| ||||||||
| I forgot to post this here - a 200-word BSG / Lensman novel crossover, originally written for Starbug's First Contact round robin on Twisting the Hellmouth. ( The Immigrant Problem ) | ||||||||
comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment   |
Meme-Free Zone
|
|||||||||||||
May 11th, 2008
| ||||
| Gacked from Secondsilk, another of those memes I don't usually do. The following is a list of Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award winning novels (not including retro-Hugos) Bold the ones you’ve finished Italicise the ones you’ve started but not finished Underline the ones were you’ve seen the film/tv show ( Read more... ) I've read quite a few of them. No real surprises there considering I've been reading SF and fantasy since I was 12. | ||||
| comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| ||||||
Pointed out by ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} oldhans177Might be fun though I have a feeling that the plot will be somewhat predictable. | ||||||
| comments: Leave a comment |
May 6th, 2008
| ||||||||
| I'm thinking about cutting the price on the Flatland RPG, a Forgotten Futures variant. It's currently $6.99 and not selling very well. All of the proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders, and I might sell more and possibly make more for them if the price were lower - it doesn't affect me either way. So, given this, let's have a quick poll... Poll #1183369 Flatland RPG pricing Open to: All, results viewable to: All I've already bought the Flatland RPG PDF
View Answers Yes No Can't remember Flatland RPG? I don't play RPGs Ticky button I would buy it at
View Answers $5.99 $4.99 $3.99 I don't want to buy it I still don't play RPGs Ticky button I would be more likely to buy it
View Answers If there was a supplement (not very likely) If there was on-line material supporting it If pigs were flying Some other condition (leave a comment) Ticky box | ||||||||
| comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
4 (28.6%)May 5th, 2008
| ||||||
| OK, I was worn down by all the hype on my flist and decided to go see the movie this evening. On the whole it was enjoyable - I'm not entirely sure that it was £9.20 worth of enjoyable, which is what the ticket cost, but I enjoyed it. I suspect that I would have enjoyed it nearly as much if I'd waited a few months for the cheap DVD release, but what the hell. The thing is that I was never a huge Iron Man fan in the comics, so I supect I'm missing some of the "Squee" factor. Nothing much to say about the plot, and no spoilers - it seems to work, and they came up with a nice ending I hadn't expected. Recommended. | ||||||
| comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
May 4th, 2008
| ||||||
| ...beware! http://kaction.com/badfanfiction/ Is an automatic crossover fanfic plot generator. VERY silly! e.g. Your challenge is to write crossover fanfiction combining Sonic the Hedgehog and Muppet Babies. The story should use getting sucked into the "real world" as a plot device! | ||||||
| comments: 13 comments or Leave a comment |
| ||||||||
| I've changed the back cover of the PDF of the Those Who Favor Fire chapters Jo published. Basically, this was an edit of the graphics, which has somehow had the side effect of reducing the size of the file as a whole by about 50k, it's now about 850k Remember that there are major spoilers and "what happened to so and so..." for Tooth and Claw, so read that first! http://forgottenfutures.com/game/ff10/f Please let me know if you find anything that looks like a typo or have trouble reading it. The reason I did this may be interesting to anyone creating PDF documents. When I put together the first version I had a semi-transparent text box on the back cover which slowed the loading of the page to a crawl, and printed poorly, with a mesh effect I didn't much like. As a quick fix I made the box completely opaque, which worked but wasn't ideal. For the revised version I've simply taken the original graphic and added brightness to the area. The result is much better - it loads fast and prints the way I want. I'll be using the same trick for the back cover of the RPG. | ||||||||
| comments: Leave a comment |
May 3rd, 2008
| ||||||
| ( spoilers ) See comments for animation - thanks to image supplied by major_clanger | ||||||
| comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| ||||||
| For those wondering why the election upset me http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_John Read it and weep. I'm off to bed. | ||||||
| comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| ||||||
| First vote Boris Johnson (conservative) - 1,043,761 Ken Livingstone (labour) - 893,877 No-one else more than a hundred thousand or so. Second preference Boris Johnson - 124,977 - total 1,168,738 Ken Livingstone - 135,089 - total 1,028,966 So bloody stupid Johnson has won. Soddit. | ||||||
| comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
May 1st, 2008
| ||||||
| I could have sworn that I just heard David Dimbleby use the phrase "Adama and Clinton" on the BBC election night coverage... | ||||||
| comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| ||||||
| ...Paid my credit card bill in time to avoid being charged interest. ...Converted my dollar check into a sterling cheque, via a friend who has UK and US bank accounts. ...Discovered that the silver I bought for making electrodes was considerably thicker than the (considerably more expensive) type I've had previously, and about a third the price by weight. The reason being I bought it from a jeweller's supply place, not a chemical supply house. ...Established, with a fair amount of certainty, that the problem with my computer is the power supply (this is good news, it's easy to replace) ...And voted against Boris fracking Johnson No prizes for guessing which one pleased me the most. | ||||||
| comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| ||||||
| I'm having a weird problem with this PC. To save electricity and reduce the chance of surge damage I normally switch the electricity mains off after I've finished using it. Lately the PC won't switch on if I press the button, unless I let it sit for a while after I've switched the mains on - looking at the back of the ATX PSU, the light that indicates it's getting power flashes for several minutes before settling down to a steady glow, at which point it's possible to switch the PC on. Once it's switched on it's fine. Any thoughts on what this might be? If, as I suspect, it's the PSU itself that's on its way out, are the connections for ATX powers supplies completely standardised? The PC is an HP Pavilion, the existing power supply is a Bestec ATX 250 12-Z. | ||||||
| comments: 12 comments or Leave a comment |
April 29th, 2008
| ||||||||
| Got a royalties cheque today from Steve Jackson Games - amount isn't quite as bad as I'd feared, but reinforces the general "don't give up the day job" vibe of the last few years. The really depressing part of it is that the proceeds from my big charity project, The Original Flatland Role Playing Game, are very poor. I was thinking about a sequel, but given how it's done so far I would achieve better results by donating one day's wages to the charity, which is not ideal for a project that took most of my spare time for several months. Part of the problem may be that it was never reviewed and got little or no publicity outside my livejournal etc. Most of the sales were in the first couple of months after I launched it, and I've already given that money to charity, there have been comparatively few since. Oh well... I've rounded that part of the royalties up to the next ten quid and given the money to Doctors Without Borders. And for now at least shelved the idea of a sequel. | ||||||||
| comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
April 27th, 2008
| ||||||||
| Forgot to say I've put together a PDF of the Those Who Favor Fire chapters Jo published. Remember that there are major spoilers and "what happened to so and so..." for Tooth and Claw, so read that first! http://forgottenfutures.com/game/ff10/f About 900k, please let me know if you find anything that looks like a typo or have trouble reading it. | ||||||||
| comments: Leave a comment |
April 26th, 2008
| ||||||
| I've seen two or three reports now that Sky are planning to remake Blakes Seven. http://www.aintitcool.com/node/3651 Not 100% sure that it's a good idea, but if someone had asked me if remaking Galactica was a good idea a few years ago I would have been 100% sure it wasn't. The important question, of course, is who will be playing my fave babe Servalan. | ||||||
| comments: 11 comments or Leave a comment |
April 25th, 2008
| ||||||
| In case anyone was thinking of buying a data projector... 4 or so years ago my school equipped a lot of rooms (I think at least 20) with interactive whiteboards and data projectors made by a company called Sahara. As of today nearly every one of the projectors has gone wrong, most of them a couple of months after the warranty ended, showing a double image with coloured fringes. It's probably an optical problem, not electronic, but the one time we tried to get one repaired they charged a couple of hundred pounds and at the end of it there was still a double image, just not quite as bad. It may just be that we've been remarkably unlucky, but we certainly won't be buying them again, or doing business with the contractor that specified them. | ||||||
| comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
April 23rd, 2008
| ||||||||
| papersky has posted the first few chapters of the Tooth and Claw sequel Those Who Favor Fire for International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. http://papersky.livejournal.com/385 VERY nice, but I shall have to change a few things in the RPG... | ||||||||
| comments: Leave a comment |
April 22nd, 2008
| ||||||
| http://www.freedownloadaday.com/ Give away PC, Mac, and Linux software, the usual "old version of a commercial program / good freeware" deal. Unlike "giveaway of the day" the stuff stays on line indefinitely, rather than being deleted after 24 hours. There's a feed, but I'm not sure it's working properly. | ||||||
| comments: Leave a comment |
April 21st, 2008
| ||||||
| I'm looking at buying a 6-year ISA which pays 40% if the average value of the FTSE over the 6 months at the end of the period is higher than it is at the beginning - if it's lower I'd only get 2%. FTSE Graphs I've looked at show a general upward trend, a drop at the end of last year presumably caused by the bank crash, and what looks like the start of another rise. My thought on this is to put about half the money I'm investing this time round into something that has a guaranteed interest rate, and the rest into this one since there's the risk of a low payout. Anyone got any suggestions, or any reason why the FTSE one isn't a safe investment? Later Having taken on board what people have said here, I've decided to go for an index-linked ISA which has a minimum 18% payout. I have enough in easily-liquified savings that I'm not too bothered about that side of things, my main aim here is to maximize my savings for after I retire. The 40% thing is too much of a gamble. | ||||||
| comments: 12 comments or Leave a comment |
| ||||||
| Pointed out by jinxed_wood and ( spoilerific ) | ||||||
| comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
April 19th, 2008
| ||||||
| Recced by ps238principal, You are trapped in a maze of twisty tunnels all alike. | ||||||
| comments: Leave a comment |
April 18th, 2008
| ||||||
| Can't remember if I posted a link to this, the latest game tie-in movie. Coming to a computer near you soon... | ||||||
| comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
April 17th, 2008
| ||||||
| Trailer for the new Batman animate movie, pointed out by ps238principal - looks fairly awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvJg5jw6 | ||||||
| comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
April 13th, 2008
| ||||||
| Virgin's web site says that my area now has 10mbit broadband. I've just done speed tests at a couple of sites - one showed it as 4mbit, the other as 9mbit. I have no way of knowing which one is more accurate - is there a generally recognized speed test site? | ||||||
| comments: 12 comments or Leave a comment |
April 12th, 2008
| ||||||||
Here's a first stab at layout for the Tooth and Claw RPG back cover  Click on image then on larger view to see it at maximum size. This is basically the front cover illustration and text - I've put on a semi-transparent text box (which I may make more opaque) and overlaid one of frostfox's pictures to which I added a bonnet and placard. There will also be some blurb about the contents which I'll write when I've got them finished.Preliminary tests show it printing pretty well and the main text is legible at arm's length. But as usual any suggestions for changes gratefully received. | ||||||||
| comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| ||||||
| Microsoft's Net Framework service pack 2 has just installed itself for the fourth time. I suspect that for some reason it isn't putting up whatever flag tells automatic updates that it has installed. I've now switched off the fully automatic version of automatic updates again - it's only a week or so since I switched it on, because I was fed up with having to manually confirm the download of definitions files for Windows Defender, but it looks like that's a small price to pay for having a little more control over things. One of the side effects of this was that I couldn't access my Jornada properly through the serial port while it was waiting to install - I have no idea what that's about, it's just bloody annoying. | ||||||
| comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
April 11th, 2008
| ||||||
| Bloody hell - I've had a week off work but I've had to stay at home most of the time because we had a bit of roofing work done. This afternoon I was free to go out, and I was just about to do so... but it's just started hailing. Hopefully it won't last too long, but I could really live without this sort of crap... five minutes later And now it's a thunderstorm... Three minutes later still Gentle shower now. But I think I'll wait a little longer before I brave the elements. | ||||||
| comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
April 10th, 2008
| ||||||||
| I've just heard that I've won three Fang Fetish Awards for my BtVS / Men in Black crossover Family Issues I'm not sure where the "fetish" bit comes in, since it's pretty much PG, but it's always nice to be recognised. I've won the Unique Universes award and I'm runner-up for The Supernatural, also a Judges Award.    And congratulations to all the other winners - some familiar names there including nwhepcat who has won or placed with several stories.Later Make that four awards - Just noticed I'm also runner-up for Best Transformation (presumably because someone gets vamped in the course of the story)  It's a fairly old story, I'm really surprised it's done so well! | ||||||||
| comments: 13 comments or Leave a comment |
| ||||||||
| This is what I've ended up with as the Tooth and Claw RPG cover; I'll use the same illustration as background for the one or three volume covers. I've managed to avoid using the word World three times on the cover, just once in "World Fantasy Award." It prints well, it looks good and is legible at a distance or when it's reduced in size, none of the background seems to be particularly obtrusive, and it's more interesting than any of the "lots of coins all the same" ideas I previously tried. In short, I think that this one is the keeper.  Click to enlarge. Click twice for the largest version I've transferred, about 60% of full page size. The icon is still the early version, I'll replace it eventually. | ||||||||
| comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
Meme-Free Zone
|
|||||||||||||