2020 science fiction, tenth in the Diving Universe series. Contemporary with Boneyards, Squishy's various sabotage teams destroy stealth tech research stations across the Empire.
2019 animated action/comedy, dir. Josh Cooley / John Lasseter, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen: IMDb / allmovie. What if God is just a series of children?
2019 military SF, thirteenth and to date last of this series. As the truce continues to hold, the Far Traveller explores a forgotten section of space.
Back in the Usual Pub.
2011 mystery, fourth in the series (police plus amateur detection). A private museum is about to open the recently-discovered coffin of a mediæval bishop, but just before the event the museum's director drops dead next to it.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved sorted lists and iterative reductions. (Note that this closes today.)
2010 animated action/comedy, dir. Lee Unkrich, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen: IMDb / allmovie. Growing up is a thing now.
2015 crime, fourth in the Sean Duffy series. Belfast, 1985: what looks like a family murder followed by a failson's suicide turns out to have wide-ranging implications.
This Meetup-based boardgames group skipped a meeting due to absences so some of us got together locally.
2004 mystery, third in its series. Back in 1930, Jonathan Ketchem left his wife and was never seen again. Now someone else has gone missing from the small town of Miller's Kill.
1999 animated action/comedy, dir. Ash Brannon / John Lasseter / Lee Unkrich, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen: IMDb / allmovie. What is the righteous path to take in your life?
1987 SF, seventh of its series. With a parallel timeline thought to be causing disruptions, the Time Commandos are sent to join Jason in his voyage to retake the Golden Fleece.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved more finding strings that can be made out of letters, and a search for a subsequence. (Note that this is open until 18 June 2023.)
2001 audio adaptation by Michael Bakewell of Christie's 1940s mystery, in one 90-minute episode. Newlywed New Zealander Gwenda Reed finds the house she's just bought in England stranglely, even hauntingly, familiar, and then breaks down at a performance of The Duchess of Malfi…
2012 collection of short stories (published between 1958 and 1992) with murder, or at least attempted murder, as a theme.
This Meetup-based boardgames group continues to meet in the Britannia.
2015 fantasy. Bryony is caught in a snowstorm and takes refuge in an abandoned manor house that casually gives her food and drink. But when she tries to take home the cut rose…
1995 animated action/comedy, dir. John Lasseter, Tom Hanks, Tim Allen: IMDb / allmovie. What if the toys could, like, come to life, man?
2022 historical detection, twenty-second in Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series (1920s flapper detective in Australia). Phryne happens across an opium-pipe, then a corpse, in a suburb to the west of Melbourne; meanwhile her family work to track down irregularities at the Blind Institute.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved word breakdowns and perfect squares. (Note that this is open until 11 June 2023.)
One of the more complex aspects of En Garde! is gambling, and correct choices are not obvious. So I worked it out in detail.
2018 military SF, twelfth of this ongoing series. Roy Olfetrie's father was caught on the take, so Roy had to leave the Academy; but a chance meeting puts him aboard Daniel Leary's latest venture…
2019 crime tragedy, dir. Josh and Benny Safdie, Adam Sandler; IMDb / allmovie. Gambling with the mob's money is not good for your health.
2018 Victorian romance. Helena is desperate to escape from her family; Justin is a scarred ex-soldier living in isolation in Devon and has advertised for a wife…
2018 animated superheroics, dir. Brad Bird, Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter; IMDb / allmovie. I know, let's give the chick something to do!
2019 SF, seventh of its series. Roslyn Chambers ends up as a flag lieutenant in the big fleet trying to win the war; Damien Montgomery follows the clues to uncover something the enemy's keeping secret even from their own people.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved sequence processing and a cost optimisation. (Note that this is open until 4 June 2023.)
Back in the Usual Pub, about eleven of us on a bank holiday.
2011 thriller, second of this ongoing series; translated from the original German by Rachel Ward. A new client brings Nea a complicated multi-stage puzzle…
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…)