Job hunting going a bit better

Next week I have two interviews, one with Edinburgh University and the second with a humanitarian aid organisation with offices in Edinburgh which would be good. I also have been confirmed and group exercise and interview with IBM but unfortunately they appear to do all of their recruitment in London which is a bit of a bugger to get to. The cheapest trains that would get me there with plenty of time and back again on the same day appear to be over £100 with a student rail card, which I don't have.

The cheaper option, megabus which would be less than 20 only has 2 busses a day and the earliest one would get me in too late unless I managed to get a hotel or something. This should be interesting.

Heather thoughtfully came up with the idea of easyjet which came out the most reasonable at just over £50 to get me there and back again, the only thing would be getting from the interview site to the airport before check in closes. To get better times requires nearly double the money so we'll have to see.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2007-05-25 23:31:12

Second game set in the Mad City

Well for the Wednesday that has just past we had a new temporary player David Deacon to join my Don't Rest Your Head game for the second session, he was just coming along for this week so I could take the gloves off and see what happened. Prior to the game I asked him to come up with a character concept that could be anything as long as it is reasonably in line with the game, insomnia. It went quite well though Jinty going insane didn't quite go to plan but the music went down well, I chose Mr Blue Sky by the electric light orchestra, going from horror and darkness to joy and happiness in a moment of pure delirium.

I have the second part of the first session written up now though if you want to check out how the first session ended: http://www.kamui.co.uk/rpg.php?id=30

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2007-05-25 01:44:41

Entering the mad city

I started a new game last Wednesday and have just finished writing the first part of the session which introduces the characters. The game is Don't Rest Your Head by Evil Hat Productions, it is a story of insomnia in a mad city where nightmares run free, and sleep equals death. It is fantastic, as one comments states "... it plays like Call of Cthulhu on crystal meth..." when I finish the second part I will write another post.

See what you think: http://www.kamui.co.uk/rpg.php?id=29

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2007-05-20 23:23:21

Well the shower is knackered

The shower in the flat is completely broken, it had been leaking for about a week and we contacted the landlord but two days ago the shower ceased to work at all. So the plumber came today and found out the reason why the shower wasn't working, the solenoid valve was broken so he replaced the valve and got the shower working again except that when he switched it on again he saw the leaking which torrential and realised that he didn't have the bits to fix the problem, using the engineering term "bugger". So he disabled the shower, saying that that much water and electricity was not a good mix, and is coming back in a few days.

While he was out for the second time to get a replacement for one of the safety devices on the right hand side of the shower unit (he said that this device checks that there is sufficient flow for the shower to work), I took a photograph which I have edited to show all the places that the water was leaking from.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2007-05-15 16:49:05

Recent events

Well I have seen Alpha Dog in the cinema. I initially thought Justin Timberlake and Bruce Willis in the same film, this cannot be. The film was good though, very good, when I went to see it I was so surprised by the ending having gone into the film not realising that it was inspired by true events. Well worth seeing.

Also a few other films I have seen recently, Blades of Glory which was silly and hilarious, Fracture which was such a good film for Anthony Hopkins, Next which though it was really good, it felt like half a film. I have also seen Shooter which was great, this past month has been great for cinema, Shooter was action packed and had a satisfying ending, well kind of, it leads on like the Punisher which doesn't give the good feeling of completion that a film should have unless that is what you are intending. Kind of like Silent Hill, what is up with that ending, I know I have had it explained to me, but still, WHAT? Before that I saw Wild Hogs which was great though I will not be able to watch Dr Cox from Scrubs, played by John C. McGinley without getting scary mental images after seeing that.

Most recently I have seem Spiderman 3, once on the opening night from the far left hand side of the front row as it was so crowded, and then once again a day later for Jinty's pre-birthday party where we bowled, had pizza, and went to see the film. The film itself was good, and venom was actually well done, though I have to say that this film has by far the cheesiest Stan Lee quote (Creator of Marvel Comics as we know it today) of any film I have seen him in. Some of the cringeiest moments I have seen in a while though funny on a second look, well worth seeing.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2007-05-08 16:13:55

Back in Edinburgh

I decided to go home for the weekend, I saw C'fur and he has put a lot of weight on which is great bearing in mind the last time I saw him he was just skin and bones, though he is now deaf as a doorpost. For those who don't know C'fur is one of my cats back home. Oliver and the minders of the cats (other wise known as mum and dad) is doing alright as well.

As for activities we went walking about the countryside a total of 15 miles over 2 days, I think I lost weight over a holiday where it is not unexpected for a person to gain weight. The walks were quite useful as well, we got to talk about the future and work and catch up on what has been happening in each others lives, what I have been planning on doing in the future, and how I have been getting on in job hunting.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2007-04-11 13:06:17

Graduation booked

12 July 2007 at 10:30 am at the festival theatre, it should be fun. Unfortunately I was only able to get 2 tickets for the ceremony but there will be a pub celebration after. For those who don't already know I got a 2:1, yay! All I have to do now is hire the robes and oh yeah, get a job.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2007-04-11 12:55:14

The Nationals are over

That was really quite fun and very satisfying to see my hard work pay off. The first game proved to be another play test as it didn't quite go as smoothly as I would have liked but fun none the less. The best bit was that the players really did not see the ending coming it surprised both groups, though I slipped up in the first group by referring to the people in the streets as zombies by accident instead of people so kind of let the final surprise out a little early but by that point there had been 3 encounters already so they could have already guessed. One of the players from the first game suspected something along the lines of what actually happened when he was in the police station based on clues that were given in another game he had played "All Flesh Must Be Eaten" which warns of signals which may point towards a zombie apocalypse.

Though they didn't see the dark future technology twist that the creature in the game were not technically dead so they didn't have to follow the traditional rules for undead creatures. Unfortunately neither group got around to exploring the University even though many clues were given to that being the source of the outbreak. It was fun though for the first 2 hours getting the players fighting and scheming against each other in the prison setting, such a confined and hostile environment proved to be a great location to enforce group cohesion, especially with the token a**hole that every zombie movie seems to have.

One event in the second game was very fun for both me and the players, in the first encounter with the zombies in front of the bank. OK technically this was the second encounter but the first zombie didn't live long enough for the players to discover that he was a zombie. In this encounter one of the players had in his background that he worked part time at the bank, so when they were cruising along the main street past the bank he recognised the faces of some of the people who looked like they were shell shocked. When he went up to them they surrounded him, bit him (scoring a critical hit) and he failed the fortitude save (strangely though I recommended using a charity re-roll he decided not to) and as a result became infected. They then encountered a black hawk helicopter that dropped a series of devices on the ground on their route to the University, these devices were EMP bombs. The characters were exposed to the high energy blast which cured the infected player as well as disabling all electrical devices around the characters, most significantly their vehicle.

Unfortunately the players didn't pick up on this but did pick up on the fact that nanite colonies are vulnerable to electricity and proceeded to the doctor's surgery to the west away from the university but found it filled with zombies so had to come up with an improvised solution. They needed a defibrillator and couldn't get to one, so what did they use? The main power lines. Through a series of pure dumb luck the character survived 2 shocks of live current and was well and truly cured, but unfortunately due to this distraction they ran out of time and managed to get to the roof of a nearby building in time to watch the zombies escape the town. Zombies win. The first group used the person who worked in the bank's security codes to get into the garage, find keys to the armoured truck and then used said armoured truck to plough their way to the power station and save the day by stopping the zombie's escape. Good did prevail but it was more fun to see the characters reach the roof and realise their mistake. Next year should be fun.

Posted by Christopher Chestnut on 2007-04-03 00:39:46