(PAW2009 02/52)

Printed card and carved wood can still be fun.

Electronic game-makers may finally be turning an eye to a more inclusive and social experience (you’ll believe it when you hear my father-in-law giggle as he flails madly to win an on-screen boxing match), but the humble board game has been around much longer.

Is it Monopoly in your family? Or Risk? Trivial Pursuit, even? I remember a few years ago when everyone seemed to be talking about Settlers of Catan, but I’ve never played it myself.

Carcassonne is an easy game to pick up, doesn’t take too long to play and is gently competitive in a social way. In other words, it’s dangerous. I hadn’t played board games for years until a couple of friends introduced us to it. Now the collection of games is growing, and we’re always on the lookout for people to play with.

Of course, if you prefer your entertainment mediated by a screen, it’s a laugh on Xbox Live, too :)

A tasty selection for the first Linkdump of 2009.

• Have you ever wanted to make paper models of ships from Star Wars? Now you can, via Gizmodo.
• It's 150 years this year since the clock at Westminster was started. The mechanical mechanism is accurate to a couple of seconds, and the Parliament website explains how it works.
• Picked up on Twitter, some good advice for surviving the zombie apocalypse.
• Dinger is beginning what I know will be an honest and thought-provoking series on Stories I wish weren't in the Bible.
• Via Shawn Blanc, 1001 rules for my unborn son.
• I always like a bit of xkcd. Ouch. I laughed.

(PAW2009 01/52)

One of my not-a-resolutions was to take more photos this year. Knowing that were I to attempt a Photo365 I would be dooming myself to embarrassing failure, I’ve decided to opt for the slightly less intensive challenge of a photo every week — or PAW.

My plan is this: every Monday I will post a photograph with a little bit of commentary. The image may not have been made in the seven days up to its posting, but it will have been taken since 1 January 2009. This way I will encourage myself to keep taking photos, but will allow for the fact that I prefer to shoot film, and processing and scanning takes time. Hopefully there won’t be too many silly little snaps just to make my deadline; this requires planning and dedication.

Strangely, the most difficult part of the challenge isn’t to keep producing images. While I’ve posted a fair few photos here in the past, I tend to edit very closely and only post the images I’m absolutely the most pleased with. Pushing myself to not only take more pictures but to post more pictures means that, especially here at the start of the year, I’ll be posting some of what I’ve taken recently instead of waiting until I’ve made a picture that I really want to publish. Some might be pictures that I’m proud enough of that I’ll print and hang on my wall, but I expect that most won’t. Which is why I’ll be displaying them at smaller sizes than my irregular photoblog posts — click through to Flickr if you want to see them bigger. Small steps.

There are three principles motivating this approach:

• Spending more time with a camera in my hand is good and will lead to better images.
• Being too precious about what I like and show of my work is bad and stifles creativity by way of encouraging timidity.
• Sitting around waiting on some sort of creative impulse is a trap; better to just do it.

My first post in PAW2009 is the view yesterday afternoon, across Belfast Lough from Holywood, not long before sunset.

Years, that is.

New Year has never been terribly significant for me. In our family, Christmas has always been the big occasion, and my New Year’s Eve has been marked by a quiet evening formerly in the company of Mr Kelly, and then of Mr Holland. Of course, I’ll be heading out the door in a couple of hours to join in slightly more than a night in front of the TV.

I’ll remember some things from 2008, in, as they say, no particular order:

• Our first foreign holiday in a while.
• I, and others around me, have spent rather a lot of time in the City Hospital. I was only visiting, but others in my family were the ones being visited.
• I've met many great people for the first time.
• I've been aware of my outlook on various things changing dramatically.
• Most memorably, 2008 has been the year when my wife and I discovered our impending parenthood. (See previous point :-)

So. 2009, then. I’m not one for resolutions — they always seem doomed to failure — and I tend to be hostile to too formal goal-setting. Instead, I have a few what you might call hopes-becoming-intentions for the coming year.

• In 2008, I read fewer books than in any year since I was in my early teens. I'm not happy with that, but it's a matter of time and priority. In 2009, I'd like to read more, but I'll settle for becoming comfortable with not.
• I hope to write more — for profit (of course) but, more importantly, for fun. I am under definite orders from my wife to enter at least one competition this year.
• On that subject, I'd like to break my habit of constructing sentences with such a confusing number of paranthetical clauses :-D
• I'd like to attain a slightly closer to normal body mass index.</il>
• It's my intention to photograph more. At some point around our move back to Northern Ireland, I stopped taking pictures just for the fun of it. More on this one next week.
• Then there is everything that will come with the birth of our child. I've no idea where to begin, there.
</ul> There it is. One year on its way out, one on its way in.