Midweek Game - Arkham Horror

Arkham Horror. I've played this game several times, and it never goes well. I want to like it a great deal, which is partly due to the setting,  and partly due to it being a co-op game. Whilst I enjoy trying to beat my fellow gamers, sometimes working together to beat a game is fun.

I picked Jenny, who is the character I usually go for. I prefer playing women and I like to think of her a bit like an American, and female,  Lord Peter Whimsey a dilettante detective. And smart. she starts with a skill and a spell and money isn't a problem for her.

The problem that I find every time is that the game is very complex, and is difficult to grasp for non or newer gamers. Heck, it's difficult to grasp for more experienced ones. So difficult that if you google, you can find that people have made game play flowcharts to help keep you on track. My friend had traded a game for a lot of AH expansions and they came with a handy laminated flowchart and cheat sheet instructions.

It's never a good sign when you need to draw a flowchart. It's also a game that's played best with fewer players. I think we had 7 players and it just seemed interminable. Each round was drawn out that by the time it came around to you, it was hard to remember which phase you were in.

Now that my friend has the expansions he's determined to learn and really enjoy the game, but next time i think we would play it with 4 players max, to speed up.

Oh, and for the record, we lost!    

CineMonday - Theory of Everything

I though that this was a very good looking film, particularly Cambridge which has never looked so lovely during the (tame!) May Balls sequence and i felt that Redmayne was very convincing as Hawking with a great physical performance as well as capturing the intelligence and humour.

 But i found the dialogue to be a bit clunky, and no I don't mean because of the electronic speech! There was a point early on where Jane, played by Felicity Jones asks what a viva is, and she's supposed to be a potential Cambridge doctoral candidate! I assume it was put in for an overseas audience, but it felt a bit off.
The film does rewrite history (and physics!) for the sake of making a better story by essentially skirting over Hawking's second marriage.
I loved the subtle costume and hair changes, particularly for Jones, as the years go by taking us from the 60's through to the 90's.
I saw this is a completely packed screen on an early Saturday evening (i booked the very last seat!) and i think it's doing very well here, and I can see this doing well awards-wise.

Swim time

So in preparation for starting swimming seriously (well semi-seriously!) I have ordered an mp3 player from Decathlon. Unfortunately it's not due to be delivered to the store until the 12th, which seems like a really long time.

I went for this one which seems like good value, although it doesn't have a lap counter or timer. I guess if this turns out to be something i enjoy, i can always upgrade.

New Year, new start

It's that time of year when people make resolutions, and break them fairly quickly.
I am not immune to this, especially as there is so much that I want to change about myself and my life.

This past year saw a lot of changes, new job, new house and a new town. It was quite stressful, although it had a lot of positivity with it.

2015 I want to do more for me. I have signed up to do jantastic, starting off at just 2 workouts a week. 1 "run" and 1 swim. It seems low, but I am doing precisely nothing at the moment, and two seems like an achievable number to do a week for the first month, and hopefully build upon it in the following months.

It's not something that is going to be easy for me, I am very overweight and quite frankly very lazy. I never used to be, I used to love taking part on physical competitions despite the fact that I would often be a foot shorter than other competitors.I don't really know what happened, but I want that back!

For my running i am going to go back to the NHS couch to 5km plan, and I'm planning on outdoor running. It's dark at the moment, I know, but the area in which i live has loads of footpaths which are well lit.

For swimming, which i enjoy, but do find boring, i want to get a waterproof mp3 player. I could listen to tunes, or podcasts and combine two things at once. 

For both I need some way of measuring how far i have gone, and that is something that i need to look into.