RogerBW's Blog

Skydancer, Geoffrey Archer 31 January 2021

1987 Cold War espionage thriller. The upgrade to Polaris warheads, to get them through a new generation of Soviet defences, is one of the most closely-guarded of British secrets. Then one of the pages is found in a rubbish bin on Parliament Hill…

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Sixth 1 Player Guild UK Meet 30 January 2021

The 1 Player Guild is a group of solo game players, communicating through BoardGameGeek. Not counting the on-line birthday party last year with many of the same people, this was the sixth get-together for the UK contingent – on-line, alas but necessarily.

With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

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The Spellman Files, Lisa Lutz 29 January 2021

2007 mystery or at least mystery-adjacent; first in the Spellmans series. Izzy Spellman is a private investigator, from a family of the same. This does not make things simpler when her younger sister goes missing.

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The Mysterious Affair at Styles 28 January 2021

2005 audio adaptation of Christie's 1920 mystery, in 5 half-hour episodes. Captain Hastings, home on leave from the front, is staying with friends at Styles Court when the elderly owner dies suddenly. He enlists his old friend Hercule Poirot to help investigate.

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Perl Weekly Challenge 97: Caesar Substrings 27 January 2021

I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. The latest involved implementing the Caesar cipher and breaking up binary strings. (Note that this is open until 31 January 2021.)

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New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird, Paula Guran 26 January 2021

2015 fantasy/horror anthology on the theme of modern Lovecraftian stories, sampling stories published between 2010 and 2014.

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Marlow Tabletop and Board Games 19 January 2021 25 January 2021

This Meetup-based boardgames group remains on-line for the moment; as usual we got together on Jitsi and then played some games online.

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Nerves of Steel, Tammie Jo Shults 24 January 2021 - 4 comments

2019 non-fiction. On 17 April 2018, the Boeing 737-7H4 registered N772SW suffered a catastrophic engine failure at 32,000 feet over Pennsylvania. Only one person died. This is the story of the captain's life.

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Boardgames in Isolation: January (part 1) 23 January 2021

More boardgames played from home.

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Perl Weekly Challenge 96: Reverse Distance 22 January 2021

I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. The latest involved reversing words in a string and calculating Levenshtein distance. (Note that this is open until 24 January 2021.)

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Answers for the Princess Charlotte General Knowledge Paper 2020 21 January 2021 - 4 comments

Here are the answers to last year's quiz. (Gosh, that seems like a long time ago now.)

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The Science of Being Human, Marty Jopson 20 January 2021

2019 non-fiction, popular science; short treatments of scientific aspects of human existence.

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More Kicking, More Starting 19 January 2021 - 4 comments

After last year's GURPS PDF Challenge, there's more of my stuff now being funded on Kickstarter.

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Mere Ethics 18 January 2021 - 2 comments

There is obvious a certain Schadenfreude to be had in observing the flailings of the people who got caught during and after the failed coup in the USA. But I think one should go beyond that.

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Letter Tycoon review and strategies 17 January 2021

Letter Tycoon, by Brad Brooks, was published in 2015 and is now quite hard to find. But I was recently introduced to it on BoardGameArena, and it turns out I'm quite good at it.

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Running a Vote 16 January 2021

I recently ran the vote for the Pearple's Choice Awards, which used to happen on the old Shut Up & Sit Down forum and now happen on discussion.tekeli.li.

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The Orphans of Raspay, Lois McMaster Bujold 15 January 2021

2019 short fantasy novel in the World of the Five Gods (formerly known as Chalion). On his way home from a pointless job, Penric's ship is captured by pirates, and he finds himself responsible for two orphaned girls.

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Perl Weekly Challenge 95: Palindrome Stack 14 January 2021 - 1 comment

I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. The latest involved testing for palindromic numbers and building a stack class. (Note that this is open until 17 January 2021.)

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Fun with Letter Tycoon 13 January 2021 - 1 comment

I've been playing a lot of Letter Tycoon on BoardGameArena (it seems that losing at Scrabble to my wife is good training for this). I wanted a practice opponent. So I wrote one.

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A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear, Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling 12 January 2021 - 2 comments

2020 non-fiction. In 2004, Libertarians started moving to Grafton, New Hampshire, in an effort to "free the town". The bears soon followed.

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Marlow Tabletop and Board Games 5 January 2021 11 January 2021

This Meetup-based boardgames group remains on-line for the moment; as usual we got together on Jitsi and then played some games online.

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New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird, Paula Guran 10 January 2021

2011 fantasy/horror anthology on the theme of modern Lovecraftian stories.

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Boardgames in Isolation: December (part 2) 09 January 2021

More boardgames played from home.

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The Book of Cthulhu 2, Ross E. Lockhart 08 January 2021 - 1 comment

2012 fantasy/horror anthology, consisting of more stories inspired by Lovecraft.

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Advent of Code 2020 07 January 2021

I did Advent of Code again, and had a good time. Spoilers.

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The Sittaford Mystery 06 January 2021

1990 audio adaptation of Christie's 1931 mystery, in 5 half-hour episodes. At a table-turning session in a near-snowbound house on the edge of Dartmoor, the spirit claims that Captain Trevelyan has been murdered. When the party gets down to his house later, so he has. The fiancée of the prime suspect works to clear his name.

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Perl Weekly Challenge 94: Binary Anagrams 05 January 2021 - 1 comment

I’ve been doing the Perl Weekly Challenges. The latest involved grouping anagrams and more furkling with binary trees. (Note that this is open until 10 January 2021.)

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December 2020 Trailers 04 January 2021 - 5 comments

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

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2020 in boardgames 03 January 2021

2020 was another very boardgame-ful year, in patches.

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2020 in Books 02 January 2021

In 2020 I read 141 books, very slightly up from last year.

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Roger's 2020 in 50 Words 01 January 2021

A friend likes to sum up his year in a set number of words, and I copy this fine idea. "Think of it as a short and un-boastful summary of the year, which nobody is expected to understand all of."

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