Walsingham

I think it's important whenever considering that sort of thing to keep in mind how much bollocks floats around intelligence cells. It's part of the job. It's easy to confuse the truth with rumour.

Didn't fancy being at home alone today. Had my singing lesson - which rocked - and went strolling about town looking for people I knew. Wound up with good friends I hadn't seen in a while and then out to the pub for beer and venting stress. Stuck to no more than three beers, comfortably oiled. Then home to the internets, and emailing people drunkenly.

Re-listening to this compilation. I made it for a certain lady, and although I've now admitted she's probably bad for me, I LOVE this compilation. It's one of the best I've ever put together. Really flows, and goes on a jourey at the same time.

Pfft! last year, maybe...

I got invited to a screening with Uwe Boll recently, but couldn't go due to the family thing. *thinks* I could aks him to make a film about my family! A sort of Uwe boll does Lars von Trier.

What I found refreshing about that scene is that they're such peaceable types. Compared with a night in a regular club, which is seething with envy, violence, and bacardi breezer.

My learned colleague, Mr Kalthorne, merely conflates the whole of humanity with his bad attitude.

My advice is to enjoy being a freshman. Don't turn into a networking bastard too soon in life.

I'm going to imagine this silence is the silence of Obsidian furiously animating Yahtzee being eaten by a woodlouse.

I know I always say this, but tabletop games can give you an excellent feel for _some_ elements of games design and manufacturing. Granted maybe your game is not going to work on cardboard, but if it might then it could be a way to put it through its paces. You'll also be able to point at your boxed game as proof that you were there first if you later go for a computer platform. Further point: if you do decide to make a tabletop game, use your brains to come up with component manufacturers and ideas. For example, we found we could get biscuit tins made for less money than the same design on cardboard because 'games manufacturing' companies priced so high. Ditto looking out for ordinary plastic widgets which could be used as parts.

Sure. She's been fighting cancer for about five years now. Basically hit the skids in the last couple of weeks. I still say it's impressive she's done as well as she has. She was given only a year or so to live at the outset. Most of her treatment - at her insistence - has been non-standard.

Because you put the sauce on as teh later marinade you don't get a crust. However, you could probably get one by frying the steak in deeper oil, and only adding the sauce afterwards. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm guessing that this recipe might not work so evenly for a ribeye steak or other very fatty cuts, as they would spread out a bit.

Since we had some comments in the daily activity thread I thought i'd set another one of these up. My mum being at death's door means we've been allowed to take her off her special ultra-goody-two-shoes diet. My sister and I both cooked. My favourite has to be the steak I did. It's a heavy adaptation of a recipe I read. Take a fillet steak and coat it thickly in a mixture of powdered coriander seed, black pepper, and salt. Leave to one side so the coating dries out and seals the surface. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan mix together equal quantities of soy sauce and honey. I used bloody expensive aromatic honey. Warm this through so the honey melts. Add a few barberries (they're very high in vitamin C), bruised and chopped lemon grass, and some crushed garlic. Once the flavours are mixing, pour a little over your steak to help the marinade. Now turn up the heat on the sauce, so it froths and caramelises, and goes a bit burnt. Once it's nice and thick, seive out any lumpy bits of stuff and save as sauce for the steak (or anything else, for that matter). If you're too chicken to eat the steak raw with this sauce then fry it no more than medium rare and eat with gusto. Would work with a hearty south american red wine or a really cold lager.

can't remember when I was last on. It's been a while. Spent a long time at the parents. mom's still alive, but all swollen and yellow with jaundice. She'd actually look hilarious if it weren't serious. She now needs 24 hour cover, so the family has been working shifts. She's in a NHS hospice which we would never be able to afford, even with our resources, and they are unbelievably good. But she needs loved ones around to keep her calm. Doctors say we should not look more than a couple of days ahead, basically. It took a bit of getting used to, caring for someone who is completely incapable of moving more than their lower arms. But in general the disgusting bits are over pretty quickly. You don't get used to them, but you do get better at forgetting them. just trying to keep her comfortable at the moment. I came back to my own house for a few days to try and get some work done, and to take a break.

Quick Answer: "I could have been a heavyweight boxer... if I'd been heavier and better at boxing" Explanation: You'd have to be an insane dictator to have started ww2, but having done so there were systemic and practical reasons why Germany probably was going to lose all along. ~~ Some detailed reasons why Germany was going to lose Political: 1. Churchill. Cabinet papers and other evidence clearly indicate that without Winston Chruchill the British establishment would have agreed to peace after Dunkirk. 2. The Blitz Anyone who didn't hate the Nazis in Britain soon did after they began the Blitz. It turns out that there was a flaw in teh theory that you bomb people to the point where they won't stand up to you, then expect them to stand up to their own government. 3. Hitler backed his mates He may have been human excrement, but Hitler had a bewildering loyalty to other fascists. he followed Italy into North Africa. He followed Japan into war with the United States. he kept Hermann Goering as head of the luftwaffe (see below). 4. Nazism sucks Nazi party officials at all levels consistently made mistakes. They made mistakes due to being lazy and stupid, which were subtle, and they made mistakes due to being racist ****ers which were less subtle. Principally, nazism managed to turn a Red Army that had little interest in fighting into a vengeful colossus through treating the Russians according to party doctrine. Logistic: 1. Too many different bits of kit. All the armed forces used a massive variety of different machines. This complicated supply of spare parts and training of mechanics. Also, lots of the adapted kit, like the self-propelled guns, was too heavy or underpowered, meaning it broke in new and exciting ways. 2. No logistic geniuses. Certainly there were some logistic cretins on the Allied side (for example: Gen. JCH Lee). But there were also some absolute bloody marvels. OVERLORD being one example, and the 14th army counter-attack on Burma being another. Had Germany possessed a fraction of that ingenuity it might have been able to overcome logistic problems in the East which constantly hampered effectiveness. Although the aforementioned being a bunch of ****s and subsequent partisan activity couldn't have helped. 3. No oil. You can't run an army on smoked pig products alone. You need fuel. As a central european power Germany simply didn't have access to enough fuel. Although this could have been solved by a concerted attempt to drive for the British-held middle east. Intelligence: 1. Codebreaking & codekeeping Even without the Royal Navy capturing an enigma machine (it wasn't the US Navy, no matter what the film says) Allied codebreaking was extensive and generally very effective. Signals traffic by the Germans and also the shockingly inept Japanese lead Allied commanders to have a superb picture of events, including German intentions. With this intelligence it became almost unthinkable for the Germans to achieve any meaningful surprise on the battlefield. And before you ask, the battle of the bluge happened because we forgot the germans might start using telephone lines rather than radios once they were back in germany. 2. The XXX committee In addition to knowing what Jerry was thinking, the British set about capturing, turning, and generally foxing German intelligence agents. By a determined and well-coordinated effort, the Germans were actively mislead on just about anything we could think of. from the number and strength of allied forces, to the effects of air raids, and the general intentions of our troops. Combat Effectiveness: 1. At sea Being a bit of a mahdi wee man, Hitler refused to accept the blidingly obvious point that Germany was almost certainly never going to out-do the Royal Navy surface fleet. He tried to compete by building battle-cruisers and whatnot. Quite simply, the steel and other resources he wasted on these would have been far better used building U-boats, or tanks, or railway engines, or cutlery... because they just got sunk. They were always going to be sunk. The best he could hope for was that he would repeat the first world war, and he'd build a huge fleet which did sod all for fear of what would happen if it met in a big battle and lost. 2. In the air The luftwafe made three principle blunders. The first was not building a heavy bomber like the Lancaster or Flying Fortress; if you insist on wasting resources on strategic bombing then you need heavy bombers to be efficient. The second blunder was not adopting drop tanks - which were well understood at the time - for use on fighters in the Battle for Britain. The third blunder was the confused mess that they made of research and development and production, meaning they had not enough sensible fighters to tackle Allied airpower later in the war. 3. On land German land forces justifiably get a lot of chaps warm about the trousers. They fought extremely well because the wehrmacht had trained its command and control structures superbly, and the Nazi culture of encouraging violence with marching made for a good start with recruits. However, they did two things pretty badly. The first was they didn't really have any concept of operations beyond burst through and surround, with a general reckless enthusiasm. Compare this with the Russians who were world leaders in understanding an opponent's architecture and dismantling it. The second failing was that they stood their ground when they shouldn't, and they ran away when they shouldn't. A lot of this is down to Hitler, but not all of it. Again, you could argue this comes back to their lack of operational thinking.

You mean like playing a xylophone?

I think it's horrible. It's the closest we have come to functional mind control. We are constantly bombarded with opinions that tell us who our heroes have to be, what we are to think, what we have to fear, what's the road to happiness, who are the good guys and the bad guys... etc. Throw in video games (or any other form of mental anesthesia), and we might as well dump our brains in the trash can. And it takes a conscious, sustained and focused effort on the individual's part to fight this. What if YOU are part of that machine, eh?

I just love the idea of "they're up there looking down on me". Thank you but I don't need the last 20 generations of my family watching me do what all men do... or shower... or anything really. My mum believes in that sort of thing. She asked if she could come visit, and eventually we compromised that she could visit whenever my stepfather was around. Kinda helpful like a visual clue. If she violates that rule, she's getting one warning then I'm fetching an old priest and a young priest...

Aliens come to Earth, at first they just attack shipping. Then it turns out the sea levels are rising. Basically it's about how an alien species could go about knocking the hell out of us and we'd be totally incapble of doing anything to stop them. Very very good.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/contests/r...inggreatgame_09 Come on guys, this HAS to be done, surely? Is anyone up for this?

Like it.

Two words: **** death. Death is a physical fact that is going to overcome every single one of us. But that does not mean we should pay it any mind. It's like some amazingly powerful dictator. We should fight it, we should outfox it, we should rage against it. But what we should never do is to hold any kind of interest in it or respect for it. I spent a good few hours talking about this with my mom, and she's come round to my way of thinking somewhat. The only emotion one should have towards death is contempt. Total, venomous, but serene contempt. That's why I shall NOT become obsessed with angels or mediums, or how many cigarettes I second hand smoke. That's why I say: take heart, take ale, and forget the whole bloody subject except to damn it vocally and in chorus.

WTF? Fatboy Slim is great for working out. *pout*

I can't speak for your friend, but I know that I feel very strongly as if my life has been on hold ever since we found out my mum had cancer. You go into emotional and intellectual lockdown. Also, it seems logical to me that you'd reach out to another person when you're hurting from grief. ...additionally, thinking about it... when someone is properly terminal you almost begin the grieving process before they're gone. Any of that make sense?