Projects
Dvorak
The improvised card game.
Back on the Orion Express
Er, coming soon.
Bookpile
The Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Haruki Murakami
Worldwar: In The Balance
Harry Turtledove
The Origins of Virtue
Matt Ridley
Incidental Music
Born Yesterday
DD&HSW
Fresh Wound
The Bonzo Dogs
Before
As Above at Stormloader
Banner-advert-ridden drivel.
Weeks Beginning
20.11 27.11 04.12 11.12
03.12.00
One of the best things to do with Dvorak, if you ask me; card-game versions of other things. I've been sketching and musing over a Day of the Triffids deck whilst reading the novel, and now that I've finished reading it, here it is.
Something worth remembering the next time you overhear someone giving away the plot twist of a film; they might be too stupid to have understood it properly. I was irked to hear someone loudly decrying Galaxy Quest on the bus the other week, making particular reference to the fact that the aliens turn out to be evil about half-way through. I saw the film last night, and - er - they don't. Not even slightly.

Quite a good film, anyway; the whole "basing reality on ill-conceived television" idea was amusingly done, although maybe underplayed a bit, and ultimately the whole thing didn't make enough sense. But the superbly odd Thermians were more than enough to make the film worth watching.

01.12.00
Damn you, Webb, I'm going to have to get this blog script archiving properly, and everything, now. Maybe you were right about that "audience" thing.
Will Self was magnificently sharp and sane and insightful on Question Time last night; Widdecombe and Boateng were smug and petty and humourless enough to begin with, but by the end of the programme it was dramatically clear who should be running the country. Tch.
A neat, searchable database of UK TV adverts; splendid for finding out what music's been used, and where to find it. Irksome that it tells you what the maintainer thinks people are "best known for", mind. ("Willie Rushton was a regular on Blankety Blank.") Actually, I'm quite tempted by the CD of music from Trigger Happy TV...
30.11.00
Oh, for goodness' sake; another new Nomic, the rather egotistically-titled DocNomic. This is an Imperial Nomic, which is quite entertaining - proposed changes to the game are accepted or rejected solely at the whim of the player known as the "emperor", rather than being resolved by anything so wishy-washy as democracy.

Good if the Nomic has a good emperor, annoying if it's got an annoying one. From his behaviour elsewhere, though, Mr Holmes would appear to fall firmly into the former empire. This could be rather good.

Hm, a new, untitled online Nomic has snared me. I'm still a bit wary about starting one from Suber's initial ruleset, but we'll see what happens. Christian cartoonist Jack Chick gives his thoughtful and balanced viewpoint on Dungeons & Dragons. Why aren't GMs running the world by now, if they can all cast "mind bondage" spells, with religion only being able to affect the weak-willed? Hm?
"More than 150,000 gallons of gravy is wasted every week when it is poured over the Sunday roast, a study has found."

Mercifully, taxpayers didn't foot this; Bisto apparently commissioned the research "in response to calls from people asking what to do about wasted gravy"; eerily implying that it's unsafe to pour down the sink and should be disposed of in designated dumping areas.

"The scientists also discovered that for the most efficient gravy absorption, the food had to be eaten in the right order" - for goodness' sake, it's only gravy; we aren't talking about uranium and carbon rods, here. For most efficient absorption we should probably mince the whole meal up and compress it to a small, easily-swallowable tablet. I think someone's missing a point. And wasting a research budget.

Jeremy Hardy was on at the disturbingly wooden Hove Centre last night, and I was among the oddly random audience. A good set, even if he didn't start the serious, coherent stuff 'til after the interval. And he said "fuck" rather more than I expected him to. That's Radio Four for you, I suppose. Hm, it's probably about time I wrote an archive function for this blog thing, isn't it? Tsk.
29.11.00
Some prettily hypnotic Java toys. Bezup is particularly beautiful and eye-confusing.
28.11.00
I Can't Believe It's Food! Terrifying gelatin-moulded meals from the fifties and sixties. I feel very ill.
yolkfolk.com is a rather exhaustive fan site for the old Dizzy games; despite edging rather too far into Quinlank territory at times ("They had forgotten to include a frontal somersault view. What's more, the animation was jerkey, the jump was too fast, and he turned at least three somersaults instead of the trademark one or two!"), they've got downloadables and Java applets of the games (including, worryingly, some homegrown sequels).

Which are all fairly unplayable and infuriating, of course, because that was the favoured way of making games last more than a few hours, back in the eighties. It's nostalgia, though, even if the Dizzy games were never really that interesting. Get it where you can.

27.11.00
"Are you big in the USA?"
    "No, not at all. I'm very tiny, like a tiny little pixie."

An appropriately bewildering log of an online chat thing with Bill Bailey.

Umbrellas should, I feel, be fitted with moisture detection devices and loudspeakers that bark "It Has Stopped Raining" in periods of minimal humidity, whilst sending electrical shocks to the handles. Dammit, Dylan Moran's Brighton appearance had sold out last night. And I only found out about it on Saturday, despite actively combing the Web and local theatre leaflets for information the other week. Somewhere really should keep track of stuff like this.
A part of the Uncertain Organisation.

kevan@somethingorother.com