CraigBlog

Author: Craig

  • Origins Game Fair Thursday

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    I played more demos on this day than I have in the entirety of my Gen Con attendance. Also found out about a bunch of other games but didn’t demo them. We got premier badges for Origins, because we are elitist snobs it made getting a downtown hotel easier, and this includes getting into the…

  • Indianapolis to Columbus

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    It took us a while to find the convention centre once we got situated in the hotel. It’s kind of a maze in places, and the signage, to me at least, works along the assumption that you already know the layout; Directions to specific things in the centre, not to the place itself. The route…

  • Chicago to Indianapolis

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    Slept well, and woke up at a sensible time. Well, sensible enough; There was sunshine & the hotel restaurant had coffee. ( there was an actual ‘Mr Coffee’ coffeemaker in the room, and I discovered why you don’t put too much water in the reservoir of those things. fortunately it was in a little tray,…

  • London to Chicago

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    The hotel didn’t have AC, but did have windows that open a bit, so I could get some cooling effect & got a decent amount of sleep, admittedly in “only my feet are under the covers” mode. Woke up a little bit before my alarm.Hotel breakfast wasn’t as crowded as I’d dreaded. ( there was…

  • It begins, as always, with an indifferent railway station coffee

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    This is the last few months of my ‘sabbatical’ – I’m going to a convention in the US, on to NZ via a week in Fiji, then back through the US for two more conventions, and back to the UK. That’s the plan, anyway. The trip from Aylesbury to Heathrow wasn’t entirely smooth. I got…

  • Cricket. Again.

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    This was a T20¹ match between England & West Indies, which makes it my first international cricket match. ( But probably not my first international sporting thing, because I’m pretty sure there was an NZ vs. Australia kickboxing thing I went to at one point ) Tickets happened because another person bought them but couldn’t…

  • Ferry Time

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    Thanks to the hotel shenanigans, I didn’t get the train I’d intended; Not a big deal. There was one to Rotterdam soon after, so I caught that instead. (the planned one would have taken me to Schiedam Centrum, where there’s also a metro stop on the line out to Hook of Holland, where the ferry…

  • Hotel Shenanigans

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    So, the hotel over the train station is very fun, but there was one significant downside. Not the train noise; Even with a window open it just wasn’t that loud. No, the downside is that almost no department could do their job without fucking it up. The outlier was the bar/restaurant. When I got back…

  • Keukenhof

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    My thing for the day was a visit to Keukenhof, which I knew involved flowers, but not a lot else. I’d sort of assumed it was a garden of some kind, and while that’s correct, it’s not entirely correct. The trip included a bus tour on the way out there, with commentary about the place;…

  • A Poetic Moment From Keukenhof

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    Craig
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    In one of the many gardens, or parts of the really big garden, there’s this sculpture of a bear. Possibly a steampunk bear? And it reminded me of this poem by Richard Brautigan; All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace I like to think (andthe sooner the better!)of a cybernetic meadowwhere mammals and computerslive…