3 x packs of Doctor Who CMG figures from Woolies, @ £8.00 ea

1 pack of Star Wars CMG figures from Forbidden Planet, @ £14.99

4 Rare Star Wars CMG figures via eBay, £9.94

1 issue of Miniature Wargames, @ £3.70

Total: £52.63

A few weeks ago SFX published a SF and Fantasy Books Special which contained a top 100 Favourite SF and Fantasy authors of all time decided by popular vote. The list shows the perils of popular votes… But lets turn it into a meme anyway.

( Meme rules and a big list of authors )

1 pack of Star Wars Legacy of the Force collectible miniatures from Forbidden Planet, @ £9.99

I issue of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy, @ £3.95

1 issue of Miniature Wargames, @ £3.70

1 T.rex and 1 pack of Syntarsus from Jeff Valent Studios , @ $38.90 (£20.74)

Total: £38.38

Total for the quarter: £37.74 + £26.94 + £38.38 = £103.06 (a smidgen over the £100 budget).

1 pack of Star Wars Force Unleashed collectible miniatures from Forbidden Planet, @ £14.99

2 issues of Wargamesd Illustrated, @ £4.00 each

1 issue of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy, @ £3.95

Brontosaurus Rex RPG from eBay, @ £9.99 lost in post, money refunded by seller

Total: £26.94

Reading the new SFX Heroes special and this:

Jayma Mays (how sad her name makes her sound like a female version of the gorilla-faced car journo)

made me hoot with laughter and made pink_weasel very indignant (she’s a bit of a fan, you know).

Ragnarok is the journal of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers. The latest issue, the first with John Wilson as editor, of Rag has been published and is in the post to members.

• Saint Snatch - Relic steaing in Dresda
• In the Dog House - Strontium Dog in Inquisitor
• Crimson Twenty One - Crimson Skies in Air War C:21
• Ottomania II - More Turks in Aeronef
• The Rules of War - Reviews of Space Vixens from Mars and Battlestations

Comments can be left on the SFSFW forum.

As we’re all blogging for history, here’s a bit about my day.

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Alarm went off at 7:00. Lettice got up. I didn’t. Whoops. Staggered out of bed at 8:00 and between checking e-mail, showering, eating breakfast and faffing about managed to get into work around about 9:45. No meetings this morning so not a problem. Check work e-mail and calendar and tell the project manager that I love her because she’s worked out that in our incredibly tight schedule for the site (www.visitlondon.com) redesign I actually have no tasks allocated to me between the end of November and the sometim in February so I can take some holiday after all. But then I groan as I realise that Friday is booked up with meetings from 10-12 and then 12:30-16:00. Ouch.

Spent most of the day working on a project for our kids’ site (www.kidslovelondon.com). Nothing terribly exciting - a bit of CSS, bit of XSLT, bit of JavaScript (enforcing my own recently written coding standards to avoid document.write and use appendChild() etc.). Minor panic regarding the half term edition of the kids’ newsletter but it got sent out on time and everyone seems very happy with the new style.

Went to lunch with Lettice - she’s working at VL for a few weeks. And after that it was time for today’s round of meetings about the redesign project. Time and money versus ambition. Same as every project I’ve ever worked on. We actually have a very good team (and soon to be a much bigger team, an ad will be appear in this week’s New Media Age for six positions within the web team at VL) and doing most of the work in house will cut down on some of the headaches.

Ended up working until 18:30 which makes up for the late start, though a fair chunk of the last hour was spent playing Bang! Howdy (www.banghowdy.com) whilst waiting for other people to go through the designs of the Christmas pages with me. We need to have some pages up very soon in order to cover the switching on of the Christmas Lights.

London Bridge was busy and I just missed the 18:39. I bought this week’s New Scientist (suckered in by the ‘what would happen to Earth if humans vanished cover story) and this month’s .net (a couple of articles that I can quote mine for a brainstorm in one of Friday’s endless meetings). Ran into Séverine and we caught the 18:51 to Tulse Hill and then walked up to West Norwood together.

Home, sausages for dinner, then watched CSI: Miami with Lettice before sitting down to write this.

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So there you are, not my usual sort of post and probably not of any great historical interest.

This morning I got on the wrong train. I have never done that on the way to work before, and I’ve only done it twice on the way home (and drink was definitely involved in one of those cases). So I was heading towards Victoria rather than London Bridge, and having a plain return season ticket rather than a travelcard I couldn’t jump off at Balham and hop on the Northern Line. So I jumped off at Balham and waited for the next train to London Bridge, which was late and even if it hadn’t been late would have gone back through West Norwood half an hour after I left.

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My web server has been up and down, but mostly down, all day. I think that one of this weekend’s jobs will include taking a complete backup of everything.

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For some reason I bought another issue of .net magazine. This one comes with a free CSS reference poster. The credits for which read:

Reprinted courtesy of the W3C
www.w3schools.com

The poster is indeed a version of the w3schools CSS chart which explains why it’s not very good, ‘cos w3schools aren’t very good. w3schools are also nothing whatsoever to do with the W3C. Whoops.

Not my usual reading matter, but this month’s copy of New Woman was brought to my attention:

Well done Jo on getting the web site URL included.

Best headline in this morning’s Metro was “Man Killed by Gimp Suit”. I suspect Auton involvement but the newspaper gave some mundane explanation instead - UNIT misinformation in full swing.

According to the SFSFW Awards I’m in a minority these days for preferring Wargames Illustrated to Miniatures Wargames. I subscribe to the former but only pick up occasional issues of the latter. Yesterday, I bought the latest issue for the article on the conquest of the Canary Islands - Conquistadors versus Cavemen. I’m a bit miffed that the article (billed as part one) was just two pages long and did nothing more than give the geographical description of the islands.

There’s a new wargames mag - Battlegames - but its not being distributed to newsagents and whilst I can subscribe or order a sample issue online, there’s nothing like being able to flick through a copy to help decide whether it’s a worthwhile read (which clearly I should have done in WHSmiths yesterday prior to buying Miniatures Wargames). With luck, someone will be selling copies at Salute.

Apart from WI, and with Harbinger having folded the magazines I either subscribe to or buy every issue of are:

• Prehistoric Times
• Warpstone
• Ragnarok
• SFX
• Doctor Who magazine
• TV Zone

That doesn’t seem like too many (especially as some of them are published rather infrequently), so why do I never seem to have time to read them properly?