Pueblo Aserradero

The lack of regular posting here has been due to lack of external stimulus to provide the inspiration. Ironically my original blogging niche was as a wargamer who didn't wargame, but that space seems to have become very crowded of late. I assumed that the restarting of gaming would in itself be sufficient to rectify things, but sod's law meant that, after waiting fifteen months, I missed the second evening. It seems that I lost in absentia, which was not surprising and was at least an efficient way to do it. However, I did turn up for week three and the start of a new game, details of the set up of which can be found here. It had been very pleasant to find that all was reassuringly familiar after the long gap - except for James' moustache obviously - and that situation carried on. In fact there was an unexpected return to something which had first been the subject of heated debate at least eight years ago: the rotation of the earth on its axis, the orbiting of the earth around the sun, and their combined effect on the length of the day at different longitudes and in different seasons. Thankfully, where once there had been discord, there is now harmony. The solar system, being unaware of, and uninterested in, the debate seems to have carried on regardless in the meantime. La causerie scientifique then moved on to quantum mechanics and once again there was unanimity; we all agreed that it was very, very complicated (*) and also that gluon was an amusing name for a particle. 

But, what of the game I hear you ask. Well, I'm the British, I got all the initiative, I currently have possession of the target village, and the Connaught Rangers were an Irish regiment. I am sure that James will fill in the gaps in that summary on his blog in due course.

* As an illustration of this, last week's New Scientist says that we now know that at high enough energy levels a Higgs boson decays into itself. Come again?

Tobit 8:2

This blog has long had an interest in the movement of the earth around the sun and so it is fitting that as the days start to get longer once again that we find the time for another post. There are many reasons for our absence, and possibly the least among them is that I have hurt my arm dry brushing. There was a level of derision in certain quarters when I passed on that news, but unlikely as it sounds, it's true. Perhaps readers deserve a recap.

When I was last here I was playing through a solo try out of my 'Blue Guitar' company level (or possibly battalion or even brigade level - I'm not entirely sure what the naming convention is) Great War wargames rules, and also providing a much needed running score update of the cricket in Australia. What happened next was that there was a bit of a cold snap in the UK and my enthusiasm for going outside to the annexe to roll dice and push little plastic men around a table rather dwindled. It seemed a convenient point to pause, properly write up all the rule amendments arising from the playtest and start again. In particular as weapon ranges had been shortened during the game the defending Germans had suddenly found themselves isolated from each other and rather easy to pick off, one unit at a time.

As I said earlier, it was a bit parky so I retreated to the warm to do some painting and modelling of various player aids. I wanted to make some smoke markers and after due consideration decided to make these out of wire wool. (I should mention that the same doubters mentioned above were also sceptical about this choice, given the material's noted flammability and my own equally well documented propensity to set things alight whilst painting them.) One attraction to me was the opportunity to get out the hot glue gun, which I have owned for years, but which never sees the light of day. Inexplicably, but somehow inevitably, despite never using it I had managed to run out of glue sticks, thereby causing a delay while more were procured.

At that point the cold weather gave way to wet and several more days passed before I could take the stuff outside to spray it with primer. I decided to prime in grey, thinking to dry brush over the top in white. This was a mistake. The grey was much darker than I thought it would be - in fact it was almost exactly the shade on the cap of the can; who'd have thought it? - and wire wool is an absolute bugger to dry brush. This coupled with yet another duff decision, namely to model enough markers to make a smoke screen a metre in length all in one go, have given me a painful RSI type strain to my arm coupled with a great reluctance to overbrush with any more shades. So, my advice for anyone wishing to make some smoke is to prime in white and, even more importantly, don't use wire wool in the first place.

In case I should not post again before Christmas - and let's face it, I won't - Happy Yontiff to you all.

Pot18pouri

As part of last Friday's JFK commemoration Radio 2 ran a three hour programme reflecting minute by minute the period between the motorcade starting through Dallas and the swearing in of LBJ. I started listening because I was driving, but actually found myself enjoying its blend of reportage, analysis and music. There was a particularly affecting version of 'Abraham, Martin and John' (the song from which the title of the relevant blog posting came) by David McAlmont. My one complaint would be the continual references to it as 'the day the world grew up'. Considering that most people alive in November 1963 had lived through WWII this description was plainly ridiculous and cliched. Whatever the effect of that day it's hard to imagine it comparing with the dropping of the first atom bomb.

I normally restrict my boardgame comments to games played but I have to mention that I've bought a copy of Mush!Mush!. This is for no better reason than to print the following photograph of your bloggist mushing away like a good'un.

That's me at the back

And it's about time we resurrected the great debate about the sun. What better way than associating it with common sense?

Ecnomus

I finally got to play with James' Punic War naval toys this week. We refought the battle of Ecnomus that James and Peter had played the previous week. I was the Romans and was tasked with reversing the heavy defeat that James had led them to. I didn't.

I did, however, thoroughly enjoy myself. In my formative wargaming days we played a lot of ancient galley battles with paper cut outs on the floor and I've always had a soft spot for it. I had, sort of, got a grip on the rules by the end and would play things slightly differently next time around. However, they provided what Piquet games usually do, an interesting game that could easily have gone the other way had the cards played out differently.

Readers will be pleased to note that the equatorial length of day was only briefly mentioned. There was some debate about the correct plural of the Latin word 'corvus', but in my opinion this lacks substance as the cause for debate because there is a correct answer that can easily be determined. Far more promising was the discussion as to how that plural might be pronounced. Given that Roman pronunciation is intrinsically unknowable I can see a great future for that particular discussion.

The Swedish Women's Volleyball Team

According to Wikipedia

The headline of yesterday's posting was a quote from Wikipedia, which has summarised all poor old Peter Snow's journalistic and literary achievements into being known for waving a large piece of wood about in the middle of the night once every few years. However, Wikipedia has also astonishingly been regarded as definitive evidence by the loser in the great daylight-at-the-equator debate. Now I neither wish to name the individual involved nor to flag up which theory was correct; as Joseph Joubert said "The aim of argument should not be victory, but progress". But nevertheless, readers may wish to know that I was right all along.

It's possible that people may only be familiar with Ilkley through that appalling song (1). It does, of course, have many other things going for it, such as being the epicentre of wargaming in Lower Wharfedale. On top of that it has many Bronze Age and possibly Druid related standing stones, having been continuously occupied as a site for at least the last four thousand years, with flints having been found that date back another five or so thousand years before that. Now, I hear you asking, what has any of this got to do with the price of fish? Or indeed wargaming?

Well, clearly it's got nothing to do with wargaming; that would just be ridiculous. No, I'm just asking you to imagine yourself back in those prehistoric times. Two men stand part way up on the slope from the river to what was then the Bull, Cow and Calf rocks (possibly where the Winter Gardens are now) arguing about the movement of the sun; the knowledge of which is necessary to erect the load of stones just about to be delivered by the wholesaler. I think that here we can see the real hardship of living in ye olden days. Forget having to paint yourself in woad and die at 35; how is the argument to be settled without Wikipedia?

So why does it make a blue dye? If only there was an online resource that could answer these puzzling questions.

(1) although if you have never heard Bill Oddie's version I urge you to listen here 

A man with a beard

Known for: Swingometer

I observed in my last post that the Ilkley Literature Festival was in the grip of a clique. Such complaints must now be put behind me because it transpires that James' wife Lucy is connected in some way to the clique and she managed to blag two free tickets to Peter Snow's talk tonight on the War of 1812 and, more specifically, the burning of the White House. Even better, one of the tickets found its way to me.

And so, James and I attended a very entertaining talk along with a fair number of, mostly elderly, Ilkleyites (although less than for Richard III). Snow, who is 75, delivered what was in effect an hour long lecture without notes. His immense enthusiasm, well known to election night viewers in the UK, causes him to speak rather quickly. At times it was as if Stanley Unwin had been a professor of History instead of Basic Engly Twenty Fido.

After the talk we didn't queue for a signed copy of the book because we were obliged to discuss - at some length - a burning and t(r)opical issue that has been mentioned in these pages before: namely, is the day always twelve hours long at the equator. I can tell you, we got some pretty admiring looks from the others leaving the talk as they were impressed by the scientific rigour of our debate; or possibly it was the way we illustrated out theories with extravagant hand gestures. It would indeed be a great shame if we ever met someone who actually knew anything at all about this subject.

Pot8pouri

• Did you know that the length of the day at the equator is 12 hours plus a few extra minutes, these being essentially caused by refraction through the atmosphere and the fact that the sun is a disc rather than a point of light. This length of day is constant and doesn't vary throughout the year. The equator is, of course, the only one of the five major lines of latitude (the others being the tropics and the arctic/antarctic circles) whose position is a) unrelated to the axial tilt of the Earth and b) fixed (all the others are migrating slowly as the Earth's axial tilt varies). It is possible that some ill-informed people may believe that the location of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn relates in some way to the length of the day at that latitude rather than, as in reality, simply representing those locations furthest from the Equator where the sun can be directly overhead at least once a year. Poor deluded fools.
• They are jousting at the Royal Armouries at the moment and, almost unbelievably, it continues to be scorchio. I was standing outside the main door this afternoon as one of the participants came past in his armour on his way from the tilt yard, presumably to get changed. I'm not sure that I've ever seen anyone look so hot. He was however accompanied by two buxom wenches carrying all his gear. I'm not entirely clear how authentic that is.
• My hat with magical properties is proving very useful, especially during the test matches. I get lots of admiring looks, particularly on trains although, as you will appreciate, it doesn't work too well in that environment.