It may be only February, but I have the uncomfortable feeling that my year is already full. There's precious little room to breathe in the calendar, and the next six months will be particularly hard. If I get slack at returning emails, or cancel things without much notice, please bear with me - I'm going to have to do what I can to stay sane.

I have a few goals: not all about my PhD, but there are a few in there as well.

Family: Make sure every day contains some time spent with aeliel when we aren't actively doing other things. Occupying the same room =/= spending time together. We're both busier than we ever have been, so that time is more precious than ever.

Kung Fu: Grade for 3rd Blue after Easter. I haven't quite learned all of the requisite Kul Dar form yet (it's a sequence of 126 movements, and requires more flexibility than I currently have due to jumps that transition into leg sweeps or kicks), but I think I can learn it in time. It's been over ten years since I last took a grading. Training regularly is good for keeping me healthy (and being physically exhausted enough to sleep), but it's good for mental discipline as well.

Thesis: Methodology draft this week. Update the social media overview next week. Finish coding the first half of my interview data during March. These things will help me to get it finished in time. It's a slow process, building up momentum to write these chapters.

Games: A surprisingly important sanity measure - these give me time to relax in the company of some excellent friends. Keep playing the weekly RPGs for as long as possible. Help aeliel plan out a Call of Cthulhu game for Arcanacon next year - though most of the writing will be a post-thesis project. Play in some WM tournaments and leagues, when time allows, to stretch the tactical part of my brain.

Painting: Another important one - this time for being able to relax on my own. I can't keep doing the late nights now that I'm at work by 8am each day, but painting after midnight is an indulgence. I like painting when the world outside goes quiet. It lets me gather my thoughts, or set my mind adrift while my brush takes over.

That's the barest hint at what I'll be doing over the next few months, but if I can manage those I will be on the right track.

2012 is the Year of the Thesis, but I will also be doing some painting as well. It's become a bit of a tradition to track that, so I know what I need to finish (and how much I've done so far). This is the 2012 Uberlist - a list of the painting projects that I've started (italics), finished (strikeout) or simply added to the to-do list (regular font).

If you're interested in seeing what's on my painting desk at the moment, you can find the list ( behind the cut )

Two posts in two days? I must be trying to avoid going back to my Methodology chapter...

I'm trying to work out what to cook for tomorrow night. We're having a Chinese New Year dinner with family, and I'd like to have eight dishes - I might end up with nine though, if I find some fresh fish. Eight is an auspicious number for a new year meal, but I don't know what I'd drop from the list - so maybe the rice won't count :)

Starters
Chicken, prawn and chive dumplings
Peking duck pancakes

Mains
Salt-and-pepper squid
Crisp-skin pork
Soy sauce chicken
Steamed Snapper
Shitake mushrooms, tofu and vegetables

Rice
Char Siu fried rice

Dessert
Pomegranate sorbet, fresh fruit

I don't usually fry things using much oil, so the squid will be a bit new to me - I think it's an important dish to add though, as the salt and pepper mix is something I remember Dad showing me how to make. Dessert isn't a big part of a Chinese meal, but it will be a hot day and there's too much nice fruit available to leave it out. Plus, aeliel has started making the pomegranate sorbet in her shiny new icecream maker... I'll look for whatever is fresh in the market.

The tricky part will be choreographing the cooking so that our very small kitchen manages to serve up 5-7 dishes while everything is hot. The chicken, pork (char siu and belly) and duck will be cooked ahead of time and I'll aim to have all the food prep done before turning on the stove, so I think it'll look something like this:

Wok: Fry rice, set aside in a metal oven tray covered by a damp cloth.

Steamer: warm pancakes

Oven grill: heat the duck and pork - skin needs to be crispy on both. Add rice to bottom shelf.

Wok: Fry dumplings

Serve duck (with pancakes, sauce and vegetables) and dumplings. Add hard vegetables to steamer (remove with greens, in about 15min). (2 dishes down)

Wok: heat chicken. Serve with roast pork and fried rice. (5 dishes down)

Steamer: add whole fish to top basket (takes 8-10min), green vegetables to lower basket (remove after 4-5min)

Fryer: Shallow-fry squid - probably needs two batches, so start the vegetables during batch 2.

Wok: fry vegetables with tofu and mushrooms. Serve with squid and fish. (8 dishes down)

After that, it's just a matter of leaving one board clean so the fruit can be cut. I think that if we take the sorbet out of the freezer when I start cutting fruit pieces, it'll be ready to serve as soon as the fruit is done.

Now I'm really hungry. I think I can see how it will all fit together though, which is a good start. Now, back to writing that chapter...

At midnight last night, I remembered that the new year was arriving today - helped on its way by a barrage of fireworks from over in Footscray. If you listen to the Chinese astrologers, 2012 is a Water Dragon year: larger than life, and full of change.

There's a lot of change on the horizon. aeliel is a few days away from finishing and submitting her Masters thesis, which will conclude three years of work into giftedness, engagement, learning styles, talent development and video games. She'll also be starting back at work full time, a couple of days after Arcanacon.

I have a lot to learn and write about before I can finish my own thesis. The biggest issue is transforming myself back into more of a 9-5 kind of worker, instead of a "do little bits of work at all hours of the day and night" person. I know that I'll be pushing hard to finish on time, but I don't want to disconnect myself any further from reality than I already have... after all, I'll need to quickly find a job once that final stretch of writing, revision and re-writing is done. That particular source of stress deserves to be thought about in more detail somewhere else, though.

For now: Happy New Year! I hope you can spend some time with family - whether they are the ones you're related to, or others that you've chosen instead ;) I'm planning to have my relatives over on Wednesday night, when I shall fill them with as much festive Chinese food as I can cook over the next few days.

It's 2012. Actually, it's now well into 2012, but I've spent such a languid week that the realisation of arriving in a new year has taken a few days to make it from my synapses to my typing fingers, so I'm only just getting around to writing about it.

This is generally the time when I look back on the last year, decide that it would be a good idea to look forwards at some stage, and then the year starts up in earnest - and the forward planning never happens. At least, that's the way that things have gone in most of the last ten years, now that I can check up on that kind of thing.

It's time for a change of pace, though. I've been in much the same place in my life for a few years now: an odd kind of limbo, filled with enough to keep me happily distracted, but without any tangible sense of progress to anything. I could stay here forever without really doing anything, and that should be warning enough. It's time to start packing up and moving on.

Some things are good. I live in a great part of the city, surrounded by friends. In 2011 I travelled overseas and met people who are doing some fascinating work. I remembered how much I love cooking for friends, and how much I dislike being a hermit. There have been two major problems, though.

My PhD has become a huge part of my life, overshadowing everything else. That's understandable - if it didn't, I don't see how I could still do it. It's now been almost three years though, and it's time to get it finished. That will involve a lot of work over the next seven months. Some of that work involves writing the thesis, but I think the harder job will be breaking bad habits that I've taken ten years to refine: getting used to writing more, spending less time chasing up details, and letting other people read my work. That last one is particularly hard, but will be vital.

The other bugbear I've fought over the years is my health, which has caused problems since I began this journal. Two years ago I was very unfit and unhappy about it. In 2010 I joined a local gym, but it never really became part of a routine. It did get my confidence up though, and helped me return to Kung Fu in January 2011. I've been training ever since, and feel like I've returned home again.

Injuries, health problems and excuses have been disrupting my training for eight years. Last year, I beat the bastards, and got back to doing something that I love.

My PhD has only had three years to build up a backlog of jobs that need to be done by July. It's one hell of a pile of work, but it's time to finish it - I want to find out what comes next.

Three years ago today, aeliel and I got married in Blackwood. By this time in the afternoon, the service would have finished, and we'd all be packed into Blackwood House, trying to fill the guests with twelve thousand cakes. Like today, it was a grey-sky kind of day - bright enough to enjoy being outside, but with a bit of rain on the wind. In an hour or so, we'd head over to Sault with the photographer, who commented on how the soft light made her job much easier :)

What's changed in that time? Quite a lot, I guess. I'm now most of the way through a PhD that I hadn't really considered starting, back in 2008. We have a house and a cat, and seem far more settled than at any time in history. Work remains super-busy, to the point where I sometimes wonder what it would be like to only work on weekdays, or not work in the evenings.

There are some of you that I don't see all that often these days. That's not really anyone's fault - life changes, people get busier, and we all end up wondering how it's possibly been a year (or two, or five) since we last spoke face to face. I'm still curious, though. What are you up to these days? What's going on in your bit of the world?

Last night was miss_rynn's Halloween Special game - one of my favourite traditions of the year, as it involves good food (including butterscotch-and-black-pepper Cthulhu Cookies), good company and a Call of Cthulhu game full of good old-fashioned New Orleans voodoo zombies. I'm still so full I can hardly move, and I don't think any of the characters technically survived to see the end of the game - so the night was a resounding success.

In other game news, the final Game/Play Late Night Boardgames evening is happening at NGV Studio this Thursday night. If you think that playing boardgames with a bunch of friends (and friendly strangers...) at Fed Square sounds like fun, come along - hespa and lena_supercat both mentioned that they were planning to be there. aeliel and I went a couple of weeks ago, and got to try out a bunch of games that we haven't played before. It's on from 6pm - 10pm in NGV Studio @ Fed Square. Anyone interested in coming along?

Today marks three years since Dad passed away. I've been thinking about him a lot, lately - wondering what he'd be up to now, if he were still around.

Memories hide in the little things. aeliel and I went out for Yum Cha today, as a pre-birthday celebration for her 31st. The food always brings memories flooding back, along with the little rituals. When Mary-Anne poured some tea, I tapped two fingers on the table in thanks - remembering the story that accomanies that little bow, of an emperor walking among the people in disguise, pouring tea for his servants, and the terrified servants using it as a means to preserve the disguise without the dishonor of failing to bow in his presence. Dad told the story at Yum Cha years ago, and I remember it each time we go back.

There are some audio tapes sitting in a box in Somerville. I think some are marked 'family history', while another has my name on it. Dad recorded them in the weeks before he died - he spent quite a bit of time alone, putting things in order, knowing that he wouldn't have time to do or say everything that he wanted to. I still haven't listened to mine, but I think it's now time that I did. Three years ago, I wasn't ready to listen to them yet - but I've thought about them often during the past few months.

A lot has changed in the last three years. I got married, moved house, bought a house and went back to Uni. It's strange to think that so many of the major events that dominate my life in the present have appeared so recently. I hope that I never forget how I got here, or how much of my life was shaped by the years that I had with Dad. One day, I may have kids of my own, and I hope that I will remember enough to let them know who their grandfather was, and what he was like. The trick with memory is association - letting the mind connect thoughts to several reference points. My family memories are embedded in so many parts of my life that I hope they will stay with me in all the years to come.

I'm in a cooking mood today, so I thought I'd post some foody things.

Lime Crema Catalana

Originally a recipe from the Cook & Taste school in Barcelona; I modified it a bit by changing some of the flavours. My notes have "serves eight" scribbled in the margin, as we used very shallow bowls - but extensivedelicious testing when aeliel made this last night has demonstrated that it makes just over four good-sized serves, with a bit left over to use in a bread-and-butter pudding tonight :)

6 egg yolks
200g sugar
4 cups milk
40g corn starch
Zest of two limes
A splash of Cointreau

Blend together the egg yolks and sugar until the mixture whitens and goes creamy. Add three cups of milk, and stir until it's all thoroughly combined. Add the lime zest, pour it into a saucepan, and start heating it over a medium-high burner.

Meanwhile, dissolve the corn starch in the last cup of milk. Stir the milk/starch mixture through the rest of the custard, and bring the lot to the boil - stirring constantly to make sure no lumps form on the bottom of the pan. When the first bubbles start to appear, turn off the heat, add the Cointreau, and stir it through. Add Cointreau to yourself as needed.

Let it cool for a while, stirring for the first few minutes to dissipate the heat. Pour it into ramekins, and refrigerate once they've cooled to room temperature. To serve, caramelise some castor sugar on top as you would with a crème brûlée.

Slow roasted lamb, with roast vegetable mash

Inspired by a recipe in this month's SBS Feast magazine (which is a bloody good read... if you like recipes and stories about food, I recommend picking one up). These quantities should make about four serves - I've doubled the amounts that I just put in the oven.

1kg Lamb forequarter / shoulder
Olive oil
4-5 lemons, sliced (I've used yellow limes instead, as we had them handy)
1 head of garlic. Separate cloves, but don't peel them.
Salt and pepper

1 medium-large sweet potato
4-5 carrots

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Peel and roughly chop the vegetables, put them into a baking tray and cover them with plenty of olive oil. When the oven is hot, put them in on the top shelf.

Rub the lamb with olive oil, and add some salt and pepper to season it. Get a baking dish that just fits the meat: I'm using a wide loaf pan, which snugly fits three bits of lamb into it. Line this with baking paper, leaving enough to wrap tightly over the top of the tray when you're done.

Put half the garlic and half the lime/lemon slices onto the baking paper. Place the lamb on top, skin facing up. Pack the rest of the garlic and lemon onto it, and then tightly wrap it all with the baking paper. By now, the vegetables should have been in the oven for about ten minutes.

Turn the oven down to 200°C, move the vegetables down a shelf, and put the lamb into the top of the oven. Cook for about 30 minutes, then turn the oven down to 140°C, remove the vegetables, and leave the lamb to cook for about 2 1/2 hours (or until the meat is falling from the bone).

While the vegetables are still hot, mash them (I added a bit more olive oil and some spices) and put them aside. Warm these back up just before the lamb is done, and mix through some of the roasted garlic cloves. Serve with whatever greens are available - I think we'll be having some asparagus & snowpeas, with a bit of butter and lemon.

It's funny how traditions develop. We're surrounded by one-off occurrences all the time. If something is repeated, it might be coincidence - a little less random than the rest of our lives, but the pattern is still only half formed. Three times seems to be the magic number: it reinforces the repetition and confirms a pattern; not just for the event, but for the separation between it. And then the tradition is born.

Eight years ago, I started a tradition of pausing for a moment at this particular point in our orbit. Once more around the sun, a week and a half before the equinox. Mostly relevant to the large group of New Year's babies out there, of whom I've met many over the years.

I've doubled in age five times since I first celebrated one of these.

I got to work early today, hoping to get some writing done. This time next year, I'd like to have my thesis submitted and accepted - and be well on my way towards RMIT's giant whole-university graduation in November. In about half an hour, I'll wander over to the GSBL 'Shut up and write' group. That ought to get me started for the day, carving out another section of writing to work on this week.

After that, I'm going home to paint. I don't paint nearly as often as I would like to, these days. It's a combination of things - the PhD has eaten up my free time, and Mochason causes havoc if he gets into the study. I can paint in the evenings with the door closed, but that means not spending time with aeliel after work. So, dust (and cat fur) builds up on my desk, and the pile of unpainted figures mock me. Not today, though.

Following a theme of "start as you mean to go on," I'll be spending a couple of hours at Kung Fu tonight. I think the rest of the class are getting ready for a grading next month, but I need to (re)learn a lot more before I'm ready to grade again. I'm not in any particular hurry. After all, it's been eleven years since my last grading...

I'm changing where and when I work over the next month, and that's likely to flow on to things like where I post things online. For starters, I'll be working from RMIT a lot more often. It has fewer distractions, and no kitten biting me whenever I pay attention to a computer screen.

I'm trying to get a first draft of my thesis assembled by my birthday. Actually, a bit earlier than that: my supervisor is heading overseas for a month during September, and so I need it done before she leaves the country. That means I need an unholy amount of words written by the end of the month: good or bad, what matters right now is getting concepts from brain to screen, so that other people can help me carve them into shape.

To get there, I'm trying some new things. Strange, unfamiliar things, like writing every day (haven't done much of that yet) and not running off to start other jobs (research assistant work, layout, editing, painting) mid-task. It's a little disconcerting, realising just how often I flit off to do something else when I sit down to work.

I'm writing about it as I go, over on Wordpress: Project: First Draft. As there are only so many minutes in the day, that means I probably shouldn't be writing as much in here - though all this time in front of a computer is bound to lead to occasional blog posts when I take breaks.

Just in case anyone wonders where I've gone, I post short-form stuff on Twitter most often. Mid-range stuff (and travel updates for family!) have been going onto Facebook, but all that stuff will move to G+ soon as I prefer their approach to privacy settings. Longer stuff often doesn't happen, but when it does it's being posted to Wordpress or (occasionally!) here. So I might not be here much, but I'm not far away...

I'm about to head off to Barcelona for the ICWSM conference: leaving tomorrow, and getting back in two weeks. I'm mostly ready... that is, I've packed just about everything I can think of, printed (and packed!) a poster to present at ICWSM, and I have a vague idea of where I'm staying. I still feel a lot less prepared than I'd like to be, but there are plenty of reasons for that.

I've never travelled solo in a country where I can't speak or read the local language, so that adds a little bit of stress into preparing for the trip. I'm looking forward to it, but really don't know what to expect. At some stage during the flight (almost 22 hours in the air, with a few hours in Singapore airport) I'll try to work out exactly where to go once I reach the airport, and how to say "I apologise for mangling your beautiful language" when I try communicating via phrasebook.

Money will be a bit of an issue this trip. I'm still yet to see any money in my account from a botched casual timesheet (four weeks of research assistant work), or a thousand dollars worth of registration fees for the two big conferences (reimbursement claim lodged a month ago). That means I don't have the easy safety barrier of throwing money at anything that might go wrong: most of my account has been emptied for the mortgage payment that happens while I'm away, so I will be doing my best to use those budget traveller senses that have been honed over the years.

In the past fortnight, I've had over a dozen people warn me about pickpockets. Most of the warnings come from people who have spent a reasonable amount of time in the city in the past two years, so I'm taking them seriously... Barcelona currently has the dubious honour of being the pickpocket capital of the world. So I'm hoping that I manage to keep my possessions, at least for long enough to consult a map and track down my hostel. Maybe I should write down that address somewhere.

The first few days will be spent in a backpacker's hostel on the western side of the city. During the middle of the trip I'm in a hotel, near the conference. Then there are a few days after the conference, which I have no plans for yet... I haven't booked anything yet, and will hopefully find a good place to stay in my first few days in the city.

So, yeah. Not particularly prepared, this time. I wonder where this road will lead me.

I'm feeling under a lot of strain lately - so much to do, and so little time to do it in. I can't see things looking up for at least the next month, so I'm not entirely sure what will have to give at the moment.

I'm alternating between not sleeping at all (it's not uncommon to still be staring at the clock at 5am) and struggling to wake up or get out of bed at all on other days. Motivation (to go out into the cold, to make more infinitesimally small progress on tasks that expand faster than they are finished) is hard to come by these days.

Nana's funeral will be held tomorrow, so I will be out east for most of the day. She passed away peacefully on Saturday morning, while Mum sat at her bedside in the hospital. Almost all of the family are likely to be there - we're a big clan. I'll miss her, though (with so very many grandkids) I haven't been especially close to my grandparents. I feel sad for Pa. After 70 years of marriage, he's not entirely sure what to do now.

It's not been a good few weeks. Friends and family are in hospital, and though I know I can't do anything to help, I worry about them all the same. Things keep piling up at work. aeliel and I have both been sick over the past week, and the ATO has started calling me at home to remind me about my long-overdue tax return... so I also need to make time to find out exactly how a mostly scholarship-based income actually works.

One thing that made me smile this morning was seeing one of my micro-stories turn up on Melbourne By Dusk - it's called Careful, and I'm sure it's why we warn children against reaching down into drains... The last few weeks have been such a blur that I forgot I'd written another one.

I could really do with some kind of folded time-space pocket universe at the moment, fitting an extra year or so into the next few months. Maybe I should have been some kind of theoretical physicist, instead of a people/technology/business jack-of-all-departments kind of guy.

As often happens when surrounded by work, I've been thinking about games.

jod999 organised a group to talk about games - kind of like a book club, but talking about computer games instead. I enjoyed the first meeting this week, using Osmos as a starting point - I bought a copy last week, and aeliel and I have been playing the hell out of it on the iPad. It works really well on a touch screen, even if I'm still to master any of the orbital levels. As with most computer games, aeliel is much better at it than I am.

I've also found myself trying to be as minimalist as possible for ages after playing it. Do I click on this thing in the web browser? No, just wait until the page you were looking for drifts into view. It's hard to shake out of that kind of slow, ambient mood.

Back in 2001, Ron Edwards wrote an essay on "GNS" for The Forge. It broke gaming down into three main categories - Gamism, Narrativism and Simulationism. I'm sure there are other ways of breaking down the genres, but it's the one that has stuck with me over the years..

"Gamey" games can be great, but I'm not very interested in them as roleplaying games. I love games that are challenging to learn, master and win - but that is why I play miniatures systems like Warmachine. Roleplaying game mechanics are peripheral to the story for me: I enjoy them when they are invisible, and when they don't get in the way of story-driven decisions.

As you can probably tell, narrative games are the reason I like roleplaying. If I'm playing an RPG, I'm there for the story. Not just the story being told by the person running the game - if I wanted a static story, I'd read a novel. I want to see how it evolves once there are living characters in that world. I've happily played in games with no rules or system at all, but I also like games that are designed to encourage the creation of a story.

Simulation-style games bore me to tears. I couldn't care less how accurate or realistic a system is, as long as it doesn't break my suspension of disbelief while I'm playing. It's partly a streamlining thing: I'm yet to see something elegant that captures all the detail a simulation wants to cover, as the default style appears to be pages of bloated, over-complex rules. I'll pass on these ones.

Years later, some people on RPG.net coined a tongue-in-cheek movement of their own: Cheetoism. "We game for the snacks. And also the dice. But mostly, just to hang out with friends and tell tall stories." I think that really sums up the thing I most enjoy about all the time spent with miss_rynn, bishi_wannabe, mousebane, aeliel, umbra_mentis and Lon over the years. There have been lots of games, using lots of different systems. But ultimately it's been an excellent excuse to spend time with friends, eat more than we really ought to, and tell stories.

There's been an unintentional radio silence on all channels, but I'm still here.

Lots of writing to do this week, as I need to get a doctoral consortium application written by Saturday. I haven't made any progress on it during the last week, as Easter + everything else has prevented me from sitting down and writing anything.

My "Easter" holidays will probably start on Sunday. I desperately need some time off, or at least some time when I don't have to feel guilty about letting a huge pile of uni work build up. I also need time to paint, as I need to clear my desk and pay some bills. I think I'm going to bunker down for a week, in an attempt to turn my paintbrush into some extra cash to reduce a bit of pressure on our budget.

Paying for a house on (currently) four-fifths of a teacher's salary and a postgrad scholarship is exactly as painful as it sounds, as money will be very tight for the rest of the year. We have about $100 in the bank at the moment, and two months to save up for all the mid-year bills (insurance, body corporate fees, etc). Various side jobs will start helping that situation in the next few weeks - painting for me, tutoring and Etsy sales for aeliel. Unfortunately, they all require that other precious commodity: time.

This is the start of a character idea for miss_rynn's Changeling: The Lost game. I've cheated a little, by adapting a character concept that only saw one session of play in a much older Changeling game.

Alistair Cowl's childhood was marked by strict expectations and solemn, disappointed reproach when those expectations were not met. His parents were brilliant doctors - one a cardiac surgeon, the other an optometrist. Long before having children, they had mapped out careers for each of their offspring. After his brother and sister had entered medical school, it was assumed that Alistair would soon follow suit to qualify as a dentist.

But Alistair lacked the drive that had spurred his siblings to greatness. His grades were never good enough, and the course offer never arrived. On a special appeal from his father, Alistair was granted an interview with the university panel: one final chance to convince them that he could meet his parents expectations. True to form, he flunked it.

Sitting on the university lawn, wondering how to explain this latest failure to his family, he saw a tiny, wizened figure pulling a cart across the lawn. The man stood scarcely taller than a blade of grass, and strained against the weight of his cart. Alistair remembered stories about the Fair Folk - little leprechauns, able to grant wishes - and smiled, thinking that he had finally discovered a solution to his problems. He trapped the little man under a bottle cap, and demanded help: he would become a talented dentist, successful in his practice, and his family would be proud of their son. From beneath the bottle cap, the man spoke: "I accept your contract." Alistair freed the tiny creature, and all went dark.

When his vision returned, Alistair found himself in Arcadia - servant to the Merchant of Ivory. At normal size, his keeper was horrifying... hunched and twisted; scowling face nestled among garlands of human teeth. At first, Alistair simply pulled the Merchant's cart as they travelled the land, buying and selling slave-children for the nobility. Later, Alistair was given a more gruesome task: drawing the valuable baby teeth from the children. When their teeth grew back, the children were sold on as "undamaged" specimens - though the merchant's ivory stood as tangible reminder of their terrified captivity.

For one season each year, they sheltered in a court where the Merchant had some influence. Here, Alistair stole away from his keeper when he could, in order to speak with others who had been kidnapped. Each year, some of the court's changelings had vanished, and he grew more hopeful of escaping Arcadia - until finally he had an opportunity to break the chain that tied him to the Merchant's wagon, and flee.

Returning to the mortal world, Alistair tried to visit his family. But several years had passed, and the fetch left in his place had grown to be the ideal son... studious and successful where Alistair was not, and the very image of his parent's dreams. They would not believe that the wild-eyed stranger was their true son, and called the police when he tried to force his way into their home.

Forced to begin a new life, he has fallen back on the thing he has come to know best: teeth. Unregistered and lacking formal qualifications, he can rarely practice in one location for long. But the parents of his young patients find a grudging respect for his unorthodox methods - as scared as the appointments make them, the children become fastidious about their health lest they earn another trip to see Mister Cowl.

And if, sometimes, he might be a little too enthusiastic at pulling those teeth... at least those children will be a little less attractive to creatures like the Merchant, and a little less likely to meet the same fate that he did...

Alistair seeks some kind of closure on his old family life - even if that is simply accepting that they are no longer a family for him. He is a reasonably skilled medic, and strong as an ox from his ordeal in Arcadia; stubborn and loyal as a bulldog, and prepared to lend brutal and violent support to aid his new friends.

Mister Cowl is as close to an old-changeling Redcap as I can make him: an Ogre from the Gristlegrinder kith, with leathery skin and blunt, grinding teeth that can devour just about anything (via the Iron Stomach merit). His magic comes from the contracts of Fleeting Autumn (inspiring fear) and Stone (battering aside obstacles and brawling with a terrible rage).

qwade ran an old-school Worlds of Darkness game last weekend - in which a group of Mages, Werewolves and one very lost Kuei-Jin ran around trying (with, er, 'limited success') to prevent the western suburbs of Melbourne from being torn to shreds by escaped laboratory creations. It was a good chance to get out of the house and see people. I was also amused by the way an "old fashioned" pen and paper RPG works when almost everyone at the table has a tablet or smartphone... text search and PDF rules reduces all that time spent looking for rules, and you can also conjure up maps and aerial photos on a whim.

miss_rynn mentioned Changeling on Tuesday night, when we were talking about games that we've loved (or hated) in the past. I bought a copy of Changeling: The Lost today, and had a look through it on my lunchbreak. I haven't looked at any of the newer Worlds of Darkness games yet, as we've been playing other systems (Exalted, Weapons of the Gods, D&D) since it was released. I'm impressed with the breadth of the game, from my first glance at it.

The game is a lot sleeker than it used to be. I loved the old Changeling game, but it had some terrible flaws. Mechanically, a lot of it really didn't work alongside anything else in the setting. The character types felt fairly restrictive straight from the main book, and only became more interesting as new books were published. The new game takes a much older look at the Changeling story: characters that have been spirited away into other realms, and changed by their time away. When they finally return to earth they discover that they are nothing like the creatures they once were, and they also find that they aren't the only ones to have made that journey.

Most importantly, every Fae archetype that I can think of can be brought to life straight away. I haven't had a single idea so far that caused me to go "oh, but I can't actually play one of those in this game." I like games that help to build on the imagination of the players, instead of restricting it.

Lots of things have been happening lately. My ICWSM paper has been approved! Though it needs to be re-written as a short-format paper, before the end of the week. That means that I will be able to attend the conference in Barcelona (mid July), and meet a bunch of interesting people working in the social media field. This makes me happy :)

In less happy news, Melbourne Uni Sports continues to be crap. They appeared in an article in The Age yesterday, as the university has decided to cut support for venue hire, for the clubs that aren't involved in regular competitions.

The Melbourne Uni Kung Fu club has been running since 1977, and may not make it through the current year. As there are no competitions available to them, they are now required to pay regular hire costs for all their venue use, in addition to hiring instructors (which is traditionally covered by membership fees). For a "sports and recreation" body, MUSA doesn't do much to support recreation groups any more. However, the university is still happy to market itself on having an active student community, full of sports and general interest clubs and societies...

I've been told that venue hire will only be covered for three sessions per competition event that a club competes in. That's fine for a football club that plays a 16-week season, but not for martial arts groups that may only have one or two events available for the year. Clubs that don't "fit the mould" of a western sporting team are effectively being cut from the university.

At least RMIT is (currently) still in the habit of supporting its student groups, even when there's no space on campus to put them. RMIT Kung Fu is training in the appropriately named "multicultural hub" next to the Queen Vic market. It's a world of difference from the Melbourne Uni training area - which has been relocated outside, to the concrete lawns.

I've been trying to finish off some Firestorm Armada figures for ages now. There have been some technical hiccups (several failed attempts to attach them to perspex stands using rare earth magnets, and cleaning up the awful mess from poorly cast resin pieces), but a general lack of inspiration has let those setbacks stop the project dead.

I've started looking into a new (steampunk!) game by the same company, called Dystopian Wars - and went fishing on the Spartan Games forum for some pretty pictures of painted figures for the game. While I was there, I stumbled across Giovanni, the studio painter for Spartan Games.

These are a few Firestorm Armada ships that he painted for a client, from the Aquan Prime faction. The bigger ship is about 10cm long, while the small escorts are only a couple of centimetres wide. He's painted them with a combination of airbrush and traditional brush techniques, using a picture of a rainbow trout for reference... I particularly like the scales, stencilled in using a bit of brass-etched mesh.



His CMON gallery has pictures dating back to 2005, though most of them have been taken since 2009. The early pictures are good, but the level of improvement in the past two years is phenomenal.

It's inspired me to use my airbrush for more than just applying base coats and doing a bit of shading. Today I dialled the air pressure right down, and finally finished painting all of the Dindrenzi fleet... I'm really enjoying using the airbrush as a fine detail tool, instead of just a spraygun.

I'm beginning to lose track of what I need to paint when. These are my current painting deadlines, for the next two months. To be fitted into one day a week (around my PhD), and an hour a night on some weeknights.

Monday, March 7th
Commission job.
To paint: Razorback tank and turret.
For: Denis F.

Sunday, March 13th
35 point Warmachine/Hordes tournament at Battle Bunker.
Taking: Cygnar (Major Victoria Haley).
To paint: Black 13th, Gunmage Strike Team (3 models).

Friday, March 24th
Commission job.
To paint: 6 Infinity (Yu Jing) figures.
For: Nick.

Saturday, March 26th
35 point Warmachine/Hordes tournament at Hampton Games Club.
Taking: Khador (Butcher + 5 Heavy Warjacks + 4 wreck markers)
To paint: all of them (10 models). These are a commission job for Joel D.

Friday, April 15th (Melbourne in Flames weekend)
Commission job.
To paint: 10 Horrors of Tzeentch, 9 Chaos Havocs, Firestorm Armada fleet.
For: Ian A

Friday, April 15th (games weekend)
Commission job.
To paint: Hell Dorado starter box, Doppelsoldners & Captain, Swashbuckler (9 models)
For: David P

Friday, April 22nd
50 point Warmachine/Hordes touranment at Conquest.
Taking: General Adept Nemo (list 1), Major Victoria Haley (list 2).
To paint: Stormblade unit and Unit Attachment (8 models).