No Post On Sundays?

It would appear that, at least in the UK, Amazon are now using owls to make their deliveries. I ordered a small item from Amazon late on Friday and didn't pay any attention to the expected delivery date, I just assumed that, as I have Amazon Prime, it would arrive on Monday.

When I got up this morning I had an e-mail which said that my parcel was out for delivery today, i.e. Sunday. My initial thought was that it was a glitch in their system, and that it had actually only been dispatched today and would be delivered tomorrow.

Given that the weather today has been great, we spent the afternoon in the garden working, but I did keep an ear out for a delivery vehicle just in case. When it got to 6pm I decided that it really was just a glitch in Amazon's system as who would expect a delivery after 6pm on any day let alone a Sunday. So imagine my surprise when at 7:10pm there was a knock on the door and my parcel was delivered!

3D Printing: For Fun and For Profit?

Some of you may remember that back in August I experimented with 3D printing. I've since designed and built some more small accessories with similar levels of success. I've been using Shapeways to do the actual 3D printing, and one feature of their site is that not only do they allow you to print your models, but they allow you to sell them as well. Now I've no idea if anyone else will find my models useful or not but there is only one way to find out, so I've opened a shop on Shapeways.

While the Shapeways shop is nice (it's free and requires no work on my behalf), it's a little limiting. Apart from a logo and short description there is no opportunity for branding, and unless the shop becomes very popular I'm guessing it will simply disappear into the sea of competing shops. So I've set up my own shop front as well.

As of yesterday (I really didn't want to rework the logo so I had to get it finished yesterday) Penistone Railway Works is officially open for business. Currently it simply lists the same items as the Shapeways shop, and clicking to buy any of the items simply routes you to the relevant page of on Shapeways. In the future though I could use it to either sell items directly, or to link to other companies for the production of specific parts. There is also no reason why I have to be limited to just 3D printing. The opportunities are endless, but, and I'm only guessing, so will be the wait for profit!

Meeples

While I am a computer person and enjoy playing computer games I also quite like playing board games. For the younger (or future) generations that may read this post these are games that do not require electricity or a screen!

Over Christmas we bought a new board game as Bryony thought the description sounded interesting. The game is called Carcassonne and involves trying to build and own more farms, cities and roads than the opposition. For those who enjoy computer games think Settlers or any of the Age of Empire type games, only without any fighting. We really enjoyed the game and Bryony started to look see if there were any expansions or other games by the same game designer. It turns out there are quite a few expansions to the game. It was in the description of the catapult expansion that we found the sentence: "Knock out tokens try to remove meeples, seduction tokens try to swap meeples". Taken together Bryony and I know a lot of obscure English words but we had no idea what a meeple was.

It turns out that meeple is a portmanteau word (an interesting word in itself) that merges me and people. Given that the game is played with small wooden human shaped figures this should probably have been obvious but for some reason it wasn't. Interestingly it must be a word mostly associated with the Carcassonne game (even if many other games use similar styled pieces) as the Wikipedia page for meeples simply redirects to the page on Carcassonne.

If you ever find you are short of meeples then do not despair! For all your meeple shopping needs visit MeeplePeople.com. As well as being able to buy meeples in any number of colours, you can also buy meeple shaped cushions and pillows, meeples on beer glasses and meeple themed t-shirts. My favourite t-shirts (in no particular order) are: got meeples?, evolution of gaming, and meeples with human game pieces.

And if you don't fancy a meeple t-shirt how about trading wood for sheep?

Amazon MP3

Amazon finally launched their MP3 store in the UK today. Finally their is a competitor to iTunes in the UK with a reasonably sized catalogue.

Now I've been using iTunes to buy music since before I owned an iPod. I like the service (I detest the actual application) apart from the fact that not all the tracks available through iTunes are DRM free, and even those that are are sold in Apple's AAC format and not as MP3 files. Given it's name the Amazon MP3 store is selling Mp3 files with no DRM.

The new store from Amazon also appears to win on price. Many of the tracks are just 59p which is a saving of 20p when compared to iTunes. A lot of the albums are just £3 which is a bargain as far as I'm concerned. Finally a store that understands that if you sell the product people want at a price they deem fair maybe people will buy it.

Shopping in the Souks - Part 2

When I described my trip to the souk in Marrakech I mentioned that I actually did do some shopping. Almost every meal served in Morocco will end with mint tea. So I bought a tea set so that when I try and cook Moroccan food at home I can also try and make mint tea in the proper kind of pot and serve it in the right kind of glasses.

Of course nothing in the souk has a fixed price. I have no idea if I paid way over the odds for the set or not but I did manage to bring the price down by 200 dirhams (about £14) from his initial asking price.

Shopping in the Souks

Of course no trip to Marrakech would be complete without a shopping trip in the Souks.

Apparently the Souks are divided up into named sections based on what is sold there. I spotted a number of signs (two of which you can see above) naming a section but I couldn't work out what was being sold -- my guide book didn't list these names and everywhere you look almost everything you could think of is being sold anyway.

I did do some shopping (an interesting experience when nothing has a price on it) but I'll leave that for another time.

The Whisky Shop

It took a long time before someone offered me a whisky I could drink without the burning sensation making me want to pass out. The first whisky I really liked was a 10 year old Isle of Jura single malt and to this day it is still me favourite.

Given that good whisky is expensive I'm always wary of buying a bottle only to find that I don't like it. Given this I'm definitely a fan of the Glenkeir Treasures range from The Whisky Shop. They buy barrels of whisky direct from the distilleries and then decant into small bottles upon request. This way you can try lots of different whiskies at a fraction of the cost it would cost you to try them by buying normal sized bottles. I found out about the shop when I was bought a 10cl bottle of 12 year old Ben Nevis whisky for my birthday last year. A truly fantastic whisky!

Now I have a clearer idea of what I think makes a good whisky I'm going to follow this flavour chart and try some more light and delicate whiskies. Although I won't rule out trying a smoky rich whisky either!