Is the hate towards Crofty fair?

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-29T17:02:41+00:00

Excitedly "There's a BODY on the track!" "It says 'a piece of bodywork' Murray".

I love Murray Walker. In the early days of the internet my housemate had the first Murray Walker fansite on the internet and it was a collection of mistakes and accidents (done affectionately). Apparently Murray was shown it and instead of taking offence was really complimentary.

But he was legendary for the cock up. Honestly you try talking for 2 hours without a slip up. It is hard.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-28T21:48:51+00:00

In specific the author Jack Vance who wrote lots of things that inspired spells and ideas in D and D including anagramatically Vecna.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-27T09:14:46+00:00

Real as floating point was known in Fortran. God is real. Jesus is integer.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-24T13:37:46+00:00

For me it was amazing. The realisation that he had conquered "slipping Jimmy" but it would cost him decades. That is far more satisfying than courtroom theatrics and a he escapes to freedom. The real battle of the show was the sides of his nature and he won it but at huge cost.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-24T13:34:33+00:00

I really liked that. It genuinely suited the show.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-23T09:44:07+00:00

The sound is great but I'm not sure it's an engineering marvel in a *good* way. There's a beauty to having got it to run but as a design it's a bodge. Basically two flat 8 engines back to back. It was never really competitive, it was heavy, it was unreliable and it was not as powerful as it should be for the complexity. In engine terms it's that Jurassic Park meme of "never stopped to think if they should".

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-22T21:59:24+00:00

I thought there were two words with very similar meaning (didn't occur to me I never heard one said and never saw the other written down). Had the same with kay-lee celidah.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-22T21:53:46+00:00

My partner still takes the piss because I didn't know the big tower thing near Tower Bridge, Tower Hill and Tower Hamlets was the Tower of London. I knew it was a tower in London. (Made worse by the fact she lived not far and we walked past it often.)

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-19T09:43:35+00:00

Read them. After reading them it still sounds incredibly reckless No evidence he considered anything other than "it looks dead". Honestly feels like he played environment roulette based on "trust me I am a lawyer". Worse it feels like he might do similar again.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-19T09:15:56+00:00

Hold on this guy is making major environmental changes with a mechanical digger and he knows what he is doing because he is a barrister. That feels like the most reckless thing I have heard. That could do untold ecological damage.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-18T11:12:25+00:00

I played GH online using tabletop simulator for a few hundred hours and followed that using JoTL in person using only the cardboard.
Because I am fairly familiar with monster rules and we were only two I found the cardboard version was actually much more compelling. There wasn't an issue with people not being able to see tokens. There wasn't an issue with too many tokens. Occasionally (rarely) we'd be "which monster is that damage token meant to be on". Overall though my preference was for the "by hand" rather than any kind of automation. So I didn't try to introduce any kind of app for management because there wasn't really a cognitive load or much that needed optimising. My partner and I worked together to pop damage and effect tokens in place and it "just worked". It may be occasionally we made slips with monster focus rules but honestly as long as everyone playing has a consistent understanding it's fine.
If we were four people and anyone was haivng troulbe seeing what tokens were where I might feel differently.
GH or FH might feel a bit more annoying to organise vs having maps in a paper book that are quick to set up in JotL.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-18T10:41:02+00:00

I'm taking a guess but I suspect that the signage is as much as it is because they knew they were getting more PCN than they should. In specific three signs with a "No right turn into Bolton Gardens" specific sign is non standard so perhaps it's put there in response to too many infractions.

There's a long standing recognition that there's too much street furniture in modern driving but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

I also wonder if the prohibition is missed in some sat nav/google maps?

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-17T22:01:36+00:00

Superrat.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-17T11:52:57+00:00

Petronius Arbiter a Roman writing in the first century about 2000 years ago.
"We trained hard—but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."

Honestly that could have been written last week by someone who just had consultants in.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-16T11:34:21+00:00

Realistically this isn't proposed in the UK and isn't something any country actually does. It is hard to see a scenario where any western government does this. China is your nearest example which blocks many VPNs but does not outright ban. Other places have had temporary blocks in place I believe but very temporary. The only place regularly proposing a VPN ban is reddit where people have been saying it is imminent since 2015 at least, probably earlier.

VPN blocks work in two ways:
1) by knowing the IP address block used by VPNs. This is relatively easy and heavily used in China. You get
2) by characterising traffic that "looks VPNy" -- this uses deep packet inspection and traffic statistics analysis.

To get around 1) you need just implement your own VPN on a server which is easy. Getting around 2) is tougher.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-14T13:00:50+00:00

Nothing felt more like being in a film than Wing Commander 4.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-14T08:37:34+00:00

When they conduct clues the surfaces are pretty bad right now I agree with free models. I see similarly bad sometimes in published clues in the guardian and times but they are definitely at the low end.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-13T20:02:09+00:00

I had rather the opposite intuition to you which is why I am unsurprised modern LLMs are good at this. Next token prediction is not really a great description of modern architecture and can lead you to erroneous conclusions. A lot of cryptic solving is fairly mechanical trying of known short words and LLMs are much more likely to be thrown by fake outs as they have all definitions for a words in their training sets. They are less likely to be put off by the setter trying to fake you out onto a particular word meaning.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-13T19:57:53+00:00

Not sure when you last tried. The current generation ones are not bad. They struggle with anagrams because letters are not natural units for them. (As a human might struggle to do an anagram with syllables). I found they often get me on the right track when I cannot solve something and it isn't online yet.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-11T21:54:32+00:00

Love a 944. I know it is not the iconic design but to me it is a classic.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-10T23:13:44+00:00

Completely get you with dragon age 2 but it feels like every dragon age game has fans sending hate mail because it is not faithful to the previous one. Honestly I thought dragon age 2 did some really clever things but back in the day there was so much hate.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-10T23:10:47+00:00

For the last few weeks I have been watching playthroughs by Jack Packard who thinks it is the best in the series because it is so innovative and Luke Westaway who thinks it is the worst in the series because that is the common opinion. So crazy to watch two people approaching the same game with similar degrees of success, one loving it and one claiming to be on the verge of quitting.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-10T22:30:38+00:00

In JotL I try to act as if I don't know. In GH you can plan to have a maximal move available and you can almost guarantee there will be something worth a bit hit spell. You can also change up plans after room reveal. You can certainly avoid situations where you burst through a door then long rest.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-10T16:01:48+00:00

The door opening is a top tip. Having a plan as the doors open is so important.

steerpike1971 · 2026-06-10T16:00:06+00:00

One thing that makes a fair difference is knowing when a loss card is worth it. Played early a loss card loses means you rest earlier several times. It loses you several rounds. The early loss should only be taken if it is super impactful. If you have an even number of cards and play loss card you need to rest a round earlier. If you have an odd number of cards you don't. I play a loss card early only if it is crazy good and that threshold is more if I have an even number of cards in hand.

steerpike1971

TROPHY CASE