Rosio Pavoris

Not much happening anywhere, lately.

Nub flood in #radio-kol a bit ago, which wasn’t nearly as bad as the White Wednesday one. Notably highlights: PVA getting kicked for being a dipshit, PVA bitching about #radio-kol on the radio, PVA creating his own channel, KMD being unable to believe PVA was being a dipshit, Ashallond doing the resigned-but-bitter thing. *shrug*

Implemented a clan stash in Muffins yesterday, because P4UL wanted one. Took a while to get it to work, because coding drunk is painful. Shouldn’t be anything exploitable in it, though. Ricket hasn’t managed to break it yet, but I blame that on the horrible, horrible lag we were having last night. Not sure why. Not our fault, at least. Nobody online on SWBHG, two people on Muffins.

Completed a 9-day hardcore run in KoL today. I’m rather pleased with that, though starting on a Moxie day with canned air and having Crimbo town open for the entire duration of the run doesn’t really count as “regular circumstances”, I guess. I was level 7 on the first day. Now I’m doing a Pastamancer teetotaller run, and I’m level 4 on the first day. Oh well.
Still a week ahead of schedule.

Oh, PhilANThropiSt kicked inari out of the Purple Turtle yesterday, because I asked him to. She claims it doesn’t bother her, of course.
Also had to break the heart of one of her lapdogs. That was fun.

So yeah.

I’ve been back for a while now, but I’m still excited. Just finally un-tired enough to actually post about it.
So yeah. It was obviously totally awesome. A brief (and yet extremely long-winded) overview:
(Names are bolded on their first mention, for ease of reading.)

Friday

Took the train on Friday morning. My mom misread my tickets and assured me I didn’t have to get up before noon, because my train left at 14:27. Turns out that was the arrival time, but I noticed in time, fortunately. Did the check-in thing in Brussels. Passport got checked by Belgian authorities once, by British *thrice*. Paranoia FTW.
Arrived in Waterloo International, found Roberts immediately. Subway (”Tube”) to, uh, somewhere near the hostel (Euston station, probably; doesn’t matter), found the hostel, realised we were two hours early, went for a walk. Had some coffee advertised as tea, made really awkward small-talk, went for a walk around some Christmas market, returned to the hostel.
Still nobody there, so we sat down in the lounge to watch Men In Black. Met Agent Lex there (Roberts saw him first, and recognised him by his KoL shirt; I would’ve recognised him on sight), stood around a bit to wait for the others. Met watercolourdreams, waited around more. Eventually, Cat_Killer, Starkmoon, Ironfist, and rawk the slayer came in as a group. Did the socialising thing. Cat_Killer gave me the teddybear thing she knitted, quite awesome. Went to the bar in the hostel, then to the Purple Turtle. Possibly Kitch Wing of Angmar and Krodoc had joined up with us at that point, I’m not sure. Krodoc was probably in the group with Cat_Killer, actually.

In the Purple Turtle, we found, uh, ILoveJewsAndIWantToBuyThemJam/phyphor, izchak, KItsune_tsuKI, Soulcake, Jill_Bob, Torne (FURRY), Fifi_Katana, CheekyJez, and a bunch of other people who I can’t remember now but were also awesome.
Went to sit next to phyphor, because he looked nice enough and had large amounts of alcohol. Convinced him to get us both drinks on me, because I’m a lazy bastard. He showed me his jam, but didn’t give me any because I’m not Jewish.
After a bit Eugene (long-time friend of Cat_Killer’s who she’d never met IRL), Grayson, opai and SaskiaSalSoul, and Mr Skullhead, Jezerfly, and Xlyinia, Fembot Artsypants, PhilANThropiSt and a bunch of friends, and SeltzerDuke joined us, probably not in that order.
We talked a lot, drank a lot, made nametags, signed guest books, came up with the Purple Turtle clan, had fun. I almost got molested by Starkmoon, in a good way. I ruined it by refusing to dance with her, though, and she danced with Krodoc instead. She had sex with him later tonight—Imeanwhat?

Went back to the hostel after that. Did some socialising with roommates. Kitch Wing performed his Star Wars song, and started writing the beginnings of “Itznotyerzitz Mine” to the tune of “Sweet Child of Mine”. Absolutely nobody smoked any weed. >.>
Lex, Roberts, and I went to sleep, the rest went to the bar downstairs (I didn’t go because it was too fucking loud; hard enough understanding people speaking British as it was).
When everyone returned, Lex had disappeared. We started dividing his possessions between us (Kitch got his cell phone, WCD his DS), but then decided we should probably go and find him. If he’d gone to the bathroom, he would’ve been back already, because that was about five meters (”metres”) from our room, so we figured we should check out Cat_Killer’s gang’s room. So, the five of us, three in pajamas and barefoot, stumbled down from our room on the second floor to their room on the negative first floor, traversing half of the hostel because we almost got lost ourselves. We knocked, but nobody answered, so we went back to our room and divided up the rest of Lex’s stuff. We do some more talking (about old-school gaming), and go to sleep.
Four or five hours later, Lex stumbles back into our room. Turns out he had indeed gone to the bathroom, but he had taken a wrong turn somewhere and tried to get into someone else’s room. His key didn’t work, so he banged on the door until someone let him in. Then, he proceeded to crash on the bed until new guests found him and called a hostel attendant to have him removed. The room he was in? Room 303, a floor above us.
He’d been there for about six hours, turns out.

Saturday

We got up really fucking early, because people wanted to get free breakfast, and they stopped serving that at 10.
We hung around a bit and then moved on to the arcade somewhere. We met a few more people there, including jonbly and Rushed Luncheon. Sat down in a corner somewhere (a huge group, at that point), did some talking. Xlyinia brought her giant box of merch, and sold some stuff. People proceeded to play some games.
A lot of us went bowling. I was in a group with opai, SaskiaSalSoul, and Roberts. Opai kicked my ass, but I managed to beat Roberts and Saskia, at least. And I got a strike. PANTS beat everyone.
I think JLE joined us there at some point.

I’m not entirely sure what we did immediately after that, but eventually we made our way to the Garden, where we proceeded to get ripped off for drinks, ripped off for food, and pretty much chased away. Well, that’s not entirely true.
Drinks were pretty expensive. Food was £2 worth of snacks advertised as £8 worth of dinner (and apparently, they claimed they had an order for a lot fewer people than were actually there; didn’t change the price, though). Xly eventually dipped into Kingdom money to order more food, because moving somewhere good wasn’t really an option, considering the enormous size of the group at that point. Hypahnova met us there, I’m pretty sure, as did Spazworrier, killthesnowmen, Tagliatelle, Bleeding Pineapple, Daisy Cutter, HappyLittleDragonQueen, and a few other people.
I paid for PANTS’s drink at one point, and he instructed a very bewildered waitress to make me a cocktail (after trying, unsuccessfully to find out what my favorite booze is), which was one of the best things I’ve ever drunk.
People played Blank White Cards (Mortice kissed PANTS thrice, PANTS kissed Kit and Xly, Kit almost died of Gaschamber, phyphor snogged Rushed Luncheon), people got drunk, people had fun. Kitch performed the Star Wars song again, and a bit of Itznotyerzitz Mine, to which the Garden staff responded by turning up the background music volume to ridiculous levels.

Eventually, everyone went back to their various hostels/hotels/homes. We used the Generator’s insanely expensive and mostly crippled internet for a bit (most of us spent more on internet than we did on rooms, in that weekend, probably). I couldn’t log into my main, because British QWERTY keyboards don’t have all of the characters in my password on them, but I logged into Tabris and Tiny Plastic Cairnarvon for a bit. Mostly watched others curse at the computers for denying access to most of the game (certain strings were apparently blocked; you couldn’t interact with /hardcore, for example, but the rest of the chat worked fine, if you watched what you typed). A few people definitely didn’t smoke more weed in our room.
JLE spent a lot of time talking to Roberts. Turns out she was taught cello (I think?) by an old acquaintance of his. Eventually, we (Roberts, JLE, and I) went back to our room, the rest went to the bar. We talked a bit, mostly about D&D and the Kingdom. Hearing a member of the dev team bash Skully was fun too. Hearing him whinge about money, less so. Went to Tesco’s for food at 4 AM.
Nobody got lost that night, but Jill_Bob apparently woke up in SeltzerDuke’s bed the next morning.

Sunday

Woke up early for breakfast purposes again. JLE knew about cheap internet nearby, so we went there. Got on IRC on an uncrippled computer, talked to people, mentioned Teh Club sucked, got slapped by every member of Teh Club at the meet.
Then, we went on to the World’s End. Met up with Narth and a few others. Spazworrier and killthesnowmen got IDed and thrown out. Narth did too for not carrying valid ID, apparently.
Wandered around Camden for a bit. Bought unrecognisable food (which was apparently sweet-and-sour chicken), talked, almost froze to death, split up the group.
The bit I was in went on to the Devonshire Arms, a goth/alternative place with a dress code. The only people really dressed for it were Torne (because he was wearing a collar, like the furry that he is) and me, pretty much. Bought ridiculously overpriced drinks, sat down somewhere. Rest of the gang started filtering in, and we got a complaint about not being dressed right.
I think it was Grayson who said “Sure we’re alternative! We’re internet nerds!”. They apparently thought that was good enough (or were too nervous to actually try to kick us out), if PANTS “lost [his] jacket”, which was admittedly very white.
Talked about servers, OSes, cell phones, internet gaming, and a few other things with Torne and a few other people for a bit. We decided not to go back to the World’s End, because everyone (well, almost everyone) was at the Devonshire Arms anyway (and it was really far too small for that).

Wandered around Camden for a bit more, went into Weatherspoon’s for a bit, couldn’t get food because it was too late (6 PM at that point, I think). Opai tried socialising with me, which was cute. He gave up pretty quickly, though.
Eventually, opai, SaskiaSalSoul, Jill_Bob, SeltzerDuke, and I went back to the hostel together. We lost SeltzerDuke at some point, because he doesn’t wait for anyone, apparently.

At the hostel, we met up with the rest again. Spent a fuck of a lot of money on internets again. Talked to Cat_Killer a lot about Terry Pratchett (haha, I was right and she was wrong), KoL (and KoL players), and stuff. Ironfist talked to me about his White Wolf campaign for a while. He was hard to understand because of his thick Scottish accent, but was actually pretty interesting.

Went back to our room, and eventually went to sleep, after hours of horrible, horrible zombie jokes. Watercolourdreams was sick, apparently. Her coughing and moaning was (insensitive, because she was in pain, I know) incredibly erotic.
JLE snored.

Monday

Got up early, had some breakfast. Few people went ahead to the statue of Eros somewhere, where we were going to meet up with everyone who was still in town. The rest waited for SeltzerDuke. Got tired of waiting, went on to the statue, found out SeltzerDuke had gone home early.
Stood around for a bit, said goodbye. Got hug from PANTS. Went to Burger King (just Lex, rawk, Roberts, Fembot, C_K, Ironfist, and I at that point), had food, talked for a bit (everyone was tired at that point).
Roberts escorted me back to Waterloo International, got felt up by British Customs, got home without a problem.

So, I was thinking aloud about the relative positions of Rota Hall and the Cult of the LBRS. As in, Rota Hall being a European branch of the Cult, or the Cult being a suborder of Rota Hall, and then Cawd said this:

<CrackerOfDeath> Rota Hall is the government LBRS is the religion >.>

Which I think is a much better way of going about things. I realised I’ve always envisioned Rota Hall as a tool of change of ideology with some mysticism tacked on just because, which caused me to mistake both the nature of Rota Hall and of the Cult of the LBRS.
There would’ve been a lot of overlapping regardless, of course, but this defines roles a bit. The Cult of the LBRS will keep doing its thing as an essentially atheistic and rationalistic religion, and Rota Hall will get rid of its mysticism and become, at its core, a political movement.

With some luck, the combination will lead to a semi-coherent ideology.

Now that the hard part is out of the way, we just need to fill in some blanks, and then move on the world domination. Easy enough.

I like when people echo my sentiments exactly.
I wonder how many people I know personally are religious. Not too many, I don’t think, and none to fundamentalist extents.

Not much going on, so time for a mini-rant.

In general, I don’t mind acronyms. Which is to say, I don’t mind acronyms when they make sense.
While IMO and OTOH are perfectly acceptable, as they’re both well-known and tedious to write in their entirety, LOL and ROFL aren’t.

Why? Because nobody says “laughing out loud” and “rolling on the floor” in regular conversation, and it’s equally unlikely people are actually doing those things every time they type them (which, of course, is far too often). And even if they were, that’s not how emoting fucking works. There’s an emote feature in most chats and IM thingamajigs, so use it, and use it properly. If it’s not there, some more creativity is needed, perhaps (*emotes* usually works just fine), but in general, resorting to emotes is overrated anyway. It works occasionally (hell, I do it), but too much is too much.

Next, the acronym “WTF” specifically. Yes, it usually falls in the “makes sense” category, but seriously, some people are using it way too fucking often. We understand you have a question by the question mark at the end of your sentence. There’s no need to emphasize it by using WTF (or, more often, the lowercase wtf) EVERY FUCKING LINE.
I don’t object to swearing, when it’s used in moderation and with reason. Moderation is a very relative word here, but reason, not so much.

Also, when you’re using acronyms, for fuck’s sake, make it clear they’re acronyms by capitalising them. For that matter, capitalise everything that needs to be (that doesn’t mean writing in all caps, and it doesn’t mean sTuDlY-cApS either). And try to grasp the basics of spelling, grammar, and punctuation, while you’re at it. Honest mistakes are okay, intentionally raping a language “coz its to hard to rite evryting rite” means you get raped with pineapples. Or would, if there was any justice in this world.
Most of the people who ignore rules of spelling and grammar are people whose mother tongue is English, I’ve noticed. These people should be shot several times, in addition to said pineapple-rape.

As for 1337-sp34k, honestly, I’ve never run into this as a real issue. In general, nowadays it’s only used ironically, to the point where using it as such has become a cliché.
So yeah, not a sign of linguistic decline so much as just another example of people being unoriginal. Big whoop.

And then there’s the ironic use of words like “lawl” or “roffle”. Perfectly fine with that, as it’s still firmly in the “mocking morons” category, which is all that stands between us and the Abyss.

Final note on smilies (emoticons of any kind): meh. Yes, when used too much and/or in the wrong context, they get annoying, but mostly, they’re an efficient way of conveying the speaker’s (typer’s) intent. Lack of that (or lack of skill at recognising that) was a major problem when I first hit the internets (and for some people, it still is), so all in all, I consider this to be a Good Thing, even when used semi-ironically (^___________________^).

Just wanted to get that said.

‘nother month done, apparently. No big detailed post about bandwidth use. Let’s just leave it at this: SWBHG used 1.18 GB, but Muffins is definitely catching up, with 1.10 GB.
So yeah. Muffins is pretty popular, despite only being a quarter of a game.

Got my Eurostar tickets this morning, which is awesome. Now I just have to exchange monies, which I’ll probably do next week. Well, which I should do next week at the latest, I guess.