I've survived the first day of Gen Con UK, even if we made a complete mess of the GURPS Cliffhangers adventure. For once it was truly bad tactical decisions, not awful dice rolling which caused things like my character getting stuck inside a crashing plane. At least I didn't completely miss the bad guys' Zeppellin!

Don't like the way the demo hall closes at 6pm, which means any in-progress games have to relocate if they haven't finished by then. Fortunately there was a free table tonight in the CCG hall; probably by the weekend these tables will be filled with hordes of Magic:the Gathering players so such an option won't be possible.

Full report on the rest of the con on Sunday - Tomorrow night I'm at the Pyramidian dinner at Belgo's in Covent Garden.
:: Tim Hall 11:29 PM ::  

Memetic Life has a collection of really bad metaphors allegedly from US High School essays.
:: Tim Hall 11:21 PM ::  

Either that, or it's got speech recognition you didn't know it had. Try this ESP Experiment!

No thinking traitorous thoughts, comrade. The Computer is your friend! Thanks to Twylyte on Dreamlyrics for the link.
:: Tim Hall 8:03 PM ::  

Here's the next five of my Nick Hornby-like list of 20 favourite albums.

Dream Theater - Metropolis II: Scenes from a Memory

Dream Theater are the pack leaders of the prog-metal scene. Earlier albums such as "Images and Words" showed they had the chops, even though some of the songs turned into poorly-structured jams. They progressed through the darker and heavier "Awake", and the tighter, more radio-friendly "Falling Into Infinity". Their masterpiece, "Metropolis II" combines the best elements of these three preceding albums, and shows how they've developed compositional and arrangement skills to match their undoubted instrumental virtuosity. It goes without saying that this is a concept album, the theme being memories of past lives, and a murder mystery.

Genesis - Selling England by the Pound

I've reviewed this album on this blog before. I find it difficult to choose between this and "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway"; both show the band at their peak, before Peter Gabriel left and the band began to turn away to a more commercial, blander direction. This is what 70s prog-rock was all about; Peter Gabriel's sometimes surreal lyrics, complex classically-influenced arrangements, and lengthy instrumental workouts spotlighting Steve Hackett's liquid guitar and Tony Banks' keyboard skills.

IQ - Subterrainea

IQ had a chequered history. They began in the early 80s, and their early albums "Tales from the Lush Attic" and "The Wake" were clearly derivative of Gabriel-era Genesis. With a different singer they tried a more commercial approach with the "Nonzamo" and "Are You Sitting Comfortably" albums. They vanished for several years before reforming, back with the original vocalist Peter Nicholls. Their new sound was a more polished combination the best elements of the two earlier phases of their career. Of the three post-reunion albums, the second, the double concept album "Subterrania" shows them at their best.

Jon Lord - Sarabande

Attempts to combine rock and classical music get a bad press. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. This 1976 solo album by Deep Purple's Jon Lord is an album that works, and is the best of several solo albums he's released in parallel to his career in Deep Purple and Whitesnake. It's based on the concept of baroque dance suite. Featuring Andy Somers, later of The Police on guitar, the rock band and the orchestra integrate into a single whole; sometimes the band play the theme with the orchestra adding tonal colour, in other places the orchestra takes the theme with band providing rhythmic support. Listeners are also treated to an extended jazz-rock workout from Jon's Hammond.

King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King

King Crimson were to define the progressive rock sound, and then move on to different things as soon as making this musical statement. Although later incarnations of Crimson formed around guitarist Robert Fripp, this one is dominated by the soaring vocals of Greg Lake and the mellotron on Ian McDonald, and of course, the marvelous baroque lyrics of Pete Sinfield, although Fripp shines on the metallic opener, the classic "21st Century Schizoid Man".
:: Tim Hall 4:02 PM ::  

An enthusiast charter marking the farewell to the Class 58 hits the buffers at Walton-on-Naze in Essex. The train, named the "bone-breaker" after the nickname of the class 58, "Bones" ended up breaking bones of two passengers (one with broken leg, and one with a couple of cracked ribs) after a 5mph collision with the buffer stops. The cause is so far unknown. 29 other people suffered minor injuries.

Walton-on-Naze has a reputation for being one of the most snobbish towns in England. The place was notorious for refusing to give planning permission for a chip shop because it would attract "the wrong element". Not sure what they make of a trainload of stranded class 58 fans.

:: Tim Hall 11:20 PM ::  

Over on BlogCritics, someone (can't remember who) suggested the reviewers came up with a list of their top ten albums to give people an idea of where they're coming from musically. He admitted the whole thing is a bit Nick Hornby-ish, but a lot of people like compiling lists, so here's the first part of mine. Mine's a top twenty because I couldn't pare the list down to ten, even by ruling that no artist could have more then one album in the list.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the first five, listed alphabetically

Anathema - Judgement

Anathema began life as a standard death-metal act, all grinding riffs and death-grunt vocals. But once their original vocalist left, and rhythm guitarist Vincent Cavanagh took over vocals, things started to change. By the time they recorded "Judgement", a strong Pink Floyd influence had crept in and they were sounding as much progressive rock as metal. "Judgement" is an atmospheric and emotional work, musically balancing light and shade, metal riffs contrasting with delicate acoustic passages.

Asia - Asia

Most critics scoffed at the idea of this supergroup, consisting of ex-Yes men Steve Howe and Geoff Downes, ELP's Carl Palmer John Wetton of King Crimson, Uriah Heep and UK fame. While many expected a prog-muso chops-fest, what we got was a superb AOR pop-rock album, with the instrumental breaks cut back to fit the songs. Great combination of good playing, good songs, and powerful production, sadly they were never able to repeat the quality of this debut.

Black Sabbath - Heaven and Hell

I know I'm probably a heretic for prefering Ronnie Dio's operatic melodrama to Ozzy's angst-ridden howl, but to me Dio's voice and Toni Iommi's guitar seemed a perfect match. As much the follow-up to Rainbow's "Long Live Rock and Roll" as to "Never Say Die", this is a great metal album when considered on it's own merits rather than in comparison to the Ozzy canon.

Blue Öyster Cult - Secret Treaties

Blue Öyster Cult have always been my favourite American band, with their multi-layered sound, high wierdness lyrics and Buck Dharma's wonderful guitar playing. All their albums are good, most of them are great, and this album, their third, is their best.

Deep Purple - Machine Head

What can I say about Deep Purple? One of the defining groups of the heavy metal genre, with the riffs that inspired a generation of bedroom air-guitarists, some of whom would go on to pick up real guitars and form the next generation of bands in the 1980s and beyond, even if most guitar shop owners are sick of hearing "Smoke on the Water". Every song on this album is a classic; no filler at all.
:: Tim Hall 5:54 PM ::  

This review, along with many others, can also be found at BlogCritics.org.

It was January 28th, 1982, the day after my 21st birthday. As part of the celebrations, I had tickets to see UFO at the second of three sell-out concerts at what was then the great temple of British rock, the Hammersmith Odeon in London.

The BBC recorded the show for their regular Saturday night 'In Concert' broadcast a couple of weeks later. This has shown up as a bootleg in the past, now it sees an 'official' release. While many people associate UFO with Michael Schenker, the often overlooked period with Paul 'Tonka' Chapman saw their greatest commercial success. This recording shows just why; it shows the Phil Mogg/Paul Chapman/Pete Way/Andy Parker/Neil Carter line-up at it's peak.

In complete contrast to the classic "Strangers in the Night" live album released just three years earlier, they draw the bulk of the songs here from their most recent albums 'No Place to Run', 'The Wild, Willing and the Innocent' and 'Mechanix'. Just a few Schenker-era favourites remain, four on this album, since the final encore 'Doctor Doctor' is missing.

High spots are the "No Place to Run", the harder and heavier version a great improvement on the weak studio version (I always felt the lightweight production on 'No Place to Run' was the major blot on George Martin's copybook; perhaps hard rock just wasn't his fort�), a fast and furious "Long Gone", and the storming cover of Elvis' "Mystery Train". Paul 'Tonka' Chapman's playing is superb throughout, unconvinced Schenker fans should listen to his solos on "Only You Can Rock Me" and "Love to Love".

This is of course an 'official bootleg', no overdubs or edits, and suffers from the odd pops, clicks and fades. But the live intensity of the performance shows though; this is just what live albums are supposed to be about. The only thing missing apart from the final encore is the bit where Phil Mogg announced that the gig was being recorded for the radio, and got the audience to shout "Hello Mum". Turn up the volume as far as the neighbours will tolerate, and enjoy!

And I do still have the T-shirt, 20 years later.
:: Tim Hall 7:48 PM ::  

What's the most fun you ever had creating something in a game that changed the game-world?

I think this has be the goth/doom-metal band Ümläüt, which has been a feature of not one, but two games. The first game was an on-line modern-day Call of Cthulhu adventure set in London, running on the late lamented CompuServe RPGAMES forum. My PC was Karl Tolhurst, guitarist of the band. The back-story in my character submission was that the band had split after lead singer Steve Leywood had run out of sanity and murdered another band member (who was also Karl's lover), before killing himself.

The GM skillfully wove all this into her game background; NPC Steve Leywood's occult obsessions had turned him to incorporate forbidden Cthuloud rituals into song lyrics and getting audiences to chant them. He was later to turn up as an undead thing, to murder another band member who the GM was using as an NPC in front of another PC in a different game thread. The Cthuloid rituals themselves may or may not have been responsible for the earthquake in Docklands that did terrible damage to the headquarters of Rupert Murdoch's News International.

Ümläüt have their own spoof web page, which more than one person has mistaken for the web site of a real band - the fictitious murdered keyboard player turned up on the dead rock star site. There is also a recording of Ümläüt's music, made by my brother. The GM refuses to listen to it.

The band has now resurfaced in another on-line game, Edge of Hell running on Dreamlyrics, touring the US slightly earlier in their own timeline. They're currently stranded in California following several dates falling through due to incompetent management. This time four out of the five members are player characters, including Steve Leywood and one of his murder victims. Time will tell if history will repeat itself; this time the crowd chant of "Iä! Cthulhu F'Tagn!" resulted in a severe thunderstorm and a power failure that terminated the show.
:: Tim Hall 4:05 PM ::  

I'm not in total agreement with Patrick Crozier.

Or take the airport. OK, so arriving there by road is a pain but once you've entered the terminal building it's a piece of cake. You check in, go through passport control, go through security, do some shopping, go to the departure gate, board your plane. Easy peasy.

Boggle? One of the big advantages of train travel is that it isn't as cumbersome as air travel. No two-hour check-ins, lengthy boarding procedures or nonsense like that. As for shops and facilities, how many railway stations in Britain deal with the same number of passengers daily as an airport? And what proportion of those passengers arrive an hour before their train is due to depart?

I travelled from Slough to Manchester today, and experienced four stations (and three trains) in the process. I thought about yesterday's comments as I travelled.

Slough: Arrived about 15 minutes before the train was due. There's nothing in terms of passenger facilities at all on platform 2 - There is a buffet, but it's on the wrong side of the revenue protection barriers. There's another one (when it's open) on platform 5 over the bridge. There's also no gents loo on that platform; you have to cross the bridge to platform 5 again. Room for improvement here.

Oxford: I waited about 35 minutes here, due to a missed connection (for once it was Thames Trains, not Virgin, that was to blame - the Virgin Cross-Country train I'd planned to catch had left on time for once). This is a fairly simple station with two main platforms; I had time for a coffee in the buffet on platform 2. There are a number of shops in the concourse on platform 1, but you have to pass through the revenue protection barrier to get to them (which means I technically broke the journey, which I was allowed to do on my ticket). The bridge linking the two platforms is wide, covered and non-flimsy, and supplied with a passenger lift on both sides. Also the freight lines through the middle are good for taking photographs; I got a good shot of Freightliner's 66520 on the Avon Bin-Liners.

Crewe: My original itinery didn't include a change here; but since I'd missed the direct train from Oxford to Manchester I ended up on the Portsmouth to Liverpool as far as Crewe. This was one of the few trains where a Voyager is a definite improvement on what had gone before; the four car class 220 unit was well-filled, and the passengers would never have fitted in the 2-car 158 they'd previously used on this service. Crewe is a confusing station which had grown piecemeal in Victorian times, with platforms all over the place. Again there's a substantial covered bridge with a lift at each end, although I found the lift on platform 6 hard to find.

Finally, Manchester Piccadilly. Thanks to the Commonwealth Games it's got a shiny new concourse with a growing number of shops, which they've managed to fit in without putting one of those infernal concrete rafts over the platform. The blend of modern and Victorian works, and the 19th century train shed looks a lot better than it must have been in the days of steam. To me, this place is a template for how a major railway terminal should look.

:: Tim Hall 10:35 PM ::  

I find almost all stations disappointing. And it's not just the graffiti, the vandalism, the tatty appearance of many of them or the fact that so many have been rebuilt by modern architects - modernity's answer to the Luftwaffe. Even if none of those things applied I would still be disappointed.

Any why is it that some of the surviving Victorian stations seem to be so much better than the 'modern' ones? I hate the places where they've put a bloody great concrete raft over the platforms, leaving a dark and dingy environment for the passengers. I realise this releases real-estate above the station for retail and office development, but what's the value of the more pleasant passenger environment? Star prize for the most awful station has to be Birmingham New Street, narrow cramped stairways, dark and claustrophobic platforms. Probably the reason Birmingham has such a bad reputation is that New Street (or Spaghetti Junction) is most visitors' first impression of the place. Not that it's a uniquely British problem either; Bern in Switzerland is pretty horrid too.

There are better stations around; I like Manchester Piccadilly, especially now they've built the new airy concourse which compliments the modernised and cleaned-up Victorian train shed. Pity half the trains use the desolate and windswept platforms 13 & 14 ten minutes walk from the rest of the station.

There are a few places where there are decent wide footbridges under cover; Carlisle comes to mind as a pleasant station to use; so does Chester and York. All three are refurbished Victorian buildings complete with overall train-sheds. I think there is a pattern here.

As for confusing layouts, that's not confined to large stations. Dawlish in Devon is horrible in that respect; the place is a maze, it's difficult to find the way out or in, especially when the booking office is closed and you have to get in through the gate at the side. Walking to the corner of the building you're presented by a flight of steps that you naturally assume lead up to the platform. Wrong! After about six steps it leads to a blank wall, where a doorway had been bricked-up. The real entrance is a little further on.

Of course, many smaller unstaffed stations have more in common with a bus stop than an airport in terms of the number of people that use them. I can't think of a good solution to vandalism in a lot of the smaller stations that it's simply not economic to staff all the time. One good idea is to sell off redundant railway buildings as private housing; this has been done in a few places in Britain. I've seen this in Switzerland, where the station buildings of now unstaffed stations are occupied by retired railway staff.
:: Tim Hall 11:09 PM ::  

The short version is this: I stopped reading SF and fantasy when I realized the market had turned into a cesspool without a hint of real life or imagination, driven entirely by paper-thin profit margins and catering to easy, well-known product lines (or imitations thereof).

I don't doubt that there are, right now, very good SF and fantasy books floating around out there. But I have become so poisoned by the bad stuff that it may take me a long time to get my taste back. Not only that, but something else happened that probably undermines everything I could do to bring the taste back: I grew up.

There's no getting around the fact that SF and fantasy are designed to appeal to an adolescent cultural outlook. Not just adolescents, but a culture that revolves around appeasing an adolescent mindset. Many of the people I know who are my age have this kind of perpetually adolescent outlook -- their life revolves around not what's important or meaningful, but around what they can get and how they can get it. (I'm probably not much better, come to think of it, but it is something I have grown painfully aware of in past years.) And most of what they want is adolescent cultural products.

I think that's a little over the top. Sure, there's an awful lot of formulaic drivel out there, but there's plenty of good stuff out there for those that are prepared to look. And there are people out there that write SF and Fantasy suitable for grown-ups.

All of this is probably just a very wordy way for me to voice a prejudice: SF and fantasy as we have come to know it lately are [expletive deleted - this is a family blog]. Plain and simple. Have you read any of the Wheel of Time books? They're unspeakably bad -- atrociously written, ploddingly paced, and populated with characters I wouldn't want to waste ten minutes of my real life with. (That's the Gene Siskel test: if we don't want to spend lunch with these people, why the [another expletive] are we going to read 800 pages about them?) And yet the books sell like mad. Evidently my tastes are a lot finickier than most people's, but I can only report back on what I know. Most of what I keep running into, or what gets recommended, is just nasty hackwork.

I managed to read about a hundred pages into The Wheel of Time before deciding I didn't have the time to waste reading any more. People tell me the series does get better, but people also tell me the later books go off onto rambling interminable subplots, and Robert Jordan will never finish the story, because it's his cash cow.

I gave up on "generic fantasy" several years ago; I read one or two a couple of years ago as part of the Book Club section of the Compuserve SF forum, one of which was the first volume of George R R Martin's Fire and Ice saga. It reminded me of just why I'd given up on generic fantasy; what I was reading was an American daytime soap opera in fantasy trappings. The point at which it lost me was when I imagined a group of bickering kids as having American accents. Sadly I seemed alone in disliking the work, everyone else was praising it in gushing tones. The sysop in charge annoyed me particularly in claiming this formulaic potboiler was many times better than the previous book we'd discussed, Frank Herbert's classic "Dune", and questioning my judgement for daring to disagree with her.

I like the definition of fantasy from John Clute and John Grant's Encyclopedia of Fantasy, which claims that the setting itself must be an actor in the story, and not just a static backdrop. By this definition, much "Generic Fantasy" as written by the likes of Robert Jordan and David Eddings isn't really fantasy at all. I believe Generic Fantasy has now become an extremely conservative genre, almost as conservative as women's romances, driven by archetypes derived from Tolkien and Gary Gygax.

Saying this, I realise I have read and enjoyed a lot of what should be classed as Fantasy in the past couple of years; Roger Zelazny's "Chronicles of Amber", Tim Powers' "The Drawing of the Dark", Neil Gaiman's American Gods and the last couple of Terry Pratchett's Diskworld books, as well as re-reading "Lord of the Rings".

What I suspect is that most readers of Generic Fantasy (and the equivalent formulaic SF sub-genres) don't want surprises; they're not after sense of wonder, or metaphors for the real, mundane world. They're after the comfortably familiar, those easily-recognised archetypes, the same basic story told over and over. Which is why I'm not one of them.
:: Tim Hall 6:53 PM ::  

This is my first attempt at answering one of these; since I can't think of anything to say for the current WISH, so I'll try and answer an older one.

Describe three systems you have gamed under: one you thought was good, one you thought was all right, and one you didn't care for. What were the good points and the bad points of each system? Did the systems support their genre? Were they complex or simple? How easy were they to GM and play? Is there a system you'd really like to try that you haven't? Which ones wouldn't you try based on reading them?

Since so much of my gaming nowadays is either one-shot convention games, or internet-based PBeM/PBMB games, I tend to play a lot of different systems. System matters a lot less in on-line games, so I'll concentrate on the FtF games. I realise the last ten games I've played have all been for different systems, working backwards we have Blue Planet, In Nomine, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, 3rd Ed DnD, GURPS, Hero Wars, TORG, Fudge and Classic Traveller.

Good: GURPS
GURPS is unfairly maligned as an overcomplicated system that appeals only to anal-retentive simulationist gearheads, being too slow and cumbersome for most tastes. It's not true; while the system is detailed, and strives towards realism, it only becomes over-complicated if you insist on using every possible optional rule, something I've never done as a GM, and haven't seen done as a player. Most of the game's complexity is in character generation rather than game-play; once you've generated characters, the actual gameplay runs smoothly. I've played a lot of GURPS both as a GM and as a player, concentrating on low fantasy, realistic modern-day or hard SF, genres for which GURPS excels. To me, it's one of the few well-supported games that's optimised towards more realistic lower-powered characters rather than towards highly cinematic action heroes. I'm not bothered by the fact that it breaks down at high power levels and can't handle comic-book superheroes because I don't care much for those genres.

In the good category I'd also mention Fudge, which is ideal for story-centric rules-light gaming, and Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing, the engine behind Runequest and Cthulhu, which has stood the test of time remarkably well.

All Right - d20
The best thing I can say about D&D 3rd Edition is that it's a big improvement on what went before; they've cleaned up a lot of the inconsistencies and dumped most of the sillier rules. Having played quite a lot of 1st and 2nd ed. DnD over the years, I find 3rd ed an awful lot smoother in play. However, it still includes the sacred cows of DnD such as classes and levels, and the hard-to-rationalise way it treats and armour and damage - Armour doesn't really represent armour, damage quite definitely doesn't represent damage, and to try and rationalise what healing spells do makes my brain hurt. However, it's a reasonable game at representing the tropes of heroic fantasy, though I don't think d20 really works as a generic multi-genre system.

Bad - Deadlands
I sometimes think the designers of Deadlands have tried as hard as possible to make a game which is the polar opposite of my own tastes. Having played it a couple of times under different GMs it's just about the only system I refuse to play any more because I can't stand the mechanics. I find the system of dice and playing cards and poker chips far too intrusive, the card-based initiative system is very slow and cumbersome, and the dice mechanic awful beyond description. It uses a Byzantine dice-pool mechanism using polyhedral dice which leaves the player with absolutely no clue what the character's actual abilities are. This may intentional in an attempt to frustrate min-maxers, in which case I must be a min-maxer because I found the system incredibly frustrating in play. Couple this with what I suspect to be far too high a chance of critical failures (although the impenetrability of the probabilities mean I have no idea if I just rolled badly, or the odds were stacked against me). I hate the way the number of actions per combat round is based on a roll using this idiotic dice mechanism, and the all-too-frequent critical failure means you end up sitting out the next hour while the other players have four or five actions.

There aren't many systems I'd really like to play but haven't, but there are quite a few systems I've played a couple of times but would like to play a bit more before judging them; Hero Wars is one example; a lot of intriguing ideas there, especially the very free-form magic system.
:: Tim Hall 5:44 PM ::  

Stewart Watt posted this to the ModMod mailing list.

Subject: Last Virgin XC Loco Hauled into Padd

Hi all,
Just a quick note to say that last night was the last ever booked Virgin loco hauled service into Paddington (1V97) which then went to form the 1M02 0600 Padd-Manchester. And I had the distinction of despatching on its journey into Padd!!
Regards
Stewart

There's an August 1968 feel about all this. Throughout the summer, the Virgin Cross-Country locomotive-hauled workings have been going over to shiny new Voyagers, one by one. Soon it will all be history and memories.
:: Tim Hall 2:16 PM ::  

Meanwhile Andrew Ian Dodge over at Dodgeblog doesn't mince his words - "Elvis was an ignorant drug-addled over-eating cretin. He would have been forgotten if he had not died on the bog from an overdose.". See his comments board for the flames from Elvis fanatics.

Of course, not all Elvis fans are like the family from My Trailer is Bigger Than Your Trailer, but that site's worth mentioning for their award-winning Amazon wish list.
:: Tim Hall 1:29 PM ::  

• Rhapsody - Power of the Dragonflame (Operatic Dungeons and Dragons pomp-metal)
  
• Arjen Anthony Lucassen's Star One - Space Metal New project by the main man of Ayreon with SF-influenced lyrics
  
• Rush - Vapor Trails - the long-awaited album by Canada's finest
  
• Muse - Hullaballoo - Live album by young and trendy British act.
  

A very silly idea using the Alanis Morissette Lyric Generator, suggested by Scott at The Gamer's Nook.

"Will to Live"

I feel miserable
Delays make me ill
I feel miserable
Fragmentation tears at my foundations
I feel miserable
Crashes are dragging me down to the depths of misery
I want to die

Is it because of Railway Privatisation that I feel this way?
With the rail blue rays of misery pounding on my brain?
Or am I lost in tale of Captain Deltic, adrift far from home
I don't think so, I don't think so.

John Major Broke My Will to Live
John Major Broke My Will to Live
John Major Broke My Will to Live
I was getting better but then
John Major Broke My Will to Live

I feel miserable
Bloated costs rot the flesh from my bones
I feel miserable
Railtrack shareholders defeat my purpose
I feel miserable
Angry passengers are doing their best to impale my soul
I want to die

Is it because of Railway Privatisation that I feel this way?
With the rail blue rays of misery pounding on my brain?
Am I lost in tale of Captain Deltic, adrift far from home
I don't think so, I don't think so.

John Major Broke My Will to Live
John Major Broke My Will to Live
Oh God, John Major Broke My Will to Live
I was getting better but then
John Major Broke My Will to Live
:: Tim Hall 10:26 PM ::  

The launch is tomorrow!! Please tell your neighbors, relatives, media, and readers. We will be interviewing Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA as well as posting a boatload or two of great reviews, essays, ruminations and the like. Below is the current roster - if I have missed you, please let me know. If you would like to join us, send me an email.

I'm not sure that's a valid argument; the reason a greater proportion of travellers buy advance tickets is that that's all they can afford. To me, a restricted ticket with no option to change schedule which has to be booked a considerable time in advance is worth rather less than a walk-up ticket which can be bought immediately before travel and gives a choice of return journey.

He gave me this reply to my emailed comment:

I hope to get round to a proper reply on fares - I've had quite a lot of feedback on this one. I would just say this: to me a cheap fare albeit with restrictions is lot more valuable than a more expensive, flexible one. It is the difference between travelling and not travelling.

I advertise this site as "RPGs, Trains, Music", but I realise while I've posted several lengthy railway and music-related pieces, I've had little to say recently about the world of roleplaying games. Perhaps it's because much of my RPG-related writing is the actual games themselves, after all, I'm running three internet-based games, two on Dreamlyrics and one on The Phoenyx, as well as playing in a couple more.

I know roleplaying games are even more uncool than trains or listening to prog-rock, and I get enough flack for them. And if you think such things are too nerdy, what are you doing surfing the web? You should be down the pub, or playing football!

What are roleplaying games anyway? Those that know can skip this paragraph; those that were originally here for the trains or the prog-rock, read on. I would describe it as a cross between co-operative storytelling and wargaming; a group of players each take the part of one major character in the story, while one (called the Games Master) takes the part of minor characters, and controls the setting. Most games use a set of published rules that define character's abilities, and some mechanisms for determining character success at doing things. Games can cover all sorts of fictional genres, with action-adventure themes always the most popular; published rules cover things Tolkein-style fantasy, 50s style science fiction, comic-book superheroes in spandex costumes, vampires battling against werewolves, or angels battling against demons.

So what attracts me to roleplaying games? Unlike a lot of gamers, I didn't discover RPGS until my 20s. I was never the sterotypical teenage munchkin acting out his adolescent power fantasies. One thing that I really love is the worldbuilding aspect; there's something about creating an entire imaginary world, with it's peoples, places, cultures, religions and even languages. And persuading other people to explore this world with their equally imaginary characters, for me, makes it all worthwhile.

I love games with rich, detailed settings, a style of gaming which has gone out of fashion in recent years. My own Kalyr setting is a case in point; it's been written up and developed over a period of many years. One of my favoutite settings is has to be Glorantha, developed over more than 25 years, originally the setting for Runequest, now the setting for a new game, Hero Wars.

At the moment, I'm not in any long-term campaigns since I moved away from my original group. All my gaming is either one-shot games at conventions, or internet-based, either email or message board.
:: Tim Hall 5:54 PM ::  

As part of the 1955 modernisation plan, British Railways ordered large numbers of diesel locomotives from just about every manufacturer that believed they were capable of building such things. Many companies with a good track record for building steam power took up the challenge. Many of those designs proved not to be up to the job, and many ended up on the scrapheap after ridiculously short lives, in some cases as little as six years in traffic. Such was the fate of classes like the Class 17 "Claytons", the class 23 "Baby Deltics", and everything produced by the Glasgow firm North British.

This posting by Hugh Dady to the South West Rail Gen mailing list suggests that history may be about to repeat itself.

Happy Anniversary 67014

Today 9th August 2002, General Motors ably assisted by Alstom can celebrate what is thought to be a 'first' in UK diesel traction for an almost brand new locomotive. One year ago today with the locomotive little over a year old, 67014 was declared a failure at Penzance on 9/08/01 before working 1C01 the 1930 TPO to Bristol and to this day has not worked a train again. Happy Anniversary for the first year out of service and good luck with the next!

This ultra reliable product (or so we were led to believe by Mr Fisk & Co) designed to replace the aging 47/7s has been off lease from EWS for some time dumped in the scrapline at Cardiff Canton - give, or take, 1.3 million pounds of scrap metal.

Even the worst examples of the pilot scheme diesels, Co-Bos, Baby Deltics, D8400s etc are hard put to beat this record - most of them were 5 years old before taking their rightful place decorating the depot yards of Britain.

The problems of the 67 design should have been no surprise to Ed Burkhart and his engineer Jim Fisk. They had only to look at the performance of the Alstom Mega class (Cl 67 clone) delivered to Israel Railways in June 98 to realise that they were buying a problem on wheels. Not only were Israel less than impressed with the Mega but they didn't seem to think much of its big brother curiously named Semi-Mega which is a Co-Co. Alstom had offered the basic body shell in a number of configurations with various traction packages available. The contract signed by EWS was with General Motors, the locomotives technically built under license by Alstom at Valencia in Spain.

Given the mechanical problems which have befallen the 67s, it might have been a safer option to plump for the Co-Co variant rather then hover on or over the axle load limit by trying to get the whole lot into a Bo-Bo locomotive that is actually longer than a 47!

Despite the many shortcomings of the mechanical design which manifest themselves in poor ride quality, excessive wheelset wear, short bogie spring life, buffing and drawgear problems etc it would appear that it is the GM supplied power plant which has been the downfall of the once SWRG 'pet skip' 67014. The locomotive had been in trouble long before August 9th last year with all sorts of heavy current electrical problems and a rather unhelpful fault diagnosis system which itself was giving misleading information from the on board engine management system.

On that fateful Thursday, the locomotive worked from St Blazey down to Penzance with 5C01, the TPO ecs, to form that evenings 1930 service to Bristol. It would seem that trouble was anticipated for an HQ riding inspector was already with the loco following previous repairs. Clearly both he and the driver were not happy for the locomotive was left on the country end at Penzance while alternative traction was found to work the service forward. 67014 was towed dit on the rear of the train before being cut at Par to make its way l/e to BZ. Two days later it ran under its own power first to Barton Hill and finally to Canton where GM and Alstom engineers were contacted.

By November both GM engineers and ones flown in from Alstom's Valencia plant had visited the loco but it appears they could not really agree what was wrong and perhaps more importantly who was responsible for putting it right! A vail of secrecy closed around the loco. The problems appeared to centre around the alternator which Alstom argued had been incorrectly manufactured by GM while GM declared that Alstom had fitted it incorrectly. Meanwhile with EWS struggling to keep the rest of the fleet operational it quickly became a Christmas tree for spare parts, first some wheel sets but later all manner of parts. The loco remains off lease with an unknown future while EWS finally announced three weeks ago that they were in effect back-peddling and would be embarking on a programme of light overhaul and what are politely referred to as 'reliability modifications' to selected examples of its elderly 47/7 fleet.

Plans to utilise 67s on charter work at the weekends have all but been thrown to the wind as those who watch the regular outings to Eden and elsewhere will realise. The higher Route Availability of 8 for a 67 as opposed to the 7 rating for a 47/7 is offered as the excuse, but that hardly adds up as the routes over which the Eden charters work are invariably cleared throughout for RA10!

Photograph them while you can - 67002 continues to languish at Crewe after its crash at Stapleton Road, and the class faces an uncertain future with EWS. On a positive note they have proved to be an excellent sales advert for the 57 conversion programme! Whether Britain's only 125 mph rated locomotive will ever be able to flex its muscles at this speed remains to be seen. The extensive on-going modification programme to the class is showing some signs of success with ride quality improved if still short of the norm expected on UK built products. Whether they ever deliver the promise remains to be seen, but for enthusiasts they have all the ingredients for a future cult class - small, idiosyncratic, named, difficult to get milage behind, potentially fast and just generally strange looking.
H.D.

The West Coast Mainline is to be closed between Milton Keynes and Hemel Hempstead for every weekend until Christmas. This is so they can replace one set of crossovers between the fast lines and slow lines.

It says something about the ill-considered rationalisation of tracks over the past 30 years that they're making no attempt to divert any services over alternative routes; all potential alternate routes (Manchester-St Pancras via the Hope Valley line and the Midland Main Line, or Birmingham-Banbury-High Wycombe-Marylebone) have had to be ruled out because those lines are already at capacity with existing services. Instead passengers must endure the misery of being bussed round the blockade, and continue their journeys to London in commuter trains.

This is a problem that predates privatisation. Penny-pinching economies in the 80s and 90s removed extra tracks and loops, to give a network that could cope with the current timetabled traffic, and no more. So when traffic increases, or worse still, another line is blocked, the lines can't take the strain.

I can't believe the fragmentation involved with privatisation has helped, though. I suspect there's a bit of HSE-related sillyness that's made it necessary to close all four tracks in the first place.
:: Tim Hall 8:44 PM ::  

Thanks to Dodgeblog for that one.
:: Tim Hall 4:26 PM ::  

I have to quote this Guardian article yesterday, listing anti-war quotes from a number of people.

Richard Dawkins, the writer, biologist and professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford, was also firmly against any US assault: "Obnoxious as Saddam Hussein undoubtedly is, it is not obvious that he is more of a danger to the world than 'President' Bush and his reckless handlers.

"It would be a tragedy if Tony Blair, a good man who has so much to offer this country, were to be brought down through playing poodle to this unelected and deeply stupid little oil spiv," he said.

I have to say I'm not a fan of Dawkins. As a Christian I find his anti-religious bigotry repulsive; he's unable to distinguish true religious faith from blind, unthinking fundamentalism. But on the subject of GWB, I think he well sums up the way a great many Britons think. I guess many people wouldn't have expressed their opinion in quite those terms. Tact and diplomacy aren't exactly Dawkins' strengths.
:: Tim Hall 2:13 PM ::  

I first encountered Twelfth Night as a four-piece instrumental band when I was a student at Reading University, in 1980. The band were students themselves at the time, and played the student's union and local clubs in the Reading area at the time. The band's sound revolved around guitarist Andy Revell's extensive use of an echoplex. With song titles like "Fur Helene part 1" and "Afghan Red", they were either loved or hated by the student fraternity. Old-school rock fans loved them, punk and new-wave fans hated them with a vengeance.

This lineup recorded a live album, "Live at the Target", which gives a good impression of what the band sounded like at the time. I was in the audience for this recording, in a underground pub with the band's equipment crammed in a tiny stage at one end of the long, narrow room. The music, described by the band as a "timeless kaleidoscope of sound", climaxed with the 20-minute epic "Sequences", which condensed all the best bits of their sound; spacey echoplexed guitar in the early sections, atmospheric keyboard sections, and fluid guitar soloing.

The band sensed they needed to add a vocalist to move forward. After a unsuccessful start with a woman named Electra Macloed, and an awful, awful single called "The Cunning Man", they chose fellow Reading fine art student Geoff Mann. Then they gave him a baptism of fire; to debut as singer in front of the biggest crowd Twelfth Night had ever played to; the 1981 Reading Festival, adding vocals to "Sequences", transforming the instrumental epic into an the story of an idealistic recruit swallowed up in the horrors of World War One.

A year later, they recorded what was probably their best studio album, "Fact and Fiction". This established Geoff Mann as a lyrical force to be reckoned with. The lengthy "We Are Sane" and "Creepshow" were both drawn from his experiences with art therapy at a psychiatric hospital, while the cynical "Fact and Fiction" reflects the arguments about nuclear weapons raging at the time. One critic described "We Are Sane" as 'Pink Floyd's "The Wall" summarised in ten minutes'. The overall tone of the album was dark and gloomy, reflecting the times - the early 80s were dark and gloomy, the feeling Thatcher and Reagan had declared war on the young and the poor, and with the ever-present threat of nuclear war. Mann's voice was an acquired taste; more Peter Hamill than Jon Anderson, but there was a passion and humanity in his lyrics, reflecting his strong Christian faith.

They played the Reading Festival again in 1983, opening the bill on the Sunday, and I had the opportunity to see what a great frontman Geoff Mann had become; his charisma and lyrics more than made up for his shortcomings as a singer. However, just as things looked as though they taking off, Geoff left the band. The live album "Live and Let Live comes from his final gigs with the band at the Marquee club in London. Perhaps the band's best album overall, the band on excellent form, featuring some material from "Fact and Fiction", the previously unrecorded "The Ceiling Speaks", and the full version of the epic "Sequences".

Geoff Mann went on to train as an Anglican priest. He continued to gig and record with his new band The Bond, who I saw live a couple of times. To my tastes, they lacked the musical scope of Twelfth Night, and it seemed to me that Geoff had lost his lyrical edge too. Sadly Geoff was to die of cancer a few years after being ordained. Who knows where his career might have gone?

Twelfth Night themselves regrouped with new singer Andy Sears, and recorded the mini-album "Art and Illusion". By now the sound was a little smoother and more commercial, but still retained enough depth to be interesting. In 1985 they finally signed to a major label, Virgin Records.

Sadly, the resulting album, titled simply "Twelfth Night" was a mess, musically, and a major disappointment. It's as if they couldn't decide whether to be Pink Floyd or Duran Duran. If it was an attempt at commercialism, it was a dismal failure. Only "Take a Look" came together and reflected the Twelfth Night of old. It didn't sell, and year later the label dropped them. The band split.

But this wasn't quite the end of the story. In 1988, the Geoff Mann lineup briefly reunited in the studio to record "The Collector", an 18-minute epic played live but never recorded. This was to appear on the 1988 compilation "Collector's Item", a retrospective look at the band's entire career.

Today, two albums are still available on CD; the live album "Live and Let Live", and compilation "Collector's Item", recently re-issued with three new tracks replacing "Sequences" (which is on the live album). Other albums, including the classic "Fact and Fiction" remain out of print.
:: Tim Hall 1:28 PM ::  

The article makes an interesting point about the fact that only one woman (Tracy Chapman) made top 100

Rowley said women were not as "geeky or competitive" about music as men.

"Instead of showing off, they're trying to write a good song. Which is probably smarter," he added.

Maybe; but maybe it's because lead guitar is a very, well male thing.

At the moment I'm having great difficulty thinking of any significant women rock musicians. Singers, yes, but not musicians. In comparison, the classical world has a great number of female soloists. Where is the rock equivalent of Vanessa Mae (who reminds me of a female Yngwie Malmsteen!)?

:: Tim Hall 10:45 AM ::  

I've added a few more to the list of blogs here; the Catholic Goilard Blog, who's author is currently writing a funk mass for Hammond B3 organ (Yay!), the Cthulhu-worshipping Dodgeblog (Iä F'tagn!), and it's offshoot Darker than Dark, and of course, Eric Olsen's Tres Producers, which is about anything and everything, but particularly music.
:: Tim Hall 11:07 PM ::  

I shall have to look up the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook to see if Clerics and Druids can multiclass :)
:: Tim Hall 9:56 PM ::  

It's Sunday, so I'll talk about religion again.

In his blog, Nathan Lott makes some comparisons between Rowan Willliams and Pope John Paul II.

Thanks to Lynn GAzis-SAx for this article from The Tablet, which offers some pointers from for the future direction of Anclicanism. One quote caught my eye concerning Anglican-Methodist union "At present nothing really separates Anglicans and Methodists in England except inertia plus Anglican snobbery and Methodist sectarianism". Harsh, perhaps, but there's more than a grain of truth in that statement. Of course, it doesn't apply to all Anglicans or all Methodists.

However, in this Guardian article, Theo Hobbs is not so sure about him, and complains that Britain's Protestant heritage is being lost. Personally I blame Ian Paisley and his ilk for making Protestantism a dirty word.
:: Tim Hall 4:38 PM ::  

Rush - Vapor Trails

I've been a fan of Rush since the beginning of the 80s. One of the great bands of the 70s, 80s and 90s, Rush had been on hold for several years while drummer and lyricist Neil Peart recovered from being devastated by the deaths of both his wife and his daughter within a few months of each other. While bandmates Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee had both recorded solo albums in the interim, the return of Rush to active service has been eagerly awaited by all fans of the band.

This album isn't what you might expect. They've made a deliberate decision on this album not to use any keyboards, and to have no conventional guitar solos. The latter will no doubt be a disappoinment to fans of Alex Lifeson's fluid style, but there are plenty of other things to recommend about this album.

The album opener, "One Little Victory" starts with a fusillade of drums, just to remind us all the Neil Peart is back. This intro, especially when joined by Geddy Lee's bass, reminds me of Motorhead's "Overkill", although the intro is as far as the comparison goes.

Overall, I'm not sure how to sum up this album. It's not Rush's best, no "Moving Pictures" or "Hemispheres". But Rush have never been a band to retread their own past.

Rhapsody - Power of the Dragonflame

Fourth full-length album by Italy's "Symphonic Epic Hollywood Metal", it's another slab of operatic pomp-metal with lyrics so strongly influenced by DnD you can almost hear the polyhedral dice rolling.

Really should be released under the d20 licence - Requires the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook in order to listen.

Arjen Anthony Lucassen's Star One - Space Metal

New project by the Holland's Arjen Lucassen, the man behind Ayreon. This album sees Arjen steering more towards melodic metal rather than progressive metal of Ayreon, with lyrics inspired by easily-recognisable science-fiction films and novels. The heavy sound, with a lot of hammond organ in places, should appeal a lot to fans of Uriah Heep, although the 80s sheen on the production sounds a bit dated at times.

Muse - Hullabaloo

My only recent album purchase by a fashionable young band who's members weren't even born when I started collecting records. A double album, the first disk made up of collection of B-sides and outtakes, the second a live performance in Paris. I'm amazed at the combination of energy and virtuosity of this trio, with some great neo-classical guitar flourishes, and some fantastic keyboard work as well. The vocal style invites comparison with Radiohead in parts.

Meanwhile, in the news

This news story about the "vampire murderer" from Anglesey is worrying. Not that the murder isn't shocking (and 12 years seems a light sentence for murder), but what worries me is the conclusions more hysterical sections of the media are likely to come to. I would expect the ever-toxic Daily Mail to call for the immediate banning of role-playing games, heavy metal music, and the Internet. After all, the Daily Mail is more dangerous than, say The Sun, because unlike the red-tops, the Mail's readers seem to take that paper's Manichean world-view seriously.

Why is it when something bad is done by someone from an obscure sub-culture (heavy metal fans, roleplayers, train-spotters, what have you), that subculture is placed under a distorted microscope and blamed?. When a boy-racer runs kills someone when driving at three times the speed limit, or a football hooligan stabs a rival fan to death, the media doesn't blame car culture or football in general.

I would guess boy-racers are responsible for far more deaths than wannabe-vampires...
:: Tim Hall 1:23 PM ::  

It's a pity John Major's regime didn't consider the consequences before 'pressing the button' on rail privatisation. They could have tried privatising a few self-contained routes like the LT&S running from Fenchurch Street to Shoeburyness, known in BR days as the 'Misery Line' due to it's dismal performance. Or started with freight, one of the success stories of privatisation. But they didn't; they chose to take a great leap into the unknown and hastily privatise the whole lot before an election they knew they were going to lose.

Patrick wonders why I read his blog if I disagree with his politics. Is it like a car crash that I can't look away from? Well, not exactly. I find a lot of his ideas thought-provoking; sometimes we accept the status quo without considering if there's a better way. Blue-sky thinking is always useful; even if many ideas turn out to be impractial, there will still be some that are worth considering.

Politically, I'm a non-ideologue. For example, I don't really care who runs the railways as long as the train runs on time to the destination I want to get to at a price I can afford. If continued state subsidy is needed to avoid closing large parts of the network leaving entire regions with no services, then I'm willing to pay the taxes needed, after all, plenty of my taxes go on things that are no use to me. If there's a good way of running those services with a much smaller subsidy, I'm all for it.

As for my "I am not a Libertarian" quote, this is a bit of a reaction towards the large number of annoying libertarian trolls and winguts I've run into on Usenet and places like Pyramid Online, often teenage sociopaths quoting Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein, and saying things like "Democracy is like two wolves and a sheep deciding who to have for lunch" at every possible opportunity. See David Edelstein's Wingnuts and Trolls page for some gruesome examples.
:: Tim Hall 1:55 PM ::  

A lot of webloggers, such as Bruce Baugh and Eric Olsen have been talking about the file-sharing recently. The recording business, an industry notirious for ripping off consumers and screwing over it's creative talent, loathes file-swapping services such as Napster, and blames them for declining music sales. They're even proposing highly dubious laws (via their bought-and-paid-for US politicians) enabling them to hack into and destroy other people's systems to stop file-sharing.

The music business of course claims that they're losing sales because people download MP3s instead of buying CDs, and seem to believe that every MP3 downloaded represents a lost sale. I can remember them using the same argument against cassette recorders in the late 70s and early 80s. I wasn't convinced by those arguments then, and I'm even less convinced now. And people tell me they've tried this argument against FM radio as well.

Eric Olsen's blog reprints an interview with Janis Ian, in which she claims that file-sharing is actually increasing her sales of CDs. With so much commercial radio following a narrow top-40 or golden oldie format, non-mainstream artists can't get their work heard. Internet file sharing lets people sample their work, and translates into CD sales.

I'm increasingly thinking the real reason the major record companies loathe file-sharing is that they don't want this to happen. Their business model is based on a small number of million-selling artists, like N'Sync and Britney Spears, boosted by massive amounts of hype. The less talented and more manufactured the better, so they realise they're totally dependant on the company and won't insist on silly things like 'artistic freedom'. The last thing they want is the finite money people have to spend on music dissipated amongst millions of independant artists. Worse still, to artists not signed to major record companies, but selling direct to their audience via the internet. The horror! People might start listening to Marillion or Uriah Heep.
:: Tim Hall 6:45 PM ::