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Bad New Everybody

I can always tell how long I have been away from my blog by how many plugins need updating.

Well I’ll start with the bad news.

My favourite coffee shop is closing down. Nothing to do with not making money but because the office block it is part of needs the space for showers and cycle storage1. Which is a bummer.

But there is also good news.

I have finally started writing again. I was being super productive and trying to use most of my time.

And it made me go mental. I just couldn’t relax without worrying I was wasting my time. I got so pent up with it.  The stress was effecting my writing and my full time job that pays for my bills.

But after having relaxation  forced upon me (I have been off from my full time work due to sickness) I was watching to shows I had started not finished.  I was idly writing idea for stories and the pressure had gone away and I was not stress as I was before.

I need to worry less about not using the most of my time. And take time to make sure I relax.

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Website Update

Well I tried adding the Goodreads widget to the side bar of the website.

And it stopped me from uploading pictures.

Soooo. No Goodread Widgets for me. I have no idea why it will not work and have no access to the server to find out.  Possibly a memory with connections to the Goodreads server. But instead I will just link to my Goodreads page so anyone who is interest can just go to the Goodreads directly.

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Amédée or How to get rid of it

On Thursday I went to see Amédée at The Rep.

What is it about?

A procrastinating writer (Amédée played  by Trevor Fox) and his put upon wife(Madeline played by Josie Lawrence) are stuck in a single bedroom flat. As the play progresses we see the cracks in their relationship as they struggle to deal with the dead body in the bedroom. I give this away as this is an absurd play, and that this is clearly not what it is about.

What is it really about?

My friends who went to the play with me all came away with different ideas of what the play was about. Did the body represent the weight of creative expectation as Amédée struggling to write as he supported by the hard working Madeline? Or the stress of marriage as it breaks down and two peoples inability to deal with it? Or is it all Madeline head as she tries to deal with the death of her husband (Thanks to Rich). Because it does not tell you and leaves you figure out for your self1

The Playwright

The play was written by Eugéne Ionesco, a Romanian Playwright. His work is of the absurdist variety(Apparently2). The play was freely adapted by Sean Foley. When I heard the name it struck the distant memory bell. A quick google later revealed where the memory was from. I had heard The Remains of Foley and McColl on BBC Radio Seven 3

The Actors

Trevor Fox and Josie Lawrence where really good in their respective roles. Trevor Fox was easily distracted as a writer would be and prone to bouts colourful prose. Josie Lawrence play his wife in a fantastically manipulative and supportive way. She wants her husband to succeed and works at a old fashioned switchboard operator to pay for his way. But at the same time will try and twist his memories to suit her needs.

The Set

The set design was possibly one of my favourites from The Rep . It was in The Studio, the smaller stage at the Rep. But they brought a piece of Parisian internal decoration to Birmingham via Dudley. All brown woods and beige cloth. As well as well an arrange of sprouting mushrooms. The stand out was probably the giant puppet that sits as the centre piece of the play. At five metres tall it is quite hard to miss. This is all set in the back drop of country which is heading to the authoritarian side. Told through over heard conversations outside and radio news. Until the second half that is but I do not want to spoil.

The other play which I really enjoyed the set design was The Government Inspector.

Overall impressions.

I came away from the play thoroughly enjoying myself and was quite surprised by the play. If I have one criticism it was that I was surprised. The first act is bit slow get going but I think that was to with the setup of the second act as that was really enjoyable and very well staged.

One note, on night that I went to see it there was a British Sign Language Interpreter there. I did not find it distracting but it was strange that she was so far away from the stage. It would’ve been nice if they had figured away of fitting her in to the plot so she could be closer but then again it only for one performance.

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Sooooooo….

I have been a bit lacks on here. My full-time job has been a bit stress as well as difficulties at home.  Also a lot of Stardew Valley. Oh so much farming.

On of the things I have struggled with is ‘How do I write with cats?’ Well i seem to got that down finally.  

Well I have got to get back to the farming. Those parsnips will not pick themselves.

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Follow Up On Hosts

So I have done some further research. As mention before I need the host to support three sites and I did not mention but all the prices include VAT.

First: is fasthosts with their Momentum plan at £7.00 pm.

Second: 1&1 Managed WP Plus  at £3.99 for 12 month and

Third: OVH.co.uk Web Host Performance plan £8.34 pm.

Forth: EUKhost WordPress Blog Hosting Starter plan at £3.99.

Fifth: A2Hosting WordPress Shared Host Swift Plan At £3.91pm. They have a load of tech to make website run quicker and smother. 

Sixth: Vidahost Cloud Hosting Medium plan at £7.19pm. Another part of the Gestalt Entity of HEG via Paragon Internet Group. Have a TrustPilot rating of 9. Good local support option.

All of them have good reviews. But then I suppose you can fudge that is your favour. Speaking of which I was looking in to A2hosting and trying to locate the nebulous source of ‘A2Hosting averaged 5 / 5 in 6674 reviews’1 all I could find was link to ReviewInc which is an online review management web service. If you need brand management I start to worry. On TrustPilot they have 14 reviews with an average of 4.4. That in and of it self is not an issue as only people who are really annoyed with service will to that great length of visiting an online review service but the thousands of others who find it acceptable will keep quiet.

My Short list is

  1. WHUK. High Trustpilot score(9/10), local (uk phone support)
  2. TSOHost. They got the only the only vote when I asked on twitter, local (uk phone support) and a high Trustpilot score(9.3/10).
  3. Vidahost. High Trustpilot score(9/10), local (uk phone support2) and anecdotally  recommended on Readdit.
  4. A2Host. They have shed load of technology. Also use CloudFlare and their Railgun CDN.

Will update on my decision but I not rushing it.

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So I’m Back. ‘I Think’

Well I’ve figured out what was causing. I think.

After a non constructive conversation with my web host who said that can’t help me any further and advised I switch to 123-Reg host plan, I took it in my own hands.

I asked one of my friends who uses WordPress for his business and he advised me to reinstall WordPress. So I decided to turn all my plugins off and test. Low and behold I cloud upload pictures without issue.  To test further I turned on my plugin till I had an issue. Aside from a slight Jetpack activation issue, I had no problems with uploads. I did not activate my GoodRead Progress plugin and Novel Progress Plugin.  I chose not to turn on my GoodReads plug as it had not being working for a while and had not had chance to look at it. The novel progress bar did not function well with multiple project.

So now I have a website that works it still leaves me with the problem of which Host should I switch to.

I have a short list so far. I need host plan that allows three web sites. As I this one, My Wife’s and StoriesWhatIWrote.

Webhosting Uk WordPress Cloud plan which starts at £1.19 and goes to £8.99 a month.

Heart Internet Business Pro plan. It is £52 for the first year and 129.99 the year after. It has the best for features as it is unlimited across the board but it is owned by the gestalt entity that bought out WebFusion.

TSOHOST Cloud Web Hosting standard plan which is £34.99 a year or the professional plan which is £49.99 a year. The pro plan has extra storage and bandwidth per month.  They are own by Paragon Internet Group. Which is in turn own by the HEG which own Heart Internet. It is such a small world.

Also for comparison. 123-REG WordPress business plan starts £1pm for first year and £4.99 the year after.

Not a complete list and I have favoured the Uk based hosting companies. Not because I think they are better but cause getting support from some one on the same time zone is much easier.

I am going to do further research see if there is further web hosts that might be suitable.

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Apropos of Nothing

Well it looks like I can upload pictures. Now whether it is a temporary thing or not I do not know.

But to celebrate I thought I would show this fine cake from Faculty in Birmingham.

It is a Pineapple and Coconut cake with a pineapple syrup filled pipette that you use to inject the syrup into the cake. Increadably pretensious but also increadably tasty. So I recommend.

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A Slightly Vexing Situation

For a while now I have had problems uploading pictures to my website.

I put it down to latest update of WordPress not working with my version of Safari. As it would work with chrome or mobile Safari.

But it turns out that it was a bit more severe than that. I can no longer upload any picture as I get an error that my server has run out memory.

I have contacted my web host for a support and a kind gentleman called Bogdan has increased my memory limit from 8MB to 128MB which apparently the limit of my hosting account.

This has not fixed the issue and I have to wait and see if Bogdan has any other option.

So I am now looking for hosting alternative.

I could go for SquareSpace is site but as I have three website I’ll need their Business plan which is €18 a month.

Another option is WordPress.com account. This starts at £2.50 but I need to pay for website I have with them. And the to use any additional features of WordPress.com it would start from an additional £7.08-£20.83 per website.

Another problem with these solutions is I would have to start my website from scratch. No old posts and no third party plugins.

Well I will have to keep searching whilst I wait for an answer from Bogdan.

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Second Board Game Night

Well we had another game night.

And we played Mysterium with me and my wife’s good friend Rich and Hannah.

It also the first time we had played with the Hidden Signs expansion to Mysterium. Steff bought it as a christmas present for me. And as a strange twist fate so did Rich and Hannah.

Mysterium played by candle light.
Hannah and Steff are trying figure out what the card mean.
Rich enjoying being centre of attention.
The Layout of the cards.
View as the ghost.
Top down view of the layout.
Close up of the potential bad murderers.
Locations(potential) of the bad murder.
Potential Bad murder weapons.
Alternative game at Rich and Hannah’s.
Top view.
Action Shot
Another action shot.

Mysterium is a game for three to seven players. Were one plays as a ghost who was badly murdered and one to six psychics who investigate the bad murder. The ghost can only communicate with the psychics through dreams. These dreams are given to the ghost in the form a hand of seven exquisitely drawn cards. The Ghost gives a number cards to each of the psychic each hour. The hours function as turns of the game and you get seven of these. The psychics each have to use the dreams to figure out who their individual murder suspect is. When you have got all of the individual murder suspects the ghost will give up three cards to psychics to guess as a group who the actually was the bad murderer was.

One the standout features is how beautiful the card arts is.

Gratuitous box shot.
Expansion box shot
Expansion box and card.
Suspect Card
Suspect Card
Suspect Card
Suspect Card
Suspect Card
Suspect Card
Suspect Card
Suspect Card
Suspect Card
Location card
Suspect Card
Location card
Location card
Location card
Location card
Bad murder weapon card
Bad murder weapon card
Bad murder weapon card
Bad murder weapon card
Bad murder weapon card
Character sleeve

Now that brief description does not even come close to the joy of how great guessing the right is. Or the frustration of being given another card that confuses your thoughts rather than enlightening them. You work as a team to figure out what the dream and it is that discussion aspect that is the fun part of the game. And also to view as the ghost.

There was times when I was the ghost and I heard my friends talk to each other. One would have an idea but it not to be quite right. Another would have a light bulb moment and guess the right answer but the group discussion would lead to a totally different answer. You as the ghost can do nothing to set them on the correct path. The one instruction you have as the ghost is that you can under no circumstances talk or indicate that the psychics are right or wrong. And you can only confirm with a knock whether they are right or wrong.

It is in essence and excellent dinner party game. Because it is collective victory or nothing then you want others to succeed and have a vested interest in their success. If you want to win the game then everybody has to succeed. As opposed the to Cluedo which when I last played it devolved into a guess who blocking session because we all guessed at the answer at the same time and then spent of the game stopping other from succeeding.

The reason why I say dinner party game as apposed to party game. It is more relaxed and perfect with candle light. There are other games such as One Night Werewolf and Funemployed which function better with larger more bombastic groups.

[Update]

I have recently played this with my parents who enjoyed once they got the hand of it and my parents only really play Trivial Pursuit as a rule.

Thanks to Libellud as their website has excellent materials for press. Their sister company Asmodee Digital even have a Mysterium App for iOS, Android and Steam. Shame that Asmodee Digital’s Website is a bit simple.