Impromptu trip to Edinburgh

The existance of budget airlines and a reasonable amount of travel experience means if I want to go somewhere I can. Various things made a last minute trip to Edinburgh sound like a good idea. The last minute hotel booking turned out to be an apartment on the harbour, even if it turned out sitting in the car looking at the water was preferable to enjoying it whilst outside.

The National Museum of Scotland is something that goes on my list of have been there would happily go again (I do have a list above that, it contains the (US) National Air Force Museum in Ohio and maybe also the Boeing Factory and the two parts of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum - it should be no surprise to anyone that I like planes and spaceships). It brought back pleasant memories of possible the Science Museum, but maybe the Natural history museum abour thirty years ago when I remember looking at diamonds and models of diamonds and other minerals. They had a fantastic display of minerals/crystals including various pure elements in their dendritic form and an awesome pyrite crystal that was 3 cubes, the biggest being about an inch and a half.

We saw Dolly the sheep and concluded the display was flawed, one sheep fails to demonstrate cloning! There had a small bit of Cern on display, which required a quick explanation of sub atomic particles and the Higg's Boson, in some ways my kids are lucky with lots of intelligent adults in their life but all with different specialisations, we might lose it a bit when it comes to appreciating literature, but Biology to Pure Maths with a detour via Computer Science and Engineering, between us we've got it covered.

For dinner the choice was turn left or turn right, turning right took us past BRGR where slightly to my surprise we all ordered the same burger, but could we be nice to the waiter and not be fussy, no we could not though I think me and N win as he had it as it came and I only removed the bit I couldn't eat, the bread. The girls had IrnBru, I might have discouraged it had we had chance to check what everyone wanted not just know we were just about ready as the waiter arrived, it's not everyday, so I think they'll live.

N had all the luck when it came to opening value in his prerelease pool. They've started including reprints called masterpieces in every magic set, they are printed in new art all beautifully foiled. With 16 players I think the expected opening is less than one, N opened one, it was one of the lower priced ones, Solemn Simulacrum, but one of the more playable ones in this format, he thinks it won him at least two games, he also opened a torrential gearhulk the 10th most expensive card in standard (~1400 cards), it's also good in limited, it allows you to cast one of certain types of card from the graveyard (a bit like a discard pile in many games) for free, he then had another card that would bring it back from the graveyard. He lost some tight matches, some inexperience some bad luck, but his luck returned when opening his one prize booster pulled a planeswalker that's expected to be relevant.

A didn't have quite such luck in value, but some obvious synergies, but the poor kid would win a game and then have to mulligan to three - you start on 7 cards and keep it unless you think the chances are better to go to six, you need a mix of lands and at least some cheap spells, you can do this cutting a card each time and I saw her have to go to three and four when I never went below 6 (though I had some funky draws after keeping reasonable hands).

I had one hand where I kept something needing a specific thing to happen, I estimated that as at least 2/3, it didn't happen, then it didn't happen on my next draw or my next. I ran those probabilities through an app online it's a distribution that you can't just throw some numbers in a calculator, what I wanted was over 80%, what happened was under 3%, so I know I made the right decisions but it sucked when it caused me to lose the game and thus the match. I still have no idea what was going on with my deck that night, there seemed to be no synergy, none of my rares worked with each other, but I think it should have behaved better than it did.

Sunday morning we had some free time before we needed to head to the airport so we went and had a quick look at the the Royal Yacht Britannia. Me and Matt being the people we are this meant we then had to look up info about the Royal Yacht, turning up the fact it had been to Chicago in 1959, Matt says how, I say the St Lawrence Seaway and it's astonishing how much time you can spend learning about dams and canals. Did you know that the Three Gorges dam/river/canal has two parallel sets of locks, one for ships and one for boats. Also if you are claustrophobic like my don't look at a picture of the deepest canal barge lock and certainly don't go in it. The UK data that was most impressive to Matt was the series on the peak forest canal and then commits the heinous crime of managing to mispronounce Marple. He will be dragged there for a visit and he has brought it upon himself.

There's an app for that...

Tonight seemed like a night for fine dining, next door to our hotel there is a restaurant on the top floor, the fifth in UK speak, the sixth in local language. This provided fantastic ocean views, though dark ones, eventually we reckoned we were watching an aircraft carrier making it's way into Norfolk.

It turns out the location of US aircraft carriers is not someone anyone attempts to conceal and were able to find out what all of them were doing and narrowed it to two possibilities. Our waiter informed us there was an app which would pin it down, we didn't bother hunting for it. There must be another a bit further out as the height of the planes as they pass over here suggests that. Fortunately they stop at night.

Afterwards we went for a walk along the board walk, I think we went about a third of a mile, then we had to turn round and come back, so that's 2/3 of a mile on outdoor terrain. No wonder my shoulder hurts now. That was entirely unassisted including ramps bumpy bits and awkward pavements.

Hopefully tomorrow will have better weather as we plan to drive down the outer banks taking in the Wright Brothers Memorial and maybe a bit further south, though Cape Hatteras is too far.

Internet and ocean views

We have internet! How our entire room in Columbus conspired to be a dead spot I do not know and now we're in Virginia Beach with a view of the ocean I do not care.

Sometimes I have ideas, often these ideas should not be acted upon. Today as we landed at Reagan National  I was reading about the early Gemini missions. Knowing that Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee are buried at Arlington National Cemetry and seeing the sun shining, I thought hey, we could detour via there before driving down to Virginia Beach.

The layout means it's not trivial to see specific graves and it turned out to be quite hilly, we did see the Kennedy Memorial, which was an odd emotion, especially seeing aside the two adults their unnamed stillborn daughter and slightly premature son who survived two days. 

We made sure to locate the Lockerbie bombing memorial. I am still amazed at the detective work they did, but also wonder if the courts did get it right.

The Challenger and Columbia memorials were priorities for me and Dick Scobee the Commander of Challenger was buried right next to that memorial. I don't remember that disaster occurring, it's possibly only months before I do have memories of outside events, I remember the Herald of Free Enterprise Disaster in 87 and whilst I haven't looked it up have recollections of a North Sea oil disaster of some kind in later 86. 

We were pretty tired with all the pushing and wheeling by that point and the clock was saying it was time to move, we probably missed things considered unmissable, but then wandering around a cemetary seems a slightly odd thing to do anyway.

Conceding games/match and asking for it from an opponent

I'm hating not having internet in room, so this is a placeholder not a real post.

I've got stuff to say about when to concede a game or match, whether you should ask and how to respond.

Still can't seem to throw off this migraine, they are usually shorter but worse and right now I'd choose that. We have tickets to a Pentatonics gig tomorrow night in this state to go would be torture, to not go is a wasted ticket which is also not great.

The world wasn't built for wheelchairs

Greater Columbus Convention Center has multiple hotels attached, such that at most times of day you can get from your hotel room to your event without going outdoors - this is more of a benefit than usual considering how much street in the area they seem to have dug up.

This seems to be just about wheelchair accessible, really obvious problems are a couple of ramps which probably don't meet gradient guidelines in other parts of the world, even if they do here (I've not checked local rules), a lift of the variety that only works when the doors are closed and one of the three times I've used it I was at the top and able to see the door at the bottom was somehow open, somewhat odd as they swung closed behind me. Other moans are; did they try and find the worst carpet for wheelchairs and the route from A to B always seeming to be longer when you need to use the lift.

I played four rounds of magic today, which was more that I expected considering how bad I felt when moving from horizontal to vertical this morning. Technically I came away with a draw and three losses, but we ran out of time on the draw with me in a winning position and needing one extra turn, knowing his deck I'd be surprised if he could have dealt with from one draw. Another loss was incredibly close with good, fun games with plenty of thought required. The next was unlucky draws for me such that it was a quick win for him in game one and I failed to bring to mind what the shell of his deck might be and even then it came with a few surprises. I conceded the next round at one game all when I concluded I'd prefer some help getting back to the hotel room.

So it was a fun morning, but I'm both pleased and disappointed with four rounds of play, the number of entrants made it a nine round event. Six would have been a reasonable target for an average day, but when you wake up and realise you acquired a migraine in the last hour or so of sleep, it's too late to do anything about it. Anti nausea drugs helped but in the end it won, unfortunately my nap this afternoon hasn't thrown it off.

Food shortage in Ohio?

Everything seems to have very restricted hours, we're staying in a hotel with no restaurant. Food and magic tournaments isn't great at the best of times so we could be very hungry by Monday.

I've made a couple of tweaks to my deck after the warm up event today and am looking forward to tomorrow. I'm hoping I'll get some quick wins, my deck can win at any speed but rarely loses quickly.

terrible wifi

A) migraine

B) free wifi that is this bad may as well not exist

C) it's possible I may be in love with an inanimate object - my wheelchair, I really did not expect this much difference on so little practice or building of strength and stamina.