September 6th, 2009
We took two week-long holidays this year. The first, at the beginning of August, was to the south coast of Devon. We stayed, as we have for the last four years, in a caravan and spent our time on the beach and visiting local farms and the like. You could take the kids to just about any beach and they’d have a good time, the only requirement is it isn’t raining. This year, for the first time, our luck with the weather didn’t hold and we were subjected to a couple of truly miserable rainy days. This cemented the idea in our mind to try something different next year and go slightly further afield.
In the last week of August we went to Disneyland Paris. Overall, it was a very good, if tiring, holiday. The first thing I really enjoyed was being able to catch the Eurostar from London and within a couple of hours walk out of the station in France, turn right and straight into the park.
The whole park is a very polished operation and despite my usual corporate cynicism, I did find myself being excited by the whole experience… possibly contagiously from the children. More than any amusement park I’ve been is before they really due try to amuse you at every turn, not just on the rides. One slightly odd detail was the incessant music being played wherever you were in the park; sometimes this worked better than others.
We stayed at one of the (cheaper) Disney hotels, which was nicely themed and entirely adequate given that we really only stayed there when we were sleeping. One of our main concerns was that as we were all sharing a single room, getting to sleep was going to be awkard. However, we were up at 8am each day, into the park around 9am and not back home until after 10pm, so we all flaked out immediately as soon as we got back.
The queues weren’t too bad (with the notable exception of an hour and fourty minutes for Crush’s Coaster) and some judicious use of the Fast Passes allowed us to get on almost every ride in the five days we were there. Ben’s favourite ride was Star Tours, which we went on three times. It has a delightfully 80s overtone that fits very well with “classic” Star Wars. Jessica’s favourite the Buzz Lightyear ride because she loves the “Ooo! The Claw!” aliens. Again, that ride got three goes. By the end of the three days we were pretty worn out and it was definitely time to head home.
The only downside was the food. This was very expensive and rather samey, although we rarely ventured above the fast food level, so perhaps if you’re flush you get a better experience.
I’d definitely recommend going if you have young children, for them it really will be magical. That said, I don’t think we’ll go back for a good few years, partly due to the expense and partly because we feel we’ve really “done” it and going back wouldn’t live up to this year’s experience.
Tags: amusement park, ben, buzz lightyear, catering, devon, disney, disneyland, eurostar, family, finding nemo, food, holiday, hotel, jessica, star wars, toy story, train
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August 16th, 2009
Well over a year ago, I finished ripping all my music onto the computer and set about listening to every track. Today I passed the 1000 track mark. Clearly I don’t listen to music on the computer all that often. In fact, it’s about 1.7 tracks a day on average. My in-car listening is very much confined to podcasts these days.
Interesting note on the state of applications: I was about to fire up a spreasheet app to do the above calculation when I decided to see if the internet could do the necessary work for me. Short answer: Yes. It’s the future, baby!
Tags: internet, music, software
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June 1st, 2009
Ben had his sixth birthday last weekend. Aside from a large assortment of Lego (awesome!) from the family, his present from us was a Nintendo DS Lite. It’s amazing the change a generation has seen. The first computer I used was a ZX81, complete with 1024 bytes of RAM. At the same age, Ben has his own computer. It’s the same size or perhaps a touch smaller but has built in touch screens (plural), sound, microphone, battery, storage, wireless… and 4 million times as much RAM.
Now if Moore’s law holds, this means our grandchildren will get computers with 16 terabytes of RAM. That’s something like 2000 DVDs loaded in memory. Err…!
My main concern was that Ben was going to do nothing but play on it, so we set him a daily limit. This can be confiscated for bad behaviour, increased for good behaviour and all those other parent-style tricks. I’ve been pleasantly surprised, however, that he’s got a very balanced approach and he’s yet to challenge over having extra time.
His favourite game is Lego Star Wars and now I have a whole new set of problems to face as a father, such as how to trip up an AT-AT with a tow-rope on the Empire Strikes Back level. It’s a hard life…
With the Lego sets, the Lego Star Wars game and a trip to Legoland, it was a “very Lego-ey birthday” in Ben’s words. I won’t go into how we lost Ben for half an hour in Legoland, suffice as to say losing your child at any time is one of the scariest experiences you can have.
Tags: ben, birthdays, computers, lego, legoland, nintendo, star wars
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May 5th, 2009
Last weekend I attended Tim and Johnny’s Bacchus Ale Festival 2009. I think the best way of describing this is as a “micro beer festival”, as in a beer festival that’s micro — 20 attendees — as opposed to a festival of micro beers.
All in all I thought it went very well. I had a brief chat with Tim about it at the Wokingham May Fayre yesterday. He said he found it very hectic, with very little time to enjoy the event. That sounds similar to experiences I’ve had hosting large family get-togethers, where you spend the whole time worrying about all your guests and no time enjoying the occassion itself. As a festival goer rather than organiser, though, I thought it was great.
I thought I’d use my internet pulpit to make a couple of suggestions. Firstly, a simplified first-past-the-post voting scheme would reduce the paperwork and headaches, especially around the 15th beer when it all gets a bit hazy. Secondly, I was wondering about reducing the number of beers somehow as the schedule was pretty punishing — 19 beers to try in 5 hours! Tim was suggesting that perhaps letting people sample the beers in any order. I’m not sure, perhaps. Everyone trying each beer simultaneously certainly prompted a lot of conversation!
Anyway, those were small criticisms. I hope the Bacchus Ale Festival returns in years to come. You can see some of the pictures I took on Flickr, although you’ll have to be logged in and set up as my friend to see all those featuring real people… unless you badger me and I send you a guest pass.
Tags: beer, festivals, flickr, friends, photos
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April 16th, 2009
Pretty quiet round these parts, eh? This has mostly been due to me wasting huge amounts of time playing Arcanum (something I last did a few years ago) to get some sort of RPG fix after my recent D&D revelation. This time I’m playing a couple of different characters in parallel, including a thief, which is turning out to be more enjoyable than I expected, as well as showing an entirely different facet of the game.
This post is brought to you, again, by the D&D podcast. Today I went back to the first Penny Arcade / PvP podcast. This is a really good introduction to the world of D&D as it features some new players learning to play the game for the first time, having never rolled a D20 in their lives. For veteran players this also has some commentary by the DM on the changes present in 4E.
Now, if anyone out there is interested in giving this D&D lark a go, please let me know!
Tags: arcanum, dungeons and dragons, games, podcasts
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April 2nd, 2009
Recently I’ve been listening to a podcast and reading a series of blog posts on Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D as we like to call it in the business. Back in The Day, when I played games like these, I was much more into 40K and Car Wars, and less into the role playing side of things. But the posts and podcasts have made me remember how much I enjoyed dice-based, tabletop gaming and I’d really like to give D&D a try, either as a player or as a DM.
When I was younger and actually playing these games, I always preferred to run them, be the GM. I guess that way I could never suffer the lows of losing but the flip side was I never got the highs of winning. So, part of me would love to be just a player now, but if I have to run things myself to make it happen, that’s fine too. I dreamed of becoming a proper DM. Maybe I’ll get there, albeit 20 years late.
I also think this would be something awesome to get Ben and Jessica into, something fun for us to share. Clearly they’re years away from it currently but the years tick past quickly enough, so perhaps I should start preparing now.
Tags: blogs, car wars, dungeons and dragons, games, podcasts, warhammer
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March 12th, 2009
As Mark said to me: Who watches the Watchmen? I do!
I know the critics don’t like it but both Louise and I did. I was surprised to see it currently rates 8 out of 10 on IMDb. It’s certainly long, perhaps too long. It is the most faithful adaptation of a book I’ve ever witnessed. I kind of agree with those critics who say perhaps it’s too reverent. Just like the book, though, if you like it you’ll want to go back and see what you missed and immerse yourself in the world.
Speaking of which, I finished my re-read of the book on the same day I saw the film and my admiration has only gone up. It’s not without its faults — some of which I think they tried to address in the film — but it is an amazingly intricate piece of storytelling.
Tags: comics, films, watchmen
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