A holiday just before Covid happened! I see Tokyo and Hobbiton in New Zealand then Gardens by the Bay in Singapore on the way back.

This day I got baptised as an adult, by total immersion as it is put. Which describes it well as I got totally wet. I had been christened as an infant, long long ago now. One reason I didn't get baptised as an adult was that my parents, well my mother wouldn't have appreciated it. She didn't like it when my sister got baptised in her university years. Both our parents are now no longer with us so I no longer had that excuse. I didn't decide to be christened, and I wasn't aware of being christened at the time. But a lot of us who would call themselves Christian do so because that is what they have been culturally brought up as. So to call oneself a Christian in this case is to accept your upbringing, even though you didn't get to choose your upbringing. So in a sense I was happy to accept having christened even though I was not aware at the time. I did worry about what to say, the expectation is you will say something when you get baptised which is called giving your testimony. The ideal testimony follows the apostle Paul and his Damascus Road experience. The true saints are able to tell you down to the second when they made the decision to give their lives to Jesus. I am a gradualist in many things, and for me faith is a process not a one-off operation. I'm not alone in this. I ran over various ideas beforehand. Almost on the spur of the moment I found words to say that I was happy to say yet satisfied those listening. I was bemused to hear people saying they appreciated what I had to say as I thought it was rather fuzzy and woolly. Getting baptised itself was unusual. Being pushed backwards under water is not something I'm used to, or was looking forward to. For some people it is a spiritual moment but for me the mechanics of the baptism dominated my thoughts. Would I resist being pushed under water? Would my feet go up in the air? Would I remember to not wear my watch and phone? Did it change me myself? No, but it was something I needed to do for completeness, for harmony.

"The Ghost Bride" is a six part series about poor Pan Li Lan who becomes enmeshed with the dead son of a rich family in 1890s Malacca. This dead son Lim Tian Ching from a Chinese Buddhist netherworld interferes in the world of the living, and coerces Pan Li Lan to investigate his murder. She eventually finds herself in the netherworld too, forced to be a ghost bride. Will she able to return to the land of the living? The setting is very much traditional Chinese beliefs, where mediums can contact the spirit world, where good people get reincarnated and the bad people get judged, where being filial is very important. It is well produced and acted, the relatively short length for a TV drama helps maintain the tension. The costumes are rich, particularly in the netherworld segments. The ending may be a little anachronistic, but acceptable. Very watchable, and keeps moving.

I've refreshed my personal website a little. Most noticeable will be that the logo at the top of each page has changed. Beneath that are the breadcrumbs - a line giving where in the website the page is, the landing page doesn't have any breadcrumbs. Beneath that on most pages on the left hand side there is an index to either child pages or to sibling pages if there are no children. If there is content on the page then that appears on the right hand side. Less immediately noticeable is that the website is more responsive to the size of the browser window it is viewed in than before. Four different browser widths are supported: 360 for small phones, then 768, then 1280, then for big screens 1920. The size of images and font sizes used vary according to the browser width. I'm undecided as to whether as the browser window expands in width to stretch the page display sidewards or not. Even less immediately noticeable is that large images are no longer displayed using Lightbox2, instead they tend to be displayed all on a page. Lightbox2 was clever but stylistically I felt it didn't fit, it was counter immersive. Not using Lightbox2 removes a dependency on external software, and also makes my personal website much more HTML and CSS, not HTML CSS and Javascript. The less technologies one uses the better, the simpler maintenance is. Javascript is still used because I use Leaflet.js for the maps, but that is self-contained. Behind the scenes the definitions for the pages no longer attempt to say where or how images should be displayed on the page. Now each page is defined as text to go on that pages plus a set of images for that page. The website generator decides how to add the images into the webpage it generates. This eases creating the pages in the first place, but also simplifies making the webpages responsive to different browser widths. I'm pleased I have simplified how I construct my personal website. I could have used many tools like Drupal, Joomla, Jekyll - but these tend to trade off simplicity for flexibility to satisfy many different requirements. Also for me implementing a website generator is an engaging activity in itself.

In "Along with the Gods: The Two Worlds" a heroic firefighter dies, and finds himself facing seven trials in the Buddhist afterlife in order to be reincarnated. This film and its sequel are based on a webcomic series "Singwa Hamgge" by Joo Ho-Min. Which in its turn is based on a famous Buddhist painting "Ten Kings of Hell". Visually spectacular in its depiction of the Buddhist hells, the film almost is a roller coaster ride through the afterlife. The imagination on display overshadows the other elements of the film. There is courtroom drama here as the three guardians helping the firefighter pass the trials (for their own shot at reincarnation) contend with the prosecutors. There is some comedy. The heroic firefighter may not be so much of a paragon as it appears. Really glad I chanced upon this film on a long-distance plane flight.

"Professor Layton and the Curious Village" was originally released for the "Nintendo DS", I played it on an iPad. It's definitely old-school, 2D cartoon graphics with animated cut scenes. Random clicking required to find hidden puzzles and hint coins. No action sequences, one progresses by solving the over 100 puzzles which are of the brainteaser variety. The plot has Professor Layton invited to St Mystere, a very curious village indeed, to find the Golden Apple mentioned in a late Baron's will. The curious villagers in the curious village will delay his progress towards finding the golden apple and the Barons' treasure with a stream of puzzles. The puzzles are puzzles, not integrated into the environment as puzzles in Myst are for example. A mysterious adversary will further complicate Professor Layton's progress. Professor Layton has a young sidekick called Luke who also gets to solve the puzzles. Solving the puzzles will mean progress towards the end of the game. You don't need to solve all of the puzzles to reach the end. However you gain points (and other rewards) for solving the puzzles, more points if you solve the puzzles with fewer attempts. So besides finding the Golden Apple, you can also piece together a picture and furnish rooms for Professor Layton and Luke for instance. All of that may seem negative. But in fact playing this game is a charming experience. Somehow the mix of elements melds well together into addictive winning gameplay. It is really quite cute fun!

"Senlin Ascends" (Josiah Bancroft 2013) has worthily made it from being originally self-published to being released by a major publisher. It is the tale of Senlin, a mild-mannered school teacher, who decides to visit the Tower of Babel with his new wife Marya from their small fishing village. The Tower of Babel is a massive tower of many levels, each level being a separate kingdom. Senlin soon realises he is out of his depth (height?) as he is separated from his wife, and has to ascend the tower by any means possible in search of her. Bancroft's imagining of the Tower of Babel here is the core and strength of the book. It reminded me of Jack Vance's world-building as Senlin encounters strange characters and strange situations, of places with distorted logic running them. Yet it also comments on our own world, where so often life is a rat race.

Each episode of "The Avengers" ""is very formulaic, there's a mysterious series of murders which John Steed and Emma Peel are called on to investigate. Everything gets wrapped up with a neat comment at the end, and order is restored. What lifts the "Avengers" out of the norm is firstly the quixotic (or lunatic) people and situations that the Steed / Peel duo encounter. Talented actors from the 1960s were given space in these episodes to overact. So in these episodes you will find Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Jon Pertwee to name but three. There is the chemistry between Steed and Peel, the banter between them. To some extent this is TV of its period, Emma Peel isn't a helpless female (her martial arts skills are debatable) but she does end up tied up in predicaments needing Steed to rescue her rather often. The visual style (particularly Diana Rigg's outfits) reflect the swinging sixties. It is all striking colours and brave designs, not grunge. The Russians (played largely as buffoons) serve as opponents in many of the episodes reflecting the cold war times.

"The Vampire Tree" (1996) is by Paul Halter who has written a number of detective novels not only in the style of John Dickson Carr, but set in the milieu that Carr tended to set his novels. So Paul Halter's books tend to revolve around impossible crimes and murders inside locked rooms. "The Vampire Tree" is more gothic romance than detective fiction. The heroine Patricia Sheridan moves to live with her husband in Lightwood, where outside her window is the tree under which an accused witch was buried. And the tree by which an impossible crime was committed. Bit by bit Patricia comes to identify with Lavinia who was married to the victim, and becomes obsessed with the tree. I found this book very readable, all the more for it not completely conforming to the pattern of the detective genre. There is quite a lot of blood spilled, crucifix waving, strange dreams, and eeriness. But this book isn't so much about elaborate setups and baffling events.

"Zork Grand Inquisitor" is a classic Adventure game (both in years and status). You are an unnamed anonymous Adventurer tasked with restoring to the the land after it has been banished by the Grand Inquisitor (a glorious performance by "Erick Avari" ). You have to find three magic objects (three's a good number) to do so. "Zork Grand Inquisitor" is an older game. The resolution is limited, it's not 3D or VR. When I started playing it did feel cramped and retro but after a while, as I got into the puzzles and story I got used to the resolution and didn't mind. Your mileage may vary. The game is very much descended from text adventures - not having played the original Zork games there's references I will have missed. But the humour and outlandish settings appealed to me a lot. If they still made games like this I would still play them. The puzzles are fair, and inventive - particularly how you use the spells you pick up as you play. The ending is very pleasing as you get to use the spell you haven't yet used. Some of the puzzles require out of the box thinking, and give a real sense of accomplishment. The game is not super hard. A classic game indeed.

"The Gardens Between" is a beautiful puzzle game in which you guide a couple of children through a series of islands. The islands are populated with toys and TVs and sinks and childhood memories. Even without solving the puzzles there is a lot of imagination to wonder at. There is a small story here, a large one to the children, the ending is foreshadowed in the opening. But the main draw here are the game worlds (islands?) and the puzzles to be solved. The game mechanic is novel to me. As a player you either go forward or backwards in time and see what happens, sometimes touching switches or moving a light key to your progress. The puzzles go from simple to rewarding to solve, puzzles which require careful observation of what happens as you manipulate time. I felt I was robbing those who made this game by paying so little to play it on my iPad.

"Day of the Tentacle" is a 1993 LucasArts game, back in the days when LucasArts were turning out Adventure game classics. Written by Tim Schafer and Dave Grossman, it has been remastered by "Double Fine Productions" and I played it on an iPad. "Day of the Tentacle" is an old-school, 2D cartoon graphics comic game. The plot is about a purple tentacle who imbibes some toxic waste and decides to take over the world (as one does). You play as three different characters in three time periods trying to avert humanity's doom at the hands (well it would be hands if tentacles had hands) of the purple tentacle. The mansion most of the game takes place in is differently realised in each time period, from 200 years ago to today to 200 years in the future under tentacle rule. The writing and situations are richly funny. The puzzles are fair, and listening to all that's said will often point towards the solutions. The game play in one time period can impact another. There are no timed puzzles or puzzles requiring dexterity. The savegames indicate how far through the game you are. A classic game. Sadly they rarely make them like that any more.

In "Exit" a family are celebrating a mother's 70th birthday in a lavish hotel in Korea when suddenly a toxic white fog spreads through the area. The people in the hotel manage to get to the rooftop, a helicopter comes and rescues all but two of them: one of the mother's sons who is a loser into rock climbing, and the deputy manager whom he loved back when they were in a rock climbing club. Together they try to escape by clambering from rooftop to rooftop. A well-made film, with very human leads in an impossible situation. Their obstacle course is varied and treacherous, but there are moments of triumph and comedy and almost alien beauty. There are formulaic elements here, the hotel manager is a slime ball, but the film is fresh and enjoyable. On a deeper level one could understand the film commenting on voyeurism - the couple's desperate race for survival thanks to drones becomes filler for news programmes, becomes entertainment and something for the spectators to talk about. Though as viewers we can dismiss this as fiction nonetheless we are voyeurs, to enjoy the film we have to enter into it, willingly suspend our disbelief, and watch safely from our couch of armchair or beanbag. Great film, great performances.

The cake Virginia did for her parents' 60th anniversary.

2020 is the year of the Covid19 pandemic. A microscopic virus invisible to the naked eye has impacted the whole world. Suddenly we're all living at arms length, crossing over the road to avoid people, not seeing face to face our friends and family. Happily software like Zoom means we can meet up with family every week and at least see and speak with each other. So Virginia and I have regular slots during the pandemic to meet up with each side of the family. Which is great. But it's difficult sharing a meal over Zoom so what do you do instead? One answer is do a quiz. Each year Virginia's folks have tended to have a general knowledge quiz on Boxing Day as part of the Christmas festivities, often Virginia has been the one setting the questions. We're now doing a quiz much more often than once a year during this pandemic! It was when someone did a quiz in Microsoft Powerpoint that I felt inspired to try my hand at creating a quiz. Rather than Powerpoint I created them as HTML pages - the idea was that people could see the questions and answers by going to webpages I would upload. In practice the quizzes have relied on screen sharing inside Zoom or Google Meet. An aside: the HTML pages for my quizzes are actually generated from data files by a Ruby script. This separates the presentation from what is presented. This should also enable reusing quizzes by remembering questions already used. What makes for a good quiz? Not that I've achieved a good quiz yet I feel. Everyone must have a chance of getting most of the answers - a quiz on topics you don't know is demoralising. A quiz must be clear on what the goal is - some of my quizzes have failed there. To some extent a quiz should be unusual, that's good. To some extent quizzes should be easy, these quizzes are not university entrance exams. I'm tending now to have 7 rounds in my quizzes with 10 questions in each round. The kinds of rounds I have are:

The cake Virginia did for Mirren's 1st birthday.

I'm now retired. Perhaps a silly time to retire, working from home was quite easy for me, and the frequent IT issues made it easier. Whenever I was unable to connect to my desktop at work I would have to wait until there was someone in the office to reboot it - they hand-picked those who were allowed into the office. I could have stayed on some months longer and got some more money in the bank - that would have been wise and sensible. But I retired instead. I didn't have the retirement farewell I hoped for, with everyone gathered round my desk, speeches there, and some gift wrapped presents to investigate. Instead I got the very generous collection straight into my bank account (which I preferred as I can spend it how I would like rather than worry what to do with bottles of drink when we don't really drink ourselves). There was a very nice E-card with unexpectedly kind comments on it, even from managers and the like who must have found me a difficult person to work with at times. We had a Microsoft Teams meeting in lieu of the huddle round my desk. I enjoyed working for the small Cambridge based software house I joined in 1996, but that enjoyment tailed away when a giant US multinational bought the software house in 2000. At the end it felt one was fighting against the system to get anything done. So when I started IT was in-house, any problem one could just and go talk to someone and it would be sorted. But inside the multinational IT was virtually a different company who viewed us the users as intruders - the IT head even once said we had to tell him when we wanted to use our computers. Problems could be batted between the different IT departments for days. Our site was effectively down for 3 weeks just before I left. The multinational relied on metrics to measure everyone, and this led to an internal culture where the winners were those who played the system best not those who did the best work. So you could raise a case to get something done, and it would be closed for a trivial reason - to eventually succeed you would have to reopen the case several times and because you would be dealing with people round the world something simple would take days. One felt managers mattered most inside the multinational, how far you were up the greasy pole. In the small software house even software developers like me could go to international conferences - in the multinational I got to walk around the office. Managers went to exotic locations for training, it seemed software developers were expected to learn mostly by googling. One hot summer the air conditioning failed and we all complained but nothing happened - turned out the site manager had 5 fans in his office and reported upwards he was alright Jack. Once I got transferred between teams but no one thought to inform me. But I didn't envy anyone who was a manager, they had continual pressures in the way of meetings and emails and procedures to follow. The methodology in fashion was called agile but I wasn't convinced it was an awful lot better than what we had before. There was still wastage, just a different kind of wastage in the various Agile rituals we had to follow. Managers would expand stories that had been committed to then complain if the burndown was poor. There was no joined up thinking as regards software development. Maintenance of existing systems was zero priority, the demands were always for new features. I'm an old-timer and regard skunk works, developments below the radar, as part of a healthy development organisation.

We go with Virginia's parents to the Oxford area, seeing Blenheim and a Transport Museum and Waterperry Gardens.

"The White Lady" (2020) is by Paul Halter and like his other detective novels is faithful to the style and period of the golden age of detective fiction. "The White Lady" is set in the 1920s, and features Paul Halter's detective Owen Burns who admires the art of a really good and mysterious murder. An aging widower has taken a young vivacious new wife, and his daughters fear for their inheritance. A mysterious white lady threatens him but evades capture by moving through solid walls and fences. An eccentric soothsayer says murder will follow and it does. Have the children of someone the widower destroyed come for revenge? The clues are all there, the author plays fair with the reader. The twists and turns are satisfying and surprising.

"The 39 Steps" is a loose adaptation of the Buchan espionage thriller. Colonial Richard Hannay finds himself embroiled in a melodramatic spy story - is pursued to the Highlands of Scotland blamed for a murder he didn't commit - stumbles into the den of a German master spy who tries to kill him - gets handcuffed to an attractive blonde - uncovers the mystery of the 39 Steps at a finale at a London Music Hall. Has Hitchcock's fingerprints all over this film. Good interplay between the leads. Restrained and effective playing by the support characters. Neat set pieces. Filmmaking that works.

In "Zatoichi" the blind masseur "Ichi" gets involved with a pair of geishas seeking revenge for the murder of their parents, and also two gangs fighting for control Yojimbo-style in a feudal Japanese town. A masterful work by auteur "Kitano". Notice particularly the use of sound in this film which is appropriate given the blindness of the lead character. A good bit of tap dance at the end too, besides all the swordplay.

The film "Dragon Tiger Gate" has a conventional plot for a Hong Kong martial arts film. Bad guy kills master of a kung-fu school. Three students get trained up by mysterious hermit. They teach bad guy a lesson. That's roughly it. The setting however is not of so many Shaw films. Instead it's a mixture of modern day with "wu xia" fiction fantastic elements. Donnie Yen plays the lead, and also did the fight choreography. Yuen Wah plays the master of the school. Where the film really excels for is in the set pieces. There's a well shot fight in a restaurant with neat tracking shots from overhead. The opening scene in which the Lousha token is delivered to Ma Kun then 'borrowed' is nicely and powerfully staged. Ma Xiaoling slapping the Lousha gang members after the attack at the baseball ground is powerful cinema. Ordinary in places, but also brilliant in places. A martial arts film with a touch of fantasy to it.

In "Future Diary" a lackadaisical student has his life turned upside down when he receives a strange phone with a diary that tells the future. He finds himself in a game to the death with six other people, driven by a mysterious being called "Deus". Nicely paced, with the science fiction elements gradually woven into the storyline.

"Liar Game 2" is a sequel to the original "Liar Game" which is more of the same fun. Our innocent college student played by Toda Erika gets to be a little more intelligent but mostly it's Matsuda Shota's suave swindler getting our heroine out of trouble. The series is also setting the stage for the movie with the final stage and game.

In "Mischievous Kiss" a F grade naive schoolgirl Kotoko gets a crush on the school's star student Naoki, but her wishful approach to him gets a crushing snubbing. However a stray meteorite flattens Kotoko's house, and she and her father are put up by a friend of her father who also turns out to be Naoki's father. Kotoko's fragile affection for Naoki, and Naoki's mother's fondness for Kotoko, bring Kotoko and Naoki closer. This is one adaptation of the original manga, I haven't seen the others, but this one benefits from the lead actress being the right age. Her over the top reactions, and her attempts to compete with the more mature rivals, are very funny.

"One Cut of the Dead" sees a low budget zombie film being shot in an abandoned factory as well as it can be with constant arguments between the crew and actors. However the factory was used for human experiments in WW2, and real zombies turn up to turn make belief into the truth. The director sees a big opportunity and carries on shooting seeking to make his perfect film. Very much an indie low budget film but a very clever and very funny film. One of those films where you have to watch it through to get it. In its way the film is not about zombies but about film making itself, and the pain and pressure of so doing. I am a sucker for films within films.

"Lumino City" sees you guiding Lumi on a quest to find her missing grandfather. The star of this game is the setting - Lumi has to puzzle her way through Lumino City which is a wonderful whimsical concoction of model making and origami. Truly a different place to visit. The puzzles are a varied batch of fix or manipulate this machine, with the aim of restoring power to Lumino City so Lumi can progress. Lumi has a backpack but there are minimal inventory puzzles. Lumi's progress is very linear, and the next puzzle is fairly obvious. The game has a very good hint system built in, but you may have to turn a lot of pages in the manual which is a work of art in itself. There is enough cleverness here to please adults as well as children.

We went and got a Norwegian Christmas tree from the Oakington Garden Centre on Tuesday the 1st of December. Didn't realise how prickly a customer this tree was until we we putting it up in our lounge. Once again I admired the simple and effective technology used to wrap the Christmas tree in a mesh for transport. We've been having natural trees for a while because of concerns of cats licking and eating artificial trees (as pretty as I find fibre optic trees and how reusable they are). The poor tree was out in the cold garage (and it snowed on the Friday) until Sunday when we brought it into the house, and installed it at the lounge front window. Putting ornaments onto it was a little tricky - one could hardly wear gloves yet the prickly foliage made its presence felt. We also decorated the lounge (red wool up to hang the cards on, tinsel draped over the grandmother clock which hasn't worked for a while and bookcases and other places). Also wove gold beading down the staircase bannister rail - my mother didn't appreciate this when she was here one Christmas.