Sunday was St David’s Day. Which saw me doing something in my fifty seven years I have never done.

I made Welsh cakes.

Ok technically not a true Welsh cake because I used raisins, blue berries, sour cherries, and cranberries.

I also didn’t use a cookie cutter to get the perfect round Welsh cake.

I will say for what is technically just five ingredients (I used the recipe off the Welsh tourist board site) these were a lot simpler to make than I had imagined. The hardest (not really) bit was the rubbing of the butter into the flour.

If I do say so, and I may be biased, they were rather nice. They are like a thinner scone. Mum and I had some for dessert, I had a couple for breakfast the next morning. And mum must of liked them because she two had a couple for her breakfast too.

I think these will be made again soon.

Yesterday saw me experience EPiC aka Elvis Presley in Concert at my local cinema The Luxe.

EPiC is basically newly found and restored footage of Elvis from his two live movies Elvis on Tour, and That’s The Way It Is. Plus I think they used a newly discovered interview with Elvis to narrate the footage.

I think That’s The Way It Is was one of the movies from that all night tribute showing I went to in 1977 after the death of Elvis.

As an Elvis fan I loved it. It captures Elvis and the phenomenon he was live.

I read the guardian review of EPiC and they bemoan that the film glossed over and failed to hold Elvis to account. But I feel they miss the point of this movie. I think the reviewer has a point if applying those comments to the directors biopic from a couple of years back (which was awesome). Although I would argue against a couple of the points because I feel they are not valid. However this movie is about the restored live footage. The performances.

Yes there were moments that water gathered in my eyes.

But still an amazing film bringing to life once more the magic of Elvis live.

I’m actually back at the cinema for another movie later in the week. If things go my way I will have the cinema to myself to see a sci-fi, comedy, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.

It’s been a quiet week so far. Nothing much happening at all.

There is stuff in transit. Which I’m obviously waiting to arrive.

Stonemaier Games launched the latest Wingspan expansion Americas, covering the birds of the Americas such as Peru, Brazil, etc. Obviously I’ll be asking Diogo which of the birds he has seen. Along side this a new board for Viticulture was released. There was also a restock of the fan created packs. And yes I did order the new stuff.

The arrival of the new Wingspan expansion was the final nudge I needed to order the nesting box. For those curious what the nesting box is, it’s basically a big box to store Wingspan and all the expansions in. The only drawback is that the nesting box makes taking the game to a game night a bit more inconvenient. However with more and more large boxes joining the collection this is not really an issue these days.

While caught up in all the excitement of the new releases I realised it must be a good couple of years since I played Wingspan. Most likely when the Asia expansion came out.

However in that period we had two new additions to the Wingspan family in the form of Wyrmspan and Finspan. Both of which have seen table time. So in a way indirectly I have played Wingspan.

I do have a copy of the new Lord of the Rings The Two Towers trick taking game plus the Horses and Haradrim promo chapter pack. I think it’s great that the promo pack is free if you purchase from a lgs. I get that the publisher wants to support the brick and mortar stores. However is this really true? I’ve seen reports that stores are getting very limited supplies of the promo pack. Not nearly enough to go with all purchases of the game. And some stores not getting the promo pack at all.

I hate this sort of promotion. Not everyone has a lgs near them, and their only way to get the game is online. So why punish them? Why not have a period of exclusivity for the promo pack for the stores (making sure they have enough copies in the first place), and then make it available for purchase from the publishers website or the bgg website?

At the moment this extra content, it’s not cosmetic, is just putting money in the pocket of scalpers on eBay. I’m pretty sure a lot of the copies for sale on eBay are from retailers. Although I have no evidence to back this up. But they are the only ones that’d have multiple copies to sell.

How did I get my copy? Well Nathan was going into Basingstoke so I asked him to pop into the flgs there and see if they had it with the promo. They did so a quick bank transfer and I’m the proud owner of the game with the promo.

I think that’s enough for now. Hopefully something interesting in my life will have happened by the next post.

As of yesterday the UK rules for owning and flying a drone in the UK changed.

Previously I only required an operators id to fly my Dji Mini 4 pro because it came in at 249g. Getting an operators id wasn’t hard as long as you had the pennies to pay for it you could get it. The only hassle about it, if you can call it that, is it needs renewing each year. The operators id needs displaying somewhere on the drone itself.

As of yesterday to fly my drone I needed to also have a flyer id. To get a flyer id you need to take a forty question multiple choice test. Which is free to take, and you can take as many times as you like until you get a pass (which is 30 out 40 questions right). This flyer id is valid for five years.

So on New Year’s Eve I took the online test and passed first time (34/40). It’s not as impressive as it sounds. You can refer to the drone code as it’s called during the test. In fact they actively encourage it. One thing I did like at the end was for the ones you got wrong it gives the correct answer.

I will also need from the start of 2028 make sure that my drone transmits a remote id. Technically drones transmitting a remote id kicks in from yesterday too. However “legacy” drones have a transition period before they have to. My drone falls into this “legacy” area.

I’ve looked into if my drone can be upgraded in some way to do this and the answer is technically yes. It can do it now if I use the enhanced batteries with it. Which I think I may have.

Another new requirement as of yesterday is if flying at night the drone has to have a flashing green light on it. Which I believe mine has but when using the camera it may switch off. I need to investigate this more.

I haven’t done much with my drone. But I want to. And the plan is to. Like my Dji action 4 camera I want to do more with them. However I’m not sure how I’m going to use them because I want to avoid using, or falling back on the tropes and cliches currently in vogue with outdoor videos. I’ll leave my subconscious to ponder that one for me in the background.

It’s been a rough couple of days as we work through the grieving process. Nico for such a small dog has left such an enormous hole behind.

But even while grieving and having much needed emotional support cuddles with the rest of the little monsters, I have bought another game.

The majority of my game purchases these days are ones of opportunity.

I belong to a UK board gaming facebook group that not only chats about games but also allows the selling and buying of games.

It has been known that on a daily basis for members of the group to post collections or games they no longer have room for or want for sale to those of us who don’t have enough games.

It’s these listings that I usually buy from these days, especially if it’s a game I’ve been after for a while.

One such purchase of opportunity from this group has been another copy of Dark Moon.

Dark Moon started life as a streamlined, dice version of Battlestar Galactica. Naturally being an ip licensed to FFG it was never going to see the light of day with that theme. Not unless FFG picked up the game. Which they didn’t. So it got released as Dark Moon by Stronghold.

Stronghold did release an expansion for the game that I never bought at the time. Then over the years the game and expansion fell out of print. Which made it harder to find a copy of the expansion when I remembered to look for it.

Which brings me to this purchase.

The seller was not only selling the core game but also the expansion. They couldn’t be separated because they were in one box. However at the price being asked I didn’t mind. Getting the expansion separately would easily cost me the asking price if not more on eBay (if it was available).

So I snapped it up.

This sort of opportunity was how I ended up with Discworld Ankh-Morpork.

Obviously I do pre-order stuff (mainly expansions these days) or buy stuff I come across via reviews. But those later ones I also count as purchases of opportunity because they were unplanned.

I’m hoping this sort of serendipity will eventually get me the Fallout expansion New California (at a reasonable price).