Where Worlds Collide

I haven’t posted much on politics lately, largely because other people say what I might want to say, only better. So I’m linking a a couple of posts from people on the blogroll.

First, there’s a good post by Matt Sellwood, now a Green councillor on Oxford City Council, giving an example of the sort of pragmatic compromises involved in making real political decisions. Have the online arguments with Amadán all those years ago done some good?

Second, Temple Stark gives us a thorough fisking of Donald Rumsfeld.

I’ve never got into Massively Multiplayer Online RPGs like Ultima Online or Warcraft. Raph Koster’s lament explains why…

The most important thing in the world is slaying something that will be back the next day… before anyone else gets to slay it.

Nothing sleeps.

Nothing dreams.

There is art and beauty in the world, but you can’t be responsible for any of it.

There is no death; there is simply a failure to show up.

Because of this, there is also rarely any mourning.

I’ve heard some Ultima Online addicts claim that UO represents deep immersive roleplaying, but I’m not convinced. Give me human-moderated text-based games any day. Ones with actual stories and plotlines, where the actions of players within the game can make meaningful changes in the world.

Richard Hall’s Economics and Theology has reviewed Richard Layard’s Happiness: Lessons from a New Science

I have to quote the introduction.

There was the “Making Slough Happy” series on TV recently. All Slough was up in arms about it: most of the miserable people interviewed weren’t locals, community groups were ignored, some of the presenters were batty, and so on. But there was some useful economics and psychology hidden away there.

Coming from Slough, I got a lot of stick from colleagues at work over that stupid programme. I responded (to the worst offender) that any attempt to create a “Make Warrington Happy” would result in the presenters getting bottled.

The review itself makes some interesting points, but I’m not sure what to make of this:

He now argues that the promotion of happiness should be a major element of government policy.

This conjures up images of Tony Blair creating a Ministry of Happiness and forcing everyone to wear his stupid rictus grins.

I’m wondering whether I can make any dates on the Mostly Autumn Spring tour. I’m not quite like Scott, who follows his favourite band all round the country, but I’d like to make at least one show.

Unlike previous tours, where they’ve returned again and again to the same venues like the Limelight Club in Crewe, (where I’ve seen them twice), this tour sees them play far and wide. Some of the venues seem odd choices, far off the beaten track. Workington, Great Torrington, and Builth Wells are an awfully long way from any major centres of population. I wonder what sort of audience such shows will attract?

Unfortunately, most of the shows reasonably close to, such as Runcorn or Preston are midweek, making them awkward to get back from and get to work the next day. The same applies to those further afield where I have relatives or friends living in the area, such as Aberdare or Exeter, making them impractical without taking two days off work Just about the most accessible is looking like Rhyl, of all places. It’s on a Friday, and I could conceivably make a weekend of it; a chance to sample the Beyer-Garratts on the Welsh Highland Railway, which should be running by May.

HippyDave is getting cold feet about the band, has decided to give this tour a miss. I’m not sure I completely share his opinions of the band.

Depressing press release of the week, from Notwork Rail. (I can’t find it on their site; but it was on the BBC North-West news. I’ve quoted it from the uk.railway newsgroup.

The reopening of the railway line between Sandbach and Wilmslow has been delayed to enable the completion of infrastructure improvement works. The line will now not open until early June whilst vital testing work is carried out on a new signalling system.

The line has been closed since December and was due to reopen on March 26, once the existing life-expired signalling system was replaced by a new computer based interlocking system. However a number of compatibility issues between the Italian system and the UK railway infrastructure have meant further testing is required to enable completion.

John Armitt, Chief Executive, Network Rail said today, “On behalf of Network Rail, I sincerely apologise to passengers for the inconvenience that this will cause. We are working round the clock to find solutions to the problems we are having with this new system to ensure we get the line reopened as soon as is possible. We will keep you fully informed of developments and as soon as we have more information we will release it to you.”

As has been the case since the blockade began in December, long distance services are being diverted with replacement coaches running between Wilmslow and Macclesfield. Local trains will continue to be replaced by a <sarcasm>high quality</sarcasm&gt coach/bus service, with links to Congleton Station from Holmes Chapel and Sandbach during peak periods. Trains will also continue to run between Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Airport until the works are completed.

Trains will also continue to run between Wilmslow and Manchester Piccadilly via the Styal line (Wilmslow to Manchester via Heald Green) during weekdays. A direct service is also available between Crewe and Manchester Oxford Road during weekdays.

This is the third multi-month blockade that’s affected my daily commute, since I got hit by the Stockport refurbishment as well as the track relaying. At the end of all of this, there will have been a total of more than a year’s worth of rail replacement buses, more than doubling the length of my commute, adding an hour to my day. I’d been counting down days until March 26th, when the work was finally supposed to be finished. Now it’s back to some indefinite time in ‘early June’. What’s the odds that it will slip further, back to July, August, December?

Seems they’re using that same untried, untested system that was proposed and then rejected for Stockport a year ago. And it’s looking like the whole thing still doesn’t bloody work.

Heads deserve to roll over this.

For historical reasons that have a lot to do with modelling outside valve gear on British ‘kettles’, British N gauge models are made to a different scale to those of continental Europe or North America. While everyone else’s models are 1:160, ours are the larger 1:148. The difference is obvious when models of similar prototypes are placed next to one another.

Shock news from the Mostly Autumn camp. They’ve parted company with long-time keyboard player Iain Jennings. To quote the official announcement from Bryan Josh:

I feel strongly that it is my duty to inform you personally that, at least for the foreseeable future, Iain Jennings and Mostly Autumn will no longer be working together. I can honestly say from the heart that working and writing with Iain for the last ten years has been a great privilege and a great pleasure. We both shook hands recently and expressed this to each other.

I can’t put into words the magic I feel we have created together and shared, also the friendship that will still remain. I guess as time moves on things change, people change and we move in different directions, it’s just part of life, the previous albums will always be there and will always celebrate our musical partnership.

This comes as a big surprise. I’d thought of Iain as one of the core members of the band, a significant contributor to the writing, contributing songs like “The Gap is Too Wide” and “Hollow”. The band won’t quite be the same without him. Looks like December’s London show was Iain’s last appearance with them.

Norm is unimpressed by Leeds railway station.

Here’s a word of advice. If you travel by train from Manchester to Leeds at the weekend and have it in mind to return, then find another way of travelling back.

The first thing is that Leeds station is not a great place to spend time. It never has been. It had a makeover some years ago, but it’s still a cold, unwelcoming place, not like Manchester Piccadilly - though Manchester Victoria does have something of the same feel about it.

By coincidence I travelled from Leeds to Manchester yesterday evening, although I spend something like zero time waiting; I had to leg it across the footbridge from platform 1 (where my connection from Harrogate deposited me) all the way to platform 16, where I caught the train with about a minute to spare. I suspect this was not advertised as a connection, as it’s less than the regulation ten minutes that’s supposed to be allowed.

Of course, I missed the connection to Cheadle Hulme at the other end, and had to kill 30 minutes at a Manchester Piccadilly that was absolutely crawling with police, presumably because of the bloody football. I wonder who comes up with these timetables? It’s roughtly a half-hourly service on all three legs of the journey, but each change involves the maximum possible wait at both interchanges, in both directions. Presumably not many people travel from Cheadle Hulme to Harrogate and back.

On my regulation half-hour wait on the way out, I had the first opportunity to sample the rebuild Leeds station, which was still a building site on my last visit about five years ago. It’s a steel and concrete ‘New Brutalist’ style edifice; as Norm says, not a patch on the superb Manchester Piccadilly. At least they’ve gone for a proper train shed and avoided the temptation of a Birmingham New Street style underground car park. Unfortunately, the platform facilities are a little lacking, even in the buffet, where there are virtually no seats.

Every so often a game comes along that renders every game published obselete.

It has the following characteristics.

1) Minimal system
2) Minimal to zero setting
3) Convinced that it’s revolutionnary
4) Bad attitude towards all previous RPGs
5) Sprinkled lightly with forgeite jargon.

The ultimate challenge! To be to gaming what Henry Cow was to music. Or the Lima N-gauge Deltic was to railway modelling. That game is SPULTURATORAH!

The dark narrativist game of gamist simulationism in ancient retro-future Babylon

Intro If you are a roleplayer, chances are you are an overweight spotty obsessive prat who rolls greasy dice and kills orcs. You are probably dumb, and the things you love and play are dumb. Everyone is immature and ugly and obsessive and only likes killing things.

That is, until you play SPULTURATORAH. You will then be a narrativist StoryEngager who will wow your players (also now called StoryEngagers) with epic storylike stories of storytelling.

No other game has ever been like SPULTURATORAH. The minimalist system is quite easy to grasp, yet hard for old-school spotty roleplayers to understand. You have to let things go to be a Narrativist. But your games will turn from dice-throwing hackfests into narrative Awesome.

Setting: It’s like a dark Frank Fazetta mixed with a Tetsuwan-Atomu style flair. Set in ancient Babylon. With flying cars and psychic armies. King Gilgamesh rules over everything with a cruel and controlling eye from his Levitating Darkness Throne at the Ziggurat of Ur.

The heroes must stop him. With Narrativism.

Read the whole thing. There really is a complete system there, complete with an attribute called “Ziggurat Barley”. (Link from Lumpley.com)

A post on The Ministry of Information questions the methodology of a US experiment that seems to show that people’s choices of music is based more on peer pressure than anything else.

Sociologist Matthew Salganik, who conducted the survey, said that success was not relative to the quality of the music.

“It also suggests that even if an act creates high quality music, you might not be successful,” he said.

Doing my best Ron Edwards impersonation, I could say that artists like Marillion or Porcupine Tree are objectively better than Coldplay or Franz Ferdinand, despite the much higher sales of the latter bands. But this is only true for a given value of ‘better’. I maintain that Porcupine Tree give a vastly better listening experience than any of the more popular four chord bands provided you’re prepared to invest the effort to get under the skin of the music. I suspect the legions of people who lap up the formulaic Coldplay albums can’t be bothered to do that; they just want the musical equivalent of a kebab

And there are always going to be those who blindly follow the hype, and miss out on some good stuff as a result. Their loss.