Euan’s seems to be making very good progress since moving up in to the reception class at his school. He’s starting to take the first steps into reading and writing.
Eva is also doing well, she’s sitting up on her own very well and has started issuing forth “Dada” 
between blowing raspberries. No sign of any teeth though, but that didn’t stop her wanting some of my apple this morning!
Had quite a good weekend at Butlins in Skegness this last weekend. I was there with Watford Band to compete in the Mineworkers Open Contest. Unfortunately the band didn’t do too well coming 12th out of 14. However, we played quite well (even though I did miss an exposed bar!) and fell down mainly on interpretation which is subjective.
The weekend would have been much better if Louise and the kids had been there, but I suppose Eva’s still a bit young. But Euan would have really enjoyed their swimming pool and Keith Harris and Orville (yes, he is still going, and doing the same act by all accounts!)
From the band’s point of view the fact that we had two players under 10 playing in their first ever contest was good, and they definitely enjoyed the experience.
I just wish there wasn’t so much aggravation and stress leading up to these things. I can’t get on being bullied into playing as our MD seems to want to do; and from what he said at last night’s rehearsal it seems it may only get worse for the Regional contest in March. It wouldn’t be so bad perhaps if there was any praise for when people do things well to balance the barrage of criticism. Perhaps I should just hang up my contesting boots, after all I don’t like them.
No posts for a while, and then two come along at once; typical!
I can’t quite remember how I’ve got into this but I have become in an alternate reality! That is to say I’ve joined in some Alternative Reality Games or ARGs. These are games that are played out via the Internet typically, but could also involve messages being passed in real life in real locations.
There has been some recent press about these games in marketing media as a new way of promoting brands. A current ARG that is going on at the moment called “Sable and Shuck” is being promoted by Stella Artois.
The start of a game is not obviously widely advertised, though you may come across weird adverts in magazines or newspapers or even flyers at the airport of coffee shop. The adverts/flyers may have some cryptic puzzles on them to solve which usually leads to a website known as a rabbit hole into which you become involved in the game. In the case of Sable + Shuck the rabbit holes are: http://www.hewalksamongus.com and http://www.helpmefindjon.com. From these sites you are lead to a number of other sites each that have puzzles to be solved. I won’t post them here otherwise it would spoil the fun!
The puzzles in ARGs are often to do with various forms of writing hidden messages, e.g. cryptography, steganography (the hiding of data within images), GPS co-ordinates, postal code/zip codes, etc. Puzzles are often found in the source of the websites too. Because of the wide variety of puzzles involved and the global nature of the ARG, there are forums available for folks to co-ordinate efforts to solve them. The most popular seem to be Unfiction, Immersion Unlimited and ARG Insider.
An ARG that has me hooked at the moment is one that is just about to get going known as Wildire Industries. This is going to be about two companies competing against each other, Wildfire Industries and The Rainman Group. These two companies are “hiring” people for their respective e-business ventures with hiring expected to be completed on Jan 28th. Flyers are being distributed in several locations around the world including Glasgow. I was in Glasgow yesterday when the location of where the flyers had been put was revealed in an Internet chat room, it turned out to be Borders bookshop on Buchanan Street. Sadly I discovered this as I was about to get into the taxi to take me to the airport and didn’t have the time to make the detour. Such is the nature of the ARG.
I seemed to have hit a time warp this evening: Iron Maiden are number 3 in the UK top 40 singles chart with “Number of the Beast” and Elvis Presley is number 1 with Jailhouse Rock!
Don’t much care for Elvis, but Maiden rock!