RogerBW's Blog

Fargo 31 May 2022

1996 crime drama/black comedy, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, Frances McDormand: IMDb / allmovie. Jerry just wants his wife kidnapped so that her rich father will pay a ransom, that he'll then split with the kidnappers. But subcontracting crime rarely pays.

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Evidence for the Crown, Molly Lefebure 30 May 2022

1954 non-fiction. Molly Lefebure was a junior reporter who took a job as secretary to Keith Simpson, the Supervisor of Medico-Legal Post-Mortems and the forensic pathologist most often consulted by the Metropolitan Police. Reissued in 1990 as Murder on the Home Front.

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The English Patient 29 May 2022 - 1 comment

1996 romantic drama, dir. Anthony Minghella, Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas: IMDb / allmovie. As the final victory over Axis forces in Italy approaches, a nurse looks after a badly-burned mystery man in an abandoned monastery.

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Aurora Blazing, Jessie Mihalik 28 May 2022

2019 SF/romance. Bianca von Hasenberg, a rich widow (rumour has it, by her own hand), spends her resources trying to save other women from the grinder that is Consortium social life. But when she's attacked and the heir to von Hasenberg is kidnapped…

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UK Games Expo 2022 27 May 2022 - 5 comments

UK Games Expo is happening on the first weekend of June. I'd hoped to go, but having thought it over, I shan't be there.

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The Weekly Challenge 166: Hexing the Directories 26 May 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved word searching and directory mangling. (Note that this is open until 29 May 2022.)

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Evil Under the Sun 25 May 2022

1998 audio adaptation by Michael Bakewell of Christie's 1941 mystery, in five 30-minute episodes. The (in)famous actress is brazenly conducting an affair, and it's not really a surprised when she turns up strangled, but everyone has an alibi…

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Knot of Shadows, Lois McMaster Bujold 24 May 2022

2021 fantasy novella in the World of the Five Gods (formerly known as Chalion). A corpse found floating in the harbour is not unusual… but this one, while clearly dead, is still moving. Penric digs into what happened, and why.

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Marlow Tabletop and Board Games 2 May 2022 23 May 2022

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet twice a month.

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Poor Man's Fight, Elliott Kay 22 May 2022 - 2 comments

2013 space-navy SF, first of a series. On Archangel, your final exam determines how much you owe the company for your education. Tanner Malone messed that up, but joining the Navy will help pay the debt back faster. Meanwhile the local pirates are getting bolder…

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Strange Days 21 May 2022

1995 SF noir, dir. Kathryn Bigelow, Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett; IMDb / AllMovie. Paranoia's just reality on a finer scale.

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The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein 20 May 2022

2003 fantasy/SF, third of its series. Rowan the Steerswoman comes to the seaside town of Alemeth, searching the Annex for evidence of a wizard who doesn't seem to exist…

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The Weekly Challenge 165: Scaling the Fits 19 May 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved generating SVG and fitting lines to points. (Note that this is open until 22 May 2022.)

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Kill Orbit, Joel Dane 18 May 2022

2020 young adult SF, last volume of its trilogy. Maseo Kaytu and Anvil Squad are being sent into space, and nobody's even telling them why…

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Eurovision 2022 17 May 2022 - 1 comment

Still not really "my" sort of music, and nor should it be, but I enjoyed several of these…

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What Will Burn, James Oswald 16 May 2022

2021 supernatural mystery in modern Edinburgh, eleventh in Oswald's Inspector McLean series. An old woman's found burned to death in her isolated home; not an accident, not with the beating first, but with a week before the body was even discovered this is going to be a tough one. Then men start dying mysteriously, and the only connection seems to be that they've recently got divorced…

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PostScript Libraries 15 May 2022

Yes, I'm still programming in PostScript. Why? Because I enjoy it.

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TringCon 30 April 2022 14 May 2022

This small one-day boardgaming event has been carrying on, mostly without me. I think it was about 30 people this time, with the organisers and the people I was playing with the only mask-wearers.

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Knight Templar, Leslie Charteris 13 May 2022

1930 thriller. The Saint and Roger Conway work again to prevent Rayt Marius from plunging Europe into (highly profitable for him) war. Vt The Avenging Saint.

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The Weekly Challenge 164: Happy Palindromes 12 May 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved two number-sequence tasks. (Note that this is open until 15 May 2022.)

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Apollo 13 11 May 2022 - 3 comments

1995 space history, dir. Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton; IMDb / AllMovie. Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here.

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Duel in the Dark, Jay Allan 10 May 2022

2016 space-navy SF, first of an 18-book series. Everybody knows that another war is coming, and Captain Barron and the battleship Dauntless are getting a refit a long way from the front lines. Until a third power gets involved.

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Silverstone Games 09 May 2022

A trip to Silverstone for a small games day with a couple of friends and fellow-podcasters.

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One, Two, Buckle My Shoe 08 May 2022

2004 audio adaptation by Michael Bakewell of Christie's 1940 mystery, in five 30-minute episodes. Poirot leaves his dentist, passing a lady who loses the buckle of her shoe while getting out of a taxi. Later, it turns out that the dentist is dead. Suicide? Of course not.

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A Ship of the Line, C. S. Forester 07 May 2022

1938 Napoleonic naval fiction, second written but seventh by internal chronology. After his triumphs in the Lydia, Hornblower gets command of a ship of the line, if an ugly and unseaworthy one, not to mention short of crew.

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Dagon (2001) 06 May 2022

2001 horror, dir. Stuart Gordon, Ezra Godden, Francisco Rabal: IMDb / allmovie. No one leave Imboca. People come, but no one leave.

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The Weekly Challenge 163: Sums and Sums 05 May 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved various summation-like operations. (Note that this is open until 8 May 2022.)

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The Dance of Time, David Drake and Eric Flint 04 May 2022

2006 alternate-history war story, last of six books. The Malwa have been pushed back but still hold their home territory; Belisarius and allies must finish the job.

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Marlow Tabletop and Board Games 18 April 2022 03 May 2022

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet twice a month.

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How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back, Diana Rowland 02 May 2022

2014 urban fantasy, fourth of its series. Angel Crawford is still a zombie (subtype conscious and super-strong, though still cerebrivorous), and things seem to be going all right, but several of her allies get kidnapped by the evil corporation…

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April 2022 Trailers 01 May 2022 - 1 comment

Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: I want a trailer to tell me what's different about this film; the marketers want it to tell me why it's like all the others…)

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