Scotland! Fuck Yeah!
So I went and I drank and I hurt and I returned.
Which is a description of last weekend, which is still in the process of finishing and describes, in some vague fashion, that act of attending my bi-annual (if I can call that which occurs every 8-9 months, due to the attribute of rubbishness on my part, bi-annual) Scottish weekend to see those kith and kin known as andrewducker and stenchpuppy. Those along with the non-LJ user aspect known as "Meredith Place" (a sister-in-law), a genetic divergent monikered as trashcanglam, she that is high faluting and registered as tisme and other such reprobates that shall not be named due to their overall incompetence in the humanitarian ideals of at least appearing human in the first place.
My attendance at such a location, geographically situated at latitudes offensively encompassing areas such that the constituents conform to social boundaries below the middle class, is purely an accident of unfortunate genetics. Both of those that are known to share a brace of parents with my good-self, long ago decided, for individual-yet-equally-baffling reasons, to establish their positional designation as the great-old-city of Edinburgh. Thus I found myself spending a Thursday night harried by the thought of impending ZBRs* and a malevolence of bug counts, fighting to reduce all such errors as could be found in Fable: The Lost Chapters by the number described as being mine.
This seemed trivial and, beyond trivial, necessary, as Louise, our erstwhile head of studio (originally some producer sort that got promoted by the accident of working really hard) had suggested that "yes, you can have Friday the 29th as holiday...if you have no bugs left". So I fought and I battled and I resolved and I assigned to committee and my 11 bugs remained in situ by dint of as many as I removed being added again from different quarters, until I turned my back for five minutes circa-midday and returned my eyes to the screen to see 11 had become 18 and then I nearly threw up in panic.
But, it turns out, all that is needed to fix "many bugs" is the assignment of "many bugs" and the ensuing "fear". For, by 8pm that night I had crumpled 10 to dust and another 3 to pre-dust-but-not-quite-check-in-able, resulting in a meagre 5 bugs to fix come Monday morn...
...and then I ran for it.
I ran myself down to Haywards Heath, not far North of Brighton, to attend a meeting with a Sussex Uni friend who had spent the last 3 1/2 years that I had been "fucking about" with games, working on his PhD in ALife. We had undertaken our Masters together and both worked on our Dissertations for 4 months in the same darkened room during Brighton's bright summer sun. We'd produced a toolkit for putting together simulated robots, and neural network style brains, graphically. This was of no use to our dissertations whatsoever, but managed to avoid the main thrust of work enough to feel that our summer was properly wasted.
So I talked and I ate and I slept and I got up and I drove to Gatwick airport to arrive 3 hours early for check-in, which allowed a very slow eating of McDonalds and playing of 10p fruit machines and wandering about like a lost soul post security. The one sorrowful point being the proposed meeting of myself and my flatmate Sophie where, via text message, it was slowly dawned upon us that her 3.30pm flight and my 2.40pm flight from Gatwick to Amsterdam and Edinburgh (respectively), whilst being chronologically similar enough to allow for a couple of pre-flight pints, were topographically separated to the degree that our departure lounges existed in opposing terminals. To-wit: she was North and I was South and never the twain shall meet.
But I made my flight in happy time and touched down some four o'clock of the afternoon upon Scottish ground, took town-bound bus to the Waverly bridge and was greeted with merry hug and back patting by stenchpuppy in true Ducker-brother(tm) style.
That night was chosen for large-scale gaming and, some short food-filled time after arrival, an eleven player game of poker was initiated. I'll cut to the chase and statistise the following...four hours passed, £55 changed hands and I beat all those cunts, proving myself the master...of course I thought I'd lost on more than one occasion, but the Gods were with me or, at least, not paying close attention and I dived to victory winning myself a sterling (literally and metaphorically) £25.
What.
A.
Winnar!
The sun went down. The sun came up. And thus Saturday became fact not future. Shopping was had and I bought, literally, socks and pants at a variety of Scottish clothing emporiums. This was a necessity as lack of access to the house washing facilities had necessitated my sojourn to Scotland to occur without clean undergarments.
Saturday night, then, was spent at Beltane, a pagan fire festival in existence upon a hilltop overlooking the fair city of Edinburgh. Many drinks were had, much ignitable was inflamed and a plethora of fun was enjoyed by all. Of course the Christians had to turn up and camp outside the toilets, telling all and sundry that they should ditch their evil pagan ways and turn to Christendom, but they didn't mar the experience utterly. Not even the drunk man at the burger van spraying my leg with mustard tainted the event, nor the losing and refinding of the Meredith, nor even the running out of chips of the aforementioned burger van.
Post fire-ritual myself, andrewducker and tisme went to trashcanglam's for 1am wining and musicing and talking and shitting about. All such particulars were taken upon with much vigour and success until a 3am taxi rendered me back to my wee brother and sister-in-law's fair abode.
Then I awoke.
And thusly did I feel the need to vom.
But two neurofen and a paracetamol and some further sleepings allowed me to awake in mere mild discomfort and, after some tech talk and mentioning of inheritance laws, I dived toward the bus that would take me to the place of the flying, steel dragons and home.
Tonight I have mostly faffed about talking to Sophie and Charlotte about boys and drugs and the occasional bad touching.
Tomorrow I walk the Devil's punchbowl.
That is all...
Mx
*Zero bug rate...the point at which the notional number of bugs in the game is ZERO and any newly found bugs are eradicated within a 24 hour period...
Which is a description of last weekend, which is still in the process of finishing and describes, in some vague fashion, that act of attending my bi-annual (if I can call that which occurs every 8-9 months, due to the attribute of rubbishness on my part, bi-annual) Scottish weekend to see those kith and kin known as andrewducker and stenchpuppy. Those along with the non-LJ user aspect known as "Meredith Place" (a sister-in-law), a genetic divergent monikered as trashcanglam, she that is high faluting and registered as tisme and other such reprobates that shall not be named due to their overall incompetence in the humanitarian ideals of at least appearing human in the first place.
My attendance at such a location, geographically situated at latitudes offensively encompassing areas such that the constituents conform to social boundaries below the middle class, is purely an accident of unfortunate genetics. Both of those that are known to share a brace of parents with my good-self, long ago decided, for individual-yet-equally-baffling reasons, to establish their positional designation as the great-old-city of Edinburgh. Thus I found myself spending a Thursday night harried by the thought of impending ZBRs* and a malevolence of bug counts, fighting to reduce all such errors as could be found in Fable: The Lost Chapters by the number described as being mine.
This seemed trivial and, beyond trivial, necessary, as Louise, our erstwhile head of studio (originally some producer sort that got promoted by the accident of working really hard) had suggested that "yes, you can have Friday the 29th as holiday...if you have no bugs left". So I fought and I battled and I resolved and I assigned to committee and my 11 bugs remained in situ by dint of as many as I removed being added again from different quarters, until I turned my back for five minutes circa-midday and returned my eyes to the screen to see 11 had become 18 and then I nearly threw up in panic.
But, it turns out, all that is needed to fix "many bugs" is the assignment of "many bugs" and the ensuing "fear". For, by 8pm that night I had crumpled 10 to dust and another 3 to pre-dust-but-not-quite-check-in-able, resulting in a meagre 5 bugs to fix come Monday morn...
...and then I ran for it.
I ran myself down to Haywards Heath, not far North of Brighton, to attend a meeting with a Sussex Uni friend who had spent the last 3 1/2 years that I had been "fucking about" with games, working on his PhD in ALife. We had undertaken our Masters together and both worked on our Dissertations for 4 months in the same darkened room during Brighton's bright summer sun. We'd produced a toolkit for putting together simulated robots, and neural network style brains, graphically. This was of no use to our dissertations whatsoever, but managed to avoid the main thrust of work enough to feel that our summer was properly wasted.
So I talked and I ate and I slept and I got up and I drove to Gatwick airport to arrive 3 hours early for check-in, which allowed a very slow eating of McDonalds and playing of 10p fruit machines and wandering about like a lost soul post security. The one sorrowful point being the proposed meeting of myself and my flatmate Sophie where, via text message, it was slowly dawned upon us that her 3.30pm flight and my 2.40pm flight from Gatwick to Amsterdam and Edinburgh (respectively), whilst being chronologically similar enough to allow for a couple of pre-flight pints, were topographically separated to the degree that our departure lounges existed in opposing terminals. To-wit: she was North and I was South and never the twain shall meet.
But I made my flight in happy time and touched down some four o'clock of the afternoon upon Scottish ground, took town-bound bus to the Waverly bridge and was greeted with merry hug and back patting by stenchpuppy in true Ducker-brother(tm) style.
That night was chosen for large-scale gaming and, some short food-filled time after arrival, an eleven player game of poker was initiated. I'll cut to the chase and statistise the following...four hours passed, £55 changed hands and I beat all those cunts, proving myself the master...of course I thought I'd lost on more than one occasion, but the Gods were with me or, at least, not paying close attention and I dived to victory winning myself a sterling (literally and metaphorically) £25.
What.
A.
Winnar!
The sun went down. The sun came up. And thus Saturday became fact not future. Shopping was had and I bought, literally, socks and pants at a variety of Scottish clothing emporiums. This was a necessity as lack of access to the house washing facilities had necessitated my sojourn to Scotland to occur without clean undergarments.
Saturday night, then, was spent at Beltane, a pagan fire festival in existence upon a hilltop overlooking the fair city of Edinburgh. Many drinks were had, much ignitable was inflamed and a plethora of fun was enjoyed by all. Of course the Christians had to turn up and camp outside the toilets, telling all and sundry that they should ditch their evil pagan ways and turn to Christendom, but they didn't mar the experience utterly. Not even the drunk man at the burger van spraying my leg with mustard tainted the event, nor the losing and refinding of the Meredith, nor even the running out of chips of the aforementioned burger van.
Post fire-ritual myself, andrewducker and tisme went to trashcanglam's for 1am wining and musicing and talking and shitting about. All such particulars were taken upon with much vigour and success until a 3am taxi rendered me back to my wee brother and sister-in-law's fair abode.
Then I awoke.
And thusly did I feel the need to vom.
But two neurofen and a paracetamol and some further sleepings allowed me to awake in mere mild discomfort and, after some tech talk and mentioning of inheritance laws, I dived toward the bus that would take me to the place of the flying, steel dragons and home.
Tonight I have mostly faffed about talking to Sophie and Charlotte about boys and drugs and the occasional bad touching.
Tomorrow I walk the Devil's punchbowl.
That is all...
Mx
*Zero bug rate...the point at which the notional number of bugs in the game is ZERO and any newly found bugs are eradicated within a 24 hour period...