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*.
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