I came for the limericks, but stayed for the Clerihews.
MC5 has a nice comfy feel for me. I like that it's not intimidatingly big. I don't much care for mcios or Orange. I think kill votes or timers would be a nice addition. If the games rotated more swiftly, us newcomers wouldn't feel as shy about trying to create them. *shy shy*

As befits my profession, I shall have to do some statistical analysis on the corpus available to me to see if it's possible to devise a heuristic that identifies the 'running out of steam' point.

(rab) You could get a heuristic off an old steam engine but you'll need a big spanner.

I would post more. But I'm just not amusing enough. *sigh*

"I Woke Up From The Strangest Dream
Whence all but I had fled
When I woke up I found out why:
I was already dead."

Just something that came to me.

[Raak] Very nice!
The game in fact shares its title with a song by the band "Liam Frost and the Slowdown Family", who I saw earlier this year supporting the wonderful Elbow. It's not my favourite of their songs, but it inspired the recursive dream game.

The next game to be started shall be Game 100 here at MC5! Any ideas how we should mark such an occasion?

[Tuj] Sorry, that's what happens when I browse but not visit the Chat Game.

< goes and sits on the norty step >

[Inkspot] Took me a while to figure out what you meant :P and there was I thinking I was being premature suggesting that!

It looks like we've just bought a flat. The much-vaunted Scottish system is enormously frustrating at the early stages, as each property is essentially sold via blind auction. But now we're in a good position because we can pull out if the survey reveals anything unpleasant, or we can reduce our offer, or whatever, but the seller can't sell to anyone else, or decide they're not selling after all. Whee!

[rab] How exactly does that system work from the seller's point of view, then? Is there something that could stop you from dropping your offer down to £10, for instance?

Yes, they could simply refuse.

...and then the seller has to weigh up the relative pros and cons of accepting a lower offer than the original one, or putting the place back on the market. In our case, I don't anticipate any problems with the survey - but it's nice to know that we can pull out if the surveyor says the place is about to fall down, but they can't suddenly decide they're not selling to us after all.

Actually, I now understand we haven't quite reached that stage yet. The seller now has to agree in writing, so until we get that it could all be orrf.

Just a (necessarily) brief note to inform that I have broken a couple of bones in my left hand, so I might find myself not posting very much for a few days. I'm always surprised at how typing one-handed reduces one's speed by so much more than 50%, and how sore a broken bone can be.

Bad luck Phil. Won't ask how you got it, and hope it heals soon.

[Phil] You do seem to be 'going throught the wars' as we used to say. Poor you. So it's spaghetti for the next fortnight...

Blimey o'trousers! I would never have thought that having a baby would take up quite as much time as it does! I mean yes - they need 24 hour care, but who would have thought that it actually ment 24 hours being awake to look after them!!! He's been a gem up until a couple of days ago when he decided to go on 1 hour gaps between feeds!!! They grow up so fast! Anyway - it's why I have been scarce recently!

Been out of the morniverse for a while due to work commitments (setting up my own business) and generally being hectic, but getting back into it. Delighted to see MC5 overhauled with some fresh games. Yippee!

Well, that was more complicated than anticipated. Looks like the surveyor actually did some surveying (contrary to horror stories I've heard elsewhere) and picked up on some things that warranted a closer look, and so we had to send someone up to clamber around on the roof (with most buildings here being three or four storeys, it's more of a skill than it sounds). Turns out it's nothing too serious, although we will need to do a bit of work when moving in. As it happens, the scope for downward offering was limited by virtue of the next offer down being quite close to ours - so we ran the risk of the seller saying "Well, in that case we'll offer it to the next bidder"; turns out that things aren't quite as simplistic as you might first imagine.

I do wonder how much loaves of bread would cost if they were sold by blind auction, though.

They'd go mouldy by the time the auction was completed.