Y'know, I've tested a lot of games, I've been in a lot of betas and pre-releases but I've *never* seen one quite as shambolic as the Warhammer Open Beta that started today.

I have completed uploading photos from my trip to Poland.

Help, LJ friends! I listen to a lot of sad bastard music. Which is fine--I LIKE sad bastard music! I'm a very qualified moper. But lately I grow somewhat weary of the quiet, intense, dim-worldview sounds issuing from my mp3 player. Can you recommend to me something cheerier? This list by no means encapsulates my musical taste, but the current lineup on my mp3 player includes Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, Beirut, Sylvie Lewis, M. Ward, The Raconteurs, James, Regina Spektor, The Ting-Tings (are they hyphenated? I can't remember), Lo Fine (who is this one dude from Western Mass., who I have a talent crush on and who insisted on giving me one of his albums when all I did was help run the door at a show he played, because my friend was the booker), Feist, MGMT, Tilly & The Wall, Jenny Lewis, Old 97s, Rosie Thomas, Operator Please (kind of dumb, but much more up tempo!), Willie Nelson, Elliot Smith, and I just downloaded some Gillian Welch. You can see, though it's not ALL heartbreaks and cynicism and moody tempos up there, it's pretty close. So clearly I need your help. Double-extra-super-bonus points if it's something I can get off emusic, since I have a sub there.

I am bloody sick of this weather.

That is all.

I am considering deleting (or "deactivating" in their terminology) my Facebook account. Friendfeed provides everything I require in a social networking tool.

Stay?

• Many of my friends are here. Not all my friends are on Friendfeed yet. And many of them probably never will be.
  
• Facebook is the only social networking site where I have connections to family.
  
• People I know from the past who can connect to me.
  

• I hardly ever go to Facebook. Pretty much the only time I go to the site is when I receive an invitation to connect from someone.
  
• The music is too loud here. There are a gazillion things happening that I am unable to keep up. X gave Y a raspberry! G and E are having a baby! C signed a petition to release D! Enough!!
  
• Facebook is the only social networking site where I have connections to family.
  
• People I know from the past who can connect to me.
  

After the downer that was my previous photography post, I felt the need to post something a lot less serious and a lot more full of Life. And here it is...

When I was visiting Krakow I stayed in an apartment right on the main town square. One evening on my way back from work I noticed a call center of Indians milling around the town square. I was intrigued by the t-shirts they were all wearing that advertised something called 'Shilpagya'. They seemed to be speaking Gujarati. Never imagining what a gaggle of Gujaratis were doing in Krakow I went up to them and stuck up a conversation. I found out that they were part of a folk arts music group from Ahmedabad and were in Poland for some student folk arts festival. They invited me to come see their performance.

I later found out that this was an annual folk arts festival and was being held for the 21st year. Here are some of the photos from the festival.

lazy_hoor and I have been having an awesome ongoing conversation that started with panniers and ended at exercise-induced hematuria. This bicycle trip is going to rock.

I use a site called upmystreet.com to review house-prices in my area - just in case we decide to up sticks and move to Peru.

I've been avoiding it as of late, but stupidly decided to check today (after a cheery mail entitled "How the property downturn will effect YOU")

There's been no sales in our complex since July (but then, I don't think there are many apartments on sale either), so I was at least spared the depression of quite how much our apartment has devalued .

However, other numbers speak for itself

I recently got the opportunity to visit the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps in Poland. Here are photos from my trip.

The weekend was excellent, if many many months ago.

Friday, we went to Wagamama for dinner - we've discovered one just a few miles from our house, and it's becoming a favourite, even though I always have exactly the same thing (which is ingeniously the only thing I've ever eaten in a Wagamama's, purely because I love it so much that I couldn't bear the disappointment of having ordered something lesser). Afterwards, we went for a little drive, which just happened to pass the entrance to the Huff house which we love so much. Sadly, it was very dark, and we only passed the gate, but it was enough to know it was there.

Saturday meant "getting things done" - shopping and DIY mainly. We reconstructed our bookshelves, to which I had not affixed the appropriate backboard during the initial construction - leading to increasing leaning during the following months, and the threat of collapse before we left for our holidays. Now supported by some nice white hardboard, the shelves are a pleasing collection of right angles again, and luciddestiny is less likely to be drowned in a tsunami of novels while sitting at his desk.

Saturday did not involve much study. This was very naughty of me. On the other hand, the flat is very tidy.

In the evening, we went out for luciddestiny's dad's birthday - meaning I met more of the family, ate food made out of burning fat, drank a little too much and predicted correctly the winner of Last Choir Standing. A pleasant evening, even with the burning fire. Oh and the "great name for a sheep" joke.

Sunday ROCKED, in two major parts. We went to the Marwell Zoo in Winchester - despite the rain - predominantly to see the giraffes. It's a nicely laid out zoo, with seemingly enough space for everyone, shared areas for ungulates, a really nice high platform to watch the giraffes from and a brilliant lemur complex (although they did look a bit damp). We spent a good three hours there, followed by par the second, which was Winchester Cathedral. 11th century cathedral with everything you'd expect. We were lucky to visit during evening prayers, so there was choral music flooding the whole space (the prayers themselves take place in a separate area of the cathedral than the bit that's open to the tourists - so you don't feel like you're interrupting or rubber-necking). Only disadvantage was that it was really quite wet, and so not the best time to admire the architecture outside (and that we were too late for the tours of the crypt). My favourite bits were the gravestone of Jane Austin ("The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the regard of all who knew her and the warmest love of her intimate connections.") and the stained glass windows, which were destroyed during civil war in the 17th century, but reconstructed out of the broken glass, like an enormous patchwork with no particular pattern.

A most excellent weekend.

Hey, nerdfriends, is anyone else going to LISA this year?

After an appropriate period to mark the passing of Capiche, which swam happily in our Bi-orb for the last 18 months, we have moved sufficiently to purchase a new fish.

After a few abortive trips, we now own a new Oranda, chosen for his jaunty swimming, a clarity around the eyes and (predominantly) because he is quite big. Bigger, in fact than Asbo, our remaining fish. Size matters, because Asbo, as the name suggests, is trouble (or at least as much trouble as a fish can be). He terrorised Blondie, whom we got at the same time, and who perished after about six weeks. Capiche was made of sterner stuff, but even he was worn down by the incessant nibbling and butting that Asbo carried out for a good 6 hours every day (the rest of the time, he spents looking for invisible food or snoozing menacingly).

We were a bit nervous initially, but new fish (nameless until he shows some sort of anthropomorphic characteristic) is having none of Asbo's nonsense. On introduction to the tank, new fish took one look at Asbo's posturing, raised an eyebrow and said "are you startin'?". Asbo used his limited mental capacity to do some rudimentary size-comparisons, and decided he was not.

All is now calm in the fishbowl - they appear to be engaging in some basic loitering, bubble-consumption and trying to trick me into feeding them again.

I guess many people have seen this before (it got its first ever TV screening on BBC2's TV Hell night years ago - it was unbroadcast before then), but ever wondered what would have happened if the BBC had tried to work out what "entertainment for men" was from first principles, given that Loaded magazine hadn't been invented in 1969?

You'd have got Mainly for Men - part 1 is here, and part 2 here. I particularly like the way in which the presenter's camp resemblance to Graham Chapman makes it even more Pythonesque than it would otherwise have been, and David Bailey doing an alarmingly good impression of Nigel Tufnel from Spinal Tap.

I just love that the Wikipedia entry for the (sorry, da) P-Funk Mothership has a snooty little warning at the top that "This article does not cite any references or sources.". I'm sorry, but any article which actually explains with a straight face that the purpose of the Mothership is "in order to better administer funk to the audience" should get a free pass on Wikipedia's bureaucracy.

I did go out again on the bike last night, with T this time. I am not dead, and not even in pain. I am quite aware of my legs, but that's OK. Also, T has convinced me that I will need padded-arse pants for the bike trip. It was a combination of realizing that my bum was already tired of the bike seat after only 12 miles, plus his semi-graphic descriptions of saddle sores, that did it.

chrysaphi's application for indefinite leave to remain in the UK goes in next month. I just found out how the fees have progressed over the last few years:

Until 2003: free
2003: £155
2005: £335
2007: £750

This is to fund immigration enforcement against people who, presumably, are not paying these fees. Talk about kicking people when they can't hit back - want your spouse to be able to stay in the UK? Cough up, bucko.

Dublin was perfect. Galway was wonderful. My sister's wedding was new levels of fabulous. I have so much to update about, but, god, not right now, because being back here is seriously mouldy. I'm going out to find a champagne cocktail and allow nyc to make it up to me for not being home.

I went out for Bike Ride II: Electric Boogaloo today. This was a trip to/around the north side of the Phoenix Park. So getting to the park is a snap, and the very first bit is fine despite some construction. So eventually I'm cruising along, light traffic only, on the north side of the park where the grass is wilder and taller and there are fewer people and it's generally lovely and quiet, and all I can think is "FUCK! Why do my legs hurt? I went on a much hillier ride the other day and it was easier!" And of course the wind was straight into me, which is always annoying. So I'm generally getting kind of despairing about how I'm never going to get fit enough to keep up, and then the wind shifts a bit, which is nice. And then all of a sudden I notice that everything is easier. I am clearly headed downhill all of a sudden, despite having had no real visual clue that I'd ever gone up. So the rest of the way is great, despite all the fucking people walking on the bike path when there is an equally well-paved people path next to it. (I miss my bike bell, which was melodious and shaped like a tomato.) So in the end, not a bad ride. It's fricking GORGEOUS today, which was well overdue, so I enjoy the rest of my trip.

I came home and looked up my route again so I could post it here, and then noticed that gmap-pedometer has an elevation function that I hadn't notice before. So I turn it on, and as it turns out I picked up about 100 feet of elevation between miles 1 and 3 of my trip. It looked perfectly flat when I was there! Now, I know that's not really an astonishing amount, but it does restore my hope that I might make some headway on this cycling business.

I'm going to spend the rest of the day cleaning so that I have NO EXCUSE not to get my editing done during the week. And if I still feel pretty decent by then, T and I might go out and do the same route again tonight, just so I can conquer it again. I'm so out of shape that this might constitute overtraining, but I'm going to take the risk, I think. One has to make the best of the good weather when possible.

The Boomtown Rats' lyrics tended to err a bit on the side of the obscure at times, but thanks to Youtube I now know what Drag Me Down was actually about - according to the video, it's about working in a mine.