RogerBW's Blog

Nisekoi 2 31 January 2016

2015, comedy, manga adaptation, 12 episodes: AniDB.

Continuation of the high school harem comedy. Hero is a yakuza heir, who to stop a gang fight has to pretend to be going out with tsundere heroine #1 (rival yakuza heiress), but really wants to be involved with kind sweet ordinary heroine #2.

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Saga and X-Wing in Loudwater, November 2015 30 January 2016

Jon, one of the organisers of Wycombe Warband, lives locally, and I had a couple of games against him. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

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Abducticon, Alma Alexander 29 January 2016

2015 science fiction. At a regional American SF convention, things are going with the usual level of chaos… until the entire con hotel gets kidnapped by time-travelling androids.

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GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 17: Guilds, Matt Riggsby 28 January 2016

This Dungeon Fantasy supplement deals not just with guilds but with organisations that interact with adventurers: the congregation, the cabal, organised crime, nobles, and the like.

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Gazebo Lights 27 January 2016 - 1 comment

When we had the gazebo roof reconstructed, I cut down the old LED light strings as they were starting to fail and there wasn't really room for them in the new configuration. Now I have a new lighting arrangement.

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Stabcon 2016 26 January 2016

This long-running games convention started off as a Diplomacy gathering. These days it's a blend of board-gaming and roleplaying. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

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Earth Star, Janet Edwards 25 January 2016

2013 young adult science fiction, sequel to Earth Girl. Jarra is Handicapped, unable to leave Earth for any of the colony worlds where most of society now happens, but after a daring rescue she's a hero. Now her archaeological and historical skills will be tested in an entirely new field.

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Scream Queens season 1 24 January 2016

2015, 13 episodes. Horror comedy by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan: a masked killer is murdering members of the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority house.

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88th Academy Awards Predictions 23 January 2016

For the last few years I've been making predictions of the Academy Award winners. Last year I called six winners out of twenty predictions; this year it was eight out of twenty-three.

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The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco 22 January 2016 - 2 comments

1980 historical mystery. In 1327, Friar William of Baskerville and his novice Adso of Melk try to solve a series of murders at a monastery in northern Italy.

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More from the Science Museum 21 January 2016 - 2 comments

More from the Science Museum last Boxing Day Bank Holiday. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.

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Skeleton Hill, Peter Lovesey 20 January 2016

2009 mystery, the tenth book in Lovesey's Peter Diamond series. After a Civil War battle re-enactment on Lansdown Hill near Bath, one of the soldiers disappears. Later the police find a headless skeleton in the same area. Later still, a homeless man is found dead with a major head wound. Are the cases connected? DI Peter Diamond is determined that they are.

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Melee 19 January 2016

Melee, by Rikki Tahta, is the third of the games I was showing off at Essen 2015; it's an area-control wargame for 2-4 players.

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Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear 18 January 2016

2015 vaguely steampunk science fiction. In Rapid City on the Pacific Northwest coast, Karen Memery is one of the "seamstresses" at Hôtel Mon Cherie (sic). It's not a bad life, but she's about to get in the way of a powerful man on his way up even higher.

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Lenovo/IBM warranty service 17 January 2016

It used to be traditional on a personal blog to rant about the horrible service one had received from a big company. (These days it does no good unless it's on Twitter or Facebook.) But there doesn't seem to be enough of the other side.

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Penric's Demon, Lois McMaster Bujold 16 January 2016

2015 fantasy novella in the World of the Five Gods (formerly known as Chalion). Lord Penric, an impoverished nobleman, is on his way to his betrothal when he comes upon a riding accident. Before he knows what's happened, he's inherited a demon, and everyone's looking at him as though he might explode at any moment.

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Mini-TringCon 2 January 2016 15 January 2016 - 2 comments

Mini-TringCons are all-day house gaming events run by the organiser of TringCon, in Deepest Buckinghamshire. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.

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Farthing, Jo Walton 14 January 2016

2006 alternate-history mystery, first in the "Small Change" trilogy. In 1949, Britain is at peace with the Reich, which is still fighting in Russia. At Farthing, a country house in Hampshire, one of the architects of that peace is murdered. Jews and Bolshevists are immediately blamed, but Inspector Carmichael thinks it's more complicated than that.

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GURPS Aliens: Sparrials, Elizabeth McCoy 13 January 2016 - 2 comments

This supplement updates and expands the Sparrial race, from the original GURPS Aliens, to fourth edition.

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Guns of the Dawn, Adrian Tchaikovsky 12 January 2016 - 2 comments

2015 military fantasy. As the war between Lascanne and Denland drags on, the gentlewoman Emily Marshwic finds herself fighting on the front.

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Doctor Who Re-Watch, series 26 11 January 2016 - 9 comments

As always, spoilers abound. See Wikipedia for production details

The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
Ace - Sophie Aldred

The show stayed on Wednesday evenings against Coronation Street, and the first episode of this series got the lowest ratings of any Who episode ever.

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Good Morning Irene, Carole Nelson Douglas 10 January 2016

1991 mystery, second of Douglas's novels about Irene Adler. Bored in Paris, Irene takes on the mystery of a series of tattooed suicides. (Retitled The Adventuress in recent reissue.)

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Happy Second Blogday to Me 09 January 2016 - 1 comment

On 9 January 2014 I made my first post to this blog.

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Boxing Day Boardgames 2015 08 January 2016 - 2 comments

On Boxing Day because we felt like it, one long game and two shorter ones. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.

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Archivist Wasp, Nicole Kornher-Stace 07 January 2016

2015 fantasy/SF. Wasp is an Archivist, hunting, studying and binding ghosts for the goddess Catchkeep and Her priest in a world that has suffered some great catastrophe in the distant past.

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Mr. Robot season 1 06 January 2016 - 4 comments

2015, 10 episodes. Elliot Anderson suffers from crippling depression, paranoia and social anxiety, but still manages to hold down a cybersecurity job. Except now he's being recruited by an activist cracking group.

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Deserter, Mike Shepherd 05 January 2016

2004 military SF, second of the Kris Longknife books. Thanks to deft political manoeuvres, Kris is now a princess as well as a naval lieutenant. But when a friend goes missing while they're both on leave, she can't really do anything else but go and look for him.

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Ghost in the Shell Arise 04 January 2016

2013-2015 science fiction, manga adaptation, 4 or 10 episodes: AniDB and here.

In a world of cyborgs and poor data security, Major Motoko Kusanagi tries to catch the bad guys. A prequel of sorts to Ghost in the Shell.

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If Then, Matthew de Abaitua 03 January 2016 - 1 comment

2015 science fiction. The people of a small English town cling on to life after an economic collapse, under the protection of the Process, an ultimate allocating algorithm. But the Process seems to be spending scarce resources on recreating a battlefield of the First World War…

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Reading Boardgames Social 22 December 2015 02 January 2016 - 2 comments

No Christmas party this year, but a good session in the back room of the Castle Tap. Images follow: cc-by-sa on everything.

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December 2015 Trailers 01 January 2016 - 8 comments

Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube.)

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