We didn’t do much because of the sickness, which we tested for and wasn’t Covid. Friday was our anniversary of 5 years, and we had a lovely dinner and went to a bar afterwards with a Chocolate theme.
Steph and I weren’t 100%, so we kept the weekend mostly quiet. I went by coal drop yards to listen to the London Opera perform, then Steph and I went to listen to a musical choir, which was pretty good. I’ve joined the fall term of the West End Musical Choir, and I’m really looking forward to it. I also took another long walk in the nice weather. This time I went to Mile End and then through Victoria park, up through the marshlands and ended at Blackhorse Road Station.
It was a pretty calm few week before Edinburgh Fringe (yes, this is out of order).
Steph and I played a few rounds of Frosthaven. The four character group is fun, but the sessions take about 3 hours each.
I went on two long walks through parks, since the weather was so nice.
The first was through Islington. I walked through Bernard Park and up to Highbury Fields. I saw a cute pub that looked like it was covered in Wisteria called The Albion. It wasn’t blooming at the time, but still looked like a great spot we will need to go to when it is blooming next. I also saw a fox on this walk, as it was ducking into a park.
The second walk was a long one. I walked through Russel Square, then down to St. James Park. I continued through Green Park, then Hyde Park. I stopped by Little Venice and then went to Regent’s Park. I walked along the canals home from there. It was the perfect day, and there were tons of birds in all of the ponds.
Steph had a work trip to Zurich, and I ended up hanging out with some people from work more this week. On Wednesday the finals for the Beat Saber competition were being held. One of the finalists, that everyone expected to win, Connor, was in London. They had set up a studio with a green screen. We had dinner with him in between the semi-finals and finals. The semi-finals was a five song competition, and the finals was eight. Connor ended up having a clean sweep, winning every song in the competition. We chatted about it for a while and agreed to do a Beat Saber dance group, like I had done before in Burlingame.
The weekend was pretty chill as well. Saturday we went climbing in the morning. During the day I worked on my story machine project. Then we went to see the Barbie movie with Nancy and Punit in the evening with a stop by Vegan Planet for dinner. The fake meats they had were pretty good, but I think the tofu dishes were still my favorites.
Sunday was also pretty relaxing, with us playing some Frosthaven. In the evening we played some Grounded with Michelle and Michael.
We had a low key week. We played some Frosthaven, and I worked some on my side projects. I went to the cave club meeting, and the dive club meeting. The plans for diving over the weekend didn’t end up happening because the weather wasn’t good. It was mainly that the winds were too high, as they were causing lots of waves, and blowing in a direction that would sweep us out to sea.
Instead of diving we went climbing on Saturday, then went to the Spitalfields Market, which was a lot of small shops and food stalls in a large open air building. We were saying goodbye to Roel as he was about to move back to The Netherlands. It was interesting to wander around, but everything was the typical mix of knick knacks. I misplaced my backpack, but the janitorial staff were kind enough to find it and take it to the lost and found.
On Sunday we went to Draughts in The Vaults under Waterloo station. We went with the group from the cancelled dive trip, and had a pretty good time. I think for games going forward it would make more sense to do it at people’s houses, so that we don’t have to worry about times and what games fit. We also would be more able to hear each other. The vaults make for loud echo chambers. It was an interesting area, and one I’d been wanting to go to for a while. It was more commercial than I had expected, but not that bad. The main graffiti tunnel was still amazing to see.
Xiaomeng and I participated in a game jam for Hugging Face. One of the requirements was that we had to include Open Source AI in some way. We did great in my opinion, and did way more than was required. We ended up 7th out of 87 for the mutual rankings. For the top 10 three of the Hugging Face employees will be judges. We’ll see how that plays out next week.
I was feeling out of it and had a low level headache all week. I did a pool test of my dive equipment and it all checked out, but I skipped the pub meeting. I managed to get my work done, but not to the level I would have liked.
We made it to the weekend, and met up with Nasir to head out to Wales for a caving trip. We were really looking forward to this trip. The first night was a little rough and we camped in a tent in the pouring rain. It had a few leaks and we got a little damp. Overall we did get decent sleep. The caves were amazing, and the club is really well kitted out. We did a tour with Jack as our guide and were joined by Floyd and Lauren. We got to see some amazing formations, and I had a blast climbing up the cracks. Most of the cave was about a meter across and four to five meters high.
The trip was a great success. After that we had an amazing group meal and them people got drunk and started a fire in the backyard. It was a nice time, even it still cold and wet. The second night in the tent was much better and we got some good sleep.
This weekend we didn’t do much, as Steph got back on Saturday, and I was still recovering from getting back from the US. Sunday we went to the BSAC party and had a great time hanging out with all the people there. We headed back and had a great discussion on the book “Of Boys and Men.” I think there was a lot there to unpack, and that some of the fixes are things we can do, but it wasn’t obvious in the way the book presented it.
Steph and I played some more Frosthaven this week, and we added in the second character each. I’m the Frozen Fist, while she is the Blink Blade.
We hung out with some of the people from the Westminster Speleological Group on Tuesday, July 4. I was calling it ‘Uppity colonists day.’ We met a few of the people that were going to be on the trip to Wales.
Thursday we had a vet come over the check on the kitties and they are doing well. Lana is putting on a little weight, but not fat yet. Archer’s tooth isn’t a problem now, but we should get it taken care of before it becomes a real problem. The vet recommended that I look into getting it fixes soon, as the lead time of getting a surgical appointment might be a while.
Friday morning Steph and I went to a special exhibit at the British Museum, which was ok. It had some good items, but the main exhibits are just as good and free.
I took most of the weekend to make a game with Xiaomeng, which I’ll describe more in next week’s post.
The best part of the weekend was getting to have high tea with George and Clarissa, who were in London after a trip around Europe. It was great to see them and I love the discussions George and I can get into around AI, ownership, and rights.
This was a busy week at work, from many different angles.
There were multiple groups coming to London from California for work trips that I had to meet with. Then there was the Beat Saber competition, where rounds 1 and 2 were on Wednesday. I did really well in round 1 and barely got through round 2, so that puts me in the top 12. I’m pretty sure I’ll make it to the top 8, but I think I’ll lose at that point.
We had a great time at the dive meeting this week, and met a group that was interested in playing board games with us. I look forward to when we can meet up with them and play. We did get a few more rounds of Frosthaven in, and finally beat the scenario with the stupid ally. We then went on to the boss fight, and did really well on that one.
Friday we had a great walk around Little Venice. We had dinner on the Cheese Barge, which is a floating restaurant on the canal. It was tasty food, and we got a toastie, a rarebit, and some croquettes.
Saturday morning I headed to the canal and broke out the standup paddle board for the first time here. I went to the astroturf stairs and inflated the paddle board. Then I headed to the St. Pancras lock and portaged around it. I made it up to the Camden locks, but didn’t want to walk around those with a paddle board. Camden market is packed in the best of times and slow to get through. No way I was making it through with a massive board. I turned back and headed to Battlebridge Basin, near Ice Wharf. The canal had some nasty parts, but mostly it was really nice. I’ll have to try going further with the board and paddling around Regents Park and maybe around Angel.
Nancy and Punit organized a picnic somewhat at the behest of Irene. We met at the astroturf stairs and got some food at the canopy market. It was Thai day at the canopy market and the food was pretty tasty. I of course got a Thai ice tea and grabbed Steoh her own so she wouldn’t take any if mine /s. We headed to a shady table in coal drop hards and grabbed some more food at the Japanese market there. This area has so much going on, it is fantastic.
That evening we jumped on Grounded and played some with Michelle and Michael. We geared up and improved the base. We started fighting harder enemies, but didn’t make any story progress.
the next day we went climbing with Punit and Roel. My grip got too tired to continue surprisingly early. Steph and I then met a friend of Irene’s, Nish, who was great to talk to. We had some tasty Ethiopian food and chatted about life and work.
Monday, Steph and I did a power pump class, but really didn’t like it because of the instructor. The woman kept doing one of my biggest pet peeves, counting loudly and not in time with the music. I ignored her counting and moved in time with the music. Steph ended up leaving early. The class itself was also overpacked. We had gotten the last sign up spots, but more people came to the class anyway.
We had ordered Frosthaven, a new massive board game. It arrived Monday and Steph put on some podcasts while she unpacked it. Archer liked the box it came in and had a little session inside it. He was so cute. We ended up playing a few times, although we lost pretty badly on the third scenario. We had an ally appear in one room, and we were supposed to protect the ally. Unfortunately that ally decided to run forward quickly and be shot by a bunch of Archers before we even had the chance to step into the room.
Overall the weather has been getting much warmer. The kitties have taken to a melted pose where they are all stretched out, compared to how they had been tightly curled up and sometimes even under a blanket. They are still up for being cuddly, which is nice. We had expected them to not want to cuddle once it got warm enough.
We took advantage of the weather and went to another one of the bars that we’ve been eyeing for a while, Rotunda. It has a Mexican theme, but specifically it is theming itself around Tulum. With the sun going down it was a bit chilly, but I was still fine in just a single layer. I really enjoy sitting and talking with Steph along the canal.
That weekend Steph went diving for the first time with the dive group we meet with on Wednesdays in Holborn. She did the scallop dive and barbecue with them. They only had the one spot left, so I stayed in London and did a game jam. While working on the game jam I was able to visit a number of the private park around London that had been opened up for the weekend. I went to Mecklenburgh Square gardens, Bedford Square Garden, and Montague Street Gardens. They were all slightly nicer than the public gardens nearby; being cleaner and less worn. They didn’t have the amenities that a garden/park like Russel Square has, but that is to be expected.
Sunday Punit and I walked to the Welcome Collection and tried to co-work from there, but they don’t have outlets. Then we tried the British Library, but all the seating was full. Then we ended up back at The Hub and it was a pretty good place to work. The wandering had eaten up most of our time, and Punit then had to meet Nancy for something with their new place out in Walthamstow.
The game jam went really well. I was participating in Mini Jam 134: Islands with the restriction of “On a Grid.” I chose to do a hex grid and an island building game. It turned out really well, and I placed 8th out of 118. A coworker also participated and made a nice tower defense that placed 19th. A pretty good showing and a great jam. I made sure that most of the elements I worked on for this jam would be reusable, like the progressive draft and hex grid.
The kitties were happy to see us when we got back from Paris. It was so nice to have such a short travel period, and given experience we could easily show up half an hour to an hour later and still be fine at the train station. We had a full week. Tuesday Steph and I went climbing at Yonder. Wednesday Steph went to BSAC while I worked on an updated project base for my game jams.
Thursday we met up with with Lynne for dinner at Kaki, and they were able to do the crispy chili dish with tofu. It was great, and makes me want to go there even more often.
Friday we went to the comedy club with some Meta employees. Steph and I shaded the truth when asked about what we did, with some of the other Meta people making up whole new personas. Only one got called out on it. We had a great time and stopped by the Thornhill Arms finally.
For the weekend we had a full Saturday of climbing in the morning with Punit and Roel. Then we had a lovely lunch in Coal Drop Yards with Punit. We had a short break before heading to a couples massage, that was a pretty intense Thai massage. After the massage we had some games with people in California planned. We played Azul on BGA with Brian and Brittany, then played some Grounded with Michael and Michelle.
Sunday we did a great escape room at ClueQuest with Nancy and Punit, then got lunch at Duck and Dimsum.
Bookclub was an amazing discussion, from a great book for discussing and a great set of people to talk to. We were reading The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin. Nicole had her first time joining a discussion, and I hope she wasn’t put off by it only being myself, Michelle, and her.
It's an Exciting World 