So it goes

Been a bit busy on the whole. Let's see.

Friday saw the continuation of the Cardiff-based supernatural investigative roleplaying game. I'm not convinced that I'm following the right approach but we're slowly gathering more information as well as dispatching an occasional shapeshifting baddie. Watch this space.

On Saturday we popped off to a RAT SHOW. It was hosted by the National Fancy Rat Society (NFRS) and took place in a nice little church in Miskin. As you might imagine, there were lots of lovely rats and also very nice cakes. The cakes and rats were kept well apart.

We picked up a couple of new hammocks and things from the stalls - one from The Rat Warehouse and some being sold by the (NFRS). The show is essentially a Crufts-style affair where rats are brought in and judged according to varieties, based on the 'standards' as well as condition, vitality, curiosity, etc. They also have a 'pets' section for rats which, while excellent, don't adhere strictly to the standards. The winner of this was a beautiful rex with great fur and curly whiskers. He didn't qualify for the main show due to some little patches of missing fur but he was ace anyway. There were also competitions that tested them for curiosity and also an obstacle course.

The main thing though was that we collected a pair of genuine proper breeder rats that we'd ordered from Bongo Fury rattery. Behold Bongo Fury Awkward Customer:

And Bongo Fury No More Mr Nice Guy:

The difference between these and pet shop rats is hard to overestimate. They are boundlessly friendly, curious and energetic. Their friendliness even extends to preferring to sniff at and grab me, rather than the food I'm offering. Ignoring food in favour of me is utterly unprecedented in my experience of rats.

Although they are great and doing fantasticly, BF Awkward Customer has a head tilt which you can just about see here:

Can you see the way he's leaning over to his left a bit? I've talked about these a bit before as one of our girls (Sansa) has one too. It's caused by an inner ear infection and leaves them with a sort of crick neck and balance problems. It doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest but he does have a bit of a tendancy to roll over and needs quite careful handling as we can't rely on him to hold on to us as well as rats normally would. When putting him back in the cage he also has a habit of trying to climb in upside down - ie; he'll grab the top of the door and trying to climb upwards. Still, he's perfectly happy and holds his own when BF No More Mr Nice Guy is scrapping with him. That happens a lot.

On Sunday I had my first session of a photography course down in Chapter Arts Centre. This is 'Advanced Digital Photography' and so focuses more on digital editing and manipulation which are skills which I only learned from buggering about with Photoshop so I don't really know what I'm doing. Formal training will be great. Was an enjoyable first session and is producing some astounding artwork:

For part of the session we walked around a sciencey photo exhibition that was on there. Gave me a few ideas and was really nicely done. Some of the bits of science clunked slightly but I wasn't sure if that was a deliberate nod, a sort of acknowledgement of the fakery involved. Still. Got lots to do for the next session.

On Monday we started a new roleplaying game written by one of the people we normally play with. It's about Zombies and I believe it was called Zombies. It's set in the real world with you effectively playing yourself and roleplaying your own responses to an ongoing zombie apocalypse. It uses Google Maps for street view for navigation - with any people you come across in the photos actually being zombies. At the moment we're just trying to sweep a village and establish a sort of beachhead for taking the country back.

As you can see above, the front garden is doing well. That's a flower. Only slight problem is that the weather has forbidden me from trying to deal with the weeds at the moment and I think the weeds are thriving under the new clear garden regime. This will not be tolerated and I hope to deal with them this weekend.

Not been getting that much gaming done. Tried a bit of Dungeon Defenders but I just don't get along with it. I think the interface is a bit too consoley. Mass Effect 3 is slow going but I fear I'm having trouble getting into it. It's a bit too big for me and there's so much going on that I can't keep track now. I will persist but it's a bit overwhelming.

I've been doing some more Welsh study, largely by going through sheets and sheets of work and translating them into English. Gotten a lot more confidence with it now.

Yesterday I discovered that Cardiff Market doesn't appear to have a nut vendor. I wanted them because I'm going for a new paradigm of rat feeding after reading rat nutrition guide, 'The Scuttling Gourmet'. ENRICHMENT:

The basic idea is to feed in such a way that enriches their experience of their environment, gives them interesting things to do and lets them express ratty behaviour such as foraging and destroying bloody everything. Most of what I've done comes from ideas from The Scuttling Gourmet. Above is an initial experiment with a colander which is suspended and filled with food and paper. It moves around slightly and the rats have to dig and burrow to get at the food as well as having a tricky climb in. It's not wholly successful as I couldn't position it just right as there were rats everywhere while I was tying it in..

Experiments with the others have included scattering food around so it gets buried in the shredded cardboard and has to be found, stuffing a tissue box with bits of food so they have to dig through the tissues to find things, putting a whole potted herb in the cage, and filling up and closing egg boxes. This last one was successful with the two new boys but the older ones just ripped it open in a matter of minutes. Next time I'll probably tie it closed so they have to either destroy the skin or gnaw through the box to get anything.

Nuts in shells are also a good one as they have to work hard to break into them. Sadly, finding nuts with shells is proving impossible, but I'll get some soon. This sentence represents a callback to the beginning of this section.

As usual, other stuff too but I can't be expected to cover *everything*.

Multimedia

I think I may have reached the end game with Lil Kingdom. I now have Ogres and a Unicorn;

The unicorn allows you to immediately get the full silver value of all of the stuff in a floor of your dungeon without it being lost. Last time I did this I got enough silver in one go for about six new floors. But there's nothing else good to do with them, other than just generating more silver for more floors. I appreciate the cunning addictiveness of the design and the artistry of the game but I reckon I've had enough.

Another game I've been playing a bit of is Cut the Rope. In this you have a piece of 'candy' on a set of strings suspended over a little monster named Om Nom:

He doesn't like to move to eat so you have to cut the ropes with a swipe to get the candy to swing into his mouth. Extra challenge is added by trying to make it swing so it also intersects with stars for bonus points. Good puzzles.

Jelly Defense is a fairly standard Tower Defense game but with a nice art style and some interesting mechanics:

In essence you have to build towers to kill wave after wave of jelly monsters of different types, so it's all about strategic placement and use of resources. There's also the fact that red towers only kill red jellies, blue kill blue and there's some mixed ones too. Some of the interface is slightly clunky - I often find my finger is in the way of something I need to see - but nothing too vital.

Wind-up Knight is a very pretty racing platformer thing. Not much to say other than it being fun but that it locked my phone up.

Listening to audiobooks continues regularly. At present it is Company of Liars:

This is about a group of traders, musicians, etc, trying to escape the bubonic plague. It's very nicely done and has lovely turns of phrase - "They giggled, delighted by terror" and "As the yawns multiplied around the group" - and some interesting history. Lots of stuff about religious and political persecution of the Jews and other minority groups, some bits about Venetian glassblowers being banished to an island in case they gave their secrets away and all sorts. It's interesting to see the sorts of scapegoating going on - blaming the Jewish population for the bubonic plague, rather than having to accept their own powerlessness. Some of the characters are despicable but most of them are compelling and the book is read wonderfully by David Thorpe.

A physical book I've been reading has been Mouse Guard. It's a graphic novel about the hidden society of mice, hunted by just about everything and protected and guided by the titular Mouse Guard. It features a dual-wielding dagger mouse named Sadie:

That is probably all you need to know to rush out and buy it.

We had a bit more rat sickness. Arya is doing fine after her antibiotics but Nightcrawler has since needed some. Furthermore, Fran noticed a lump on Sansa's neck on Wednesday, prompting us to go to the vet's last night. Sansa remains impossible to handle so the vet wasn't able to diagnose exactly so we just booked in for an operation next Tuesday. We took some antibiotics home and mixed them with some apricot jam to get them to take them. This necessitated keeping Sansa in her own cage for the time being so she actually eats the dose we want her to have.

Upon getting up this morning and examining her, the lump is gone! There's some crusty skin around it so it looks like she burst it. No sign of any pus or blood either. It had been bothering her and she was scratching it a lot so she must have dealt with it herself. Clever girl! Chased her around with some antiseptic to make sure it doesn't get infected but with minimal success. She can stay on her own for a little bit as it might do her good.

High Technology

Finally my life is complete. Not only do I have a usb stick on a keyring, but it also has a badger on it.

You may also note that the accompanying PC has a Zip250 drive. These were once considered the pinnacle of mobile file storage but now they are sweetly quaint. In this particular case it is also broken. Still, it covers what would otherwise by a hole in my pc case.

Speaking of high tech gizmos I've been doing a bit of Android gaming. Although most games on Android are unbearable crap, the sort of thing to make you despair and weep and gnash your teeth, there are some good ones. I have been playing Lil Kingdom:

In which you make a castle but burrowing down into the ground. The residents are also a thoughtful and cultured lot:

Basically you earn coins for building floors, stocking the floors with goods to sell and for doing quests. It's quite perfectly crafted to be addictive and manipulative but I really like the art style. My obsession with it has gone off the boil a bit now but I'm still dipping in.

Still carrying on with Mass Effect. Prompted by Fish Tank Girl (http://fishtankgirl.blogspot.co.uk/) I discovered that there is a memorial wall in my ship's crew quarters. It's.. running low on space:

Otherwise I've been carrying on, doing my best to avoid a diplomatic mission. Let's see.. Oh, you may want to meet my new doctor:

She's the previously-mentioned French hippy. I can't realistically have the same confidence in her that I had in Chakwas - she simply doesn't have the authority. Still, I wasn't exactly innundated with volunteers and ship must have doc. I also have a new comms offiicer who is a cockney.

Some other old faces have turned up. Had a mission with Jack, she seems to be taking to being a teacher. And when I went to visit Kaiden in hospital I ran into:

Thane! He is handling his sickness stoicly. I wish there was more I could do to help.

Following the diplomatic mission I ran into this delight:

Mordin! He slipped me some information regarding the.. the Genophage suffering people. The name of the species totally escapes me for now. I ended up in his lab after firmly defending the rights of the aforementioned species and am aiming to cure the Genophage once and for all. The Sularian ambassador called me a bully for shouting at him :(