Some days it feels as if we're all living in one, but The Asylum is a fantastic steampunk convention that will be taking place in Lincoln over the weekend of 10-12th September 2010.
We'll be running Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks at the Asylum (possibly in a prison cell, no less!) on Saturday & Sunday afternoon. Each session will be for between 4-6 people. We'll also be selling a newly updated and expanded version of the game for a very measly sum at the Dicken's & Rivett stall (who will also be selling PixiePunk Designs jewellery). Jon Hodgson's wonderful design will be on the cover, lovingly tweaked by Terry Lightfoot.
We're keeping our fingers crossed that Saturday's game may also have an extra special touch to it. At the very least, I'll be baking something delicious to take along. After all, gamers (especially Victorian steampunk ones) need cake!
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Saturday, 24 April 2010
Cakey Goodness
Taking a leaf out of Graham Walmsley's book (the upcoming "A Taste For Murder"), I've decided that it might be nice to pop some cake recipes up here for your perusal. Cake is vitally important to any Victorian game, as is tea. But I don't have any tea recipes, although should you find yourself in Toronto, there's a superb tea shop called All Things Tea we would highly recommend (especially their Belgian Chocolate one, its scrummy).
So, first recipe: This one is from the recipe sheet available from Heatherslaw Mill in Northumberland. Should you be in the area, the mill is well worth a visit and has a nice little shop selling all sorts of flour and cooking ingredients as well as the usual tourist tat. I've actually made this cake several times and its rather nice.
Heatherslaw's Carrot Cake:
Ingredients
6oz (170g) Heatherslaw wholemeal flour (although any good quality organic wholemeal will do)
4oz (115g) grated carrot
4oz (115g) margarine (or butter substitute, which usually tastes nicer)
4oz (115g) soft brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon of milk
2.5 level teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional, allegedly, but it does work very nicely in this cake)
Grated zest of half an orange
Pinch of salt
Method
1. Preheat oven to 160C/325F/Gas mark 3
2. Sift baking powder, salt, cinnamon and flour into a small bowl, mix well and add the grated carrot. Mix again
3. Cream the margarine and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy, then add the orange zest. (Try to resist eating the butter/sugar mix; my Nana always swore it was good for sore throats, but no matter how tempting, you need it for the cake)
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well. Spoon in a little of the flour mixture to stop it from curdling. (To be on the safe side, I always add a little flour before I start adding the eggs, which I always crack into a cup to make sure they're fresh first)
4. Gradually mix in the rest of the flour, then add the milk a little at a time until the mixture is soft but not runny. (You may need more milk, or less, but be careful with this step or you'll end up with icky goop)
5. Place in a six-inch (approx. 15cm) cake tin which has been greased and lined with greaseproof paper
6. Bake at the above temperature for forty-five to sixty minutes. (To see if its cooked, insert a clean skewer in the centre of the cake: if it comes out clean, the cake is done; if there's cake mix on it, it needs a bit longer)
7. Cool on a wire rack, then scoff it.
You could add icing or butter-cream to the top, but that would make it very naughty indeed. I've never tried that, so I don't have a recipe for it. There is one here, though, but I've no idea how good it is. Apparently you can add flavourings to it instead of/as well as the vanilla; orange might be nice, say some Grand Marnier...
Enjoy!
So, first recipe: This one is from the recipe sheet available from Heatherslaw Mill in Northumberland. Should you be in the area, the mill is well worth a visit and has a nice little shop selling all sorts of flour and cooking ingredients as well as the usual tourist tat. I've actually made this cake several times and its rather nice.
Heatherslaw's Carrot Cake:
Ingredients
6oz (170g) Heatherslaw wholemeal flour (although any good quality organic wholemeal will do)
4oz (115g) grated carrot
4oz (115g) margarine (or butter substitute, which usually tastes nicer)
4oz (115g) soft brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon of milk
2.5 level teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional, allegedly, but it does work very nicely in this cake)
Grated zest of half an orange
Pinch of salt
Method
1. Preheat oven to 160C/325F/Gas mark 3
2. Sift baking powder, salt, cinnamon and flour into a small bowl, mix well and add the grated carrot. Mix again
3. Cream the margarine and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy, then add the orange zest. (Try to resist eating the butter/sugar mix; my Nana always swore it was good for sore throats, but no matter how tempting, you need it for the cake)
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well. Spoon in a little of the flour mixture to stop it from curdling. (To be on the safe side, I always add a little flour before I start adding the eggs, which I always crack into a cup to make sure they're fresh first)
4. Gradually mix in the rest of the flour, then add the milk a little at a time until the mixture is soft but not runny. (You may need more milk, or less, but be careful with this step or you'll end up with icky goop)
5. Place in a six-inch (approx. 15cm) cake tin which has been greased and lined with greaseproof paper
6. Bake at the above temperature for forty-five to sixty minutes. (To see if its cooked, insert a clean skewer in the centre of the cake: if it comes out clean, the cake is done; if there's cake mix on it, it needs a bit longer)
7. Cool on a wire rack, then scoff it.
You could add icing or butter-cream to the top, but that would make it very naughty indeed. I've never tried that, so I don't have a recipe for it. There is one here, though, but I've no idea how good it is. Apparently you can add flavourings to it instead of/as well as the vanilla; orange might be nice, say some Grand Marnier...
Enjoy!
Thursday, 1 April 2010
New and Improved!
Yes, we too have succumbed to the whole new and improved fad. We've listened to our play testers (thank you!), added in a few of the tweaks we were saving for the final game but thought you'd enjoy anyway and put the whole brand-spanking updated version of the free game on the website for your perusal.
Not the best date in the world to pick for the rerelease, maybe, but there you go. We're British and we have an odd sense of humour ;)
Not the best date in the world to pick for the rerelease, maybe, but there you go. We're British and we have an odd sense of humour ;)
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Remembering Ada: Professor Kay Davies
Considering her importance in CC&S, it would be very rude not to take part in Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of inspiring women in science and technology. A lot of people are going to ignore the straight science and go right for the tech side of things, so I'm going to be as contrary as ever and talk about a female scientist who had a great deal of influence on me.
Professor Dame Kay Davies was the first woman biomedical scientist I can remember seeing on TV. In the 1980s there was a superb documentary about her work on Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a very severe genetically inherited disease that affects mostly boys. Apparently normal babies slowly lose muscle function as they grow older, dying by their early twenties as a result of complete paralysis. I can't remember who made the documentary; it may have been Horizon (before its criminal dumbing down), but it could just as easily have been QED or the much missed Equinox on Channel 4 (back before the channel gave in to reality TV hell). What I do remember is the blonde powerhouse driving forward the research into this deadly disease. She was smart, she was determined and she was making a difference; what more could a female proto-scientist want in a role model?
And she was up against quite a challenge. Professor Davies developed a test that would allow prenatal diagnosis of DMD, but actually hunting down the gene involved was no easy task. In the 1980s, molecular biology techniques were crude and laborious by current standards and usually involved playing around with tiny bits of DNA and lots of radioactive material. Still, her team got there in the end and the reason why it had been so hard to pin down the gene became apparent.
All of the genes in your body code for proteins, essential molecules that serve a myriad of purposes, from making up your hair and fingernails to digesting your dinner. Each gene is split into useful coding regions (exons) and filler non-coding regions (introns), but overall most genes aren't that big. Except for the Duchenne gene, which turned out to be huge, the largest known human gene, spread across vast distances of the X-chromosome which carries it. So big, in fact, that there is another entire gene hiding inside one of Duchenne's introns. Just to add to the numbers, the Duchenne gene is almost 2.5 million bases long (a base is the building block of DNA), has 79 exons, equating to approximately 4,000 amino acids (the building blocks of proteins). To make matters worse, those exons can be put together in slightly different ways to give lots of slightly different proteins that all have slightly different jobs. So you can see why it was such a task finding and sequencing that DNA a few hundred bases at a time.
Gene hunting in and of itself is very useful as it allows the development of screening tests, but unless you understand what the protein that gene makes is doing, you're still far from a solution. Even though we've sequenced the entire human genome as part of the Human Genome Mapping Project (1990 - 2003) we still don't know what most of those gene products are doing; we can read the book, but we don't know what it means. There's still is no cure for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, but thanks to Professor Davies' work, our understanding is much greater. Her continuing quest to crack the secrets of the gene will hopefully one day result in a treatment that will prevent the devastating effects of DMD.
So there we have it, my small tribute to Professor Dame Kay Davies, Fellow of the Royal Society, Governor of the Wellcome Trust and inspiration to molecular biologists everywhere, whatever sex they might be.
Professor Dame Kay Davies was the first woman biomedical scientist I can remember seeing on TV. In the 1980s there was a superb documentary about her work on Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a very severe genetically inherited disease that affects mostly boys. Apparently normal babies slowly lose muscle function as they grow older, dying by their early twenties as a result of complete paralysis. I can't remember who made the documentary; it may have been Horizon (before its criminal dumbing down), but it could just as easily have been QED or the much missed Equinox on Channel 4 (back before the channel gave in to reality TV hell). What I do remember is the blonde powerhouse driving forward the research into this deadly disease. She was smart, she was determined and she was making a difference; what more could a female proto-scientist want in a role model?
And she was up against quite a challenge. Professor Davies developed a test that would allow prenatal diagnosis of DMD, but actually hunting down the gene involved was no easy task. In the 1980s, molecular biology techniques were crude and laborious by current standards and usually involved playing around with tiny bits of DNA and lots of radioactive material. Still, her team got there in the end and the reason why it had been so hard to pin down the gene became apparent.
All of the genes in your body code for proteins, essential molecules that serve a myriad of purposes, from making up your hair and fingernails to digesting your dinner. Each gene is split into useful coding regions (exons) and filler non-coding regions (introns), but overall most genes aren't that big. Except for the Duchenne gene, which turned out to be huge, the largest known human gene, spread across vast distances of the X-chromosome which carries it. So big, in fact, that there is another entire gene hiding inside one of Duchenne's introns. Just to add to the numbers, the Duchenne gene is almost 2.5 million bases long (a base is the building block of DNA), has 79 exons, equating to approximately 4,000 amino acids (the building blocks of proteins). To make matters worse, those exons can be put together in slightly different ways to give lots of slightly different proteins that all have slightly different jobs. So you can see why it was such a task finding and sequencing that DNA a few hundred bases at a time.
Gene hunting in and of itself is very useful as it allows the development of screening tests, but unless you understand what the protein that gene makes is doing, you're still far from a solution. Even though we've sequenced the entire human genome as part of the Human Genome Mapping Project (1990 - 2003) we still don't know what most of those gene products are doing; we can read the book, but we don't know what it means. There's still is no cure for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, but thanks to Professor Davies' work, our understanding is much greater. Her continuing quest to crack the secrets of the gene will hopefully one day result in a treatment that will prevent the devastating effects of DMD.
So there we have it, my small tribute to Professor Dame Kay Davies, Fellow of the Royal Society, Governor of the Wellcome Trust and inspiration to molecular biologists everywhere, whatever sex they might be.
Thursday, 4 March 2010
The Continuing Adventures of...
It all went a bit quiet again, didn't it?
Since the free version went up, I've been beavering away on ammendments, additions and setting.
The section on HMFSC Atlantis is being massively expanded (it was always bigger in the full version, but its going to be a lot bigger than I'd originally planned to make it a really useful setting) and I've been tweaking a few rules based on some of the feedback I got from the play-test and from the forums. There's also a big chapter on Victorian trailblazers and nutters to act as imspiration and drop-in characters and there's a bit at the end with stats for all the major characters mentioned in the game to date (the whole chapter currently runs at 36 people and there will be at least the same again for Atlantis). I've also included some sample attributes in the character creation section.
I'm currently toying with ways to advance characters (possibly optional, depending on what your view is on that) and I'll give everything a test at Conpulsion in Edinburgh at the end of March. I'm officially running one game on the Sunday morning, but I will be about for a games on demand type thing. If you're in the area, please pop by to say hello.
Now to finish writing that scenario!
Since the free version went up, I've been beavering away on ammendments, additions and setting.
The section on HMFSC Atlantis is being massively expanded (it was always bigger in the full version, but its going to be a lot bigger than I'd originally planned to make it a really useful setting) and I've been tweaking a few rules based on some of the feedback I got from the play-test and from the forums. There's also a big chapter on Victorian trailblazers and nutters to act as imspiration and drop-in characters and there's a bit at the end with stats for all the major characters mentioned in the game to date (the whole chapter currently runs at 36 people and there will be at least the same again for Atlantis). I've also included some sample attributes in the character creation section.
I'm currently toying with ways to advance characters (possibly optional, depending on what your view is on that) and I'll give everything a test at Conpulsion in Edinburgh at the end of March. I'm officially running one game on the Sunday morning, but I will be about for a games on demand type thing. If you're in the area, please pop by to say hello.
Now to finish writing that scenario!
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Now Available...
The free version of the game is finally up! Apologies again for the delay, but it can be found here at our fledgling website.
Bear with us on the design of that, like the game its still a work in progress...
Friday, 5 February 2010
The Thief of Time
You know what its like; all your best intentions go to pot because real life gets in the way. Not just real life, extra research on something you're not overly fond of (hello, 19th century politics!). I had hoped to have the free version of the game up about two weeks ago, but events (and 19th century politics) conspired against me. Still, to be honest, that extra two weeks has allowed me to put a final bit of polish on the basic game, add in a few things that I hadn't intended to originally (but actually make the narrative flow much more smoothly) and tidy up a few rough edges. It was hard not writing a (mostly) definitive guide to women's fashion of the day, but that may well make an appearance in the full version somewhere.
Looking at it, I think one of the things I'm most pleased with are the timelines. There's a huge amount of information in them and hopefully they'll act as a spark of inspiration for people sorting out their own adventures. If not, we are planning on writing scenarios as well as the main rules.
So, fingers crossed, it will be going up online somewhere this weekend, all being well. I'll keep you posted.
Looking at it, I think one of the things I'm most pleased with are the timelines. There's a huge amount of information in them and hopefully they'll act as a spark of inspiration for people sorting out their own adventures. If not, we are planning on writing scenarios as well as the main rules.
So, fingers crossed, it will be going up online somewhere this weekend, all being well. I'll keep you posted.
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