RogerBW's Blog

Hoshiai no Sora 31 December 2019

2019 high school sports story, original anime in 12 episodes: AniDB. The boys' soft tennis club is the joke of the school; the student council decrees that they'll be disbanded unless they win at least one match at the summer tournament. Then a new kid joins the school… vt Stars Align.

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Kitty Raises Hell, Carrie Vaughn 30 December 2019

2009 urban fantasy, sixth in the series. Kitty Norville, the late-night DJ who has become the world's most famous werewolf, thought she'd dealt with the problems in Las Vegas. But some of them have followed her home.

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Perl Weekly Challenge 40: mucking about with lists 29 December 2019 - 2 comments

I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. The latest was about list manipulation.

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Fuzzy Sapiens, H. Beam Piper 28 December 2019 - 1 comment

1964 science fiction, re-read. The Fuzzies are legally recognised as sapient, and that means big changes to the government of Zarathustra.

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Marlow Tabletop and Board Games 16 December 2019 27 December 2019

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.

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Blind Eye, Stuart MacBride 26 December 2019 - 2 comments

2009 police procedural mystery, tartan noir, fifth in the Logan McRae series. Someone is attacking Polish immigrants in Aberdeen, cutting out their eyes and burning the sockets – but taking care to leave them alive – then sending ranting racist letters to the police…

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Perl Weekly Challenge 39: text parsing 25 December 2019

I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. Last week's was about parsing a specific file format.

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Clarkesworld 159, December 2019 24 December 2019

Clarkesworld is a monthly on-line magazine edited by Neil Clarke.

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The Whisperer in Darkness 23 December 2019

2019 audio drama, adapted in eight parts by Julian Simpson from the story by H. P. Lovecraft. Henry Akeley has vanished from his home near Rendlesham Forest, and the podcasters investigate.

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War Doctor, David Nott 22 December 2019 - 1 comment

2019 non-fiction. Nott is a general and vascular surgeon who uses his leave to volunteer with MSF in combat and disaster zones.

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Houkago Saikoro Club 21 December 2019

2019 high school story, 4-koma manga adaptation in 12 episodes: AniDB. Miki is terminally shy, but learns to make friends through an interest in boardgames. vt After School Dice Club.

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Thirsty Meeples December 2019 20 December 2019 - 1 comment

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

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Faceless Killers, Henning Mankell 19 December 2019

1991 police procedural mystery; first of Mankell's novels of Inspector Kurt Wallander of the Ystad police. Two elderly people living in a remote farmhouse are tortured to death; nothing's obviously missing, but someone fed the horse before they left. And a couple of clues point at foreigners in Sweden… (Translated by Steven T. Murray; original title Mördare utan ansikte.)

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Perl Weekly Challenge 38: date parsing and word games 18 December 2019

I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. Last week's was about parsing an odd date format and generating words in a Scrabble-ish manner.

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The Snake Tattoo, Linda Barnes 17 December 2019

1989 mystery, second in the Carlotta Carlyle series (neo-noir private investigation). Carlotta's old friend on the force Mooney has been suspended after he beat up a man who attacked him; he says the guy had a knife, nobody's found one, but there's one witness who hasn't come forward. While Carlotta looks for the prostitute with the snake tattoo, a rich teenager who's been roughed up is looking for his missing girlfriend in a part of town that neither of them should be visiting…

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Marlow Tabletop and Board Games 2 December 2019 16 December 2019

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.

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The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie 15 December 2019

2019 fantasy. The god Raven sustains the city of Vastai, via his Lease, a human ruler destined to sacrifice himself to the god. But Mawat the Lease's Heir returns to find that his father is missing and his uncle is the new Lease…

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Julie Enfield Investigates: The Leaves of the Dead 14 December 2019

1997 police procedural audio in four parts, by Nick Fisher. Someone is poisoned in the Reading Room of the British Library, and someone else is mummified; Detective Superintendent Julie Enfield investigates.

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Oh well 13 December 2019 - 12 comments

Well, we're fucked then.

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The Odd Job, Charlotte MacLeod 12 December 2019

1995 cozy American detective fiction; eleventh of MacLeod's novels of Boston Brahmin Sarah Kelling and art investigator Max Bittersohn. The administrator of the Wilkins Museum dies suddenly, and Sarah turns out to be named as her executrix.

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Perl Weekly Challenge 37: weekdays and day lengths 11 December 2019

I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. Last week's was about counting weekdays and working out total daylight.

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How To, Randall Munroe 10 December 2019

The author of the webcomic xkcd gives desperately impractical but scientifically rigorous advice on how to solve common problems.

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V-Commandos at Home 09 December 2019

I invited some friends over for a day of V-Commandos, a cooperative boardgame of WWII special operations. (I'd planned for six but two couldn't make it.)

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Walter Gropius: Visionary Founder of the Bauhaus, Fiona MacCarthy 08 December 2019

2019 non-fiction, examining the life and work of Gropius.

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Thirsty Meeples November 2019 07 December 2019

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

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The Sky People, S. M. Stirling 06 December 2019

2006 science fiction, first of the two books of Lords of Creation. The first Mars and Venus landers found breathable air and human life. Twenty years later, Marc Vitrac is assigned to the American base on Venus, studying the planet and its natives.

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Perl Weekly Challenge 36: VINs and Knapsacks 05 December 2019

I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. Last week's was about validating VINs and solving the knapsack problem.

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Sleep of the Innocent, Medora Sale 04 December 2019

1991 mystery/police procedural, fourth in the John Sanders/Harriet Jeffries series. A corporate chairman is found shot in a hotel room, and it looks as if the people who did it are going after the witness too, even though she doesn't know much.

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Marlow Tabletop and Board Games 18 November 2019 03 December 2019

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet at the Marlow Donkey.

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Earthly Delights, Kerry Greenwood 02 December 2019

2004 detection, first in Greenwood's Corinna Chapman series. Corinna runs a bakery in Melbourne; someone's sending threatening letters, the local junkies are dying, a new neighbour is drinking himself to death after his daughter ran off, and a lovely but mysterious man finds her interesting.

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November 2019 Trailers 01 December 2019

Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: It does not matter much what a man hates, provided he hates something.)

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