Ordinary Decent Gamer

February 21, 2015

Newforge Rings and Tendon Springs

There I was after a marathon three and a half hours of ring making, casually washing a chopping board, when my thumb decided to try and kill me. Perhaps a tad dramatic, but it was somewhat terrifying, feeling your thumb snap closed beyond your control. I dropped the board and attempted to straighten it again.…

February 11, 2015

The Great Vaccine Debate

This isn’t my usual area of journalistic interest, but I read a recent blog post by Linzy Browning and thought it deserved a response. While I can’t argue that we have become poor critical thinkers in general and take a lot of what we are told for granted, there is a reason that things are…

January 30, 2015

Altnageezy (Nialism)

EDIT: Just to clarify, *nialism* is referring to a word coined by Niall, one of my fellow medical students. I can spell relatively well, but in this case I’m fabricating words. Life is full of choices. Some of those choices lead us down paths filled with wonder and adventure, and some of those lead us…

January 25, 2015

Into the Woods and Batman

We ventured Into the Woods and saw the titular film last week, and those woods may just be the same woods from the Evil Dead. They’re every bit as disturbing as the woods in the Evil Dead. What initially appeared to be a children’s film quickly unravelled into something darker with more mature themes than…

January 17, 2015

Renewed Respect for General Practice

Bear with me – this is more medically related than anything else I have written so far, but I believe it should be said. My time in General Practice is over. Like many people who start studying medicine, I had no inclination of ever becoming a GP. My exposure to doctors was limited to getting…

January 1, 2015

Raspberry Pi is Alive, and the Dawn of the New Year

The title says it all. The Raspberry Pi-based weather station is reporting live to Weather Underground, allowing access to the weather conditions in Magheralin from anywhere in the world! Trying to get the Pi to do what I wanted was tricky, but the solution was a different program. I changed from pywws to WeeWX which…

December 31, 2014

2014 in review…ish

As always I’m including the automated annual report for the blog. The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. I shall have to put together a proper annual review when I get time. Here’s an excerpt: A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,800 times…

December 30, 2014

There’s Snow Place like the Mournes, with a Slice of Pi

The days immediately following Christmas are almost always a blur, after the excitement and preparation for Christmas day. First up was my birthday on boxing day, a day which is traditionally spent entertaining friends and family with little room left for an actual birthday celebration. I enjoy spending time with different people, but it would…

December 25, 2014

Christmas Time!

A multi-part post! I started writing this morning but was quickly swept up in the Christmas preparations until dinner was served just after 2 pm. After some intense eating and present opening, we are currently relaxing and watching Monty Python Almost Live. The fire is roaring and we are all in a food-induced comatose, so…

December 25, 2014

Merry (almost) Christmas!

The big day is almost upon us and I am starting to get excited. Today featured an intense burst of cooking, including cranberry and apple sauces, honey mustard ham, and the charlotte royale! And continuing on from last year’s tradition, I am brining the turkey overnight to add flavour and moisture to the bird. Any…