Nominate a “splat-er”. All the other players stand in a circle around the “splat-er”. The “splat-er” stands in the middle with his/her fingers pointed upwards like a gun. He/she then slowly turns around on the spot, until he/she suddenly points their fingers towards one of the players, as if he/she was shooting them, and says “SPLAT.”
Immediately, the person who has “splatted” has to drop to the ground (to dodge the splat), and the two people either side have to ‘shoot’ each other (i.e. over the dropped persons head) with their fingers and say “SPLAT.”
If the person dropping to floor doesn’t do so before the people either side go “splat”, he or she is out.
Otherwise whoever was the first to be splatted of the two either side of them are out.
If the two either side “splat” at exactly the same time, both can stay in.
The game continues in this way until only two players are left.
At this point the following happens:
The two remaining players stand back to back, with fingers making guns (as if they were having a duel with pistols).
The “splat-er” calls out a vegetable (e.g. “carrot”), and the players take one step apart.
The “splat-er” calls out another vegetable (e.g. “potato”), and the players take another step away from one another.
This continues until the “splat-er” decides to call out a fruit (e.g. “apple”), at which point the players have to spin round and “SPLAT” the other player. The person to do so first wins.
There is always a joker who calls out “tomato” – this should be banned before the splat duel starts! Similarly, continuing to call vegetables ad nauseam is to discouraged.
Very simple game. You need at least 4 players (but more is better), and a large open space (indoor or out).
Every player stands up.
Every player secretly and randomly chooses 2 other players from the group.
On “Go”, each player has to try and form an equilateral triangle with the two people they have chosen.
The game is over when either nobody has to move anymore, or a predetermined time limit has passed.
An alternative way of expressing “equilateral triangle” is “move to you are the same distance from both the people you have chosen, as they are from each other”.
More fun then it sounds, and good for several rounds.
My thanks to Roger for suggesting this, even if it was in a different context.
I was very brave last night – I flashed my router with a firmware I’d hexedited!
I’ve got a Buffalo WYR-G54, which was very cheap, but has essentially does the job of connecting me to the Internet with wireless to boot. One of it’s big plusses is that it routes the external IP from inside, so if I try to connect to my address from the ISP, the router will forward it to using whatever port forwarding I’ve set up. So if I’ve forwarded port 80 to 192.168.2.1:80 I’m on 192.168.2.3, and try to connect to 80.1.2.3:80 (assuming that was my IP, which it’s not), it will connect through to 192.1687.2.1:80.
On the other hand, it’s not actually very good. In particular the wireless is shockingly unstable. The Wii can only get a connection for 30 seconds or so at a time, and the laptop is better, but only actually in the same room!
The last straw was when, quite bizarrely, my windows box stopped being able to connect to the net through it, while Linux was going as fast as ever. After the usual cable and driver troubleshooting, it seemed to me that rebooting the Buffalo caused the problems to go away for a bit.
I’m still not convinced it’s not my little switch that both the Linux and XP box are plugged into…
Anyway, I decided it was time to try and hunt down a new firmware again, and I came across this posting (from gadgetspeak) by “kye04”
Hi — I was about to toss out my WYR-G54 after its wireless support started flaking out and not finding any firmware upgrades beyond 1.402. However, after some desparate Googling I discovered an interesting post from japan claiming that the WYR-G54 has the same internals as some other OEM devices, namely the BLW-54PM from Planex…
I EXPECTED to totally brick my device by following the roughly translated instructions, but instead am pleased to report that my device now believes it’s a BLW-54PM version 3.000 firmware Planex unit!
The wireless seems much more robust than before and the Planex web UI supports some formerly inaccessible options (like manually adding MAC addresses for access/routing). The rest of the web interface has a different theme but is essentially the same — you can preview it in the PDF manual from Planex (same link as below). That’s actually how I (informally) validated the possibility that these two devices are siblings.
So, if you have an old WYR-G54, and you don’t mind potentially killing it, the process I used was:
** DO NOT APPLY THIS UPGRADE IF YOU ARE NOT PREPARED TO BRICK (render useless) YOUR ROUTER. **
Download WYR-G54_1.402.zip (the link in earlier post above still worked as of today)
Extract both firmware .IMG files (WYR-G54_Eng_1402.img, BLW-54PM_Firmware_PCI_ENG_v3000.img). Write down the freshly extracted v3000.img file size — in bytes (mine was 720311).
Use a hex editor to exactly clone (overwrite not insert) the first 52 bytes and the last 40 bytes from the WYR image to the BLW image. I used KHexEdit on linux, but you should be able to find a hex editor for any platform via google. Note that the last 40 bytes will _start_ at a different location in each file, so be sure to work backwards from the end of each file individually when cloning those.
(not sure if this is needed): I saw “14 02” at offset 50 and also in the last 40 bytes of the WYR, along with “30 00” in the same locations in the BLW image, so assumed these were version markers. After cloning the WYR bytes over with “14 02” I then changed them both to be “14 03” (in case maybe the router consider this before upgrading).
Save the resulting image as something memorable, I used “WYR1403.img”. As a high level check, make sure the original v3000 firmware and your transplanted image are exactly the same file size — if not the clone procedure removed or added bytes which is wrong so try again. For reference, with the #5 version change the md5sum of my image was: 7023cbc9946be3eb444ade76a3f82e57
Backup your config settings (admcfg.cfg) and purchase a backup router and/or have a contigency plan ready (remember this could totally brick your device!)
(optional — not sure if really needed) Reset your device to factory defaults
Connect via cat5 and upgrade your WYR-G54 using the standard web UI and your new image.
cross your fingers, let the firmware screen finish loading, and see if it worked!
NOTE: I did not reset my device to factory defaults before upgrading, but in hindsight it might have been a good idea. Looking at the saved config files (admcfg.cfg) before and after the upgrade, only a handful seem to mesh up — for example, it kept my admin password but none of the LAN or access point settings
The BLW-54PM docs say the factory admin login is a blank username and “0000” (four zeros) for the password, but as mentioned it actually kept my admin password so my login was blank username and my old password at 192.168.1.1 (vs. “root” before).
Good luck to anyone else daring enough to try this! 😉
Best regards,
-Tim
Well, I was brave/stupid enough, and I got the same results!
I haven’t extensively tested it yet, but the Wii seemed a whole lot happier!
Just got home from a fab evening with John Barrowman.
Ok, so that might be slightly misleading. It wasn’t just me and John. Actually, I had to share him with several hundred other people. He did wave at me though.
In fact, he was doing one night only at the Harrogate International Centre, which seemed like a perfect opportunity to tick off three boxes on my “things I must do” list: (1) see a 2,000 year old time-traveller/immortal from the 51st century, (2) go to the International Centre, and (3) go out to a show.
So far everyone I’ve mentioned it to has been surprised that I would choose to go and see Mr Barrowman, which I’m thinking is because of the gay thing. I fall into none of the 3 demographics that seem to make up the majority of the audience, which were gay men (obviously), “housewives” and women of a certain age (obviously), and teenage girlies (which I was actually surprised at). In fact, I would say that teenage girls made up perhaps as much as a fifth of the audience. In many cases I would even say pre-teen. I guess it’s the Dr Who thing. (and, let’s be honest, that’s the main reason I went).
The evening didn’t get off to a particularly auspicious start. Loitering in the foyer, a slightly strange man called Robert struck up conversation. Well, I say struck up conversation, it was more a barrage of questions: Are you looking forward to the show?What’s your name?What do you do?Can I get you a drink?Would you like to meet up for a drink after the show?. All the time about 6 inches away from me – each time I moved back, he moved forwards. I had suspicions from the start, but when he offered to buy me a drink that nailed it for me. I believe that makes the second time in my life I’ve been ‘approached’ by a man – the first time I was too drunk to remember, and I’m told I threw up on him. It’s a strategy that probably would have worked this time too. In the event I made my excuses, and was thankful to be sitting a *long* way from him… 🙂
But I digress.
It was first and foremost a musical evening. The venue is great. All the seats have a good view of the stage, and while it might have been nice to be a little bit nearer, I could see fine. The band were excellent – a drummer, mad percussionist, woodwind and sax player, bass, lead guitar (who had about 5 guitars, including one acoustic, that he switched between), a couple of keyboardists, and – slightly spookily – invisible backing singers who were obviously hidden backstage (but were credited in the program).
The turn-out was a little disappointing. I would hazard it was only about 75% capacity, but there were more than enough of us to get the atmosphere cooking.
The format tended to be songs, with short stories in between. Either autobiographical from John’s life, or comedy/interactive stuff. I have to say the musical quality was top-notch. I felt the balance could have been tweaked once or twice, but the band didn’t miss a beat. The lighting was great too – just the right atmosphere. He had four dancers (two men and two women) who were fine, but I don’t really get dancers. I can’t help but to think of Pan’s people. Interestingly, one of the keyboard players was also the conductor, and you could see him conducting (and I mean properly conducting, with down, left, right, up marking the crochets, and the swirly thumb and finger pinch thing to stop the sound. There’s probably a proper name for it) from time to time.
He also had a special guest, but I’m really embarrassed that I’ve forgotten who it was. It was Danny Boyse (or something), who won “I’d do anything” or something like that. I’m really very sorry, if you ever read this, it’s a reflection on me, not you! Anyway, this guest did 3 or 4 songs, and then a duet (“I know him so well”) towards the end.
The music choice was good too. In the main real feel good songs from pop and the shows, including one genius merging of John’s Scottish background with theatre musicals, leading to an Andrew Lloyd-Webber medley to a Scottish reel. Just brilliant.
So, the gay thing. John is overtly gay, and a big advocate of gay rights, etc. And a lot of his humour was sexual and/or gay oriented, which could easily have been a turn-off for me (as such). On the contrary though, I found that he pitched it just right. He poked fun at a lot of things, including sex and sexuality, but never descended into the crude or particularly smutty. My experience is that a lot of gay people feel they have to wear it as a badge of honour, and draw their identity from being gay. John didn’t come across like this at all. He seemed to treat his sexuality a bit like his nationality – just a part of who he is, and fair game for jokes. I suppose it helps that he isn’t at all camp (quite the opposite), so when he camps it up, it’s actually very funny.
And, assuming he was telling the truth and not just acting, for me the mark of the man came across incredibly strongly in 3 things:
At one point his mum and dad joined him on stage (both in their 70s) to join in the dancing for a number. And were fantastically game, and clearly demonstrated a lot of love in the family.
He has a number of rescue dogs, and is patron of a rescue dog charity. He not only issued an appeal on the charity’s behalf, but also seemed genuinely emotional when saying that the family dog had died, and dedicated a song to it. It actually sounds a bit naff in the re-telling, but at the time it came across as heartfelt.
He repeatedly thanked us for giving him the opportunity to do what he loves to do (which is entertain), and came across as very aware of how privileged he is to do what he does
Actually one more. At the end of the evening, I’d happened to have locked up my bike by the stage door, so was fiddling with it when he came out. There were probably 50 people wanting to see him and get autographs. While he didn’t do any (bad), he did stand up on the car and explain that he was driving to Scotland overnight for the next show, so couldn’t hang around, and that if he signed one autograph he would sign them all because that’s the sort of person he was. He added that if anyone wanted anything signed, send it in to the address on the website, and he promised it would be signed and returned (good).
In my book, all of those make me doff my hat to you, John. I have to admit that humility and genuineness would not have been attributes I would have previously associated with you, based on what I’ve seen on telly, but I am happy to have been shown to be wrong.
Well, completed the upgrade to FC9. Wasn’t that painful actually – but I can now run Firefox 3, Adobe Air, and all that malarkey.
The painful bits were shifting from IMAPD to Dovecot (had to translate all my mail from MBX to mbox format – thank you “mailutils”), and I haven’t got to grips with SELinux at all.
In fact I’ve turned it off – it was stopping MySQl, spamassassin, an Apache from working, because I had all the relevant files hanging around from the last install, hence the file contexts are all wrong. The correct thing to do would be read up on SELinux, and understand what magic I need to weave… but frankly life’s too short.
Otherwise everything worked out the box. “yum upgrade” wanted 1.1Gb of downloads, but FC9 is a bit old now I guess.
Not noticed any particular difference in performance, and no doubt I will be finding all the things that are now missing over the coming weeks.
I think that starting from (say) Facebook is the wrong place to understand Twitter. For me, Twitter is not really social networking, but more like a blog, so starting from blogspot is probably closer to the mark. In fact, Twitter is a bit like a blog and RSS feed rolled up into one, with guaranteed easy (and quick) to digest morsels. I accept that that this in itself raising questions about meaningful relationships, soundbites, and attention spans, but perhaps I’ll cover that another time.
So, take this morning – I logged in, and discovered 34 updates waiting. This took me probably less than a minute to read. Compare with trying to looking at 34 friends’ updates on Facebook (yawn!), or worse, trying to read 34 blog posts.
I guess there’s two parts to being on Twitter – the first is posting your own tweets, the second is following others. I personally think to do the first without the latter is a bit narcissistic. On the other hand I know plenty of people who ‘lurk’ – that is follow others without actually posting (much) themselves.
If we start, then, with why one might follow someone on Twitter, I can think of a few reasons:
To be entertained/amused (e.g. follow stephenfry)
To be informed (e.g. follow cnnbrk, or tweeters at demonstrations)
Because you care about the person you’re following, and are interested in what they have to say.
To boost their follower count (e.g. a charity)
Oops – missed one off:
If you’re a spammer
In this regard, these are the same reasons as you might read someone else’s blog – or indeed read a newspaper or magazine, or listen to the radio. I see blogging very much as an extension of the traditional media, and bloggers are analogous to columnists or DJs.
Now, contrast this with the reason you’re friends with someone on Facebook
They’re a friend, or
You have no idea who they are, but you want to boost your ‘friend’ count
They’re famous, and you want some vicarious kudos from having a famous ‘friend’
Perhaps I’m being a little harsh there? In any case, the first item definitely further breaks down into people you are in regular contact with, with whom Facebook is a supplementary communication mechanism, and old/distant friends, with whom Facebook is the only (or major) communication mechanism. I think Facebook is fanastic at this second point in particular – I can ‘touch’ people who I have a connection with, but don’t really see or communicate with in any other way.
Of course Facebook is a very poor, or ‘thin’, means of relationship and communication. But a lot better than none at all, IMO.
But I digress….
Back to Twitter. So why do people tweet. Well, the reasons are basically the same as above, with one addition:
To (try to) entertain/amuse
To (try to) inform/provoke thought/promote discussion
To let those who care about you know what you’re doing
To try and sell Viagra
As historical record/diary/journal
The last one perhaps sounds a bit grander than I would intend, but my first “blog” was essentially me recording my efforts at the gym, and were intended solely for my consumption. It gradually expanded to other bits and pieces I wanted to record (not unlike del.icio.us, now I come to think of it), and then grew to be general comments on like. Of course, it begs the question why I (or anyone) would want their journal to be public…
This trend continues – my tweets and blogs are essentially my own musings, perhaps a catharsis even. I attempt to pick off the entertainment and informative aspects too (and succeed with rarely paralleled grace and flair, naturally). So take my recent(ish) Stag Weekend adventure. I tweeted the whole thing, with the intention of providing both a running commentary and an historical record I could roll up into one blog for the whole of humanity to use to enlighten themselves, and for 23rd century anthropologists to use to deepen their understanding of British culture in the noughties.
So, Twitter is plain fun. It takes a very light touch to use – whether tweeting or reading others. I laugh at loud at times, I enjoy reading what others have got to say, and I’m exposed to thought provoking and stimulating material I would otherwise not come across. On the other hand – this post is probably approaching an hour of my time. No less enjoyable, but considerable more effort to write and read.
In general I’m a fan of convergence, but I’ve recently realised that I use various ‘social’ websites in different ways, and it is appropriate for them to remain distinct.
Take Facebook – it’s the way I keep a connection with friends and family who I don’t see much, but also to mess around with some I do. But it’s all essentially built on mutuality, that is any action I do automatically gets pushed to my friends, whether they like it or not. If I want to see someone’s details, updates, etc, they have to also get mine.
Something like Twitter, on the other hand, is not based on mutuality, and only those people who opt in to my gibberish actually receive it. This is liberating, in one way, as the onus is on them to opt-in to my posts, and I don’t have to gets their tweets if I don’t want to.
Finally of course, there’s this site, which is the ultimate opt-in, in that it doesn’t get pushed to anyone (except Google, I suppose).
So whereas I tried having all my blog posts automatically added as notes to Facebook, and my Tweets added to my Facebook status (and vice versa), I now have come to the conclusion that I use them all in very different ways, and with different ‘audiences’, so I’m keeping them apart.
Went to the Leeds Wall with a friend from Church at the weekend. His boys are in the climbing club there, so he gets to climb for free while they have their lesson. Anyway, he invited me along to be a belay partner.
My climbing background is principally traversing. I got the bug doing a outdoor climb in Wales, but 99% of my climbing experience was doing an hour’s traverse every lunchtime for 4 years while at Uni.
So at one level I wasn’t mad keen. I’ve only really had one great experience of belay climbing, and that was the aforementioned Wales one. The times I’ve been since then, I’ve either not had anyone to go with, or I’ve gone with someone really good, and felt like I was holding them up and frustrating them.
Fortunately about 18 months ago, I signed up to the new climbing wall at the University of Leeds and had to do an assessment of my rope skills before I could climb unsupervised. Of course I’d forgotten it all, and was pants – but fortunately the dude took pity and gave me a crash course, and it all came back.
I’d also happily registered as a full member of the Leeds wall back in 2001 (!), so I was allowed to belay my friend (otherwise I would have had to go in as a guest, and not be allowed to).
I have to say it was fab. He has only recently started climbing again, so we’re about the same level (ish), which means we could take turns on the same climbs, and we run out of puff at about the same time (he did 5 climbs, to my 4.5). The highest grade we did was 5/5+ – I think a 6 might be beyond me until my fitness is back up.
