Jim's Journal

So, a perfectly lovelly weekend over near St Albans has come to a sad end with the news that Entropy in December will be the last or the forseeable future.

Ups and downs are what life is all about I guess, but coming home from a wonderful 30th birthday party to this news certainly isn't the cherry on top of the cake.

Last time we couldn't run Entropy at the Porter Butt resulted in nearly a year where we tried other venues, ran Entropy as a 'vs' night in a few other clubs and, frankly, didn't do our own thing. It didn't work. Entropy is on a Saturday for a reason: we want the many people that come to not be worried about getting up the next day, to be able to spend time trvelling over if they are coming from a long way away.

I don't really know if all the details are public knowledge yet, needless to say if everything I've been told comes to pass I'll be more than a little sad.

Edit: Spoke to Andy and he said I can tell people why. Basically the Porter Butt is being shut and sold in December. We will probably try to do something special for the last Entropy there.

So, back in April one of kittensofdoom's old school friends came to our wedding and we said that we'd reciprocate and go and visit her in Paris - a chore I know, but someone's got to do it.

We took Thursday off so that we could get up to London and catch an early Eurostar to the Gare du Nord on Friday. That left us a night in London to kill and, as it was kittenofdoom's birthday I decided to spend some cash and take her to Le Gavroche.

Don't get me wrong, it was expensive and really a 'once in a while' kind of present but it was worth it. We had two rounds of amuse bouche before starters. I had hot fois gras and crispy pancake of duck flavoured with cinnamon for starter and a main of Scotch fillet of beef with fois gras and a truffled macaroni cheese, followed up by an apple tarte tatin. I'm sure kittensofdoom will write her own account of her meal, including her 'Giraffe souffle' as she called it. Every mouthful was AWESOME. Probably even calling it awesome means its not really aimed at me but who cares, it was yummy.

The next day we went to Paris and were at the Gare du Nord around 3pm their time. We spent the afternoon looking around Sacre Coeur and Montmatre. We had a great lunch just along the road from the Moulin Rouge before meeting up with Rachel back the station. She took us over to the 7th where we stayed in the shadow of Le Tour Eiffel. That evening we met up with a friend of hers at a quiet restaurant where I had a fantastic omlette and my very first crepe suzette for pudding. We ended the night chatting in a streetside cafe sharing a bottle of dessert wine.

Saturday Rachel took us down to the Seine where we bought tickets for the Batobus, a water taxi that we used to move around Paris the rest of the day. We went down to the Ile de la Cite to see the Notre Dame and then walked over to the Ile Saint-Loius for lunch. I had the first savory pancake I remember eating (cheese, ham and eggs) before Rachel left us on our own for a bit. We went to see the Louvre pyramid and popped into Angelina to pick up a few choccies before catching the Batobus back to the Eiffel Tower, and walking back to where we were staying.

Rachael joined us a little later and took us over to her friend's house for dinner. Her whole flat was pretty much the size of a student room in Wessex or Norwood house in Bath! She served up some yummy curry. Rachel explained that most French people just can't cope with spicey foods... which was good news for me. Of the 12 people crammed into the room, about ten spoke English so kittensofdoom and I had plenty of people to talk to and we both had a good night.

Sunday Rachael bought us a selection of pastries for breakfast and we chatted for a while before heading back to the Gare du Nord, the Eurostar and back to Blightly.

We both had a wonderful time and will be going back to visit Rachael again when she has her new flat. Le Gavroche on Thursday was amazing and a meal I'll never forget.

A good weekend.

Well, I haven't played Magic for a little while now but, for some reason, I decided to have a look at Wizards' web-site today.

Its unrecognisable. I had to look up EVERY card apart from Lightning Bolt which, somehow, is back in the basic set!

Don't get me started on Planeswalkers.

They've even changed the rules so a Mogg fanatic can't kill two 1/1 critters any more because they've changed the way attacking/blocking works.

I dunno. Probably best I'm out of it both for the sake of my sanity AND wallet.

So, kittensofdoom came back from her sojourn north of the border and I decided to welcome her back with a special meal. One of the things she really likes in Marmaris and tried and loved when we were in Turkey was Incik. For those that don't know, those I've had have been Lamb Shank in a tomatoey sauce usually slow cooked and served with rice.

I actually managed to get some Lamb Shanks from Waitrose and found a recipie for Incik that I felt I could implement. I left the meat on the bone and halved all the amounts as I only did it for two.

kittensofdoom loved it. YAY!

Anyhow, I'm sure some people might like to try it so I thought I'd post a link to the recipe. It takes a little while but really only uses one dish! Washing up = negligible.

Bit of drama outside our flat. Neither kittensofdoom or I saw a thing.

Pretty sure I know who they arrested though.

After a break of six months Entropy is back on this weekend at the Porter Butt from 8pm on Saturday. icklemichael, Andy (When Robots Attack) and I will be playing the usual mix of all thing alternative.

We hope to see some of you good folk there!

I unsubscribed from the Bath-and-Bristol-Magic yahoo group today.

I had already unsubscribed from the MTGRULES and DCIJUDGE mailing lists last month but this really feels like cutting the last connections. I really will have to get around to boxing up any cards I want to keep and selling/giving away the rest now.

I feel a little sad.

For those of you are are fans of "Josh"



I have recently purchased Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. kittensofdoom and I will let you know how it turns out.

So, I found out there were no busses up to University today after waiting for one for ten minutes. Given the state of the pavements I got a taxi up the hill (for the second day in a row. GRR) so that I wouldn't miss my 10 o'clock meeting... which was cancelled.

So, this whole week of stuff I've had organised has pretty much been a washout because of snow. To top it off the flat room of our office has lots of snow on it, whenever this happens the roof leaks. This isn't usually a problem - you see tiles bulging - but someone called Property Services and they said the magic word "abestos" so the office has been evacuated for 24-48 hours while they fix it.

Luckily I have tomorrow off work.

Meh. What a day.

Given conversations last night in the pub, I was amused by a story on Massively titled "Is World of Warcraft a religion".

A chap has a thesis on this called Cyberpilgrims.

Well, I have (finally) won some money on the Premium Bonds. I'll be spending my winnings on a nice meal.

Yay!

So, last week the new year was going well. Got down the gym, played footie. Then I hit my knee and it took three days to stop hurting - it's still sore now. My legs were achey for two days post footie (used to that after not playing for a while) and not I seem to have caught whatever Emma had and I'm off work with a throat that feels like its full of sand paper.

MEH.

All this badness should fuck off. I want to be doing interesting stuff at work, going to the gym and playing footie.

Noob night should be fine tonight - just don't drink out of my glass!

Was just wondering if anyone was going to Cory Doctorow's signing of Little Brother dressed appropriately?

I have queued overnight for tickets for a concert. I've queued at the doors of Electronics Boutique (back in the old days) for a console. Tonight I queued for a game. I don't give a flying fuck if people think I'm sad. I went along with friends, we abused half the queue and then jumped the line because I'd reserved my copies.

Install quick, upgrade account quick. Online patch? Sloooooow. 65% done.

Woot. Giev WRATH.

I stayed up until Ohio was called for Obama. As my understanding went, no Republian has ever won without it. As I went to bed I was a little worried that it might be close and that a colony of lawyers would tie things up in knots.

This morning it seemed it wasn't even close and McCain graciously conceeded defeat. I don't know how things are going to turn out. Maybe, as lee_chaos has pointed out, we should remember the optimism people felt back in 1997 and how people feel now.

I'm choosing to go with cautious optimism.

Probably a good idea some people don't play internet games...

It is October tomorrow and on Saturday Entropy is seven years old. As usual we are runnign a fancy dress night and have some special guest DJs, gillywoo and lee_chaos.


Prizes for the three best costumes as judged by the DJs at midnight. Doors open 8pm as usual and £3 entropy (£2 if you have a rocksoc or musicsoc card).

Hopefully some of you will be there ;-)

Cheers!

Yarr.

Splosh, splosh, splosh.

Had a dream last night that I woke up back in time the day before one of my final exams. Obviously I couldn't remember what the exam was, let alone the content and I was worried that it would change the future when I got back to it.

No, I don't know what goes on in my head either.

If you think that you can start child threads and then "grab data from the main thread before it changes" then DON'T TRY TO WRITE MULTI-THREADED CODE.