safeism dot com — The personal website of James Marwood. I talk about Self Defence, Libertarianism, Atheism, Politics and Cooking.

Why I No Longer Hate Playing RPGs

February 6th, 2010

Warning – this post talks at length about role playing games. If this type of geekery is not to your taste then give it a miss. I can remember exactly when and where I got into roleplaying games. It was the spring of 1989 in a school camp in Scotland. I was 9 years old [...]

Quote of the day

January 9th, 2010

Comes from the LPUK blog: Listening to ‘Farming Today’ this morning, an East Anglian Farmer said twenty years ago he would be out with his tractor and snow plough keeping the rural roads open for his and neighbours benefit. He was told along with all other farmers to ‘stop it’ because they were using red [...]

Cabbage, Bacon & Barley Hotpot

January 7th, 2010

I like to rattle the pans a bit, and I’m a fair amateur cook. One of the things I want to do this year is improve those skills a bit, and branch out into using techniques and ingredients I rarely use. To that end I plan to post up a few recipes of this I [...]

On those planned new airport body scanners

January 6th, 2010

I can’t help but think that this is yet more theatre, more about being seen to do something, than actually, you know, doing something. It is clear that there are still people out there trying to blow up planes but they are not being very successful. This may be because of the heightened security, but [...]

I’m teaching in Wales…

January 1st, 2010

Just a quick update as details of an event I’m teaching have just been released. I’ll post some more information when I have it, but for now here’s the press release: To celebrate the arrival of the Rawlings range training swords and the opening of the Knight Shop’s WMA academy we are holding Two Days [...]

A Review of BusyCal 1.1

December 29th, 2009

Via Daring Fireball, comes this review of BusyCal 1.1, the replacement for Apple’s iCal application. Seems it is good, but they make some glaring UI errors. For me, however, the lack of Exchange support means it is never going to even get considered. Without the ability to sync with my work calendar it is useless [...]

Work The Chest

November 16th, 2009

A tweet by one of my favourite all time authors, William Gibson, has pointed me to this article on the importance of continuous chest compressions in CPR. This matches the advice given in a lot of first aid training now. Make sure it’s safe to help, make sure an ambulance is called and get pumping [...]

Sparring. A Rose By Any Other Name

November 15th, 2009

A number of years ago I was criticised by one of the stuffier historical fencers for using the term sparring to describe competitive free fighting. Much better, I was told, was to use the term bouting or freeplay. This seemed altogether foolish to me at the time, part of the same school of thinking that [...]

Lest We Forget

November 8th, 2009

Remembrance Sunday is not just about those who died, and are dying in the armed forces, it’s also about those who survive. There are an awful lot of people who rely on the work of charities like the Royal British Legion, Help For Heroes and BLESMA. If you can, please stick the price of a [...]

This is a problem

November 5th, 2009

With a tip of the hat to Wat Tyler & Mr Eugenides

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