RogerBW's Blog

Gypsy Fish 31 March 2015 - 2 comments

Our pond has, apparently spontaneously, generated two goldfish. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

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Seventh Harpoon PBEM AAR: Hurrying Home 30 March 2015 - 3 comments

This scenario is set in 1975; it deals with a British carrier group, heading home across the Atlantic at the outbreak of war, attacked by Soviet submarine and air forces. Total play time has been nearly two months, my goodness.

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TringCon 28 March 2015 29 March 2015

This small one-day boardgaming event happens twice a year in a village hall in Deepest Buckinghamshire, and has been going for quite a few years. This was my third visit.

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The Book of Souls, James Oswald 28 March 2015

2012 mystery, second in Oswald's Inspector McLean series. Twelve years ago Tony McLean caught the Christmas Killer, whose last victim was McLean's fiancée. Now that man's been killed in prison, but another young woman's corpse has just turned up, killed in the same way. A copycat? Or did McLean get the wrong man?

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Camden Town Brewery again 27 March 2015

Last night I was out in London at the Camden Town Brewery. (Images follow; all are cc-by-sa.)

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Obsession in Death, J. D. Robb 26 March 2015

2015 SF/mystery; fiftieth (roughly) of J. D. Robb's In Death series. At the end of 2060, Homicide Lieutenant Eve Dallas comes up against a new threat: a murderer who's such a fan that he's killing people who've offended Dallas. And there are a lot of them.

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Reading Boardgames Social 24 March 2015 25 March 2015

About eleven people, at the Abbot Cook (formerly Jack of Both Sides) in Reading.

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Trinity Seven 24 March 2015

2014, 12 episodes: AniDB

Modern magic. After the sun turns black and Arata's girlfriend disintegrates before his eyes, he now has to go to magician school.

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The House Sitter, Peter Lovesey 23 March 2015 - 2 comments

2003 mystery, the eighth book in Lovesey's Peter Diamond series. Is a killing on a beach connected with the murder of a celebrity film director?

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Wedding Anniversary Barbecue 2015 22 March 2015 - 2 comments

A barbecue on a chilly spring day. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.

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GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses, William H. Stoddard 21 March 2015

This specialised GURPS supplement deals with unusual sensory powers, from the reasonable to the cinematic.

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Four Lions 20 March 2015 - 1 comment

2010, dir. Chris Morris, Riz Ahmed, Kayvan Novak; IMDb / allmovie

Four Muslim men from Sheffield aspire to be suicide bombers. Black comedy ensues.

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Fifteen Minutes from the Boleyn 19 March 2015 - 2 comments

During my recent reading of London Falling, I wondered how quickly someone might get from the Boleyn Ground at Upton Park to the M25.

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London Falling, Paul Cornell 18 March 2015 - 3 comments

2012 urban fantasy. The big crime boss is finally arrested, curiously easily, but explodes in a shower of blood while he's being interviewed. In trying to work out what happened, four coppers accidentally step into a much larger world.

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Sleepy Hollow season 2 17 March 2015

2014-2015: Ichabod Crane, survivor from the American Revolutionary War, continues to fight in the modern day against the imminent Apocalypse.

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Redshift Rendezvous, John E. Stith 16 March 2015

1990 SF. On a passenger liner in hyperspace, the speed of light is a mere ten metres per second. But humans are still humans.

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X-Wing Tournament in Aldershot, March 2015 15 March 2015 - 2 comments

Yesterday I took part in my first X-Wing tournament. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

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A Pint of Murder, Charlotte MacLeod 14 March 2015

1980, cosy American detective fiction; first of MacLeod's novels (as "Alisa Craig") of Madoc and Janet Rhys. In a small Canadian town, the local old biddy has died of eating her own contaminated preserves. But was she really that careless?

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X-Wing at Wycombe Warband, March 2015 13 March 2015

More X-Wing at Wycombe Warband. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

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Bad Monkey, Carl Hiaasen 12 March 2015

2013 Florida Weird. On Key West, former Miami cop Andrew Yancy has a human arm in his freezer. But there's a reason for that. Yancy thinks the story about the arm's owner dying in a boating accident is full of holes, and sets off on an unofficial investigation.

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Ruining My Childhood 11 March 2015 - 5 comments

It has become fashionable to claim that a remake or reinvention of a favourite book, film or whatever from when one was young "ruined my childhood". And inevitably it has also become fashionable to dismiss such overblown nonsense. I think there is potential for a useful middle way.

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Penguins of Madagascar 10 March 2015 - 1 comment

2014, dir. Eric Darnell and Simon J. Smith; IMDb / allmovie

In this spin-off from the Madagascar series, four penguin secret agents attempt to foil the plot of the sinister Dr Octavius Brine. Or at least to find Cheesy Dibbles to eat.

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Starhawk, Jack McDevitt 09 March 2015 - 2 comments

2013 SF, seventh in the Academy series and a prequel. Priscilla Hutchins is just completing interstellar pilot training, but already demand for pilots is dropping. And terrorists are threatening the terraforming project. Spoilers.

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Agent Carter, season 1 08 March 2015 - 3 comments

2014-2015 superheroic fantasy. In 1946, after the presumed death of Captain America, his girlfriend Peggy Carter works for a secret government agency.

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Networking without network-manager 07 March 2015

I don't like network-manager. It's too big and complicated and hard to persuade to do the things I want. Fortunately it's not too hard to do without it.

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Denki-Gai no Honya-San 06 March 2015

2014, 12 episodes: AniDB; also known as "Electric Town Bookstore".

Workplace sitcom based in a manga/DVD/game/etc. shop, poking fun at the fandom and conventions of the genre.

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A Distant Mirror, Barbara Tuchman 05 March 2015 - 2 comments

1978, popular history. Tuchman recounts the history of France and some nearby countries in the latter part of the Fourteenth Century, with particular focus on the nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy.

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Thirsty Meeples March 2015 04 March 2015

Back to the boardgame café. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

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Contact Lenses 03 March 2015 - 2 comments

I've recently switched back to using contact lenses.

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Captains Courageous, Rudyard Kipling 02 March 2015 - 2 comments

1897: the spoiled son of a millionaire, washed overboard from a steamer, is rescued and put to work by the crew of a Grand Banks cod-boat.

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SpringCon 28 February 2015 01 March 2015

Back to this this small quarterly boardgames convention in Watford, and I kept up my pattern of not winning any game I play.

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