A magical journey of womacicity, or Greenenders, the Mariocart Edition

After pizza, during which there was much discussion of mortgages and the meaning of the word 'fair', and Sally in her Wonderful Lesbian Shirt TM :), Tom took us on a magical journey round the back of the Shire Hall.

At this point the Ted-and-Sylvie-esque Bicycle pootling[1][2] suddenly blurred and rasterized and helmet and gauntlets pinged down over skin and sound effects switched from breeze and birds to synthesised whirrs and blips, and vast italic text scrolls across the screen reading "Ready? Race!"

We swerve across the road and dive sideways into the carpark. Dodging building left and right and orbitting each other going round the corners we whirl down the side of buildings, curving round pavements to find dips, sliding through narrow gaps, an generally playing the "It's coming towards me! I wonder which way I should go round it?" style of computer game, before flying over a bump and skidding to a halt in two foot of gravel.

After that we looked at the moon, drank wine, and played penultima, which was anticlimactical really.

[1] This is not meant to imply that Ian doesn't pootle faster than the maximum speed limit in residential areas.

[2] The previous collective nouns "A bell of bicyles" and "An annoyance of bicyles" being replaced by "A duckling of bicycles?" and "A cat heard of bicyles"

Skins, wedgies, goggles of geese

I could never remember what the third collective terms for geese was (regardless of which two I thought of first), but looking it up we find:

Gaggle: on water
Flock: on land
Skein: when flying
Chevron: In V formation

But while some people draw these distinctions some people don't. I don't know if they're particularly used by people who talk about geese, or historically, or were just decided by someone who wrote an influential book. Everyone agrees about flying, it's flock and gaggle which get switched in most places.

OTOH, I came across http://www.birdnature.com/groupnames.html. Regardless of how many are really used, *all* the names are beautiful. Picked completely at random:

cauldron of raptors
charm of finches
company of parrots
convocation of eagles
exaltation of larks
raft of ducks
paddling of ducks

I want to be a bird now!

In other news, Dovescape is really cool. This is a magic card that turns any non-summoning spell into doves. How do you come up with that[1]? You'd never think of it, but it's so RIGHT. Can't you just imagine the magician casting, the lights and sounds going off, and then fwoom! A room full of doves in proportion to how powerful the spell was? This is how to make good rules (consider a magic card somewhere between a fluxx card and a penultima rule) -- you never think of it, but go "Ooh!" as soon as you see, and don't have to strain your brian to work out what it's going to do.

[1] Horses mouth

Posts I don't

I never kept a diary, but now I have a journal anyway there's a few things I do want to put on it anyway, but for no-one to read. Sorts of posts I make private:

* Interesting ones. Eg. I've started a new job for £[money], snogged [person] and [person], and am developing the controversial political view [foo]anism.
* Boring ones. I like to have a record of what I was doing on such a day (eg. to know how long it was since I did something I need to renew), and if I don't have anything to say about it, I'll have a private post saying "Sat. Visited [name] in london. Coffee with [name]. Read newspaper on train. Renewed railcard."
* Ranty ones "Agh! Why is the world against me? Why am I so [negative trait]? I feel really [bad emotion] because I [relatively minor mistake]. Also I REALLY REALLY HATE AUTOMATED MENUS! F**************CK" This releives my feelings without making anyone else read them.
* Aborted posts Something I write something and decide it's not or never will be ready. If I want to work on it I'll copy it to my text file of thoughts to spod, otherwise I may just post it privately.
* Like the previous two, would be a post, but give people a bad impression of me. Eg. "Wooooo! I snogged [nice person], I am teh l333t!" or "Wow! They're STILL paying me two years on![1] And I'm earning £[n]0000![2]" or "I fell off my [conveyance] and hurt my [self]. Boo hoo."

I think I'd be ok with mum reading all of these, but anything important gets c&p'd. Anything really private should go in an encrypted text file, but there never is. If people accidently see something, well, maybe it was meant.

[1] When I make my first million selling free software[3] I'll still in private dance and say "Wooo! I'm successful".

[2] That's an exclamation mark, not a factorial. I read about the chinese sage who was beheaded 2^{for each square on a chess board}-1 times, and have no intention of trying to repeat that here.

[3] Conscience: That's impossible.
Me: Nothing's impossible. You just have to want it really hard.
C: Oo-er.
Me: Shut up.
C: That is, bullshit. However hard you try you can't make the sun rise.
Me: I already did, smart boy. Besides, people actually do sell free software. Writing the code is far from all the cost to actually getting something installed for someone, and there are many successful companies that fill that niche.

[4] I nearly tagged this private because it's *about* private posts. But that would be confusing. Conversely, tagging private has been shown to be a good thing, because if you leave one open people tell you, but if you just say "Mon. Coffee. Veizla emails. Pizza. Simon Sorcerer," people think you're being boring and terse :)

Greenenders: Armaggeddon

* Scene: Jack cycling to work in his halo of good weather.
* Shot: He passes a parked car, and the camera slows and turns to focus on it, and the screen blurs to show passage of days
* Day 1: Car
* Day 2: Front of car from wingmirror to bumper ripped off, exposing the metal like terminator
* Day 3: Car has for sale paper taped inside window[1]
* Day 4+n: For sale price decrements click click click, until the lowest digit is blurring
* Day N: The readout is too fast to see. Suddenly it slows and embarassedly reverses itself, stabalising just about $50 below zero.
* Day N+1: Paper vanishes
* Day N+2: Car rusts away
* Day 2N: Pile of wreckage. We zoom out, and Cambridge is gone, covered by radioactive ash. Mutated and dying geeks roam the landscape, making roleplaying jokes about their fate. Important landmarks have fallen over and can't get up. The river is awash with slime and pollution and bodies, with a skeletal feryman trying to propel a punt through the corpses. A stribent[2] pixie from stage left appears, asking woefully "Where's the wrestling?"

[1] A car with rip and for sale sticker is what I saw. I conjectured the sequence of events.
[2] "Stribent" = "Strides" and "Vibrant"