Activities!

Ahoy!
So, apparently I'm continuing my trend of posting large globs of stuff infrequently rather than small bites as they happen.
Unsure that I like this trend since it makes it easy to put off posts to 'add them to another one later', but considering how I keep managing to fill up my regular time, posting more regularly is a little tricky on the schedule.

I'll see what I can do to find a happy medium, but in the meantime, updates! Disclaimer: As usual this is being written in bits and pieces over several hours, sorry if it reads a bit disjointedly.

There's really been two major pieces up update since my last post, and really, two big pieces of news in a month? That's actually not a half bad ratio I'd say!

Major News

Great Southern Gathering
So, this was actually on the weekend after my last update. Big.. well, bigger than monthly bash, SCA weekend event. This one was mostly classes on the Saturday (everything from forging and knife making to rapier and heavy fighting advice and such) and then a tournament and the Rapier prize fights on the Sunday. I attended a few Heavy classes on things like advanced power generation and footwork, which I think will be helpful, but I won't go into detail on since I don't think most of my readers are heavy fighters :)

Laura went for and succeeded at getting her Free Scholar prize in Rapier, which is the first "rank" you can achieve.
She was quite obviously nervous, but acquitted herself quite well. Would have been nice to see more offense from her examiners, but it was fun to see her get fed up with someone's defense and just swoop in, trap their sword out of the way and stab them a few times.
Oh yes, and she did it wearing this. This is the favour that I made for her under Janet's tutelage. It's watercolour painted silk, and the yellow background is the silk sash Laura got for winning her prize:

I'm planning on getting Janet to give me some more lessons on silk painting, and getting my own gear to start doing this at home. Silk painting is *fun!*, and for pretty much the first time in my life I can look at something artistic that I've created and honestly say that I did a good job, which is a kind of awesome feeling. Definitely something I want to do more of :)

Around the Bay in a Day
Myself and a bunch of others took part in the 50km leg of Around the Bay in a Day last weekend. Our team name was "Cyclists of Penzance", so most of us were either dressed as pirates or had pirate hats attached to our helmets (though I can't help but notice the one person NOT in costume of some kind is the person who named our team...)
Was quite amusing actually, the guy doing announcing and general chatter over a microphone at the start line said that it "it's a proper race without pirates", and we hat large numbers of people commenting throughough the race (including a couple of "Aaarrrrrr!"s from the police helping direct traffic near the start.

I think the furthest I've ridden in a day before this was about 30, 35ks, but at the pace we went I had no issue with the 50ks.
We took it nice and easy because, well, one member of our team was still on the tail end of a bout of gastro, one had the flu, and one had stomach cramps. Yay riding wounded!
We got through it all, those of us in front paused to regroup before riding over the finish line together (to a rather thunderous round of "Arrrrrr!!" from all the people on the sidelines), so all in all it was a fun day.
... except for my arms getting quite badly sunburned.
It was perfectly logical, I figured we'd be done by 12:30ish, meaning I'd get some sun but would avoid the UV danger time of the day, and should get some sun without burning. But due to our pace and taking a nice long lunch break we left lunch at 1ish, meaning the return leg was done in full blazing sun, and I didn't think to apply sunscreen at lunch.
Yay for lobster coloured arms ><. Slowly getting better at least.
I also ended up with an increadibly sore rear end by the end of the ride since I just had my standard non-padded bike seat. Definitely need to get myself a padded seat cover.

Incidentally, riding over the Westgate Bridge was an interesting experience, though the way back we had a big tail wind so it was vastly easier (heck, part of the ride back on the flat there was enough wind for me to just freewheel without pedaling and still keep up with everyone).

Here's a picture of us :) (yes, my hat made an absurd windsail, felt like I was going to get blown over)

Health Stuff
On the good side of things, my back is pretty well back to normal nowadays. Occasional twinge when I have a violent sneeze or similar, but that's about it. Huzzah for working spine!

On the bad side of things I got gastro last weekend. On the same day as Laura's birthday picnic. I still went along (I just thought I had food poisoning until mid afternoon).
I won't go into the details but suffice to say I wasn't back at work until Thursday and I had the worst stomach pain I've had in my life.
The silver lining was a reminder about how awesome my friends are. Lara brought me medication so I could still go to the picnic Sunday, Hespa & Laura dropped by Monday morning with DVDs and juice and broth and such, and Hespa hung around for most of the day to make sure I was ok.
Huge thanks guys, I was really touched :)

Roleplaying
I've finally started my new roleplaying game that I'm running, in the Mistborn world (books by Brandon Sanderson). The first session ended with the players each being handed an encoded poem, and having to decode the hidden message to advance the plot.
Two have now completed this (though one cheated, but she's forgiven since she found typos in my code), so next session we can advance.
It's been quite some time since I got into player's heads like this. Great fun :D


Hrm.. I think that's about it really for this entry. Another one should be forthcoming soon(tm) with the gender topic I mentioned last post. If it's not up in the next few days, someone poke me.

Random mass update!!

Yes, I know, I'm sorry. My posting regularity is utterly terrible these days, I'm just never managing to sit down and write anything.

Having a go at that again now. I do apologise if this ends up sounding a little disjointed, I'll be slowly writing bits of it through the day.

So.. last post was just over five weeks ago. There's a couple of things that have happened since then, but honestly it hasn't been all that busy (other than my usual weekly stuff anyway).

Wedding:
The big standout one no doubt was Ashley & Rebecca's wedding. Nothing quite like rocking up to the wedding and having the groom hand you a tablet and ask you to record the wedding for him. That was rather unexpected! Since when do people think I'm good with electronics gear?... hang on...
The wedding was small, and very, very geeky, from Star Wars awards music while walking down the aisle, to vows involving "Till Ragnarok comes", and Adrian giving an "Ode to Pi", with slight rewording which had the whole room either in hysterics or wondering what on earth was going on.
It was a good ceremony all in all, it's nice to see people taking something that important and then making it fit them, rather than going "Well we have to do it the traditional way" and going with the usual solemn ceremony.
Something involving history, geekiness and everyone laughing fit them far better.

Clubbing:
Honestly, this one was rather funny.
A friend invited me to go along clubbing a while back at a place she goes to. I've been clubbing once before when I was at uni and didn't think much of it, but in the spirit of trying new things I figured I'd go along.
Now, earlier that day I was at a friend's place planning the group trip to NZ that we're having, and after the planning was done I was slumped half asleep in a beanbag while the others broke out a boardgame.
Something was mentioned about plans for the evening, and Laura mentioned that I was off clubbing that evening. She sheer amount of incredulity in Lena's "Darren, clubbing??" response was hilarious :D

The clubbing itself ended up being more fun than I thought it'd be. The music (at least in the area we spent the night) was quiet enough that you could actually talk, and honestly I spent most of the night watching people and chatting about random stuff with a few friends-of-friends that I met while there.

New thing tried for month of September: Tick

Back:
My back is.. fluctuating... most days I've got some kind of twinge in it, but it's exactly that, a twinge rather than "Oh gods I shouldn't do that again". A bit like muscle pain from doing a lot of exercise, but without the 'nice' edge those tend to have.
Been to the physio a couple more times, but basically it boils down to: I'm spending huge amounts of time in an office chair for eight to fourteen hours a day, five to seven days a week, and its catching up with me.
I'm doing stretches and exercises every half hour or so at my desk (when I pay attention to the RSI timer thing I've setup), but really I need to get myself a new job that involves moving around for at least part of a day. Walking to other buildings to setup computers and stuff. Or maybe just changing careers entirely and becoming a professional travel writer. Hah!

Health:
Thankfully am finally over the latest bout of the flu. Not much need be said here, but fever & hallucinations really suck

Weight: 
Unfortunately due to a couple of emotional rough patches and some comfort eating I've put back on most of the weight that I'd lost, which annoys me to no end.
It seems to have redistributed slightly since my waistline remains the same, but I'm under no illusions that I've put on enough muscle to make up the difference.
I somehow think my hope of losing 8-10 kg in the twelve months of this blog isn't likely to happen thanks to this setback. I'll just keep my fingers crossed I come out with a net loss of something at the end.

Personal Stuff:
I won't go into specifics, but I've had a few very 'down' spots personally/emotionally recently. I've mostly dug myself back out of it again, and talking to people has helped, but.. yeah, not fun times, and I know I hurt at least one person during it, but I think we're better with it now.
Also, gods I hate it when something that's.. important but not overwhelming, suddenly gets stuck in your mind and all that you can do is chase that one thing, to the exclusion of everything else.
I do NOT like that degree of obsession randomly cropping up in my life.

Food:
I'm a little up and down about bringing lunch in with me to work, I'm managing it.. every second or third week at the moment, typically spag bol or butter chicken or chili con carne or similarly easily 'made in bulk' foods.
Now that the weather's warming back up again I may give sandwiches another go
I think the 'veggie of the week' idea is well and truly dead. Being out 3-4 nights a week isn't leaving me with enough time to use something like that.
Maybe I should do a "try new recipe once a week" or such, that I can do on a weekend.

But hey, I'm getting decent at making pie at least :)

SCA:
Going to an SCA camping event this weekend (Great Southern Gathering) which will be interesting. There will be classes on various things, fighting training and such. Will be a new experience.
Laura is also going for her "Free Scholar" prize in Rapier at GSG, think of it as like a martial arts grading. It's not completely analogous but its close. I've been informed that I'm allowed quiet, reserved encouragement from the sidelines. Waving pompoms is strictly prohibited.
I did manage to get her fighter's favour completed last week at Crafthall thanks to the awesome tutelage of Janet, I'll post a picture up here after the event.
Silk painting is a lot of fun, and surprisingly therapeutic, I most definitely need to learn more from her and perhaps try my hand at some solo.
Also need to look at getting more garb made (since while I have rudimentary sewing skills, I don't really have the time required to become good enough to make things I'm happy with, not right now at least.
Similarly I need to finally get my own armour, have been speaking to Rodriego about having him make me a set, need to follow that one up...

Leisure Time: 
I've been finding myself spending a LOT less time playing computer games than I did a few months ago. Well, with the exception of the weekend just gone, when I was playing Borderlands 2 a lot, but in general computer game time has gone down, reading time and time watching tv shows has gone up.
Unsure what, if anything, this says about my tastes, maybe I was just getting bored with the games right as interesting new shows and books cropped up.

Tidying:
I also had another big go through my wardrobe and cupboard, tidying things up and throwing out a pile of stuff that I no longer need/is busted.
I'm also trying a technique suggested by my friend Rachel. Put all my clothes on hangers in backwards, then when I use them, put the hanger forwards again. Then after X amount of time I can go through and I'll know exactly what I have and haven't used, and anything with a backwards hanger can be stored or donated or packed away or similar.


Hrm. I think that'll about do it for now. I do have a discussion on gender and such that I plan to put up, but I think that'll deserve a post in itself.

Also, Laura has suggested that I ask people what they'd like to see/read about in the next post. Feel free to weigh in!

Introspections

Not a huge amount to mention here events-wise at the moment, but there's been a couple of introspections and realisations that I thought I'd write down.

Winning & Losing
I'm not sure how long this one has been in play (wow, what an amazing pun. Laura, I blame you!) but it finally hit me while talking to Laura after a Swordcraft game a couple of weeks ago.
When it comes to games and matches and such, I no longer care about losing.
Considering what I used to be like, that's pretty big. I've always been competitive (and I'm pretty sure that at this moment, both of my parents are adding "And you were a little shit when you lost too" to that statement) and no matter what the match/game/challenge was like I always hated it when I lost.
Now though... I just don't care.
Don't get me wrong, getting taken out of the match early/getting easily clobbered/being outmatched still frustrate me, but not because I've lost, because it's boring. Crushing someone else with no challenge is nearly as bad.
But in terms of actual outcome? As long as I enjoyed myself, it's all good.
Knockout tournaments still present a bit of a problem, since you have to win in order to be allowed to keep playing, but for things like Swordcraft, where when one side wins you just reset and keep going? Don't care anymore!

I know, seems like the kind of thing that's drilled into kids all their life, but the whole "It's not that you won or lost, but how you played the game" thing is something I've always struggled with.


Limits
This one isn't quite so nice, and could be considered a backslide in some ways.
In the past, whenever I've copped a hit or clobbering of some kind I've never really had a.. mental reaction, for want of a better term, to it. Or when I have, I've been able to shove it aside and ignore it.
This.. seems to have slipped a bit.

Ok, specifics.
Last week at Swordcraft (isn't it amazing how many of my posts, ideas and realisations start with "After the last time I ran around an oval beating people with foam weaponry and shouting at the top of my lungs while one or two hundred others try and kill me" ?) I copped a sword thrust directly into the left eye, shoving my contact lense off my eye and seriously ruining my night (didn't help that the guy who did it briefly said "are you ok", and when I said "no" and walked off the fielding clutching my face he just ignored me and went back to fighting. He's now been.. spoken to.. by three players and a ref about both his unsafe fighting and pathetic sportsmanship).
I could easily recognise the.. kind of disconnected apathy that I had afterwards that meant I just couldn't not get into the rest of the night, and very nearly just walked off and didn't come back, but whereas before I'd normally be able to shove that feeling aside and get back into the game, this time I just.. couldn't.

I'm not sure if it's because it was an *eye* shot (head and face shots haven't bothered me much) and therefore something more severe than I'd normally taken, or if maybe the whole lowering/breaking of emotional/mental barriers that happened a few months ago means that I'm just no longer as good at blocking things out.

Not really anything with much of a resolution there, but I figured it was worth mentioning nonetheless.

Back & Neck Pain
Thought I'd give an update on this one. I'm going my physio-mandated exercises at work, and keeping up with my usual activities. My back is now perfectly fine.. probably four days out of a week, slight twinges one day, and moderate ones the other two.
Haven't yet figured out a reason for when it's more painful than other times, but it's a massive step better than it was, and getting better.

My shoulder on the other hand is still having a few issues, though I'm not 100% sure if it's because my neck muscles especially are still tight, or if I've just had a bit of atrophy happen due to using it less. I suspect a combination.

Either way, things definitely on the improve in that area :)


Anyways, I think that's about it for this entry :)
Hope everyone is keeping well!!

I'm not late, I'm just chronologically impaired

So.. erm.. first thing's first, an apology. It's been nearly a month since the last post (I've had a few people prod me about this blog, which is good), somehow my month filled up ludicrously, to the point where I've had only a couple of free afternoons in the last few weeks, and they've tended to be taken up by collapsing in a chair and occasionally going "argh". Likewise spare time on weekends tends to be taken up by cleaning, shopping, groceries, washing, and all those fun domestic things that need to be maintained.
Turns out that having regularly scheduled events every Monday, Tuesday & Friday evening, and every second Thursday evening, kinda fills up your weeks...

So, plan is to slowly write this entry bit by bit when I get a spare few minutes at a time, and hope to have it up by tomorrow night (ie, have more than one post in July). So if this seems a little disjointed at times, or the writing style shifts a few times, that's why :)

So.. what's been happening. Erm.. let me check my calendar so I don't forget anything (I probably will anyway, but hey, I can try).

Trivia: A group of us (ten I believe in the end) went along to a Trivia night run by the Melbourne Browncoats (a Serenity/Firefly fan group).
That was a very large pile of fun, and the questions were actually varied enough that everyone on our table got the opportunity to be the 'expert' for at least part of a round, which very rarely happens. We ended up coming second, with one or two points between first and second place, which was awesome :D
There was, however, one thing that they.. didn't really think through...
They had one of those "Count the number of Easter eggs in this jar and you win it" things going. Then partway through the knight they announced that for an extra dollar, they'd tell you if the true amount was higher or lower than your guess.
Queue me and one of the others looking at each other, and him announcing that a standard binary number search will only require seven or eight guesses to get the answer..
So we wander up there and start doing a standard binary search:
Aside note: Here's what I mean by Binary Search. Say you've got to guess a number between one and fifty, a binary search is where you just keep splitting the difference. eg:
Number between 1 & 50, so you start by guessing 25
If it's higher, it's between 25 & 50, so you split the difference again, 37
If it's lower, it's between 25 & 37, again, split the difference and guess 31
Then you just keep that up until you're done. Theoretically any number can be found within seven or eight guesses.

So, we start doing that, the guy running it quickly realises we're up to something and declares that there is now a limit of one guess per person. So I grab the rest of the team, we all line up and keep it going. We're two numbers away from the exact guess when he declares that our team is banned from making more guesses for two rounds.
We got there in the end (three people ended up with the correct guess, so the eggs were split). Worth it just for the look on the organiser's faces :)
Definitely a fun way to spend a Saturday night.

Date: I won't go much into details or specifics, but I had a date on the Tursday night after trivia. It was an.. interesting experience. Believe it or not I'd never actually been on a 'date' before, typically having gotten together with people that I already knew, in rather different circumstances, so the whole "go somewhere, meet the person, see if you're interested in a relationship" thing was just.. bizarre.
Still, it was a fun night (in possibly the most cliche thing possible, we went to a movie. The Spiderman remake to be precise. Actually a surprisingly decent movie), we shall see what comes of it once her workload settles down and a second date can be organised.


Brave: Saturday midday a group of us went to see Brave, the new Pixar animated movie. Absolutely awesome! The usual excellent animation expected from Pixar, actual Scottish (and one 'really good at faking it') voice actors, gorgeous scenery that looks exactly like parts of England and Scotlant (I swear at one point they might as well have been mapping the scrubland around Glastonbury Tor) and an excellent story.
Actually, the story deserves a bit extra mention, There are going to be some spoilers here, so just skip to the next section if you don't want to be spoiled (in which case, get out and see the movie ASAP! It's really worth it).
Now, I'm sure we're all aware of the whole "Child/Teenager running away from parental induced responsibility X" type stories (arranged marriages being rather common), typically resulting in a "I'm sorry Son/Daughter, we were wrong, you can decide for yourself/be yourself/do what you want" kind of resolution.
Brave is the first movie I've ever seen where running away from your unwanted responsibility absolutely screwballs everything around you and has repercussions, and in the end the result is *compromising* with family and tradition, rather than breaking it. I know that seems silly, since that's what happens with most arguments etc, but it's pretty rare for a movie to actually show that.

Similarly, I'm sure we're by now familiar with the "Girl who is kickass at all the traditionally 'masculine' things like fighting and drinking, kicks the men's rears at everything, and in general shows that girls can be badass too" type of movie/book/story.
Once again, we have a movie where compromise actually exists. Yes, our plucky princess protagonist (there had to be alliteration somewhere, right?) is a fantastic archer, climber and horse-rider, and an at least proficient swordfighter, but unlike most "badass female warrior" archetypes she actually takes part in the feminine things as well (and climbing a rock pillar in a dress is far more impressive than doing it in pants).

Dear gods, we have a vaguely balanced character who learns from their mistakes and comes up with a compromise over the whole movie-inducing difficulties.
This kind of thing should not be rare enough in a movie to warrant special notice!! It's a pretty sad state of movie affairs when something so simple is deserving of high praise.

Lauren's party: Moving on from the movie, later that day was Lauren's birthday party, costume theme of "Video Game Characters". As always her parties tend to be awesome fun, with ludicrous amounts of sugar being consumed, and laughing at my hilariously inept attempts at singing along with the "Singstar" game (hrm. May need singing lessons if I don't want to sound quite so dodgy, and to actually be able to hold a note).

Here's my Minsc costume (standing between Link and a Lemming), yes, the hamster is part of the costume. 

There was also a game of Ghost Stories.... we lost :(


Swordcraft Quest: And then last weekend was Swordcraft Quest! I've mentioned Swordcraft before, it's the 'medieval paintball' thing where you run around hitting people with foam latex swords and such.
Quest is a camping event, Friday night, Saturday night and part of Sunday that was held up at Brittania Park (a guides/scout camp out in woop woop), with much in-character shenanigans, laughing, killing, belting people with weapons and all round good old fashioned fun.
My orange-shell fire cakes went over a treat with my warband (even if it did take one of them an hour and a half to eat his orange, and I had to keep running after him and threatening him with a stick if he didn't eat his orange), and the "dump a liter of cake mix into a foil shell and throw it in the fire" idea didn't actually work too badly.

All in all tonnes of fun was had, next to no sleep was had, and dear god was I grateful for my shower and bed when I got home!

The Bad: Well, that's the list of events and fun things, so I figure I should also mention the less fun things at the moment. It would appear that my desk job has finally caught up with me and is doing my back in. I pulled a few muscles in my neck/leg/arm a month or so ago, and trying to relieve strain on them caused muscle pains in my lower back, which due to the desk job just isn't coming good.
I've been to the physio a couple of times, and he's given me a bunch of exercises to do during the day to try and loosen up my back (apparently my back & neck muscles are stupidly tight), but in the meantime I just have to put up with twinges and soreness when I move or lean :(
Fingers crossed this gets cleared up soon, I really don't like having a sore back!

Milestones: There's a few good things here :)
1) I rather think Swordcraft Quest can be considered something I haven't done before, so awesome work there
2) Weight update! I was 81.5kg with a 40" waist when I started this blog. I'm now 78kg and 38" waist! Weight and size and slowly coming down again! Woohoo!

Stupid body grumble grumble

Not really going to be an update this week.
Pretty much as soon as I started getting over the flu my body decided it'd had enough of this "Operating properly" thing. An old pain that occasionally crops back up in my right glutes kicked in, as did a really bruised/pulled muscle feeling just below my right shoulderblade. A couple of days later I apparently sprain my neck right after going to bed, and I've now also got a pain in my lower back from trying to stop the other three pains from hurting too much.
Yay me.

Magnesium, painkillers and a hot towel (really need to get a proper heat pack I think) have finally started making a difference, but it's still been a shitful couple of weeks, and left me feeling kinda miserable.

*Sigh*
Fingers crossed I'll improve over the next few days.
Why doesn't my place have a Spa (or at least a Bath) dammit!!

Rather bit miserable

So, sorry for the delays on this post, guess I'm not doing particularly well at regular posting at the moment.

Anyways, lets see if I can get you all updated...
First up, I'm currently feeling rather miserable due to illness. Currently on day four of a bout of some kind of bug, hot & cold flashes, shivering, feeling like I'm being stabbed with pins, ludicrous amounts of sweating last night, really sore stomach that feels like my intestines are bruised, very very short (a few seconds) but intense headaches whenever I stand up, plus other bits that are kinda TMI. So I've been off work since Friday, sleeping twelve hours a day, and trying to fight this off with Vitamin C, fluids and cold & flu tablets.
Saw the doctor today and I'm pretty much at that stage where if it's a 'standard' bug I should come good by Wednesday, and if I don't I'm to head back in for another appointment. He said there's not really any specific symptom there that indicates the need for antibiotics, and it'd quite possibly make my stomach worse. Plus my temperature is only slightly elevated, and I'm still functional.
Fingers crossed I'm better by Wednesday, because gods I hate being sick like this!

In terms of other things, lets see, what's been going on..
I had my second counseling appointment. It continues to be good to talk about things but.. how do I put it.. since I don't really have a sense of what I want to get out of these sessions, other than a bit of clarity and perspective, it's hard to figure out what to actually do in them. At the moment we're mostly just talking about things that have happened and how I reacted, so there's no real sense of moving towards a goal. Oh well, I guess we see what happens. This may well be perfectly normal for counselling sessions when you're not there with a specific "I need help with X" type of thing.

On slightly more unusual news, and on the 'trying new things' topic. A few years ago Laura gave me a voucher for one of those beauty places to get a facial and either a massage/manicure/pedicure. At the time I kind of ummed and ahhed over it for a few months but couldn't really manage to ever make the booking, so I gave it back to her. In the spirit of, well, the whole purpose of this blog, I decided to 'return to the scene of the defeat' so to speak, and made a booking to basically recreate that offer.
It was an... interesting.. experience. Don't think that facials are my thing somehow (though the scalp massage was fantastic, as was the foot rub) but it was definitely something worth trying out. My feet felt absurdly soft/squishy afterwards too, that was a bonus.
New thing tried out, tick!
Comfort zone pushed, tick!
Horrible pun made, tick!

Now, I can't remember if I mentioned (and can't be bothered going back through my blog), but I'd needed to send my camera back to Olympus for a repair quote, since I couldn't get a bunch of the functions (like manually adjusted shutter speed) to work. I could select the options, but the little selection wheel wouldn't let me alter them. Olympus' customer service hadn't been able to help with it either, so I sent it off. A couple of days after I received a call from a lady in their repair center, asking me if I'd spoken to the place I bought it from since she'd just unboxed my camera and saw it was only a few weeks out of warranty, so maybe they'd be nice and let it be covered. I told her I'd already tried that and they weren't offering me leeway, but I figured it was awesome customer service from them that she actually called me to check that.
Well, a few days after that, my camera gets sent back to me. I figured this was weird, since I hadn't had a followup and no mention of a repair quote etc. Unboxed it and the note inside said that it works perfectly, I just had to use the ring on the front of the camera, around the lense.
How fucking hard would it have been for their customer service monkeys to say that??? I'd been using the control wheel on the back of the camera, which you use for changing all other settings, but apparently the "Control Ring" is around the front lense and not used for anything else (and you only find out about it if you read through the advanced manual from their website, and realise that they define "Control wheel" and "Control ring" as two different things).
Argh!!

Anyway, rage aside I now have my camera back and apparently it works perfectly, so I've been messing about with the shutter speed a bit. Here's a couple of shots with me playing a laser pointer over a half full glass and a couple of prisms etc beside it (note that this is 20 & 25 second exposure):

Then these two are of my room. This one is a pitch black room with a laser pointer being played over it for a minute:

And for this one instead of just the laser pointer, I also used my bike lights, giving them about equal amounts of 'lense time'. You can't really see evidence of the red one, barring a couple of little smudges:

Yay for cameras and lasers! Now I just have to learn to use these settings properly, rather than just in amusing little oddities.

Trying to think of what else has been happening, and I think the last one of note is last week I had my second lesson of SCA Rapier fencing. It continues to be an interesting experience, and is highlighting some of the oddities in how my joints work as I've been needing to slightly adjust my stances to stop my knees going "Oi, our union says we don't have to bend that way". I was allowed to take part in the sparring as well, which did somewhat surprise me, but I guess with Heavy training they knew I wasn't going to be swinging wildly and causing injury. I fully expected to be killed in three seconds every bout, but I actually managed to hold my own. Sure I had no style, no finesse, and was making huge wild parries and jumps and most of my hits on opponents were pure luck rather than creating openings, but I definitely made people work for their shots.

Going from sparring against Gindi (the trainer) and Laura was a huge contrast. If I tried to forcibly move Gindi's blade he'd typically adjust his grip/stance and push back. Laura would just disengage around my blade and do something else. Now I know how all those people who used to tell me I fought like a rabbit back in Kung Fu felt.
The third person I sparred against was a little of a mix of the two of them, though he had a habit of using a specific sequence of moves where he'd hit my sword out of the way and then lunge in at the same point. After he tried it the first time I was able to see it coming and dodge it pretty easily. Didn't figure out how to hit him back while he was doing it mind you, but I think avoiding it is a darned good step.

All up, awesome night, even if Laura did end up killing me most of the time by taking out three of my limbs rather than torso/head shots (To the pain!) :)

In terms of how I think I'm keeping up with the general theme of the blog.. I'm somewhat behind where I had hoped/thought I'd be, mostly in three places:
1) I still haven't completed the cleanup of my shelves, which I'd hoped to do one shelf a day at.
2) I had been hoping to have worked out a 'daily checklist' of things to do, mostly exercise related, to make sure I do every day.
3) The whole 'vegetable of the week' thing fell over after a few weeks and I haven't got back on the bandwagon yet.

Have failed at all three so far, but as a number of people have told me, making too many changes too quickly can stop you managing to achieve any of them, so I'm going to pare things down to this:

1) Clear out a shelf a week. More if I feel like it, but one a week minimum
2) Do some kind of exercise that's not commuting, per day. Three days a week are already done thanks to activities, so I just need bits to do for the other four. This can then be slowly transitioned into something that I do daily
3) Make sure I do up the vegetable intake a bit, and maybe try and work out some kind of easy vegetable *thing* that I can pre-make so that whenever I'm in a "Blargh, too exhausted to cooking, making something instant" mood I can still add vegetables (anyone have ideas on that? I need something that's reasonably tasty, goes with soup or noodle type instant dishes, gives me at least a couple of veggie serves, and will last at least a few days in the fridge).
Veggie of the week may return once I have my cooking more stabalised.

So. I.. think that's got you all up to date. Fingers crossed I'll manage to bring the next entry in rather sooner. Maybe that should be another item, get back to writing at least one blog entry a week!

Continuum!

Hey everyone. Really sorry about the long delay between posts here, I've had a very busy fortnight and just haven't had time to post.
My time has pretty much been split three ways:


First up: Costume Preparation 


I had to do a pile of running around like a headless chicken looking for costume bits, things I'd forgotten about, picking up thread, and all kinds of things along those lines. I think I've only had two lunchbreaks where I haven't been riding off to somewhere in the city to pick up things for Continuum costumes. And I still haven't made it to Lefflers to get leather for SCA and Swordcraft stuff.

And of course, once I had all the bits together, assembly was required (huge thanks to Lisa for assistance with some shirt sewing stuff). I am certainly getting better with Sewing. Heck, I can even manage to reliably thread the thing, rather than the bobbin thread going "neener neener, you can't catch me". I finally finished my costume Friday middayish (with Continuum happening that afternoon).
Pictures shall be in the Continuum section below.

Secondly: Counselling 


I went along to the University counselling service a couple of Wednesdays ago. It's one of the things Laura & I have said we should do with all the stuff that was going on with us, and lets face it, my brain probably needs a tuneup :)
I won't go into the details, but suffice to say it was certainly worthwhile (I have a followup session in a week and a half) and I think I'll get something out of it.

Finally: Continuum!!


So, the thing that all this costuming etc had been leading up to was Continuum , a Fantasy/Sci Fi convention being run over the long weekend.
Now, for those unsure this wasn't one of those "Conventions" that you tend to see on TV, with thousands of people all in costume, standing in lines to see the latest X and posing with celebrities. This one is much smaller and more close-knit. A few people were in costume but it wasn't the norm (more on that below), and most of the programming consists of panels on various topics (Everything from "Is kids TV less traumatising now than it was when we were kids" to "How do you write different genders/cultures to your own" to "Two people loudly talking about their Doctor Who disagreements" [though there was a lot of agreement there...] ), with three to five people up the front nattering back and forth.
There were a lot of writers there, but we're not talking the big, household names, mostly smaller and/or local authors, people who write for fun, etc. And of course piles and piles of fans.


This was the first such Con that I've ever been to, and in true Darren style I kinda leaped right in and signed up to talk at a bunch of panels. I did "21st Century Storytelling", which was basically about Video Games becoming a more narrative-driven media and such, "Supernatural", about the TV series, and "Build it and they will come", which was about world building for Roleplaying games.
I've been told that I acquitted myself well all around, and I'm quite sure the people telling me this wouldn't have hesitated to correct me if I'd done badly, so I'll call it a win :)

Laura came up with the idea of doing a 'themed' day costume for the Saturday & Sunday, of Steampunk on Saturday and Goth on Sunday, and considering that I'm doing that whole "Say Yes to more things and try out stuff" thing, I decided to do so as well!
Unfortunately there's no picture of Sunday's Goth getup, but here's mine & Laura's Saturday steampunk ensembles (the flash does odd things, so I'll give you the flash and non-flash versions):

Then Saturday night was the Maskabolo ball, with the theme of "Enchantment under the Sea". Here's where my Captain Nemo costume got used. Unfortunately I don't seem to have a full body shot of it (though that will quite likely come later), but here's a shot of myself, Hespa as GLaDOS, and Laura as the Companion Cube.

For reference, here's the character my costume was based on:

And here we have the Companion Cube valiantly defending Nemo from an onslaught by the evil computer system, GLaDOS...

And Nemo gearing up to avenge the Companion Cube...

So yes, overall a fun time was had by all!!

I can definitely tick a few things off my "To Do" list, and I think I'm well within my rights to tick off the "Do something new/interesting/odd each month" option as well, since I went to my first such Convention, spoke on three panels in front of an audience, and went to both Lunch & Dinner in that crazy steampunk costume (Lygon street cafe in a steampunk corset & tophat? MADNESS!)

Overall, a very fun and very exhausting weekend! I'm now back at home (well duh) with a pile of costume and clothing bits strewn around the room, shoes and boots all over the floor, and a pile of dishes in the sink. One load of washing is currently in the machine (and probably due to come out now) and I'm really hoping there's enough food in the place for me to make dinner tonight.


So, I think that's all for today, it won't be a fortnight before the next post!
Also, can I please ask that anyone reading this posts a comment! Doesn't matter if it's just a "Haha, you look funny" or something, it'll do me good to remind myself that people are reading, plus seeing what people think is always fun.