Over the last few years stv&jo have variously participated in a sort of bloody-mindedly perverse version of Ludum Dare, which is a game jam, a themed, annual competition to design a video game in 48 hours. While stv and his cohorts have in the past actually programmed a game, some combination of jo&stv have at various points also run a personalised ( Read more... )

It's bucketing down outside, and in the interstices between lectures the foyer of my building is filled with damp-puppy students staring dolefully out into the downpour amid the smell of wet hair. We are clearly in autumn, a season of pleasing damp and benevolent chill, and I have broken out the first boots of the season. I am happy. I am, however ( Read more... )

We ran Attack of the Vapours, our insane 24-person parody LARP, for the latest generation of university roleplaying types last night. As a result I'm pretty much dead, but it was fun, and the players did very well. Some really good roleplayers beautifully in character, and a lot of attention paid to costume and prop. Memo to self: always put a ( Read more... )

I have a New Resolution for today. When the Dear Little Students knock on the door, I will attempt to school my inevitable, snarling gut-reaction into a welcoming smile. If it kills me. It may be more of a terrifying grimace, in which case score, they'll all run away and never come back, but hopefully it will, via strict behaviourist principles in ( Read more... )

It's been a rude shock to come back to work after a ten-day break, particularly when my week has been rendered more than somewhat hideous by a continual stream of angsty student queries. My immediate response to a knock on my door has been instant, reflexive, homicidal rage, which I instantly have to choke down in order to be empathetic to their ( Read more... )

Yesterday was all misty and moisty, with that kind of light, persistent rain that drifts gently sideways in the wind but doesn't let that distract it from implementing a fairly relentless soaking policy. My garden is all happy and damp, if somewhat buried under plane tree leaves because I've been too busy playing Dragon Age to actually do any ( Read more... )

Good lord, but the spam on this LJ account is starting to gain momentum - I'm having to delete it several times a week, which is odd, as I am certainly not a high-traffic site, or even one with a particularly obvious demographic. Strange and random and horribly wholesale are the targetings of marketers. And the spam comments are all completely ( Read more... )

I can't make chocolate chip cookies without remembering the first Jo'burg roleplaying tournament I ever played, which was one run by the Wits crew, way before ICON was even a twinkle in Grant's eye. It was a cute tournament. We played pygmies, members of the Tchokka Cheep tribe, tasked with dealing with a crashed spaceship in our jungle. I was in ( Read more... )

I am still astonishingly tired, but thank heavens, that should be the worst of the year officially over. Student body count high, but not quite as high as it could have been. I'd like to thank Red Bull and Smallville for their contributions to my sanity over the last month. All I have to get through now is the inevitable sinus/glandular fever two- ( Read more... )

Fiasco! is my new favourite roleplaying experience. I'm addicted. I spent most of Sunday being the fake-twin bubblegum-pop-fake-hard-rock lead singer to Jo's version of my fake twin sister (she was the emo one, I was the poppy one, we had catfights and no brain worth mentioning and did drugs and drummers in equal quantities). Our rock band was ( Read more... )