Programming, NaNoWriMo, Gaming and Social News, the Socialist Tide

[tcpip]

Not surprisingly both prior employers have contacted me asking for advice. One requested that I come back in the future saying "that your finger is really on the pulse" on what needs to be done. Er, thanks but no thanks. I still have one hefty web contract outstanding and as such I've spent quite a lot of time reviewing and rebuilding my Apache, PHP and MySQL knowledge along with installing OpenSuSE in preference to Ubuntu on my desktop - and just in time for major changes between Novell and Microsoft. Further, because it rocks, I've started programming in Free Pascal, something I haven't done for a good fifteen years.

Also simpy because I can I've joined NaNoWriMo yesterday. My novel is entitled "The Outcast Girl" and is loosely based on the Ten Thousand Islands PBeM roleplaying game I ran many months ago. In a nutshell, it's a historical and anthropological study of Malay society in the early sixteenth century, with a monomythic narrative. Two thousand words done, fourty-eight thousand to go!

Gaming this week consisted of further development in our DragonQuest world (I'm really enjoying the additional grounding in the earth sciences this is giving me), a new initiative system for AD&D that actually makes sense, Urban Arcana last Sunday where the noble PCs saved St Kilda's prostitutes from a "Jack The Ripper" demon, and Diplomacy and Carcassonne (courtesy of anthanum on Tuesday. Came second in Diplomacy, but was thoroughly thrashed in Carcassonne, which I played for the first time. The latter is really quite a brilliant production. The rules are very simple but the strategic depth is excellent. Social life included a wonderful fourtieth birthday party for splodgenoodles with culinary delights provided by tenbears and halloween drinks and zombie movies with severina_242 and _zombiemonkey

In world politics over recent months I've noticed a run of victories for various left-wing and socialist parties, including the re-election of Lula in Brazil, the re-election of the socialist president in Bulgaria, a surprise win by the Social Democrats in Austria, and even little Montenegro. The only exception is Congo where the politics are personality-based rather than ideological. Alongside all of this, the world's biggest union has just been formed. Is the world going a slight shade of red without the mass media noticing? And what will this mean for that Stern Report? It takes New Zealand newspaper to accurately display Australia's view.

Comments

[severina-242.livejournal.com]

Hey, either do I. I'm very selective about my reading and have been for years (which is a contrast to my childhood years where I would read anything and everything I could get my hands on).

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

In any case, I have written some fiction in the recent past. And, according to some, it wasn't a bad first draft either...

http://www.mimesisrpg.com/pipermail/runequest4_mimesisrpg.com/2005-September/000007.html

and

http://mimesisrpg.com/pipermail/runequest4_mimesisrpg.com/2005-October/000009.html