Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn - cambridge

A familiar ache

2010-12-06T13:53:00+00:00

I spent a large part of the weekend at the Cambridge Treasure Trap end of term banquet. The format is a cross between a full weekend of club LARP and a day event with a Céilidh tacked on the end.

Most of the Cambridge TT event are effectively day events held around some of the local areas of greenery near the river. The adventures are usually around 10 encounters and entirely battleboard-less which means they run quite fast, typically less than 2 hours. However the end of term event takes place at a local scout site which allows for a bit more freedom in plotting the adventures as well as provide a location for the celebratory meal and dancing.

It's been a while since I last actively ran around for an adventure (I'm not sure the 15 minute bursts of activity at Odyssey count) but it was fun to run around hitting things with rubber swords again. In fact the event gave me a great excuse to bring out my longbow and arrows.

The Treasure Trap crowd are a lovely bunch of people. It's a fairly well mixed group including old-timers from formation (2004 IIRC) to the current crop of University students. While I most certainly won't be attending every event (room based "interactive" every Friday and "day event" adventures every Saturday during term time) I shall certainly be attending some more.

Interesting Times

2010-04-27T11:50:00+01:00

The election race in my constituency just got a lot more interesting. The suspension of the local Labour candidate offers up some interesting options for the voters. While the Tory incumbent has a fairly healthy majority he does benefit from a splitting of the opposition vote.

Despite kicking the candidate out (who would never win anyway) the party are still asking their loyal voters to "hold their noses" and vote Labour. This to me seems extremely silly as he a) won't win b) if he did win he wouldn't be a Labour MP and c) he seems to be a bit of a loose cannon anyway. If all those Labour voters joined the Lib Dems for this election then the thumping majority of James Paice suddenly looks a lot less thumping. You'd think for Labour central office one less Tory would be something they could live with even if it was a Lib Dem. I usually stay up quite late on polling day, with this development I'll certainly stay up until my constituency declares.

Under starters orders

2010-04-07T13:38:00+01:00

It wasn't exactly the most surprising announcement but the race is now on for who forms the next government. Anyone not registered to vote has about 13 days to make sure they are registered for the election.

According to the Electoral Reform Society there isn't much point voting as all our seats are dead certs. It seems like a council of despair and misplaced for a number of reasons.

Leaving aside the civic duty aspects of voting (whoever you vote for, or spoil your ballot) this is going to be one of closest elections in a long time. We have a record number of incumbent MPs standing down this election ensuring more election battles between new candidates. For those election battles where the incumbent is fighting the seat there is a wealth of information that allows voters to see their MPs actual performance. Given the turbulence and disrepute politics has fallen into over the last few years I'm sure those "safe" seats are feeling a lot less safe now.

Although my political complexion is broadly of the blue variety I'm starting to go off my local MP. His lack of record on transparency and disappointing record equality are leading me to consider other candidates. I'm voting for my local representative not a voting peon for the national party. Unfortunately the LibDem representation so far has been less than stellar. While it's hoping too much for no negative campaigning this year I'm really not persuaded by arguments telling me to vote for someone because the other party will do X. It's a shame as a 7.5% swing looks doable if the Lib Dems can pull votes from both the Tory and Labour in my constituency.

Anyway there is all to play for over the next 4 weeks, we shall see how the country decides soon enough.

Fayres

2009-07-13T11:51:00+01:00

We had a lovely weekend with Sheila visiting for the weekend. We spent our time attending a number of the local fayres which all provided a mix of community stands, beer and various burnt meat offerings. My feet are a little sore today after a few miles of walking in my finally splitting footware but otherwise everything was good.

Everything else is up in the air as we are still awaiting a response to our second offer. Our second meeting with the bank is today and hopefully the figures all still make sense.