calufrax

This is a bundle of material for Mists of Akuna, a "campaign setting of Eastern fantasy noir steampunk from Storm Bunny Studios for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition." Basically, slightly apocalyptic fantasy steampunk with Ninjas and oriental monsters and magic.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/MistsOfAkuma

This is another setting that doesn't interest me much - I'm not a fan of 5E and I've never really got into the oriental background much, and piling so many elements together would probably be a steep learning curve if I tried to pick it all up now. Presentation is good, with a lot of the illustrations having an anime look, and it looks like you get a lot for your money.

romanajo123

Can you please keep my family in your thoughts and prayers?

We need it now. Thanks.

kaffy_r

Job One: Remember that Computers Are Stupid

Job Two: bake Bob's favorite cookies to thank him for setting up my new laptop, and putting up with the occasional stupidity that's part of dealing with ones and zeroes.

We both knew it would take a couple of days, or even more than that, and I'm trying to be patient as he preps the new one (an Asus Vivo) so that we can download all my files from my slowly dying Lenovo, files that have been downloaded onto a delightful little red portable 2T hard drive.

That drive may will come in handy after the transfer, since I might need to keep it connected to my new laptop for a few weeks, or maybe months. My Lenovo has 1.82 T of storage, whilst my Asus only has 1T. We'll eventually see about getting a new, larger, drive in the Asus, but I don't foresee me using up the 1T of storage the Asus has.

I've named the little hard drive Ada, and my new laptop is officially Alice-Alyx. It's the first time I've named a laptop, but it seemed the right thing to do with this one. I'm laughing a bit at myself, but hell, why not name some things that will help keep me happy for a good long time?

Now one of the remaining questions is whether Alice-Alyx will recognize my Samsung Galaxy ear buds. We tried to get them paired up yesterday, and the Asus laughed at us. Once again, I'm reminded that computers are stupid; they only do what we tell their ones and zeroes to do.

In the non-computer part of the weekend, I was able to get in touch with a skiffy fannish acquaintance whose holiday card came back to me a bit ago. It turns out that he and his partner had indeed moved from the address I had for him, so I can send him something soon, and most definitely this coming holiday season.

I also cleaned the bathroom, and sorted a small mountain of paperwork that had grown so high it was in danger of toppling over. I'm terrible at organizing and sorting, but I managed to do it today. I'm inordinately proud of myself. (I probably shouldn't be quite so loudly proud, because the universe will undoubtedly send something my way to punish me for such hubris. Heh.)

So that's my excitement for the weekend, and I am very happy that that's the most excitement I've had to deal with. Compared to this time last week, it's easy-peasy.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Cyber Jazz/Blues Ambient Radio

brithistorian

I was reading this morning's edition of Dan Rather's Substack newsletter, where he was writing about the song "Stand By Me". (Apparently he writes about a song or musician every Sunday.)

Anyway, he mentioned that "Stand By Me" was "numbered among the Recording Industry Association of America’s 25 Songs of the Century." This naturally got me curious: A ranked list of things? That's like catnip to me!

So I went to look for it. Turns out that there's no such things as the RIAA "25 Songs of the Century." What there is is the "Song of the Century" list, produced by the RIAA in conjunction with the NEA and Scholastic Inc. It's a list of 365 songs. So where did Rather get this idea of "25 Songs of the Century"? Because "Stand by Me" is #25 on the list, and the Wikipedia entry for "Songs of the Century" only includes the top 25 songs on the list. Apparently Rather (or, more likely, one of his research assistants) looked at the Wikipedia entry, didn't read the text carefully, and based on the table of songs assumed that it was a list of 25 songs.

If you read the text carefully, not only do you get the correct number of songs. You also start to question the RIAA's methodology for creating the list. According to the entry, "[h]undreds of voters, who included elected officials, people from the music industry and from the media, teachers, and students" were asked to select the songs. These voters were selected by the RIAA (and one is forced to ask "how many students does the RIAA know?"), and of the 1300 voters selected, only 200 responded. Seems kind of sloppy and haphazard.

Then, if you read the list, you see that the voters were rather sloppy and haphazard in their definition of a song: #7 on the list is the entire album of West Side Story, which is not "a song." Altogether there are 18 albums on the list: 11 Broadway shows, 6 jazz albums, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Obviously I don't have a copy of the instructions that the RIAA sent to the voters, but I think we can all agree that (with the exception of Thick as a Brick and possibly a few others) an album is not a song.

Also, just as an aside, I think 2001 (when this survey was conducted) was a bit premature to be choosing the most impactful songs of the 20th century.

All that being said, I think any other such list would be just as subject to being haphazard and subjective, and on skimming over the list I do think it would be an enjoyable and/or interesting list to listen to. Plus, unless you were born on February 29, you can figure out what day of the year you were born on and then look at the complete list and see what song your birthday corresponds to. (Mine is "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy.)

purplecat

Photo into a museum case with a Vortex Manipulator and Teleportation Bracelet prop from Doctor Who.

ffutures

I've signed a good few online petitions over the years - but there are some I won't sign because there's only a very brief summary of the text and a "sign this petition" button. I've now set up a petition asking for it to be compulsory for all sites with online petitions to link to the full text of petitions without having to click a "sign this petition" button.

Needless to say the link they have sent me DOESN'T say that it's a link to the text, rather than making you sign, but I've checked and it does just link to the petition page.

Want to be the second to sign? Press the link below if you dare... And yes, I know that there's a missing "to" in the title of the petition, I noticed too late and can't change it...

Press Me

brithistorian

I finished the third book in the trilogy just before going to sleep last night. It was a good read, but when all is said and done, I feel like there are a number of loose ends that, when tugged at, cause the whole thing to threaten to fall apart, if not to actually do so.

My main objection is the rest of the world. The events in the trilogy happen in the US, and we're told in mentions here and there that the rest of the world is different, likely doing better. But, except for a couple of very specific events — which are instigated by Americans — the rest of the world just stays out. The closest analogy I can think of is North Korea. Except that North Korea invests a lot in its military to keep the rest of the world out, whereas Kress's America seems to have no functioning military, or at least none that ever gets mentioned. It's like the rest of the world just goes "Oh, they're crazy. Let's stay out of there." Which doesn't seem likely, because people have time and time again demonstrated a complete inability to leave people alone.

And while the ending of the final volume is somewhat more satisfying than the ends of volumes 1 and 2, it also very much sets it up for Kress to potentially write a fourth book. And not a small opening. Imagine if Lord of the Rings had ended with a bookseller unpacking a crate of old books they'd just bought, finding a copy of How to Make Rings of Power: Complete and Unabridged by Sauron and trying to decide whether or not to put it on the shelf.

So more or less a mixed reaction. Some parts I though were good, some parts not so good. Thought-provoking, though not necessarily in the ways the author intended.

Also, I've got one comment on the physical book (and so nothing Kress could have done anything about): Maybe publicity works different in publishing, or maybe the publicity department at Tor in the mid-'90s had never heard of "underpromise then overdeliver," but I found the front cover text on this book kind of hilarious:

First Wells's The Time Machine,

then Clarke's Childhood's End, now...

BEGGARS RIDE

NANCY KRESS

purplecat

I am surprised to find myself surprised by the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. It reveals that I had subconsciously assumed that obviously he would get away with whatever it was he had been doing.

thisbluespirit

I thought it might make a change to write something here and post it straight away, instead of in two weeks or three or four months, idk, shocking but still. (I continue as before, getting a little more useful with every few days.) In the meantime, here are some fannish things that made me happy in this last week:

1. Another Enigma fic! \o/ 0_o

All Tapped Out (665 words) by misura
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enigma (2001)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Tom Jericho/Hester Wallace
Characters: Tom Jericho, Hester Wallace, Wigram (Enigma 2001)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Vignette, Missions Gone Wrong
Summary: “What the bloody hell was that?”

2. Sesskasays, whose Classic Who reactions I have enjoyed so much... is going to be doing Blake's 7! I did not dare really hope, but yay. I cannot wait for her to meet Servalan.

3. Small Prophets, on the iPlayer, a 6-part comedy from Mackenzie Crook, who did The Detectorists. It has all the mix of slow build, appreciation of small things & being v down to earth of the former, with actual supernatural ingredient in shape of six humunculi that Michael Sleep (Pearce Quigley) grows in his garden shed, for reasons. I haven't watched most of ep6 yet, but cannot imagine it producing any reason in the last 27 minutes for me not to rec it warmly here.

4. Another magnitude of miraculous on from Enigma-fic - a Rufus/Adam vidlet for A Fatal Inversion (Jeremy Northam & Douglas Hodge in 1991/2) from someone on YT:

Watch on YouTube

Like. This is why I wrote Rufus/Adam fic that nobody wanted! And this doesn't even have the shots with the dinner party and the make up, but, lol, I feel like it is a much more compelling argument for watching it than me saying it's very good. XD

Anyway, creative people continue to be a Good Thing is all. <3

ffutures

This is another fantasy bundle described as an "old-school hexcrawl campaign," in which the characters are given a ship and a dead master, and have to make the best of things: "You were thralls. Now your master lies dead in the bottom of a raiding vessel, equipped for adventure. You are free."

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/WolvesCoast

This probably isn't for me - I've more or less given up on fantasy games completely, and if I was to come back to them I'd probably be looking for something more exotic. I'm also trying very hard not to laugh at one of the three islands that are the heart of the campaign, which for some reason is named Ruislip - for those outside the UK, ours is a suburb of London just to the north of Heathrow airport...

Having said that, this looks playable if you like this sort of thing, it's just not my cup of tea.

kaffy_r

Well Done, Thou Good and Faithful Servant

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has died at the age of 84. We were driving north on Ashland Avenue when the word came over the radio. I gasped, and did that "Nooo!" thing that's so cliche, but proof that cliches have their roots in truth.

I knew he was old; I knew he had progressive supranuclear palsy; I knew he could no longer walk or speak, this man whose oratory raised the hopes, dreams and resistance of so many black, brown, and marginalized people. I knew he was going to die. But I didn't want it to happen.

I knew he was a complex man. I knew he was vain. I knew he was a little apt to enlarge himself in many instances. I knew he'd made antisemitic comments years ago; I knew he felt sidelined by Barack Obama's presidential campaign, after doing the hard work of paving the way for a black president with his own two surprisingly successful campaigns in 1984 and 1988. I knew he'd had a child out of wedlock.

But he didn't let his vanity outpace his love for others. He relearned humility and other lessons after each misstep. I knew he acknowledged and supported his natural daughter. I knew he was a gifted organizer as well as an orator, I knew he visited Cook County jail every Christmas when others might have - indeed had - forgotten those men. I knew he walked the walk as well as talked the talk. And there's another cliche that has its root in truth.

I met him three times. Once, on the street, heading for Grant Park, the night Obama won the presidency in 2008. He took my questions, brief as they were, and answered me in as thoughtful a way as one can in about 30 seconds. I met him a second time when he spoke to students at Niles West High School in Skokie, a significantly Jewish community. I met him a final time, at a Wilmette synagogue, where he spoke, his voice already being conquered by his illness. He would never have remembered me, but I remembered him.

I'm not black. I'm not really poor. I have privilege that he never had. But I remember his "I am Somebody." I remember. And I cry.

I'm not a Christian believer, not really, not for years. But I can hope that if the God he tried so hard to honor is there somewhere, when the Rev. Jesse Jackson reaches the seat of the Lord, that Lord will look to him and say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

Here is what an excellent Chicago writer, Neil Steinberg has to say about Rev. Jackson, who was, and is, quintessentially Chicago. And here is a link to a local CBS News special on him.

Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Remembering Jesse Jackson

adafrog

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

thisbluespirit

I've had this post stashed away since late November, meaning to come back to it and write something more sensible about The Stone Tape that wasn't how much I wanted to icon Jane Asher's face. The reviews were already at least a couple months out of date, I think. Then life intervened and alas, I have even less brain now than then, so I should get on and post it anyway.

Eye in the Sky (2015)

This was one of the later things I pulled off Jeremy Northam's CV. The JN tumblrs reckoned it was a good one - and it was.

It's about an international military and political operation to capture the three top leaders of an Islamist extremist group in Somalia, with various layers of people involved via video conference - the UK Colonel in charge (Helen Mirren), the US soldiers running the 'eye in the sky' (Aaron Paul, Phoebe Fox), the Somali agents on the ground (esp. Barkhad Abdi), and a small group overseeing it from a meeting room in Whitehall (Alan Rickman as General Benson, Jeremy Northam as the Minister in charge, Monica Dolan as PR), plus various others who need to be consulted, including Iain Glen as the Foreign Secretary. And right there in the middle of it all, is Alia (Aisha Takow), a child who lives close to the target house.

( Cut for more details )

Smartly made modern film, but also exactly the kind of knotty moral problem and intelligent writing you'd have got in a Play of the Month.

Talking of which...

Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape (BBC 1972)

I this via Talking Pictures, after having heard of it forever, and it was great! I really loved it. The creepy concept, the scientific approach - I really wished I had screencaps so I could icon Jane Asher in it (she was wonderful generally, not just icon-able) and everything. The way that the misogyny was used was also great, and took me by surprise because I had felt my one other Nigel Kneale did give way to a 1960s/70s misogynistic trope that I had seen too often by that point, but perhaps the "seen too often" part was more of the problem, because this just made me sit up and do the, "Oh. oh" moment for real. Highly recommended if you like any brand of creepy UK 70s TV. (It IS creepy/disturbing, though. This is not a chirpy watch that will end well, please do note). It starred some other people who weren't Jane Asher, too, like Iain Cutherbertson and they were all also good, I just didn't want to icon them and their face and their red hair in quite the same way. XD

So glad I finally watched it & I enjoyed it even in summer, when I so often can't manage TV downstairs.

Official Secrets (2019)

EitS having been so good, when I realised that this one (featuring one of the 2 brief cameos that are all JN has done since 2016) was also directed by Gavin Hood, I checked for a cheap copy & obtained it poste haste. I really liked this too, and watching them close together made me think even more highly of both - this is the story of a real incident from 2002, while EitS is a theoretical piece behind its tension, but underneath, they're both smartly done morality plays with excellent casts. (Incidentally, there are 3 actors who feature in both - Monica Dolan, John Heffernan and Jeremy Northam).

When I looked up both films online the first description is always "underrated" and the Guardian apparently ran a piece for Keira Knightley's 40th earlier this year recommending a top list of her films to watch, and put Official Secrets at no. 1.

Official Secrets isn't as tightly contained as EitS, as it's based on a real UK whistleblower incident from 2002, but which ended up not having much effect, so it's a really unusual thing to tackle (& as faithfully as this - they had a lot of the real people involved in the production in some way or other). As before, it's a large but excellent cast (Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Adam Bakri, Matt Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Indira Varma & more).

( More under here, although not really spoilery )

Anyway, after watching both, I got excited by clearly liking a director's stuff, so I looked up what Gavin Hood had done since - and the answer was nothing, dammit! (Before that he did Wolverine and Ender's Game, which are not tightly done morality plays. I mean, I assume not?? But I might need to investigate the first half of his CV more closely sometime. He has something upcoming lurking on imdb, which sounds more similar, but I'm not sure if that's real, or just a production hell mythical something or other.)

purplecat

Oswin in her red dress, looking at the camera, frightened, face half in shadow.

Clara, head and shoulders, publicity still.

Clara holding the tiny Tardis from Flatline with the Doctor's hand coming out of it.

Clara's face, side view, emerging from the dark with a light shining on it.

Clara in her waitress outfit, face, looking contemplative.

ffutures

Underground and aerial fantasy adventures from Aaron A. Reed, the second edition of Downcrawl (going downwards) adding Skycrawl, for the upwardly mobile.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Downcrawl

I'm probably not going to find this useful, but if you run fantasy adventures it may be worth a look - it's cheap and seems to have some fun ideas.

kaffy_r

He Woke Up

I awoke at about 6:15 p.m. to feed the cat, and after a night of night sweats (further, deponent saith naught because, eeuww, TMI) and dread about which Bob would greet me when he woke, I couldn't get back to sleep. I got up and tried to catch up on far too many emails. "Catch up on" quickly devolved into pitching most of the 650+ emails into the aether,

Then I thought about updating Bob's doctors on the newest situation - him being home. I finally did that, but not before fearing that Bob wouldn't easily wake, or maybe he'd regress to not waking up at all, when I brought him coffee.

He woke up.

And he got up. And got dressed, and talked to me, and joked, and was there. All there.

Another episode gone? Well, we thought it was gone back in January, and it came back, but I'm choosing to believe in hope this time. And it was a delight to be able to tell people from that damned hospital, and from one of the rehab places I was gearing up to tour that we didn't seem to have a need for them. I will also cancel the tour of another rehab place that I'd set up for Wednesday.

I hope I'm not jinxing everything, but again, I'm choosing to believe in hope this time.

That doesn't mean our work is done. We have got to figure out what the fuck goes on in BB's body to throw him into confusion, weakness and aphasia, and why it was so bad this time. There has to be a reason, or even more than one reason. So that's on the to-do list. But Sunday is a day of rest, so I will rest, watching Bob at his computer, and urging me to read the political columns he's sending me. It feels like home again.

Current Mood: thankful
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Hwa Sa/Hwasa "LMM"

purplecat

Cover for the New Adventure Warlock by Andrew Cartmel. Ace is in the foreground wearing a tight-fitting black outfit that is presumably supposed to suggest a combat outfit with a very improbable hairstyle, consisting of a ponytail sticking straight up from the top of her head held by some kind of tube affair. One arm is raised to presumably shield her eyes from the nuclear mushroom cloud in the background. In between is rolling green countryside containing a sheep, a cow, a fox and a rabbit.

The, in my opinion, disappointing follow up to Cartmel's Warhead novel. This one toned down the near-future dystopia feel of the first and rather undermined its anti animal-experimentation message by suggesting that anyone involved in animal experimentation is rather obviously a villainous cold-hearted psychopath.

purplecat

A stone wall with evenly spaced alcoves, apparently set into a hillside.

Chesters Roman Fort

brithistorian

The other night on the Olympic broadcast[^1], US figure skater Amber Glenn said in an interview that she is a huge fan of Magic: the Gathering and also that she is queer. So of course I had to make a custom Magic card of her!

Amber Glenn Queen of Ice

[^1] For those of you in the US who are streaming on Peacock, it was during the women's free skate section of the team competition.

ffutures

Yesterday I was wondering if I should sell on my USB Zip drive and remaining disks (100 and 250 megabyte capacity) because they're too small and unreliable to be useful and I last needed to recover data from one about a decade ago. But I decided against it for the same reason I always do - if I ever need it it would cost a small fortune to get a replacement.

And as if by magic, today's

daily_illuminator_feed has a link to someone's project to build a USB drive based on bubble memory with a staggering 128 bits of memory. For comparison, the first three words of this post, with spaces and the space after the third word, are 16 characters = 128 bits, the whole capacity of the drive... which looks larger than the main board of most computers!

The Illuminator post is here - https://www.sjgames.com/ill/archive/2026-02-12

The project is here - https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/02/a-128-byte-core-memory-module-as-a-flash-drive-raspberry_pi/

reccity-rec-rec

calufrax is sleeping in your mind. One day, it may be brought back in front of your eyes.

April 2018

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A rec comm for A Teaspoon And An Open Mind

Member Posts

Another Fantasy Bundle - Mists of Akuna

RL Things

Dept. of Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Pretty much the opposite of a scientific method, I suppose

Random Doctor Who Picture

A small petition

Book reaction: Beggars Ride (Nancy Kress)

Suprised

An actual up to date little post of nice things

Another Fantasy Bundle - Wolves Upon the Coast

Dept. of Remembrance

Tuesday after the Monday holiday

What I was watching... um... in summer?

Clara Icons

Another Fantasy Bundle - Downcrawl-Skycrawl

Dept. of Here Came the Sun

Random Doctor Who Picture

Random Roman Remains

Intersection of Magic: the Gathering and the Olympics

A Little on the Small Side

reccity-rec-rec

Links

April 2018

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