The Man with No Time

Every year I set myself a set of goals for my work and hobbies. Things that I want to achieve, ideals for the amount of hobby time I'll set aside for each pastime, etc. Traditionally I've not had much success, whether from lack of time or excess of ambition, but 2016 has seen more success than the previous couple of years. Let's take a look at how well I did.

What a year! I don't think I'm alone in being glad to see the back of 2016. It's been a pretty rubbish year on many fronts; several high profile deaths, and a lot of controversial politics on both sides of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, a lot of what was wrong with this year is only the beginning of what will almost certainly end up being long-term changes to the wider world. The New Year won't be a magical cure-all, but probably just the harbinger of even more unsettled times. But enough moping around. Let's do the traditional year's-end review for the blog, starting with a look back at the year just passed. (Credit: http://thanksgiving2016day.blogspot.co.uk/)

On 29th June, Privateer Press released the new editions of Warmachine and Hordes, my current miniatures game of choice. This was not a complete surprise. Chatter in the community for a few years had been "I hope they change this for Mk 3", or "list the changes you want to see in the next edition", or "when is the new version coming out?", but Privateer themselves had been tight lipped on the subject, making no statements either way regarding an update. Then, at the end of April, they announced that the new editions were coming. With new starter boxes, a new app, a new points system, and new hardback rulebooks. The excitement in the community was palpable. Banner art for the new edition of Warmachine and Hordes, showing new leaders for Khador and Trollbloods.  (Credit: allnewwar.com, Privateer Press. No commercial use intended) I'm not going to go into a detailed review of what's changed between editions; the release was over a month...

"There is a curse.  They say: may you live in interesting times."  - Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times  Watching the news, both televisual and online, on Friday morning, the quote above popped into my head. Never has it seemed more appropriate.

It's been a bit longer than I intended, but I'm finally getting around to putting up my SmogCon photodump. I'm not going to put the full album up here, just to save space; as usual I took an awful lot of photos!  I've separated the photos out into a few different categories for ease of viewing. If you're interested, the complete set of photos (in chronological order) can be viewed on my  Flickr account . Painting Competition Spell Draft Iron Arena Board Games & IKRPG General

This past weekend I made my way down to London for SmogCon V, the latest incarnation of Europe's biggest and best Warmachine convention. My first visit was last year, and I had such a great time that I just had to go back. Spoiler alert: I'll be heading back next year too. Rather than giving a blow-by-blow of all of my games, I thought I'd give an overview of what I did, where I spent most of my time, and my results. Then I'll do a separate photodump post of the best snaps that I managed to take. A blow-by-blow might follow at a later date if I can be bothered (and have the time).

In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of an academic career is public outreach. Sadly, I think it's also one of the least appreciated aspects among the people occupying said academic careers, and usually the first to be dropped when time and/or funding is tight. As a PhD student I was heavily involved in the operation of the Astronomy department's mobile, inflatable planetarium. I even coordinated the program for two and a half years! We travelled all over Eastern Scotland giving shows to the public, and I loved it. Since starting my Postdoc position I've given several public talks, mostly at careers events. These have been great fun, and I learnt a lot about presenting from one of the outreach officers in the department at Warwick. But in the last six months or so I've started getting involved in a different side of the public engagement game - press interviews. These have been simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying, but on the whole I've e...

2016 is off to a pretty terrible start, and it's barely February. 2015 was a pretty terrible year as far as deaths go. We lost so many of the great and the good, including Sir Terry Pratchett, Leonard Nimoy, Christopher Lee, Cilla Black, and Jonah Lomu. And that's just the people connected with my own interests and hobbies. But January 2016 has just been awful; we've lost three legends to cancer in the space of four weeks. First was David Bowie, who had been undergoing a private battle with cancer. While not a huge fan of his music, I did quite enjoy some of it, and I could certainly appreciate the influence that he'd had on the industry, not to mention film, television, and fashion.  Then it was Alan Rickman, again from cancer that he had kept private. This one hurt. I've watched Alan Rickman in many good films, and some great ones. Die Hard, Dogma, and of course the Harry Potter series for which he's perhaps most famous. Between them these films...

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Rather than making 'traditional' New Year's resolutions, I like to set myself a few goals to try and meet each year. The number of goals I set seems to increase every year, and covers the gamut of my activities, from work to gaming via TV, books, and sport. I find that doing this helps my balance my various hobbies, and maintain a healthy work-life balance. Over the last few years my success at meeting these goals has seen a rather precipitous decline! But still I persevere. At the very least it's entertaining to see how badly I do each year. As per usual, I'll be trying to make my goals relatively achievable. In some cases I'll be building on experience from the last couple of years (a '*' marks those carried over from 2015).