Last week I was introduced to Playfire - a social networking site for computer gamers. It got me wondering why there's no equivalent for wargamers.

There's BoardGameGeek but (a) the interface sucks and (b) its remit is so much wider than wargames. TMP and Frothers are fine places to come together and talk about games but that's all. Where's the site where I can catalogue the games I play and the miniatures I own and connect with other players?

A lot of the functionality that the knitters have on Ravelry would be great - a flexible but standardised way of listing "projects" - which minis, which paints, which TOE, WIP photos, etc.

Considering how geeky and techie a lot of wargamers are, why has no one created the site? Is it simply because the idea of social networking isn't really our thing?

Someone will now pop up in the comments and tell me about a site that I should have known about all along.

This wasn't the post I was going to write tonight, but whilst double checking my facts (What? Come on, no on fact checks these days!) I discovered that the problem I wanted to write about was in fact limited to the one browser that I had been using to at the time - Opera.

I've been using Opera as my primary browser for a long time, since version 3 in early 1998. Back then it was like a breathe of fresh air compared to Netscape and Internet Explorer - so much faster, so more more secure, so many customisations possible. Subsequent releases added features that have gone on to be adopted by almost every other browser.

But in the last year or so, something has gone a bit wrong. I now find myself using Firefox to read Gmail at home (but, oddly, not at work) because neither of the two ajax powered interfaces work reliably in Opera. Likewise I post to this blog using Firefox because the plugin I use for crossposting to Live Journal breaks the 'write post' page interface in Opera. If I'm trying to geocode a batch of photos in Flickr then Opera will often hang or refuse to display the maps.

The problems are not consistent (as I said, I can use Gmail at work but not at home) and can't really be pinned down to a fault with either the browser itself, the coding on the sites or my set up. It's just a combination of all three which is making Opera increasingly unreliable when it comes to Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).

Look at the release notes for recent versions of every major and you'll see that performance, especially RIA performance, is a major goal at the moment. Opera is rightly famed for its overall performance and speed on normal web pages but it seems to me that the performance with ajax requests is lagging behind other browsers.

Will I switch to Firefox anytime soon? I doubt it. I have ten years worth of experience with Opera - I know its quirks and secrets and it has so much that I need available straight out of the box - how many Firefox addons would I need to do the same? Is there even an addon that replicates something as simple as Opera's "paste and go" function?

The fat lady isn't singing yet; but she is warming up, just in case.

Today pink_weasel has been visiting her brother in his new flat. As said flat is in Bracknell, I declined. ;-)

Though mostly I was just too knackered from a frustrating week at work and a lack of sleep. So I stayed at home and cleared out a cupboard, played some computer games (the final cut scene in Unreal Tournament 3 reminds me of the end of Blake's 7) and chilled out.

The farmers' market in West Norwood seems to be struggling. Only six stalls this week - two meat, one veg, one bread, two pointless.

My computer runs a lot better with the case open. This probably isn't a good sign. Still, soon I'll have a Wii to play with so the damn PC will be relegated to email checking only.

A puzzle: I got a £50 cheque from YouGov. I thought I only had half that amount on my account there and as I haven't been able to log in for a few months (I've requested password resets but the email never arrives) I really don't know what's going on.

Hmph.

Seen recently in a game change log:

Minor change to the AI to reduce the occurrence of Really Stupid Moves.

If only we could make minor changes to NIs to reduce the occurence of RSMs.

As we're all blogging for history, here's a bit about my day.

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Alarm went off at 7:00. Lettice got up. I didn't. Whoops. Staggered out of bed at 8:00 and between checking e-mail, showering, eating breakfast and faffing about managed to get into work around about 9:45. No meetings this morning so not a problem. Check work e-mail and calendar and tell the project manager that I love her because she's worked out that in our incredibly tight schedule for the site (www.visitlondon.com) redesign I actually have no tasks allocated to me between the end of November and the sometim in February so I can take some holiday after all. But then I groan as I realise that Friday is booked up with meetings from 10-12 and then 12:30-16:00. Ouch.

Spent most of the day working on a project for our kids' site (www.kidslovelondon.com). Nothing terribly exciting - a bit of CSS, bit of XSLT, bit of JavaScript (enforcing my own recently written coding standards to avoid document.write and use appendChild() etc.). Minor panic regarding the half term edition of the kids' newsletter but it got sent out on time and everyone seems very happy with the new style.

Went to lunch with Lettice - she's working at VL for a few weeks. And after that it was time for today's round of meetings about the redesign project. Time and money versus ambition. Same as every project I've ever worked on. We actually have a very good team (and soon to be a much bigger team, an ad will be appear in this week's New Media Age for six positions within the web team at VL) and doing most of the work in house will cut down on some of the headaches.

Ended up working until 18:30 which makes up for the late start, though a fair chunk of the last hour was spent playing Bang! Howdy (www.banghowdy.com) whilst waiting for other people to go through the designs of the Christmas pages with me. We need to have some pages up very soon in order to cover the switching on of the Christmas Lights.

London Bridge was busy and I just missed the 18:39. I bought this week's New Scientist (suckered in by the 'what would happen to Earth if humans vanished cover story) and this month's .net (a couple of articles that I can quote mine for a brainstorm in one of Friday's endless meetings). Ran into Séverine and we caught the 18:51 to Tulse Hill and then walked up to West Norwood together.

Home, sausages for dinner, then watched CSI: Miami with Lettice before sitting down to write this.

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So there you are, not my usual sort of post and probably not of any great historical interest.

This weekend the Frankenstein's Fumblers played four matches. How many do you think we won? None. Not a single one. One draw and three losses. Touchdowns scored: one. Touchdowns conceeded: seven. Oh dear. :-(

Last night the Fumblers became the first team to crash out of the Cup. After losing 0-2 to the Dwarf Giants and 1-2 to the Numinous Comets they creep back to their crypt in shame.

But, like all good undead, they will rise again!

Frankenstein's Fumblers are now available to play exhibition matches, so all other losers, or any late comers who missed out on the Cup, or any confident winners up there in the heavenly half of the draw, come and have a go if you think you're soft enough.

'cos the werewolves are getting hungry, and want some more star player points...

Last night the 2006 Old World Cup started. This, in contrast with the recent rubbish in Germany, is a Blood Bowl tournament played over the web with a few friends. My team, Frankenstein's Fumblers, played the opening game against the Dwarf Giants.

The Fumblers have a nice mix of muscle, speed and cannon fodder. The Giants have muscle, more muscle and some muscle on the side. The Giants won 2-0.

As the cup is being played as a double elimination tournament this means that I'm not out but I do have an uphill struggle if I'm going to win. My next match will be against the loser of Numinal Comets (elves) vs Veni Vedi Viking (um, Vikings).

As if I didn't have enough to read, here are a few more blogs that I've been looking at lately.

Darren Naish: Tetrapod Zoology - Incredibly fascinating science stuff.

Yours in a White Wine Sauce - Military History that never was.

Too many Ideas - SFSFW stalwart Mark Caldwell's computer art, writing and other stuff.

ThePickards - some northern bloke who's related to some other northern bloke that I work with. Web accesssibilty and football rants.

The Flogging Will Continue - Daniel James, aka Captain Cleaver, the head of Three Rings on MMORPGs and the future of entertainment.

Okay, the big question of the day: Civilization IV or Age of Empires III?

Actually, the bigger question is will either run on either of my laptops?

The newer laptop has better processor, memory, graphics card... but the graphics card overheats (or something) and screws up the display after a period of intensive use (games and to a lesser extent videos). So whilst I could play, for example, Doom III on the newer laptop I could only play for a limited period before I needed to shut the computer down and leave it for a few hours to recover.

The older laptop is lower spec and has a general overheating problem which means I need to make sure it's well ventilated if I want to play without the risk of a abrupt shutdown. But so long as I avoid that I can play for ages within the limits of the machines performance.

Guess I need to get hold of the demos and see what happens. Or maybe I need to find the space and money for a desktop. Now that we've moved to a bigger flat (though the yarn mountain means that it doesn't feel as big as when we moved in) and now that I'm no longer working from home, my computer needs have changed. I don't need a laptop for work purposes any more so maybe a gaming machine makes sense.

Recently I've been playing Civ III a lot on the old machine (another, unrelated, bug stops it from working at all on the newer one). Last night I won without fighting a single war. Playing as the Arabs I built the United Nations and was elected Secretary General by all the other nations (except the other candidate who obviously voted for himself). Especially pleasing to avoid conflict as my territory contained no coal, rubber, oil or aluminium so I was totally stuffed for modern resources.

I have no idea how to end this post.