Leisure bliki

Like most Brits my age I grew up with a sci-fi Children's program on BBC called Doctor Who. (For those who know, my doctor was Jon Pertwee, although I also saw a good bit of early Tom Baker.) It was actually the longest-running sci-fi TV series in the world, running from 1963-89.

A few years ago it was revived in the UK and has become a big hit - and not just for children. Doctor Who always had themes and scripts that went beyond the children's' audience and the series developed a huge fan base that lived off books and audio series even when the TV series died. The revival follows this with shows that are written to appeal as much to adults as kids. It was really great to sit with a couple my age and their 8 and 10 year old daughters and enjoy the new series. The scripts and acting are good, the only change is that the special effects are also good now (the old special effects made classic star trek look high-tech).

At home we don't watch much telly, the last shows we watched regularly were Buffy and Angel. Cindy, being American, had never seen Doctor Who growing up, but she loves the new series. When we get a new set of DVDs there's usually several nights of "it's late, we're tired, but maybe we can do one more".

If you've never seen Doctor Who the place to start is the opening episode of the revived series: Rose. (Wikipedia has mind-bogglingly comprehensive coverage, but I won't link from here as it's naturally full of spoilers.) Rose not only introduces the set up you'll need for other episodes (who the Doctor is, what the TARDIS is) but also does a really good job of distilling the tone of Doctor Who, capturing the mix of adventure and comedy.

If you like Rose then you can either carry on with the full first season or cherry pick highlights. If you prefer the latter I'll suggest my favorites. My big favorite from the first series was the two part The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances. I rate this as better than most films I've seen, certainly better than most TV. (It won a Hugo award so it's not just me.) It was written by Steven Moffat who is also known for writing the comedy series Coupling. Almost as good is Dalek. It lacks the humor but scores due to a wonderfully intense performance from Christopher Eccleston. I also really like the final two part (Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways) but you really need to see the whole series to appreciate it properly. (A tip if you do watch the whole series: don't watch the trailer for Bad Wolf (it appears at the end of Boom Town) as it gives away an important part of the plot of Bad Wolf.)

The second series has a different actor playing the Doctor (they have a nice technobabble rationalization to allow them to change actors easily). It doesn't quite hit the high spot of The Empty Child but is still really good. My suggestions for cherry pickers here would by The Girl in the Fireplace (another Moffat Hugo win) and The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit.

When I said the second series didn't quite hit the heights of The Empty Child, I'm not being very reasonable because those two episodes are far too good for any TV series to live up to. However the third series (not yet all broadcast in the US - it's good to have friends in the UK) hits those high notes twice. Human Nature / The Family of Blood is a super two-parter that threatens to take away Steven Moffat's crown of writing the best episode. Moffat's response is Blink, which is as good a 45 minutes of TV as you could ever hope for. Not just has it got a great story and some cracking humor, it also achieves Doctor Who's higher purpose. You see Doctor Who is only secondarily about entertainment, it's primary purpose was always to scare the living daylights out of small children. I may be too old now to get behind the sofa, but I do remember how much I enjoyed it.

Eurogames (also known and German-style Board Games) are a particular variety of board game. If the phrase 'board game' conjures up Monopoly or Risk in your mind, that the wrong image. Eurogames are a relatively recent phenomena that's a whole new class of games which I really enjoy. (Sadly I don't get to play often enough as most of my gaming friends are in England which is a long way from Boston.)

Eurogames are called that because the center of activity in developing them is in Europe, more precisely Germany (hence they are often called German-style boardgames). The Eurogaming community developed a style of board games which are thoughtful, but not overly complex. Good Eurogames can be learned and played in a couple of hours. yet are interesting enough to play repeatedly.

A large part of this is a focus on good and clever mechanics. Die-roll movement (such as Monopoly) is something you don't see. Much of the interest in Eurogames is the varied mechanics people come up with to make an interesting game.

Eurogames are sometimes abstract, but usually have some kind of theme. (Settlers of Catan is settling an island, Puerto Rico is developing a colony.) However the theme is usually pretty loose, and there's no attempt to create a good simulation. In that way Eurogames are different to simulation games. The latter were usually long and complex, Eurogames don't hesitate to sacrifice realism in order to get a game that works well. Some people dislike this, arguing that the theme is "pasted on". I find the theme tends to add flavor to the game, but I also appreciate the fact that mechanics and playability are put first. Those who are bothered by imprecise simulations would find this much more off-putting.

A key element of Eurogames is that they can be quickly learned and played. A typical Eurogame will play in an hour or two and you can learn it and play effectively on your first game. There is some variation in complexity, but even the more complex games (like Puerto Rico) play in a couple of hours and can be played reasonably on your first attempt.

Balanced with quick learning is a reward for good play. Most Eurogames have a reasonable amount of randomness, but it's pitched at a level so that a less able player will win occasionally but better players win more often.

A big problem with many older board games, like Risk and Monopoly, is that players are eliminated before the end. This leaves people disengaged from events. Worse still the climax can easily be a drawn out attrition where it's clear who will win eventually, but it takes a while to finish the last opponents off (*cough* Monopoly *cough*). Eurogames avoid these problems by working hard to keep everyone engaged to end, often by increasing the tempo as the game goes on so that things move slowly at the beginning (so you can learn while playing) but finish fast to get close and exciting climax.

Eurogames tend to have indirect conflict. Rather than attacking another player's position (as in Chess or Risk), you concentrate on building up your own position while competing for resources. While there can be a little blocking of other players, it's usually a minor part of the mechanics. As a result it's no surprise that war themes are rare in Eurogames.

I'm not a serious gamer, so I find the balance between randomness and skill appealing. I like Eurogames because they are a social game that involves a lot of table talk. They act as a catalyst for interaction between people, unlike serious games like chess and bridge that are usually taken far too seriously. I'm not interested in a game getting between me and my single malt.

There are a number of good websites that discuss Eurogames in more detail. There's an excellent article on wikipedia. For more information than you can possibly digest: try boardgamesgeek; Stephan Wessels has a nice summary of several interesting games.

If you're interested in getting into Eurogames, here's a few suggestions as starting points.

For most readers of the this blog, the best game to try to see if you like this sort of thing is Settlers of Catan - the game that's paved the way for this genre around the world. You can learn how to play in ten minutes of play and be competitive in your first game. However there's lots of room for skill as you choose between multiple strategies which have to change as other people make their moves. The board represents an abstract island on which you build settlements and cities, for which you need resources that the island provides. The island is dealt out differently each time, which helps keep the game varied. You also get resources by trading with other players, which makes the game very interactive. We've played it a couple of dozen of times, often night after night, and so far it hasn't got stale at all. It's biggest fault is that it needs at least three players.

I say Settlers is the best for readers of this blog, as I assume that most readers here are pretty quick to pick things up. My more general choice as a "gateway game" is Ticket To Ride. The big advantage that Ticket To Ride has over Settlers is that the rules are a level simpler, maybe a couple of minutes to understand. This gives it an edge with less geeky people, and also with young children. We've given this game to a couple of nephews this Christmas and they were up and away immediately; yet there was enough strategy to hook their parents too. I don't think I like it as much as Settlers, but it's still streets ahead of Monopoly.

For a game of similar complexity to Settlers, but playable with two I'd suggest Carcassonne. It has a great mechanic where you build up the board as you go by laying a new tile on each turn. You score points by placing counters (referred to as "meeples") on the tile, but you only have a limited number of meeples so there's a lot of thought in both tile placement and how to best use your meeples. There's a ton of extensions and variants of this game; from our experience I'd recommend the Hunters and Gatherers variant - it's a later version which ironed out some the kinks in the original game.

If you've tried these and you want to go up a notch in thoughtfulness I'd suggest Puerto Rico, It's often considered to be one of the most serious strategy games in this style. There is a much lower level of randomness than the other games I've mentioned (which can be a problem for casual gamers). It's a harder game to learn than Settlers, you need a game or two to get the hang of it. The theme is building up a colony - you have limited resources to spend on building, producing goods and shipping them. There's a lot of things to keep track of at once, but it's still playable in a couple of hours.

A related game to Puerto Rico is San Juan. San Juan is designed by the same designer as Puerto Rico and has a similar theme and shares many mechanics. However it is really a different game. It's much lighter in feel, and has more randomness. It's also primarily a card game and I mention it on this short list because it's compact to carry around and can play in limited space, such as on an airplane. The thinking concentrates on card management, deciding which cards to keep, which to build, and which to discard to pay for the building.

Moved to Eurogames.

The RIAA may say the world is ending, but despite my embrace of digital music with my Slimp3 I don't see my music budget getting any smaller. Indeed I think I need more of the stuff to keep my ipod's hunger satisfied.

The man I most blame for my musical financial losses this year is a man I've never met called Michael Stone. (My wallet hates you almost as much as my ears love you.) He insinuated his way into my music collection a couple of years ago with a piece on world brass music that led us to Ulixes and above all the wonderful band Amarcord.

This year he caught our eye with a series of articles on planetary jazz. I enjoy jazz, but I admit I find that US jazz can be rather samey, and enjoy listening to Jazz from other parts of the world. For those who are tired of yet another subset of sax, trumpet, piano, bass and drums I'd suggest casting your eye to Okay Temiz. There's not many places you'll find jazz with an oud and kanun. Temiz is Turkish but spent important time in Sweden which is also the home port of the Cerro Esperanza Band which includes guitar, bouzouki, tiple, clarinet, trumpet; trombone, bass trombone, double bass, accordion, percussion, cimbalom, and thumb piano in its line-up.

You'll notice many of the links in this article point to cdroots a small (literally one man) CD import operation specializing in off the wall stuff like this that you (mostly) won't find on Amazon. So far I give him a 10 out of 10 for reliable and friendly service.

Stone's second article focused on Brazilian jazz, of which my favorite was Inverse Universe. Brazil's always had an influence in Jazz, as with the Bossanova craze, and all three of these albums have that distinctive Brazilian twist. His latest article is on Hungarian Jazz, but I won't comment as I'm only starting to listen to those CDs.

But then what if you like your saxophone and rhythm section? I think the first of all of these I warmed to was Gabriele Cohen. Again there's a strong oriental quality to the music that gives the sound more of a lilt than you might otherwise expect.

I still remember when I first starting listening to music from Argentina when I got hold of Zero Hour and got badly distracted from my writing. Recent years saw that work spun into the fascinating techno sounds of Gotan Project and Bajafondo Tango Club. This year my Argentinian fix was Dino Saluzzi, originally via Stone's writing and Responsorium and later with Mojotoro. It's more laid back and less romantic and emotional than Piazolla. As a result I still prefer Piazolla's sound if forced to pick those desert island discs, but I intend to listen to more of Saluzzi.

So have I got any US jazz this year? Indeed I picked up stuff from MJQ, Gerry Mulligan, Mark O'Connor, Jerry Douglas, and Mose Allison but if asked to pick my favorite US Jazz album this year I again gravitate to the weird end of the spectrum and Tin Hat Trio's Helium. The fact that includes a guest appearance by Cindy's favorite singer helps. Actually my choice is really a split decision shared between Tin Hat and "Concert in the Garden" by the Maria Schneider Orchestra - a fabulous big band. It's the only time so far I've been drawn to music via slashdot, it was talked about because the album is only available for purchase over the Internet but still won a Grammy - since then it's picked up more Jazz awards.

All our listening this year hasn't been Jazz. Our earliest new albums were completing a collection of music by Calexico, which is probably Cindy's favorite amongst the music I'm mentioning here. Calexico is, like all the best stuff, hard to describe. I've tried putting it over as a southwestern and less weird form of Tom Waits. I found it interesting that Calexico showed up in the 2003 BBC world music compilation - rare for an American band to be so classified.

On a more folky note, I picked up Ochre by Zither player Andrew Cronshaw due to it winning an award by fRoots magazine in the UK. It's gentle music with a fascinating mix of different instruments and styles that's very much in line with my mixed up tastes these days. The base tunes are traditional English folk songs but the varied treatments are quite otherworldly. Cronshaw is new to me, but my other big folk pick this year isn't - Kila. I rounded out my collection with their album Luna Park and it's every bit as good as I hoped it would be. I seem to be repeating myself here, but again I'm picking out music that has its roots in tradition but throws in a more modern twist. Here there's pretty much a traditional instrumental line-up but produces a 'wall of sound' with an energy that wants to leap out of ipod and jump all over you.

My final pick for the year is something more in the electric lounge music vein - albeit a Colombian lounge - Charanga Cakewalk's Loteria de la Cumbia Lounge. It's a fascinating studio project rooted in Colombian Cumbia music but bringing in lots of colors which, as the liner notes say, "skirt the edge of kitsch" (successfully).

I find it a lot harder to write about music than about software - words don't quite do the job. But I've got used to omnipresent music and these are my favorites of the stuff that's new to me this year. If nothing else you might get a clue as to whether your musical taste is anything like mine.

Like most geeks I'm not much interested in fashion or having this season's styles. My philosophy is there isn't much point worrying about the packaging when there's nothing attractive about the contents. But I've had a few conversations with my geek friends about clothes, enough to inspire this entry.

Since I (and my conversational partners) aren't that interested in style, what is important? The conversation has focused on function - particularly for people who travel an inordinate amount.

• Minimal Care: no ironing for a start (even popping over to have them laundered is too much trouble these days.) For vacation travel this goes even further - I want shirts that I can wash in a hotel sink and be dry and reasonably presentable in the morning.
• Easy packing: light weight, small volume, nothing that wrinkles too easily.
• Flexible: I may visit a client one day and go hiking the next. I want things I can use in different situations so I can still fit everything in the carry-on bag.
• Pockets: I can never have too many pockets to put things in.

Over the last couple of years my backbone supplier has been TravelSmith. They have a whole catalog full of stuff, and I've been very happy with what I've got from them. Particular favorites include: the Great Escape and Air Conditioned shirts, microfiber pants, several of their jackets, and a double vote for their travel rain coat. I find that not just is their gear good, but their customer service is excellent. I've had no trouble returning things that didn't work out for me.

TravelSmith is my first port of call, then other suppliers fill in with particular items I like.

ScottEVest make jackets with a crazy amount of pockets, I've tried both their system jacket and their plain vest.

When in the UK I was fond of Rohan's stuff, and I have several favorite items from there. However they have two main problems for me. Firstly they aren't cheap, and the dollar/sterling exchange rate makes them overpriced compared to TravelSmith. Secondly whenever they make something I really like, they promptly discontinue it.

Barmah make good foldable leather hats. Although they do make you look worryingly australian, they are really handy and practical in sun or rain. For cooler weather I try to track down tweed flat caps.

For very sharp looking shirts, I really like Brook Brothers's non-iron shirts. They come out the tumble dryer looking like they were freshly ironed.

We recently took our annual dive vacation. Whenever we do this we face a dilemma - do we go to Saba which we love so much, or do we try something new? Our answer to this was to go to Saba and somewhere new, which led to a longer vacation that made up for the long trip down from the frozen North East. Our new place was Dominica.

We picked Dominica because it's a less developed island which avoid the casinos and gold courses that we hate so much. And indeed Dominica is nicely undeveloped. We stayed at the Fort Young hotel, which was a little pretentious but generally rather pleasant.

The diving was the main point, and we did a couple of days of diving. The diving was along a wall and was pretty nice. There were a lot more sea urchins than we saw elsewhere, so I was particularly glad that my buoyancy control has improved a lot. The dive operation (organized with the hotel) was a good outfit, although every other dive operation reminds how much I like the special qualities of Saba Deep.

The other big attraction on the island was hiking. We spent one day doing a couple of simple hikes that we could easily do on our own. For the other day we went with a guide out to boiling lake - literally a lake that boils due to underlying volcanic activity. It was a moderately hard hike, and had a great contrast of jungle and volcanic features.

All in all Dominica was fun, but we don't have the same feeling that we have with Saba. Partly this is due to familiarity with our regular hotel and dive center. Partly it's just that Saba's small size helps give it a peaceful quality that's very hard to match. We were glad we visited Dominica, but we were at our happiest when we on Saba - it almost felt like home.