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I'm losing track ... [16 Jul 2009|02:28pm] [ mood | blah ] ... of who is pissed off at me more at the moment, so I'm just assuming that everyone is angry and working from there. 9 comments|post comment

This weekend's mishap [12 Jul 2009|09:16pm] [ mood | pleased ] So! Another Army weekend, another amusing anecdote. While firing at an enemy (firing blank ammunition, at an imaginary enemy played by the training officer*), someone was standing immediately to my left and also firing. For those who have just joined us, the L85A1 rifle (like most others) ejects empty cartridge cases to the right - for example, landing on the collar of the person to the right, who looks down to see what bumped into his chest and thus burns his chin on the searing hot brass. I now have a neat little diagonal burn across the point of my chin. Also this weekend, I managed to get three of my soldiers killed through a particularly stupid decision. It's better to make such mistakes on training, I suppose, and I'll certainly not make any such mistakes when I'm out in Afghan. The training consisted in large part of tearing around the area in land-rovers, and I actually managed to break a piece off the land-rover when holding on too tight across rough ground. We borrowed the land-rover from another regiment, too - I hope they don't notice! We were on issue rations ("compo", composite rations) for much of the weekend, because the vehicle carrying fresh rations (and the chef) broke down on the way to the training area. I didn't really have time to make coffee from the vile stuff in the ration box, and I'm always a little leery of making a drink from water cooked in an aluminium mess tin. I wasn't sure if my headache at the end of work yesterday was due to lack of food, water, sleep or caffeine (I was short on all of the above), but I made good the caffeine deficiency at the first opportunity by necking about five cups of coffee** during the exercise debrief. Three days of last week were occupied by a training course on the queue manager for the new SGI system we have purchased. When people have a computing job they want to run on a shared supercomputer, they submit their jobs to a queue manager, which works out priorities and requirements and time allowances and so forth and then pushes the jobs out to the compute components to actually run. I inadvertently volunteered myself to arrange the UCL side of the course, and proceeded to mess up the system requirements on day one (we needed Red Hat or SUSE Linux systems, not Debian or Ubuntu) and the room bookings on days two and three. The trainer departed with a very poor impression of UCL and Army organisational ability. * His idea of "Afghan clothing" leaves a lot to be desired ** Or six. I lost count. 2 comments|post comment

Darn [09 Jul 2009|08:47am] [ mood | indifferent ] While cycling to work this morning, I went over a speed bump and heard the dreaded tok-tok-tok of something falling off my bike on to the road - in this case, the poorly-attached rear light that I duct-taped to the saddle post. I pulled off a few meters down to go and retrieve it, only to see a double-decker bus roar over it and squash it very very flat. I guess I'll be visiting the bike shop for a new light. My laptop has been running Ubuntu 8.04 for a while, but I decided to upgrade this week - mainly so I can get the newer network client, which handles authenticated network connections like Eduroam better. It took about six hours to back up my data - it was compressing on the fly, over a USB2 connection, and it was a total of 61G of data (lots of games running under Wine, two complete DVDs, about a million pictures of lolcats). I then used the Ubuntu package manager to update the distribution (sudo update-manager -c -d) and went up two versions, to 9.04, in quick succession. It seems to be working fine. post comment

Visitors [06 Jul 2009|02:34pm] [ mood | busy ] This weekend I met up with L and A to watch Red Cliff, an epic Chinese historical drama. At 3 hours it was pretty epic (and rather cool) but apparently the original Chinese version is 5 hours! It's divided into two parts to allow viewers a break, but that's still a lot of movie. It's also quite accurate, sticking to the historical reality as much as possible. We emerged into Leicester Square in the middle of London Pride, where a colourful variety of costumes were on display. We failed to meet up with D, who was enjoying the scene, I'm sure. Yesterday Y and I had dinner with J, a recent arrival from Korea. The daughter of a friend of Y's sister*, she's in the UK to study. Although I'm not actively working on my Korean much, I'm still getting better by listening to rapid-fire conversation and picking out the words I understand. Sometimes I can even follow the general conversation! I do need to work on reading and writing, though ... Y's nieces Y, Y, J and Y** say my handwriting looks like I'm in elementary school (well, I've only been writing Korean for less than a year!) and it's a painfully slow process for me to read anything. Except 못. That one I always recognize. * room-mate's cousin's second husband's ... ** Korean names tend to vary little in a family or across a generation. Y's sister is also Y. 1 comment|post comment

I'm still here [28 Jun 2009|11:23pm] [ mood | blah ] It's been over a month since my last proper update. I don't know how that much time slips past without me noticing... Aaaanyway, this weekend I had my second troop exercise* since I joined the squadron - planned, arranged, recced, set up by me for my soldiers. This one was a little under-attended (no less than three other events this weekend, plus issues with attendance generally**). Nonetheless, it was excellent fun to go over various lessons, then slow drills, then tear around the training area in a stripped-down landrover shooting at people***. Last weekend I took part in Executive Stretch, which is a military/civil liasion exercise where we show civilians some Army stuff and teach them Army management and decision-making techniques. I helped in a similar one in March, and received indifferent feedback. This time around, the people I was mentoring and teaching gave me a glowing recommendation, which mentioned me by name (twice!) and found its way into the report for the great and the good in the MoD. So some general is going to ask, "So, who is this Lieutenant Bumpycat?". Ack! I've moved! Again! The last four places I've lived, I've thought "this is quite a nice place, so maybe I'll stay here for a while", and then promptly move for some damn reason. I'm hoping not to move for a couple of years this time around, but I've said that before. The new place is very close to the previous place, but about half the size and one third cheaper. Despite the lower cost, I seem to have ended up in the Hampstead overspill area; from the pavement outside my place, I can see about four Porsches. Various frustrated accountants and dentists harrass me in their expensive sports cars as I cycle up the hill to work. The new place is lovely, and the landlord is extraordinarily nice. I quite like it here, especially now that I've sorted out the broadband****. It may actually be the nicest place I've lived in since I moved to the UK. I was discussing the possibility of mobilization with my boss during a meeting, and he said it would be a disaster for me to be mobilized - I'm indispensable. It's quite nice to hear that. The university is also under-funded and facing budget issues, but at least there's the outside funding from student fees, especially from foreign students. In theory we're hiring another person to make me more dispensable, but they haven't had any luck finding anyone yet (sysadmin, with Linux/Unix/Windows experience, able to write in shell/perl, experience with Apache/mail servers/Apple xserve/VLEs a MAJOR bonus). Competing on salary against the banks doesn't help. * I'm the Troop Commander (TC), in charge of a troop of 30 soldiers. In an infantry regiment it would be a platoon instead. ** The TA, along with much of the Armed Forces, is facing a bit of a budget issue. It's partly because of the financial crisis and partly because Labour loves wars but hates soldiers, so it starts lot of wars and then doesn't fund them. *** I spent an hour this afternoon washing dust and bugs out of my hair. **** Like rumint, I had a flaky router which pretended to work, but didn't. 8 comments|post comment

Six degrees [22 Jun 2009|01:04pm] [ mood | listless ] Ever since I joined Facebook I've been hoping to find a chain of people who link into my friends list via two different friends. It finally happened today! I was searching for someone I met this last weekend, and one hit (not the person I was looking for) had two mutual friends with me! One from the Army (C) and one from UCT (R). So! I know C who knows L who knows R who knows me. Ok, it's a little thing. But it amused me. 1 comment|post comment

Amano jaku [27 May 2009|05:38pm] [ mood | busy ] It means "anti-trendy" in Japanese, for someone who consciously and deliberately sneers at trends*. I fit the concept to a certain extent - I have an innate distrust for something popular. However! The iPhone! (No, I don't have one ... yet). I dismissed it as a fad, but the extraordinary number and variety of apps is starting to persuade me. It's reaching the stage where the phone really is the persocon (personal con- er, computer) of anime stylings. It can (to a certain extent) replace tools (spirit level, compass), computers (FTP app? text editors!), books and newspapers. It's the kind of gadget I really like. Maybe I should look at switching from my battered Nokia ... * It actually derives from a goblin-like spirit in Japanese folklore, and is also used for the main ... er ... "thing" in the anime classic Legend of the Overfiend, which should be watched well away from minors and those of a sensitive disposition. 3 comments|post comment

Who needs bluetooth [27 May 2009|12:06am] [ mood | blah ] In Sainsburys this evening I saw a Muslim woman talking on her phone. She had her hands full, so she had tucked her mobile (cellphone) into her headscarf, which worked perfectly to hold it in place as she walked around and talked. I'm currently fighting off flu, again. I seem to be very susceptible; let's hope manbearpigbird flu never takes off in London, or I'm doomed. 1 comment|post comment

Shake, rattle and roll [12 May 2009|12:59pm] [ mood | blah ] My landrover (TUM FFR - Truck Utility Medium, Fitted For Radio) is not the oldest in the squadron, but it has a unique and extensive collection of rattles and squeaks, such that regardless of what speed it's doing, from idling at rest to roaring along at top speed*, some part (often more than one) is rattling and squeaking in perfect time with the engine. The last weekend was spent doing convoy drills, which in my case involved roaring up and down the convoy as we drove for hours across Salisbury plain, reacting to people driving cars at us and lobbing smoke grenades. It was excellent fun, and since it was an exercise for the full regiment, we had a large number of trucks and rovers to play with. It was a lovely, sunny weekend and I picked up a bit of a tan. However, I was in full battle rattle, so my tan is limited to hands and the lower half of my head. In the gym yesterday it was quite interesting to note the gradation of skin tone, from brown hands to white shoulders. * 60mph/96kph - it's not exactly designed for speed. The newer Wolf landrovers are so much better, but as troop commander I have to have a radio-equipped one** ** Why, I don't know - we don't use the (ancient) Clansman any more, and our Bowman*** kit was taken off us, so when we do use radios it's either PRR (little army chat radios) or Airwaves (police/emergency service radios) which both fit in your pocket so I don't NEEEED a landrover to carry my radio *** Bowman stands for Better Off With Map And Nokia 3 comments|post comment

Watching anime until your eyes bleed [03 May 2009|09:18am] [ mood | sleepy ] So! Last night Y and I went to the London Sci-fi anime all-nighter, which was excellent fun. The best of the night was Origin, I think; Ghost in the Shell doesn't really qualify, because it's new, and Afro Samurai is just a little weird. We scored quite well in the goodie bag front as well. Y's favourite was also Origin, but that's mainly because she slept through most of the rest of the movies. In other, fairly important news, I won't be going somewhere hot and sandy on Her Majesty's service later this year. A crucial point is that it's somewhere more known for tourism than bombs, so it's not a very dangerous tour. I was a potential candidate for mobilisation, but didn't make the actual list; I'm on the reserve list, in the event that someone breaks a leg or something between now and the deployment date*. Partly as a result of this, and also to reduce toes being stepped on, I'm moving to another place at the end of May. I'm staying in the same general neighbourhood, but getting a smaller, cheaper place (provided it still has room for all my books). Since I moved to the UK five years ago, I've lived in Canada Water, Builth Wells, Sevenoaks, Stoke Newington, Acton Town, more Acton Town, Golders Green, Bounds Green, and Golders Green again. Nine different places in five years suggests a lack of commitment, but really I would like nothing more than to settle down in one place and stay there for more than a few months at a time, but various commitments (mostly work) have led me to this crazed hopping about. Golders Green is good both for work and TA (until I reach Captain** and get posted to somewhere on the other side of London), so I plan to stay here. * Even as I write this blog, plans are taking shape to sign up a couple of key people for Alpine skiing on black slopes, mixed martial arts classes and rhino herding. ** Given my rated performance in annual reports, this will take a loooooong time. 2 comments|post comment

Exciting stuff [20 Apr 2009|08:58am] [ mood | blah ] The GOC's Cup, a sports/military skills competition for TA units in London, was held at Pirbright on Saturday this weekend*. The GOC, or General Officer Commanding London District, oversees an annual competition in various sports and military skills. I was all set to take part in the orienteering part of the competition, which would have been quite enjoyable. I was even going out on Friday to purchase running kit more suitable to the rigours of running through the mix of thorny and stabby undergrowth which seems to characterize Army training areas. Seconds before my purchase, however, I received a phone call from the RSM informing me that I was now the captain of a second military skills team. Military skills generally involve fieldcraft and marching long distance at speed with weight. This competition didn't involve shooting (there was a separate shooting competition**) but did involve a first aid/rescue scenario, a chemical warfare scenario, and a couple of other tests (written, practical and physical). These were spread over a reasonable area and we had fairly tight timings to move from one to the next. The final test was a 2.2km jog (it would have been a walk except we were behind time) to the main assault course at Pirbright, which is apparently the longest assault course in NATO. We staggered around that, and no-one ended up in any of the water obstacles, so it was a win for us. On Saturday evening everyone else left (all the other regiments, the London District people, and the rest of the regiment) and 240 Squadron stayed over in Pirbright for more shooting on the Sunday. There's a fairly demanding shoot involving a casualty extraction (dragging a 75kg dummy), followed by loading your magazines, followed by ammo resupply, followed by the actual shoot, all within very tight time limits. I got all the way up to the actual shoot, performing perfectly, and then held my rifle too tight into my shoulder (trying to compensate for breathing heavily). On the first shot, BANG, the recoil of the too-close rifle knocked the lense out of my glasses***. A furious fumble to repair it during a brief pause actually worked, and I ended up with a reasonable score despite shooting without glasses for part of the shoot. * As always, I considered OPSEC when writing up this post. Some of the google results for GOC came from http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/1119912, which you might notice is a Russian webserver. I'm guessing most of this info is in the public domain already. ** Which 151 Regt won completely. We won every prize, except for second place in the team scoring, and you can't come first and second, so that's ok. *** I seem to have some comical misadventure every Army weekend, which are often more serious than I pretend. Maybe I'm just rather reckless. Maybe I'm the comic relief. 5 comments|post comment

Being a tourist [11 Apr 2009|11:15pm] [ mood | cheerful ] [ music | Rammstein - Moskau ] Y is recently back from Korea with her new visa, so we took the UCL closure over Easter as a chance to visit somewhere. I rather randomly chose Oxford, mainly because I've already seen Cambridge and it wasn't as far as some other choices (it takes a whole day to get to Snowdonia by train!). We've spent the last couple of days wandering around Oxford, usually with me dragging Y into various museums. The Ashmolean and the Pitt-Rivers are closed, entirely, for various improvements, but the History of Science museum, Museum of Oxford and University Museum of Natural History have filled the days. The History of Science Museum is wonderful in the collection of instruments and tools, as well as the building itself. It's not often you look around a room that was built as an alchemist's laboratory, including an arched, solid stone ceiling to contain explosions and fires. I thought of wolverine_nun  when looking at the astrolabes, orreries and armillary spheres. I took many, many photos of the instruments, and of Einstein's handwriting, preserved on a blackboard from a 1931 lecture. The Oxford museum was quite interesting for the Civil War aspect of it - Oxford being the Royalist capital during the war - and the insight into late medieval/renaissance buildings. I thought cow dung was a rather icky choice of flooring material (as per Zulu/Xhosa huts) but using cattle vertebrae as paving material is more ghoulish by a laaaarge margin. Wtf. The pic it took will have to wait until I'm back in London - I didn't bring my camera cable. The Natural History museum is just one large gallery, crammed full of amazing specimens and displays. There were some highlights in an overall excellent museum, however. I wish the Creator had just stopped at scaring the shit out of us - dude man, you had us terrified at raptors. Going on to create the Madagascan Hissing Cockroach is just, you know, too far. In completely unrelated, more serious, news: a civil servant working at 10 Downing Street exchanged some emails with Labour's leading blogger (God help them). Damian McBride and Derek Draper were discussing making up out of thin air various cruel and/or distasteful rumours about leading Conservative politicians, which could then be published on a new blog. The civil servant was supposed to be politically neutral, and has resigned in disgrace. Draper is still leading LabourList, and personally I hope he stays - he does more damage to Labour than anything else. All of this was ultimately brought to light by Guido Fawkes, an excellent political blogger. Blogs are starting to have real and major effects on mainstream politics. 4 comments|post comment

Teeth fixed! Hooray! [31 Mar 2009|03:22pm] [ mood | apathetic ] I was just getting used to the jagged edges of my incisors, and now they're unnaturally smooth. It does look a little better, I must admit. I have a new bike! I picked it up on Sunday and broke it in with a ride to J's place in Stoke Newington, coming home via the aforementioned high street. Based on previous experience, I'm a little reluctant to leave it overnight at UCL, even though it's in a locked bike storage area. For two days of the week I have evening activities far across London, so I can only really cycle to work three days a week. Such a pain. Unless I started cycling to Canada Water for the game, which would entail cycling across one of the Thames bridges. Thousands of people do so daily, but it's a big hurdle for me; I don't like cycling in traffic and try to avoid it as much as possible. post comment

Highgate High Street is High [30 Mar 2009|05:35pm] [ mood | despairing ] In the sense that it is at the top of a very long and rather steep hill. Cycling via Highgate is a strenuous affair. 1 comment|post comment

News and an amazing video [23 Mar 2009|12:10pm] [ mood | cheerful ] The last weekend was a quite relaxed Army weekend. We made use of an RAF base instead of the usual Army facilities, and wow but the crabs have it easy. Goodbye grubby, battered barracks, hello single rooms. The officers mess in particular looks like a country house - chandeliers and gold frescoes and vast sweeping staircases. The training part involved various classes, but I was helping run the navigation exercise. My part in the exercise was thus mountain-biking around the woods* on a beautiful sunny day, making sure people weren't getting lost. It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it. The base also had a high-rope assault course type thing, where you climb about and jump off things and generally have great fun. The climbing harness doesn't do good things for your figure if you are carrying weight around the middle, but fortunately I don't have that problem. Following on from that we went to the base swimming pool (indoor and heated) and had fun there. The fun for me included swimming into the bottom of the pool (I need prescription goggles or something) and chipping two teeth (my maxillary central incisors). I now have a slightly ragged grin and a dentist appointment on Friday. The allergic reaction from the prawn-contaminated food is finally fading. It wasn't a pleasant week, and I think more research into this is required. I would like to know how serious my allergy is. Just for reference. * RAF woods are cleared and marked and crossed by trails, each of which is marked with what traffic (horse/cycle/foot) is allowed. Army woods are wilder. Ok, actually the woods are run by someone else (the Forestry Commission) and just happen to be next door. Finally, for those of you who aren't friends of Herne (you're allowed to look too, but may have already seen it), take a look at this incredible video of Xtreme Shepherding. All the Welsh sheep jokes are looking a bit silly now, huh? 3 comments|post comment

Fucking Wagamamas [16 Mar 2009|09:02am] [ mood | (b)itchy ] Someone at Wagamamas was a little careless with food hygiene on Saturday, and managed to get traces of prawns into my (vegetarian) dish. I was wondering why I was so itchy yesterday, but it only clicked this morning when the spots started coming up. Fortunately it seems like a mild dose, so I'm going to try work and even gym today regardless. 8 comments|post comment

Brain hurts [05 Mar 2009|10:19pm] [ mood | busy ] I'm back today from a four-day course down at Sandhurst. It was a novelty for me because this time round, I was helping to run the course, rather than taking part. Much like my exercise at the start of the year, I found it rather eye-opening how much work goes on behind the scenes to make something like this happen. The course being run was a business liaison course, where various large organisations could send staff for leadership training, some of which was provided by yours truly. It was all rather enjoyable, especially the finale today of the Sandhurst assault course, which as always culminates in a leopard-crawl through the Wishing Stream. My kit is in the washing machine at the moment, getting the river muck out of the pockets. It's quite odd to picture myself as any kind of expert in this field, but it was quite rewarding to get lots of positive feedback. No-one had any major complaints about the course, so obviously we were doing something right. The flat was infested by mice a couple of weeks ago. An initial solitary mouse was the vanguard of a flurry of agile, hungry, exploring mice who infested cupboards, pooed on counters and nested in the bloody toaster*. A couple of calls to landlord, freehold-holder and an exterminator led to an emergency extermination. The mice disappeared immediately, barring one which wandered round vaguely and was almost considerate enough to die in the dustbin, but instead tried to die in a boot**. He was turfed out to die alone in a shoebox in the cold on the balcony***. Y is back in Korea to renew her visa. We have navigated the UK Home Office websites endlessly, and can now quote visa types (SET(O) vs VAF2 vs VAF4) at each other, as well as discussing the various documentation for hours at a time. I am now more familiar with the UK immigration rules than I ever cared to be. Nonetheless, my SA passport remains a distant prospect, and Y's new visa is being processed with a fairly vague target date. I'm hoping to get my new passport soon, not just because it would be nice to visit Y in Korea and get to use my poor, limited Korean (to the amusement of the N clan, no doubt), but also because the regimental 2-week exercise this year may well be outside the UK. There are various things being mentioned, some of which are rather intriguing. A couple of weeks ago there was a, ah, little bit of a verbal dust-up in my family, with me on one side and everyone else on the other. I'm still convinced I'm in the right (it wouldn't be much of an argument if that wasn't the case) so there's a mild familial cold war going on at the moment. * I tried shaking the toaster upside-down out the window, but the mouse clung on grimly. I could never go as far as switching on the toaster. ** My backup pair of Army field boots, so it's quite likely I wouldn't have known until six months down the line when my toes encountered a mummified rodent. *** Ok, maybe there was some concession to his dying comfort. 4 comments|post comment

Odynometer [28 Jan 2009|08:36am] [ mood | odynometric ] An instrument for measuring pain. From Save the Words. 2 comments|post comment

Mud [25 Jan 2009|11:02pm] [ mood | exhausted ] I ran in the TA Cross-Country championship today. The race took place in a park in Croydon, and was woefully under-attended. The constant downpour last night made the race far more interesting, because the entire course was exceptionally muddy and punctuated by enormous puddles. At one point an enthusiastic dog tried to keep pace with the runner ahead of me, and was actually swimming in a particularly deep puddle*. Today, along with many previous incidents, has convinced me that most of south-east England is actually a thin veneer of soil over something else. Grass and shrubs have a tenuous hold in this thin surface layer, but sustained rain loosens the topsoil, allowing it to slough away to reveal the true nature of the land beneath**. Despite doing frequent Wile E. Coyote running-on-the-spot impressions in the mud, and skating down some of the hills, I managed a respectable 43:15 for the 6 mile (9.6km) course. Tonight Y and I went and had dinner with K, a Korean friend of mine from my V&A days. We talked about hiding bodies, and kendo, and people. As a result of late nights and early mornings*** (yesterday was maintenance day at 240 Squadron) I am rather tired. So it's off to bed for me. * It was a little dog. ** There's a Cthulhu Mythos short story in there. *** I've been getting up earlier on weekends than I do on weekdays :( 1 comment|post comment

Update update update [21 Jan 2009|09:46am] [ mood | busy ] News from New Years! I really should stop trying karaoke*. Not only am I not that good**, but I spent New Year's Eve at a Japanese restaurant, where the Japanese, Chinese and Korean staff are all REALLY good. And I was the only European there. I'm sure a lot of them were thinking "Oh god, the gaijin/gwailo/wagukin is trying to sing!". Anyway. The Army thing is a bit busy this month; I'm doing something every weekend. The first weekend of the month (which, incidentally, was the coldest weekend this winter) was spent training down at Longmoor. It was quite cool, because it was MY exercise with MY troop. I planned, wrote and directed the whole thing. Also, I managed to book a training area with an old farmhouse for my troop (A troop), while B troop were freezing under the starry sky. Granted, said starry sky could be seen through the holes in the roof of the farmhouse, but it was still warmer than a 9x9 tent. Last weekend I was down at Sandhurst; I'm assisting with a TA training program in a few months time. I had to get up at 0500 to get down to Sandhurst on time, and then played EU: Rome*** until 0300 the next morning. After 22 hours on the go I felt a little woozy on Sunday. Finally, this weekend I'm taking part in a TA cross-country race. My sister, M, arrived in London yesterday (and I set up a new PC for her in record time after stealing back my old desktop for games). It's only a couple of weeks until the rest of my family arrives in London prior to going to France. My parents are living in a cottage in Brittany for the next six months in order to get numerous cats quarantine clearance for the UK. At work I'm setting up various new servers to replace older systems that are running out of software and hardware support. Trying to get new IBM hardware running Ubuntu to match old IBM hardware running Slackware (with mostly compiled-from-source applications) is proving a little tricky. Korean studying is all down to me, because the second semester of my course was cancelled due to lack of applicants. Woe! Since I am going to Korea in a couple of months, I had better work hard! * And sake. ** Ok, I'm really bad. *** EU: Rome is a great deal like Europa Universalis, which I spent about a hojillion hours playing in 2002/3. It borrows a lot from Rome: Total War, especially in the character parts with generals, governors, diplomats and so on. RTW is a lot more about the fighting, with a grand strategy game built around it, though; if you work on the tactical part, conquering the entire planet is easy. EUR is the opposite - there is no tactical interface (battles are abstracted out) and after ten wars with Carthage I've only just started conquering Africa. The Senate is still telling me, Carthago delenda est! Also, I'm so unpopular worldwide that there are more foreign assassins than legionaries swarming the streets of Rome. My aedile and praetor have a life expectancy of about a week! 6 comments|post comment

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