Shimmin Beg (he/him)

Brit, enjoys learning things. ESOL, academia, writing games, proofreading and editing.

Trans men are men, trans women are women.

Cymraeg/Deutsch/Gaelg OK, 中文 & 日本語 shaky.

'the gentleman who had the complicated Excel sheets'

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npub1nn269fzuusc2qlhrtwam0ynms4qnp6887clgw4z4p2t84u4xzq2suz0wem

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[email protected]

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nprofile1qqsfe4dz53wwgv9q0m34hwahjfac2sfsarnlv058232s49n672npq9gpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43qrpczgp

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relay.ditto.pub

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Last Notes

2026-09-25 17:13:06 GMT

SMART targets coming up soon.
In theory having SMART targets for every learner is a great idea to help them learn effectively.
In practice, having several SMART targets for every single learner, all of which require the teacher to provide suitable opportunities in class which leave clear evidence of success, is completely unworkable. So you either assign the same targets to everyone based on forthcoming activities with a paper trail, or it falls apart.

2026-09-22 13:33:32 GMT

I could do with collecting a pile of short (1-5 min), extremely SFW videos for use with my adult English learners. I have a few Pixar ones and a couple I've gathered at random, but any recs would be useful.
Had a nasty shock when one I'd flicked through and thought completely harmless turned out to have 3 seconds of full-frontal male nudity and scandalised my class. Watching lots of videos all the way through for NSFW, appropriacy, level etc. is time-consuming though.

2026-09-09 14:43:07 GMT

Minor but frustrating example of technology getting deliberately worse: I had a plugin that helps download videos from sites, which I often use to grab small videos for classroom use (often 2-min explanations, news clips etc) so I'm less vulnerable to internet issues at college.
The plugin has updated and now demands you buy a premium account to download more than once every two hours.
Anyway, recs for alternatives welcome.

2026-08-29 07:57:46 GMT

I've talked about this before, but the Pathfinder setting has weird relationships with settlement size.
They have "cities" of a thousand people - which you could do things with, take a historical approach and see what those would really look like. But they also want the trappings of much larger cities.

2026-08-26 12:11:10 GMT

New modern Cthulhu Eternal scenario is out!
Play a group of blue-collar workers at a Lancashire scrapyard, whose day goes very wrong when a prehistoric demon pops up to conquer itself a new mortal kingdom.
Short and dramatic, with suggestions for expanding it into something more investigative or using it as a prologue.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/581433/brazen

2026-08-23 21:36:47 GMT

Made myself a reading template to let me read these Chinese kids' books without the pinyin constantly dragging my eyes away.
(flattened tampon box with line-sized slits cut out with a Stanley knife)

2026-08-22 21:10:06 GMT

GURPS Places: Accident and Emergency is up.
https://archive.org/details/gurps-places-accident-emergency_20260816
Maybe one day the URL will be tidied up. There was a SNAFU during uploading, apparently.

2026-08-20 06:33:43 GMT

Re: last boost, I feel like I've seen several times the conflation of "riddle" and "question" in this kind of context. Monty Python and Bilbo contributing, of course.
I would be sliding my players a dictionary with the word "riddle" underlined.

2026-08-09 13:09:01 GMT

Coming to realise that in at least some parts of the US, houses simply do not have distinct property boundaries or gardens. Just a house on the ground and then at some point there's another house, no fences or hedges or anything in between. Occasionally a single waist-height bar but nothing to give privacy or prevent anything smaller than cattle crossing.
I knew front gardens tended to be like that but all-round is a new discovery.

2026-08-09 10:18:51 GMT

A very weird feature of attributes in certain versions of D&D etc. is that because Intelligence gives you bonus skill points *per level*, and because players generlaly prioritise keeping the skills they consider most important maxed out, when characters increase their Intelligence, they tend to suddenly become extremely skilled in an entirely new field they previously showed no interest in whatsoever.
"I have fought lots of ogres and just became a world-leading expert in theology"

2026-08-07 21:37:53 GMT

Good news! Fairphone secretly and bafflingly changed the shipping address of the part I ordered and never notified me of delivery, so it has been sitting in a bargain booze on the other side of the city for a week, allegedly. What the actual fuck.
(when I checked the UPS tracker and saw "Delivered" I initially thought they'd been too lazy to deliver and dropped it at a pickup point, or it had simply been stolen, but no, Fairphone just inexplicably changed the shipping address to this wine shop)

2026-08-02 09:45:16 GMT

You know, I feel it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to say that if you trigger a by-election by resigning and then immediately stand in that election, you should foot the bill.
We do now have recall options so it's not like the public has no other way to get rid of a politician mid-term than relying on their "honour" to call a new election (though it's probably harder than it should be).

2026-07-28 19:08:16 GMT

Okay, apparently Tripp suitcases:
- have spare parts available for their models
- will provide spare parts to cases in warranty (5 years)
- refuse to sell spare parts
So I won't bother buying another one from them because I resent being told to recycle a perfectly sound, expensive suitcase because the manufacturers won't sell me one of the replacements wheels they have sitting around.

2026-07-21 16:33:08 GMT

Dammit, forgot to say no garlic, so this dish contains roughly my own bodyweight in garlic. There goes the next 24 hours.
Why couldn't I be a supertaster for chocolate or something?
*mainlines Fisherman's Friends to no real effect*

2026-07-20 19:43:13 GMT

Writing adventures and gnashing my teeth at the historical forces that led to the ground/first floor division. It's more annoying than even imperial/metric because it's invisible unless you specifically call it out.

2026-07-20 18:45:44 GMT

Started a forum topic for bouncing around incomplete adventure ideas to try and get them unstuck.
https://discussion.tekeli.li/t/adventure-brewing/6823
@nprofile…k36v @nprofile…uv4t go on, you know you want to...

2026-07-18 10:02:11 GMT

Cologne chocolate museum goes harder than 90% of Very Serious Organisations. It's really good.
Also people will tell you it's a 90-minute visit, especially the boat trip companies who suggest breaking a river tour there. Don't believe their lies. It took us about three hours and if we'd know we'd have stopped for a coffee break in the middle (not sure if museum allows re-entry though). Give it the time to appreciate everything.
https://s3.masto.ai/media_attachments/files/116/940/380/079/225/073/original/4c83be231250c36a.jpg
https://s3.masto.ai/media_attachments/files/116/940/380/090/995/764/original/7a7f982048d9cce7.jpg
https://s3.masto.ai/media_attachments/files/116/940/380/077/220/861/original/814f82906a3f24e9.jpg
https://s3.masto.ai/media_attachments/files/116/940/380/075/526/828/original/0fbc1ae1ff20c4b1.jpg

2026-07-15 18:14:12 GMT

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@nprofile…zqv6 this feels like a puzzle from a choose your own adventure book. You'll need to remember those symbol and word combinations eighty pages later.

2026-07-13 14:33:13 GMT

I had forgotten that most insidious of Continental ploys, the public toilet in major infrastructure that still demands payment as though you hadn't spend hundreds of Euro to enter the building in the first place.
It's like they *want* people widdling all over the floor.
Keep your fetishes to yourself please, institutions.

2026-07-11 19:13:19 GMT

To my delight we are staying in an air conditioned room tonight.
Spouse has just turned the temperature *up* from 21 to 25 and a surge of despair sweeps through me

2026-07-06 15:03:12 GMT

If anyone would like to play some Victorian weird mystery, I have dropped the price on The Perishing of Sir Ashby Phipps to a mere $3, or about the price of a tolerable coffee.
A slow-paced investigative scenario for your D100 game, easily adapted to something else, with extensive background on Victorian Lincolnshire for you to riff on.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com//product/403202/the-perishing-of-sir-ashby-phipps?affiliate_id=284092
https://s3.masto.ai/media_attachments/files/116/873/621/469/148/341/original/69b94e4181802dc1.png

2026-06-30 16:22:34 GMT

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@nprofile…4uga "IF I COULD JUST GET A WEEK'S EXTENSION ON THE ASSIGNMENT-"

2026-06-30 10:29:11 GMT

Escorting a group of students on a trip really brings home how differently people view walking distances. Lots of people tired after the first ten minutes and struggling after fifteen, just walking from the coach to the city centre. Not even the people with actual health issues who have different arrangements. Just average students who don't exercise behind doing the shopping and don't have stamina.

2026-06-27 16:29:49 GMT

Hey what if the rest of the world just sanctioned every company and executive of every company that participated in the US sanctions against ICC members?
Yeah we're not using Microsoft or Google or any of the American financial companies any more soz lol also you're all banned from everything. No foreign holidays for your millionaire investors. No Swiss bank accounts. No Japanese cars.
Just fucking do it you wimps. Go scorched earth.

2026-06-23 20:55:53 GMT

In British Weather news, our door has swollen so much in the heat that even this, what, 1-2 hours after sunset it is physically impossible to open.
Many thanks to the genius who decided a matt black front door was a good idea. (Presumably also the person who chose the square toilets, having never encountered male anatomy)

2026-06-21 10:29:31 GMT

I am curious how many people have read (or even heard of) the "Ring of Fire" series by Eric Flint and others. I'd never heard of it, and only read one thing by Flint, until I noticed a GURPS supplement is coming out.
GURPS does tend to put out supplements for odd corners of nerddom, and clearly felt there was enough interest in this series for it to be worthwhile. So I'm curious.

2026-06-18 21:56:56 GMT

It's been a long day of teaching, lesson prep, and mostly, huge quantities of paperwork that would be rendered largely unnecessary by good administration (I should know, that sort of thing used to be my job).
So obviously I got home at 9pm and started designing a 19th-century German occult society for this scenario.

2026-06-06 18:40:56 GMT

GURPS Magic, why do you confidently state "There are five classes of duration for spells: instantaneous, temporary, lasting, permanent, and enchantment." and describe what each of these means, then list absolutely zero spells with a duration of lasting, but 20+ with an "indefinite" duration, which does not exist according to your own rules?

2026-06-05 18:42:30 GMT

Worked so much overtime recently that a teabag had been able to go mouldy in the teapot due to neglect 🤢

2026-06-01 21:05:24 GMT

Obscure Cthulhu thing - do I happen to know anyone who has a copy of Spoor Anthology 2, containing Crispin Burnham's The Thing in the Library?

2026-05-31 20:14:47 GMT

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@nprofile…zqv6 @nprofile…uzgz If another pair of hands would help, I am always around.

2026-05-31 10:23:33 GMT

Curious when people in the UK stopped smoking in gyms, which I assume they used to given how athletes endorsed smoking.
I remember seeing people in films of *boxing* gyms sitting down with a cigarette, and it would be down to gym rules when that was stopped (until the smoking ban of course). Don't think I've seen many ordinary gyms in film/TV.
Also curious about other countries, particularly anywhere without smoking bans. This isn't a very internet-searchable bit of info.

2026-05-29 13:28:18 GMT

Trying to work out stats for various animals in Cthulhu Eternal... @nprofile…acx3
Sitting here pondering things like "Is a ghoul's bite and claws worse or weaker than a jaguar's? Depends which stories you look at!"
A lot of Mythos beasties in games have tended to have claws and teeth that are as deadly as firearms, which to me feels excessive for human-like things like ghouls, whose claws and bites in CE are similar to longswords!

2026-05-25 17:23:08 GMT

Our council is now full of Reform guttersnipes, and the bin collection page doesn't work. I assume this is related.

2026-05-25 11:30:51 GMT

Pretty sure these Nandos portions are significantly smaller than a couple of months ago… just the chicken, not the veg and chips

2026-05-23 18:00:44 GMT

Intrigued by many online conversations about how PF concentration checks are too difficult and how to boost them.
My experience is generally that it is almost impossible to hinder spellcasters with concentration checks because most effects that do so have a low fixed DC while bonuses scale nonlinearly.

2026-05-18 18:17:15 GMT

Editing an old episode and it reminds me that players are (in general) inclined to have their characters completely unmoved by scary or weird situations unless mechanically compelled otherwise.

2026-05-16 18:41:37 GMT

Seriously thinking about trying to put together a very simple roleplaying scenario for my ESOL learners. I've been hesitant because most of them are mature learners who don't play board games or have any nerd tendencies that I can riff on, and more mundane genres often lean on violence (I have vulnerable learners) or deep social aspects that require a lot of buy-in. Still. Time to watch some @nprofile…4uga videos again.

2026-05-16 10:40:10 GMT

Anyone able to tell me if Düsseldorf is interesting to visit? We're hoping to go to Germany this summer by train, and my wife's not keen on extra travel beyond the Eurostar (getting to London to begin with is bad enough) so Nürnberg is out. Köln and Essen also viable, and I've been to Köln before on business.
I really need to brush up my German, it's years since I used it regularly :( Why no German neighbours?
(I know, Brexit, I know...)

2026-05-09 22:14:44 GMT

I am not sure how coherent this is but I would like cool and scary real-life beasts to be cool and scary fantasy RPG opponents rather than fairly minor cannon fodder that quickly give way to the supernatural and fellow superhumans.
Show some respect to the rex.
https://librarians-and-leviathans.blogspot.com/2026/05/a-bigger-world-than-you.html

2026-05-05 10:45:32 GMT

Do I know anyone working in the NHS who can tell me what is in various rooms? Interested in equipment and supplies etc. you'd find in A&E assessment rooms, resus, etc.
I promise this is for roleplaying games and not some kind of poorly-planned heist.

2026-05-03 18:47:33 GMT

Anyone want to have a look at the GURPS mini-location I wrote up while I was in the hospital? Spoilers: it's an A&E waiting room. Probs needs more info on a couple of things.

2026-04-23 22:02:24 GMT

Randomly-timed reminder for any GURPS fans that I made a supplement full of Earth magic and related stuff, which you can get entirely free here: https://archive.org/details/earth-spells-for-gurps-magic #GURPS
I am pretty proud of this one.

2026-04-02 15:02:05 GMT

It is done.
A comprehensive set of rules for breaking things in Pathfinder 1e - consolidating rules, providing a way to actually determine DCs, revised rules for object hardness and HP depending on construction, and crucially, rules for what happens to anything other than weapons or armour when they're "broken".
But above all, in a truly mammoth endeavour of questionable sanity, a *complete listing of breakability for every single magic item in the game*
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/562953/expanded-object-damage-rules-for-pathfinder-1e
https://s3.masto.ai/media_attachments/files/116/335/707/243/917/783/original/ef6eb3d27103ba32.png

2026-02-21 11:26:23 GMT

Completed the regular email to my MP.
If you have any free time, and you aren't a frothing bigot, please consider writing to your MP every so often to highlight important views and policy issues. I'm sure my emails are largely ignored by this point, but 100 different people emailing will be viewed differently.
(this month: no you cannot Prohibition your way out of people-smuggling; yes it's fine to look at other Euro countries for policy but not if it's racist)

2026-02-20 22:13:06 GMT

Rambling thoughts about multiple PCs in horror games vs. fiction, and various loosely-associated issues.
https://librarians-and-leviathans.blogspot.com/2026/02/three-men-in-horror-story-to-say.html

2025-12-04 14:04:03 GMT

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I have followed up by also writing to David Lammy. The government does not seem to offer any way to petition government ministers directly and MPs usually refuse to engage with anyone who isn't a constituent, which seems like a major flaw (from a citizen's point of view, obviously it's very convenient for the government). Still, I tried.

2025-12-04 13:50:45 GMT

Emailing my MP twice in one day because not only are Girl Guides forced to exclude trans girls but also David Lammy is trying to fucking abolish the fucking right to fucking trial by jury, we had an entire Magna Carta over this you fuckspleen wastegibbets what the everloving hell is fucking wrong with you
YOU DEMAND PEOPLE MOVING TO THE UK MEMORISE A LOAD OF FUCKING BOLLOCK ABOUT BRITISH VALUES AND YOU ARE TRYING TO ABOLISH THE ONES THAT ACTUALLY EXIST

2025-05-25 11:46:42 GMT

I know it's a well-established trope, but "X thinks they are incompetent but is secretly incredibly powerful; teachers refuse to tell or instruct them and instead keep throwing them at life-threatening situations and urging them to 'figure it out' themselves while they spend their days in misery" is a bad trope, they are terrible teachers and bad people

2025-01-13 16:11:37 GMT

I genuinely do not see how the USA recovers other than a French Revolution-style overthrow or mass killing of the right-wing leadership and judiciary. I'm not advocating for that. I just don't see how they shake off the grip the fascists have secured on the police, senior judiciary, media, and political spheres thanks to complacent centrists refusing to treat them as an existential threat

2024-12-14 11:10:09 GMT

Asda selling what are clearly red delicious apples as galas, a crime against false advertising laws, not to mention stomachs

2024-11-17 14:50:06 GMT

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@nprofile…74v9 This author is collecting references to list at the start of their own werewolf-themed scenario, so I assume they only want scenarios - if you do feel inclined to have a search I'm sure they'd be grateful.
*I* would be happy to hear about werewolves in folk tales, though!

2024-09-02 06:50:32 GMT

All these fun classroom activities!! do tend to rely on the assumption that you have more than two students and more than one of them is willing to participate in anything outside their phone.
#tesol

2024-08-16 18:54:45 GMT

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@npub18s6…c4cg where would you say is the best place to start understanding your work on TTRPGs for language learning?