Remembering PRESTAGS

How can a man express his sensitive side while doing weights in the gym?

Easy. Put your son's new shorts in the wash as a favour!

For those who want to know how I captured the subtle pink tones in the Prestags shirt?

Why am I angry? - Is Toxoplasma gondii - things to me?

So there is an article in today's Australian and on New Scientist

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2082105-explosive-road-rage-like-anger-linked-to-parasite-spread-by-cats/

I learned about this parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, at uni. It's life cycle is in the guts of cats (or other predators I guess) and the brains of prey (mice). Guess what? People get it too - in the brain.

It was well known that mice infected with it were risk takers, and the evolutionary explanation is that it makes them more likely to get predated.
So this is interesting research. I wonder if I have T. gondii sitting in my amygdala (bottom reptilian fight/flight brain)?

I have lived with cats on and off for many years, including cleaning up their messes.

Maybe I am the mouse that roars? Or am I just a viking trapped in the 21st century?

 

The sometime beserker in Eric the Viking

T. gondii life cycle

cyst full of T. gondii - who needs science fiction?

Brain scan - not mine, but is it the same?

 

Star Wars and Climate Change

I Made This For Thygo

Packing Commenced

I have commenced packing for the Boys Weekend. First, I have chosen the DVDs to bring.

Python Guessed It

Yes, Python figured out the mystery of the acorn buttons. Bilbo Baggins wears them.

Seriously Tempted By This Nostalgia

The Python and I saw the original Star Wars several times at Manuka when the movie first came out. I have many happy memories of this, and subsequent Star Wars movies (the original trilogy of course).

The Star Wars movies are being shown in a marathon at Dendy in Canberra on Sunday May 4th. Could this be a PRESTAGS boys event? Premium Lounge with Charddy and munchies?

Perhaps they will do this with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. THAT would have to be a must see event!

If Star Wars is tempting, I suspect we would need to book fast. Python: I am up to it!!

Infrared Photography

I have been playing with my new Sony video camera. Funny thing is, so far I have only played with the ordinary photograph function.

With ordinary digital cameras, they all have a video function these days, and in my experience the quality is quite good even on cheaper cameras. It is the sound with video that tends to be poor on these cameras. It turns out that specialist video cameras also have a function to take normal photographs, and I have discovered (at least on my Sony video camera) these are also of a high standard. The photographs also have the benefit of some of the video camera's unique functions, like continuous light (different to a flash) and infrared.

Above is the same shot, of my bookshelf in a room that is almost dark with just a little ambient light. The first is taken with an ordinary camera on automatic with no flash (pretty much all black), the second is an ordinary camera with flash, and the third is my good Nikon with no flash but using its settings to maximize the light that is available.

Below is the same shot using infrared. There is no flash and no lights, just an infrared beam that comes out of the front of the camera and is not visible to the human eye. This is an interesting option that can take a photograph (or a video) in complete darkness.

This also shows what a good job the Nikon did with so little light. However, if the ambient light was removed and there was total darkness the infrared would still have worked. Now I'm looking forward to taking some movies. I bought this particular video camera because it has three levels of sound options, and I really hope the sound quality will be high and match the high definition video.

For Python ...

Boromir Memes

The teenage children tell me that Boromir Memes have a cult following on the internet.

First, what is a Meme? It is a picture with words, which I used to call a pictogram. There are a number of 'Memes' on this website.

There is a famous line in the first "The Lord of the Rings" movie where Boromir says "One does not simply walk into Mordor ..." Apparently this is the origin of the Boromir Memes. The relevant speech is in many places on You Tube:

 

I had a quick look online and yes there are numerous Boromir Memes. Here is but a selection:

I like Boromir, so I have made a Boromir Meme of my own. It is very obscure, although PythonMagus will understand what it means.

Favourite Aircraft

Favourite aircraft are these.

 

To Middle Earth Yoda wants to go.

Come to Yoda's PRESTAGS Party

Yoda's PRESTAGS party, welcome are Messrs PRESTAGS.

In Memoriam: J R R Tolkien

There have been a number of posts recently about my favourite author, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE.

Today is the anniversay of Tolkien's death. He died 40 years ago, on 2 September 1973, aged 81.

Both PythonMagus and Thygocanberra are also fans of Tolkien, and of his great books "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. The trilogy consists of "The Fellowship of the Ring", "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King". Much has been written about Tolkien and his works, and I have read most of it. On this day I offer some random thoughts about Tolkien and my life.

When I was a young boy I used to travel to Albury to visit my grandparents. One of my oldest and happiest memories is staying in bed all morning, reading "The Lord of the Rings" for the first time, while my grandfather brought me cups of tea and bread & butter.

I also remember as a boy being intrigued by the Middle Earth alphabets in the appendices at the end of "The Return of the King". My favourite was the Dwarvish runes - the Angerthas - and I had hours of fun writing messages using these runes. I can't resist now grabbing my old copy of "The Return of the King", yes my original 1974 edition with a nice musty smell, and providing a copy of The Angerthas from Appendix 3 for any budding students of Dwarvish languages.

The world of Middle Earth created by Tolkien is so deep and so vivid that it remains in the mind like a real memory. Whereas the contents of other books fade, my imagining of Middle Earth still lives in me as fresh as it ever was. Perhaps I prefer Middle Earth to the world we live in now, and perhaps I keep Middle Earth alive by visiting it frequently in my mind.

Tolkien is one of the lucky soldiers who went to the trenches in World War I and returned. He created a code he could use in correspondence with his wife Edith to avoid the British army's postal censorship. This is pure Tolkien. He went on to invent entire languages and alphabets for the races of Middle Earth. When one thinks of the creative energy and achievements of Tolkien, only one returned soldier, the enormous tragedy of the loss of 10 million military personnel comes into perspective. The total number of casualties including wounded and civilians exceeded 37 million.

My father is an avid reader but he has never liked Tolkien's works. I wonder whether Tolkien is an author that you either love or hate. Or perhaps it is the fantasy genre that you love or hate. Tolkien has been described as the father of 'high fantasy' but I don't even know what that is. I have always been much more of a science fiction buff than a reader of fantasy novels. To me, Tolkien's creation is so unique that it deserves a category, even a genre, all of its own.

I have always admired the 'Catholicity' of Tolkien's works. For over two decades now I have attended the Traditional Latin Liturgy (the Tridentine rite, now the Extraordinary Form) and fought the good fight against modernism, and other heresies and uglinesses in the Catholic Church. Only recently I found out that Tolkien's grandson Simon Tolkien had offered the following recollection: "I vividly remember going to church with him in Bournemouth. He was a devout Roman Catholic and it was soon after the Church had changed the liturgy from Latin to English. My grandfather obviously didn't agree with this and made all the responses very loudly in Latin while the rest of the congregation answered in English. I found the whole experience quite excruciating, but my grandfather was oblivious. He simply had to do what he believed to be right". This is fantastic: Tolkien was a traditionalist like me!

When I was at university in the 1980s I rembering thinking how great it would be if there was a movie of "The Lord of the Rings", but I thought it would be impossible to ever translate the book to the screen. I was wrong. Special effects and computer graphics and Tolkien fans rising in the ranks of movie making all came together in 2001-2003 when Peter Jackson released the amazing trilogy of Lord of the Rings movies. Jackson was, in my opinion, largely faithful to Tolkien and he managed to capture the magic of Middle Earth. The casting, the music, the cinematography, the script - it was all amazing and most Tolkien fans were not disappointed.

The Lord of the Rings movies depicted some things exactly as I had imagined: Strider / Aragorn, Gandalf, the inside of hobbit holes, and the Argonauth. I'm sure every Tolkien fan has their own list. There was only one chapter in the whole "The Lord of the Rings" that I never really warmed to, being chapter VII in "The Fellowship of the Ring": 'In the House of Tom Bombadil'. Jackson left this out of the movies and I agree with this decision. However, I don't agree with leaving out chapter VIII of "The Return of the King": 'The Scouring of the Shire'. This is one of my favourite chapters.

Last year Peter Jackson released the first of the Hobbit movies, 'An Unexpected Journey'. While it was not as serious as the Lord of the Rings movies (and neither was Tolkien's book) the movie was great fun.

Just as Tolkien interesects with many happy childhood memories, so the movies intersect with newer happy memories. I remember seeing 'The Fellowship of the Ring' with my sister on one of her rare 10 year home visits from her religious order. My memories of 'An Unexpected Journey' are associated with my daughters, and a new generation of Toklien fans.

Tolkien was happily married to Edith for over 50 years, and they had four children. Tolkien and his wife share a grave in Oxford, which includes the inscription 'Edith Mary Tolkien, Luthien, 1889-1971' and 'John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973'. In Middle Earth lore, Luthien was a princess who forsook her immortality for her love of the mortal warrier Beren.

Tolkien lives on, in his great books, and in the movies.

PRESTAGS of the Rings

In 1977, SPI published "War of the Ring", a board wargame based upon JRR Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings". The game included a strategic adventure and wargame, and two related games, "Sauron" and "Gondor".

Being both an avid wargamer and a complete Tolkien fan, I purchased "War of the Ring". I still have this game, and indeed it resides it my boxes of 'the best of the best' along with (needless to say) PRESTAGS.

For fans of PRESTAGS, published two years earlier in 1975, there was a wonderful treat with "War of the Ring" (WOTR). The treat was: many of the awesome PRESTAGS counter pictures were used in the counters for WOTR. I have studied both of these epic games and I have identified ten (10) units where the same counter picture was used.

Number 1. The PRESTAGS axemen and (surprise, surprise) the WOTR Dwarves.

Number 2. The PRESTAGS archers and (again, no surprise) the WOTR Elves.

Number 3. The PRESTAGS heavy cavalry and the WOTR heavy cavalry of Rohan and Gondor.

Number 4. The PRESTAGS swordsmen and the WOTR swordsmen of Gondor.

Number 5. The PRESTAGS Improved bowmen and the WOTR Mordor Orcs bowmen.

Number 6. The PRESTAGS militia spearmen and the WOTR spearmen of Elves and Gondor.

Number 7. The PRESTAGS oriental horse archers and the WOTR Rohan horse archers.

Number 8. The PRESTAGS barbarian infantry and the WOTR Orcs (entirely appropriate).

Number 9. The PRESTAGS elephants and the WOTR Haradrim Mumakil elephants. The hobbits called these oliphaunts.

Number 10. The PRESTAGS ballista and the WOTR catapults.

There are of course many unit counters that are unique to each of PRESTAGS and WOTR, with ten examples in the following collage. However, for me there will always be a special bond between these two games, both from the great SPI at the high water mark of their game publications in the mid to late 1970s. Back when I was in high school. And mad about wargames. And mad about Tolkien. And still am.

Words of Encouragement

Favourite quotes, Yoda has. Encouragement for Messrs PRESTAGS.

For Mr Thygocanberra:

Gandalf: Breathe the free air again, my friend.
Theoden: [stands up from the throne] Dark have been my dreams of late.
[looks at his hands]
Gandalf: Your fingers would remember their old strength better... if they grasped your sword.

Theoden: So it begins.

Gamling: He leaves because there is no hope.
Theoden: He leaves because he must.
Gamling: Too few have come. We cannot defeat the armies of Mordor.
Theoden: No. We cannot. But we will meet them in battle nonetheless.

For Mr Paul:

Thorin Oakenshield: I cannot guarantee his safety.
Gandalf: Understood.
Thorin Oakenshield: Nor will I be responsible for his fate.
Gandalf: Agreed.

Thorin Oakenshield: Where did you go, if I may ask?
Gandalf: To look ahead.
Thorin Oakenshield: And what brought you back?
Gandalf: Looking behind.

Radagast the Brown: What if it's a trap?
Gandalf: It's undoubtedly a trap.
[draws his sword]

For Mr PythonMagus:

Gandalf: The board is set... the pieces are moving

Gimli: I will be dead before I see the Ring in the hands of an Elf! Never trust an Elf!

Gimli: Dwarf doors are invisible when closed.
Gandalf: Yes, Gimli, their own masters cannot find them, if their secrets are forgotten.
Legolas: Why doesn't that surprise me?

 

Strange icons these are, of Theodin, Thorin and Gandalf. What say you Messrs PRESTAGS? Blasphemous or not?

Before PRESTAGS ... there was my first wargame

I still have my first ever wargame, and I purchased it not long after I first met Maurice. I guess we are talking 40 or 40+ years ago now! Can you guess what it is? Easy:

Yes, it is Battle of the Five Armies. Check out the combat strengths for Smaug versus the other units. There are no such extreme ranges in PRESTAGS.

It may be hard to read in the image, but Smaug is 100-100-15. But there is more, because this wargame includes the absolutely classic rule (which must be a joke by the designer):

Almost half a century later the subject matter of this wargame will be included in the third instalment of Peter Jackson's "Hobbit" movies. I can't wait. The wargame included a lot of the units and characters, even a great little grey counter for Gandalf, but there were no hobbit counters. Below is Dale from the wargame map and Dale from the Hobbit movies.

This old game holds a lot of memories for me. Of the introduction of a new hobby - board wargames. And of the introduction of a new friend, also about to become a wargame addict.

In the era of early wargames like Battle of the Five Armies, they certainly weren't shy about including the name of the game in the middle of the map!

After PRESTAGS, for obvious reasons of sentimentality, this is my favourite game. And, I do believe you could play Battle of the Five Armies with PRESTAGS, albeit without Smaug!