic punks.

It has been about a decade since I went to Slimes and much has changed. A variety of previously inaccessible staircases and rooms exist, one of which has a disappointingly fake tube train in it. The old rooms have collected various additions to decor and furniture, and in one case has changed dimensions subtly, I *think*. Most oddly, there are now about four times as many bathrooms as there used to be, and in some of them nothing is wrong. (The other half are reassuringly disgusting.) The most nostalgic part was belting up the stairs two at a time as they are still completely the wrong height and length for humans.

Today I went out in the damp to be given Just William books, and on my way back I dropped into the Acension Burial Ground to say hello to Cockcroft and Eddington.

In the spirit of ten years ago I have blu-tacked yesterday's setlist to my bedroom wall, where it is making me smile.

In August I'm going to be an exhibiting an artist's book at the Assembly House in Norwich, as part of their first annual open art show.

I wasn't really expecting that to work!

Today I plastered my bathroom - we've had the broken shower replaced with a different sort and I'm making good. It was surreally like icing the wall, right down to being able to wipe the plaster off with a damp cloth if I dropped a bit. I will post photos &c. when I've finished.

Working backwards: yesterday I spent ages in B&Q buying plaster, tiles, and associated gubbins (and globe thistles). Saturday I spent lazing with damerell and collecting bruises, and we finished watching Cowboy Bebop so who will I lust after now? Friday I did 48000 errands and visited Addenbrookes. They're going to do SCIENCE FICTION experiments on my brain/eyes. More on this when it happens. On Thursday I finished some clothes, photos also to follow.

On Tuesday I went to a Science Week talk by Tim Hunkin, in which he described his approach to engineering and showed us some stuff he's built. He is the most amazing, clever and inspiring person. (Also I am lucky to live so near somewhere with such interesting stuff going on.) The weekend before that, more Science Week stuff. All the talks looked a bit aimed-at-kids, and the drop-in sessions definitely were, but we had great success with the exhibitions. In the SPL we saw artefacts from the Society for Psychical Research, including faked spirit photographs, automatic writing, and a luminous trumpet. In the Arch & Anth Museum (I must visit this properly sometime) we saw the 'Assembling Bodies' exhibition[1], an interesting mix of anthropological tools and artefacts with more modern art/science/technology. At the Newton Institute (once we'd found the entrance) we saw the 'Imaginary' exhibition[2] and played with their equation visualising software to make a kind of bent orange disc with a handle. This is more fun than it sounds...

Back even further, and damerell and I went to see a really interesting demo/talk on Japanese traditional dance, at the Kaetsu Centre[3]. Someone pointed it out to the ninja mailing list, and I've recently read Liza Dalby's _Geisha_, so I jumped at the chance to go and see some for real. There were three dancers (one of whom, Nishikawa Senzō X[4], is a Living National Treasure), each performed a dance in a different style. All three styles were very representational, but varied in use of costume/makeup/props and portrayal of a complete story versus a viginette/mood piece. It was all very graceful and some of the movements were quite familiar... There were lots of clever tricks with fans, some of which I'm sure were originally invented to make the audience go "but when I try that I just drop it in the floor!" (much like the way waiters carry stacks of plates, which I'm sure serves the same purpose). Afterwards there was a really interesting Q&A and a demonstration of the use of fans, with a chance to try it out for ourselves. We got to keep the fans (a fetching purple colour) as a reward for making fools of ourselves.

[1] http://maa.cam.ac.uk/assemblingbodies/ - I would really recommend this, and it's apparently on until December, so I think I will try to go again and write it up properly.

[2] http://www.imaginary-exhibition.com/?lang=en

[3] http://www.kaetsu.co.uk/speeve.htm

[4] Not aka Dance Hero X except by people who have been playing Chocobo Mystery Dungeon too much.

( haberdashery and ironmongery AT THE SAME TIME! )

Lessons learnt:

• go carefully, anodised rings scratch easily


• once it's done, don't mess with it - if you mess it up it'll be *really* fiddly to fix


• I need nylon pliers - covering metal ones in tape works well for a bit but if you want to do anything fiddly (see above) it's like trying to thread a needle whilst wearing thick socks over your hands


• no really, *don't* mess with it

Pictured on the other thing I made (helped make) this weekend - shelves! Oh how I love my shelves. Sadly missing some brackets yet, so pictures to follow.