fitz's fun-filled farrago of freakish fancy

The Magic of Christmas

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 02:17:08 GMT

Not being at all religious, and not having any family close by for the obligatory seasonal food-and-booze stuffing, Christmas Day is generally one of the most boring days of the year for me. This year there was a couple of hours of socializing at Waifs & Strays to break the monotony, but that's about it. Everything is closed, and there's nothing to do. TV is the usual round of pap, bollocks and garbage that gets fed to us this time of year. Just about everyone I know is doing family stuff, so visiting is pretty much out.

It's enough to make a chap turn to Drink.

I knew it!

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:42:14 GMT

New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths

But then again...

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:09:02 GMT

I was watching a Random Parade of Beauty on the streets of Christchurch the other day, and thought to myself what a pity it is that so few women realise just how attractive they really are. But then it occurred to me that without all that low self-esteem, men would have no chance at all. So perhaps it's just as well.

The Globe: things change, not for the better

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:48:22 GMT

Annette and I went to the Globe this morning for breakfast. We booked a booth.

When we got there (on time) there was no booth available. We went for a bit of a walk, and came back after about ten minutes to find that a booth had been vacated, but that our booth had never actually been reserved. We were graciously allowed to take the newly vacated (but filthy) booth.

We ordered our breakfast, and a couple of coffees.

Breakfast arrived... eventually. It was average at best, and the so-called "hash brown" was actually just a slab of over-spiced mashed potato that almost made me retch. Nice sausage though, and the bacon was good. I suspect the eggs were not free-range; they were unusually tasteless.

The coffee was late. very late. In fact, it never arrived. Annette reminded them twice; it still din't arrive. We eventually cancelled it and got our money back, and went and had a very good coffee at C1.

Guess whether or not we will be going back to the Globe any time soon. If your answer was "yes", you are either an idiot or hopelessly optimistic.

Akk, housework

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 03:00:11 GMT

I'm tidying the house. Oh, the pain.

This happens once in a blue moon; basically only when (a) we're having a party (it's Annette's birthday party tonight, though her actual birthday has already been) or (b) when elderly relations are coming to stay.

I do like living in a tidy environment, but as long as it's not actually filthy I can tolerate a considerable degree of disorder if it means I don't have to do any housework. If I ever miraculously strike it rich, I am going to hire a cleaner.

Steppin' in th' doo-doo

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:10:22 GMT

Michael Laws has never been one of my favourite people. I've always found him to be an intolerant, self-righteous, self-aggrandizing tosser. But now he appears to be reaching for the prize as New Zealand's Biggest Douchebag. Here's one of his latest efforts:

http://www.newswire.co.nz/2009/09/laws-does/

I'm actually seriously beginning to think he might have gone a bit doo-lally.

Fail

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 02:03:18 GMT

This is a proof for an aquatint I've been working on over the last couple of days. It looked so much better when it was just in my mind, and although the print turned out better than I was expecting when I went back to work on it this morning, it's not nearly as good as I'd hoped when I started. I'm not sure whether I can do much to salvage it, so I think I'll just leave it be and move on.

Larger version, as usual, on flickr.

Drawn and quartered

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:39:00 GMT

I bought a bunch of A5 pads of coloured paper to do this sort of 3-tone drawing on. What I couldn't tell under the lights in the shop is that the paper is kind of metallic, full of tiny tiny little chips of mica or something, and as a result it's a less than perfect drawing surface. That's what you get for trying to do things on the cheap; I should have just bought some proper Canson.

(larger image, as usual, on flickr)

Printing

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:46:49 GMT

I've been doing a little bit of intaglio work lately, thanks to the fact that I've been teaching an intaglio class and therefore have to show people how to do things. I really like intaglio print, especially aquatint and mezzotint. Then again, when I'm doing relief printing I tend to like that best. And when I'm screenprinting, that's what's most interesting to me at the time. I guess I just like making pictures.

Larger versions of the above on flickr.

Guru Time

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:55:14 GMT

I begin teaching again tomorrow -- this time it's intaglio print (etching, aquatint, mezzotint etc.) but I'll be teaching various other print classes untilt he end of the year. I'm pleased for two reasons: I enjoy teaching, and I love the intaglio process(es). Also, the regular money (for a while) will be rather welcome.

US Patents Office truly are morons

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:14:13 GMT

Reported on Slashdot: Microsoft Patents XML Word Processing Documents

Great "invention" there, Microsoft. You must be so proud.

Home again home again, jiggety-jig

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:16:03 GMT

Back home after my flying visit for the last night of Winter Weekend. I had a hoot, and found out that I can't shoot for shit any more thanks to Zane and his excellent .303 Lee Enfield of DOOOOM. Spa pool plus red wine is truly a winning combination.

Next time I will make heroic efforts to get up for the whole event instead of one measly evening.

The gravel road up to the lodge wasn't too bad, but mainly because of the unseasonable warm weather which meant that it wasn't its usual frictionless ice-rink self. Having said that, my bike is not well adapted to a gravel road and riding one is more stress and less fun than I like. I think in future I might cadge a lift with one of the four-wheeled mob, if I can.

I absconded slightly early because it looked like the wind was getting up to tornado strength, and I didn't fancy trying to motorbike through gusts strong enough to whirl me off to the magical Land of Oz, but as it happened the wind was mostly behind me and caused no real problems at all, bar one slightly alarming buffet.

I "accidentally" managed to get the bike up to about 175km/h at one point, when some dickspurt decided it would be a hoot to accelerate while I was passing him. Fortunately my power-to-weight ratio is considerably better than most cars, so I was forced to suppress his pretensions by twisting my throttle another 0.005 degrees.

I had a Good Time.

20mm 6pdr

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:32:35 GMT

This is the venerable Airfix kit of the 6pdr anti-tank gun, used almost throughout WWII by British and Commonwealth troops, and by the Americans as their 57mm ATG. Close-up photography really does reveal modelling and painting flaws quite mercilessly; I'm not surprised so many TV presenters are viewing the advent of HDTV with fear and trembling.

The crew are a couple of figures pulled from Valiant's British Infantry 1944-45 set; they're pretty good figures, and being plastic, they're cheap as chips. Not as cheap as Airfix or Esci plastic maybe, but on the other hand they're made of a hard plastic that is a lot easier to modify and paint than the soft polyethylene that Airfix and Esci use. They're also a little chunkier, which I like in a wargames figure.

There are a few manufacturers of good-quality plastic figures designed specifically for wargaming popping up these days, and overall I approve. Metal figures have many advantages, but they're expensive (and getting more expensive by the minute), and decent plastics allow a gamer on a budget to field a decent army without having to break the bank.

Oh... right... this thing.

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:27:04 GMT

I notice that it's been weeks and weeks since I last posted here. That's for three reasons:

Nothing much interesting has happened in my life, except for having a piece in COCA's Board Art group show, which, come to think of it, was actually a little bit exciting. I do get a bit of a thrill whenever any of my work is exposed to the public eye, whether it be in print or in the flesh (although sometimes the thrill is mostly sick nervousness, apprehension and fear of failure and ridicule). Mine didn't sell, but I wasn't really expecting it to, so no great disappointment there.

Nothing has outraged me enough to make me want to vent my spleen semi-publicly. I'm moderately annoyed by the "should assault as part of a good relationship be a criminal offence" referendum as a monumental waste of time and money, but mostly I just find it all rather wearisome and the lunatic christian child-beating lobby rather depressing.

Twitter. If I find something on the web that amuses or interests me, I'm more likely to twitter the url these days than LJ it.

History junkie

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:16:00 GMT

Just finished watching Ken Burns' incredible American Civil War documentary series. It's fantastic; if you have even the slightest interest in that sort of thing it's a must-see. Highly, highly recommended. It's 20 years old now, but it's aging well.

Buying and selling magical doo-dads

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:28:13 GMT

In general, I really hate the idea of PCs being able to walk into town and into a "Magik-R-Us" superstore to pick up a couple of spare Rods of Annihilation. I just loathe the way the trading of magical apparatus has become the norm in many games; it's symptomatic of a creeping disease that is in the process of ruining mainstream fantasy roleplaying.

That, however, is a rant for another time.

After I'd let a xorn eat one of my player's +2 chainmail, I was thinking last night about magic weapons and armour, as one does in one's idle moments, and it occurred to me that 99% of them aren't that magical really. What's a +2 sword, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty? It's just a Really Good Sword. A +4 sword is a Really Really Really Good Sword. They cut better, they handle better.... but so what? Big deal. Where's the magic? It's the "magic" of a truly talented smith, which in a fantasy milieu is likely to be real magic, not just mysterious trade secrets.

With that in mind, I've decided that I will let my players buy "magical" weapons and armour, but only the boring stuff, and certainly not in every little village or town.

I figure that maybe one smith in a ten is capable of producing a +1 sword (or armour). One in a hundred can manage +2, one in a thousand +3, one in ten thousand +4 and so on. In a pseudo-medieval milieu in which populations are low, and in which one smith may service two or three neighbouring villages, that will make the truly talented master-smiths rare enough to make buying superior arms difficult, and their talents will be in high demand, making their wares suitably expensive.

This means I'll have to think about creating some NPC master-smiths and placing them on my campaign maps, but that should be straightforward enough — it's not really any different than keeping tabs on powerful NPC mages and the like.

Don't learn your history from comic books

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:28:39 GMT

I watched 300 on TV last night. I had tried to watch it once before, but the disc I was watching at that time was scratched all to buggery and I only managed to see the first twenty minutes or so.

Seldom have I seen so many muscle-suits gathered together in one place. Six-packs galore. I have heard it described as "a Gay Pride parade attacked by mimes" — that seems a reasonably accurate description to me.

It had some good scenes, but overall the mannered cinematography and colour grading got kind of tiresome, and there was some truly, heroicly awful dialogue. The only thing that saved it from descending into utter cheesy farce was the fact that none of the lead actors were American; hearing a New York accent spouting some of those lines would have been just too giggle-riffic.

Fortunately I'm not the sort who gets too emotionally scarred by Hollywood's outrageous representation of historical events; in this case there was a double-whammy for the purists since the movie was based on a comic book based on a dream within a dream of a mystery wrapped in an enigma (or something), all probably inspired by a late-night cheese-snack nightmare of Frank Miller's. This movie isn't really much less accurate than most historical epics; congruence with actual events boils down to just a few items:

There really was a guy called Leonidas, and he was a Spartan
There really were about 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae
There really was a Persian army at the battle, and it was a pretty big army even if old Herodotus did tend to exaggerate a bit
The Spartan 300 did pretty much all get killed

I'm fairly sure Xerxes wasn't actually a giant heavily-pierced bondage queen, but I could be wrong.

I suppose it would have been too much to ask that a fantasy movie loosely based on a battle of the same name mention the six or seven thousand other allied Greek troops also present. Even after Leonidas dismissed the bulk of the army when he became aware that they were being outflanked, there were still well over a thousand non-Spartans left — about 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans and a few hundred other miscellaneous Peloponesians. They were also all killed when the massive Persian steamroller overwhelmed them, but nobody remembers them.

I guess the Spartans just had better publicists.

As for the movie, I doubt that I'll ever bother watching it again*. I'm glad I didn't spend any money to see it at the cinema.

* Although, if I ever need to draw a lot of vigorously athletic muscle-men it could be a good source of models

Gae'n Boyle yer heid

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:06:02 GMT

On the news and everywhere people are talking in tones of amazement about Susan Boyle tearing some rude, irritating dickwad a new anus and saying FUCK in public. How, they exclaim in delighted outrage, can a mouth capable of such beautiful singing produce such profanity? Shocking!

They're claiming that the backlash from this unprecedented act is what lost her the TV talent competition she was in.

People seem to be missing an essential point about Ms Boyle: she's Scottish, and thus a member of possibly the most foul-mouthed race on the face of the planet. It would be more remarkable if she hadn't told him to go and fuck himself.

Personally, I think more rude, irritating dickwads should be told publicly to fuck off and drown themselves in a sewer. Serves him right.

Disclaimer: All I know of this affair is what has been revealed in various on-line headlines and leaders, and I should therefore be deemed to be speaking (as usual) from a position of profound ignorance. I will nevertheless (as usual) continue to express my opinions as if they were undisputed fact. So there.

More stuff on flickr

Sun, 24 May 2009 00:41:45 GMT

I've put a bunch of new (old) stuff up at my flickr page. It's some stuff from 2006 that I just got around to scanning.

Fame!

Wed, 13 May 2009 22:21:17 GMT

Woo-hoo! I'm published! I did the cover and a few of the interior illustrations for Knockspell (Issue 2), which has just been released.

Blurb follows:

"Knockspell Magazine Issue #2 is now on sale at the Swords & Wizardry storefront, http://stores.lulu.com/mythmere. This issue contains dungeon design advice from both Allan Grohe and Philotomy Jurament, an adventure by Gabor Lux, and all kinds of other articles from jousting to monsters and all points in between! The art in this issue is phenomenal: artists include Jim Holloway, Liz Danforth, and others. The cover piece is "Dungeoneer," by Peter Fitzpatrick. Games covered include 0e, 1e, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, and other retro-clones. 86 pages.

DURING MAY the prices of Knockspell #2, Spire of Iron and Crystal (module), The S&W/0e Monster Book, and Eldritch Weirdness Compilation Books Three to One are all reduced, because we're in the middle of another lulu sales competition."

I always get a kick out of seeing my work in print, even after all these years. It would be nice if it had ever led to vast wealth, but que sera sera and all that.

The telephone is not my friend, it is poopy-plops from the hindquarters of Beelzebub

Mon, 11 May 2009 02:45:34 GMT

I really don't like telephones.

I'm never comfortable talking on them; I've had friends convinced I was mortally offended with them for some reason because of my rather stiff and terse manner over the phone. I'm not as bad as I used to be, but talking on the phone is never going to be a favourite pastime with me. I'll use the blasted thing to exchange information, but hours of phatic communion would just be torment. I suspect it's because I can't see the person I'm talking to; I'd be interested to see if my attitude changed with a good videophone system.

I prefer the interaction of email and texting for a couple of reasons: first, because it allows you to deal with the communication request at your convenience instead of the insistent "Me! Me! Me! Talk to me NOW!" of the voice call, and secondly because it allows some time for thought about what you want to say. I'm terrible at texting because I don't have a magic phone with a proper keyboard, so it takes me forever to tap out the simplest message on the phone's number keys, but even so I prefer it. Admittedly, we're being gouged stupid by the phone companies for texts (which, as far as I can tell, costs them effectively nothing at all).

Also -- I hate the way people will interrupt just about anything to answer a phone call or text. I find it incredibly rude; the implication is that whatever interaction you may be having with the phonee is automatically less important than a phone conversation with somebody -- anybody -- else.

Don't get me wrong, I freely admit that the telephone is a useful tool, and modern cellphones really are marvels of technology. I don't, however, think that it's a good thing to be available for instant contact with anybody 24 hours a day. Carrying a phone provides anybody with the means to intrude on your privacy at their convenience, not yours, and that's something that really irks me.

That's probably why I keep forgetting to charge my cellphone. Bloody thing.

Gallipolli

Sat, 09 May 2009 11:25:38 GMT

I just watched the very good documentary about the Gallipolli camapign on Maori TV; I say "good", but it was a story of pretty much unrelenting misery. I knew that it hadn't gone very well, but I didn't realise quite how much of a cock-up it was.

The battle planning, especially on the side of the British, seems to have been based primarily on jingoistic hope and delusional optimism rather than any kind of tactical reality, and a very great deal of completely pointless slaughter resulted. The most common tactical doctrine on the part of the British command appears to have been "if at first you don't succeed (and get absolutely massacred without achieving a bloody thing), try try again (in exactly the same way with exactly the same result)".

My great-grandfather was there. I'm bloody glad I wasn't.

It's only fair

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:04:09 GMT

In which I re-enter the Modern World

Wed, 06 May 2009 04:53:35 GMT

We have hot water again. Apparently the problem was a shonky ripple switch; when our power company turned our hot water off it just never turned on again. I do, alas, have to pay the electrician anyway.

You miss personal hygiene the most when you can't have it

Tue, 05 May 2009 22:14:13 GMT

We have no hot water. We've had no hot water for a couple of days now, and I really really want some. I want to wash the feculent grime from my body for a start, and the dishes are strting to pile up in dangerously tall stacks.

An electrician arrived early this morning and did various mysterious things to reveal that our hot water cylinder et.al. appears to be fine, and the problem seems to be with the power company's so-called "smart" meter, which isn't letting us have any power to the cylinder element. So now I have to wait around for more electricians from them, as well as having to pay the first sparky.

I'm grumpy. Dirty, Stinky and Grumpy. Three of the less savoury dwarfs.