The Man with No Time

It's that time of the year again - the Stanley Cup playoffs are here! I'm going to do a round by round review again this year, but I'll probably vary the format a bit from last year. My rough plan is to give short comments on each game of every series, every round. These will almost certainly be based purely off the highlights from the NHL's Youtube channel ; with my thesis writing in progress, I can't really afford to be staying up to odd hours watching ice hockey! But that's to come. Today I wanted to get down some brief thoughts about the 16 teams that have made the playoffs.

It's been a good period for my wargaming recently. I've been getting some decent painting time in, and I've even managed to get some games of Warmachine in! At the end of last month I went to a 35pt tournament at Highlander Games in Dundee, and yesterday I travelled to my second tournament of the year. This time the format was a 50pt Steamroller, with reinforcements for all games and deathclock. I really enjoyed playing with reinforcements under Steamroller 2012, so was pleased to get the chance to break them out again. I was also looking forward to trying deathclock timing for the first time, having only ever experienced timed turns. In the end it was a small tournament, only 8 players, but a lot of fun.

Blockbuster season starts early this year, with a couple of big releases around the end of April and the start of May. The first of these is Iron Man 3, the concluding part of the highly successful trilogy starring Robert Downey Junior. I really enjoyed the first two Iron Man films. I was never a huge fan of Iron Man as a character before this trilogy, but my only exposure had really been the animated series. It was part of a raft of Marvel  animated television series, along with the X-Men, Hulk, Spiderman, and the Fantastic 4. I always preferred the X-Men and Spiderman, but Downey's portrayal of Tony Stark really won me over the first time around, and was even better in the second instalment. I was certainly excited for part three after the trailers, but did it live up to my expectations? How cool is this logo? (Credit: collider.com)

The weekend just gone saw me travelling to a different country. - well, technically anyway. I was in Belfast with a couple of others visiting one of my best friends, Hannah, who moved there in September to start her degree in medicine. I've been to Belfast only once before. Four years ago I went there for a PhD interview, and despite being very busy I did get a bit of a tour of the place from one of the members of staff. Returning was an interesting experience; I got to see parts of the city that I missed out on the last time around, and see the many changes that have happened since that first trip. Samson. Or Goliath. One of the two cranes that was part of the main shipyard in Belfast. The two of them are actually listed structures! (Credit: David Brown)

After last weekend's manic musical mayhem, last night was the culmination of all of that work. My last ever University of St Andrews Symphony Orchestra concert was a great success, and one of the best orchestra concerts that I've been part of whilst at this university.

Earlier this year the company behind my current favourite wargame made a rather interesting announcement. Privateer Press were going to start their own publishing imprint to release fiction set in their Iron Kingdoms universe, the setting for Warmachine, Hordes, and the IKRPG. Under the name Skull Island eXpeditions (SIX) , their plan was to offer both novels and novellas based on all three of those games, exclusively in e-book format (distinct to their deal with Pyre to publish IKRPG novels in paper form), at a release rate of roughly one per month. I was very excited by this announcement. The 'fluff' in the Warmachine and Hordes books, whilst not the greatest example of creative writing in the world, is very enjoyable. The setting has so much potential for a wide variety of stories that's just waiting to be tapped, and people have been clamouring for fiction in the setting for years. Games Workshop have had an analogous publishing arm, the Black Library, f...

After the Bassoon Quartet concert on Friday, this weekend has seen me massively overdose on music. Seriously, it's been crazy.

Today was a rather sad day. But also, in another way, a rather awesome one. At lunchtime today I took part in my last St Andrews Bassoon Quartet concert (or at least, what should be my last one if everything goes to plan). It's been three years since the quartet formed, initially just to do some Christmas busking, and it's been a blast. We've put on some great concerts in that time, and have repeatedly pulled them off with limited, or accelerated, rehearsals. What's more, most of the music has been arranged specially by our members.

Now that I've had my first few games with Venethrax (at the tournament last Saturday ), I've got a bit more of an idea of how he plays and what I can do with him. I've also had time to think about the army that I want to run with him, and might be giving my current list a few tweaks. In any case, I thought I'd put pen to paper and document some of my musings and lessons learnt.