pedanther

Week in review: Week to 22 November

2024-11-25T06:31:00Z

One of the reasons why, until this month, I hadn't been to town since 2019 was a lingering fear that if I went into the crowded city I would come back with something interesting and respiratory. In a typically human display of logical thinking, however, having made up my mind to go I didn't take any serious precautions against that outcome, and went cheerfully unmasked among crowds on trains and in buses and in rooms full of boardgamers and so on and so forth.

So it wasn't entirely a surprise when it became apparent, within a week of my return, that I had in fact acquired something interesting and respiratory.

It isn't covid, or at least I've got a negative result on all the covid tests I've been taking. I even tried a brace of those fancy new ones that also test for flu and RSV, and got negative results on those as well. So I'm not quite sure what it is, except that it's definitely annoying.

It started with a general feeling of being tired that had developed by Saturday morning into enough of a something that I cancelled my social plans for the afternoon and spent most of the afternoon asleep instead. The worst of it was over within a few days, leaving just the post-nasal drip and associated cough which do not appear to be in any hurry to go away.

I've been sticking at home to be on the safe side, and skipped board game club and other social occasions. (And a committee meeting, which felt particularly weird because I don't think I've missed a meeting of that committee in years and there's a part of me that worries about what they might get up to without my eye on them.)

One of the ways I passed the time during the week was re-reading Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic tetralogy, and then the sequel tetralogy, The Circle Opens. I started reading them years ago along with the Mark Reads online book club, but for some reason I don't now recall I stopped partway through. The decision to re-read them now and finish the series was partly a choice to read something fairly undemanding that I knew I'd enjoy, and partly a deliberate attempt to manipulate my reading statistics on StoryGraph: The all-time stats page includes a top ten list of the authors a user has read the most books by, which in my case starts with Terry Pratchett at #1 and continues down through several excellent SF writers, two creators of classic detective series, and the most prolific author of Doctor Who tie-in books, to finish – now – with Tamora Pierce at #10. The previous #10 was an author who I regrettably read voraciously during my undiscerning teen years but would now rather not give any hint of endorsement to, so I'm glad to have crowbarred him off the list.

Remarkably Bright Creatures fit the themed reading challenge for November ("a book about families") and the last book of The Circle Opens fit the challenge for December ("Finish a book or series that has been lingering for a long time" – and also the alternate option, "a book about someone who is gifted"), so I've completed that set of challenges ahead of schedule. On the other hand, I'm straggling with the random book challenges: I haven't finished the October book yet (This Is Improbable is one of those books that was designed to be dipped into on odd occasions, not read in long stretches) and I haven't settled on a November book. The November challenge is to pick a book at random from the books with your favourite StoryGraph 'mood' ("adventurous", in my case); I failed to get on with my first pick, as previously detailed, and my next few attempts to re-roll the choice landed on books I wasn't in a suitable frame of mind for. Part of the trouble, I think, is that if a book with my favourite mood has been sitting on the to-read shelf for years there's probably some reason I'm not keen to read it. I'm currently having a shot at a Sabatini novel I picked up in a second-hand shop once, and being reminded that although Sabatini inspired several classic adventure movies I've never entirely got on with his books at first hand.

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Five Things Make a Post

2019-06-15T03:27:14Z

1. My Fair Lady opened last night. The show came together pretty well during dress rehearsals, and although we had a few opening-night excitements, the audience seemed pleased. (At one point, I was halfway through a costume change when I realised that I still had another scene to do in the old costume before I changed into the new one. Fortunately I had time to change back.) We also got a good review in the paper, both in the sense that it said nice things about the production and in the sense that it had actual things to say about the production beyond "it is on" and "here's who is in it", which isn't a given with the local paper.

2. Over at Mark Watches, Mark has finished watching Babylon 5 and Crusade. I really enjoyed revisiting Babylon 5; I probably could have done without rewatching Crusade, except that now I've done it I never have to do it again. Now Mark is catching up on the last few years of Doctor Who, which is something I'd like to be following along with but what with it being crunch time on My Fair Lady I haven't had time to keep up.

3. The new collection of Liaden Universe short stories came out recently, with a bunch of stories I'd already read in their original venues and two that were new to me. One I found a bit disappointing; the other was much more interesting, and speaks to the time and place in which it was written in that way science fiction often does when it's telling a story about some other time and place entirely.

4. Back in February, I remarked that I have a significant backlog of board gaming I haven't blogged about. It's only gotten bigger since then.

5. I'm intrigued enough by what I've seen of Observation, a new science fiction thriller game, that I bought it in a recent sale. Unfortunately, it then turned out that it will only run on my computer with the graphics settings dialled right down, which has happened often enough lately with interesting new games that I'm beginning to think it might be worth actually getting my computer's graphical capabilities upgraded. But while I dither over that, I'm not getting any Observation played either.

Observation is set, at least in the early bits I've seen, on a near-Earth orbital space station where something goes wrong, leaving one of the crew isolated and trying to figure out what's happened with the sometimes-unreliable assistance of the station's damaged AI. It's very atmospheric -- I gather it has several key people, including the set designer, in common with the well-regarded Alien: Isolation game. Also the lead cast: the scientist and the AI are voiced by the actors who were Ripley and Samuels in Alien: Isolation.

One of the intriguing things about the game is that it's the disembodied AI, not the human scientist, who is the player character.

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Five Things I've Watched Recently Make a Post

2019-01-05T11:32:43Z

. ( Babylon 5 )

. ( Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse )

. ( Bumblebee )

. ( Sherlock )

. ( Doctor Who )

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Five Things About Yesterday Make a Post

2017-11-05T04:11:43Z

I had a good day on my birthday. I went on my first Parkrun (although the way I'm doing it, it's more of a Parkbriskwalk), did the washing up, played a lot of Invisible, Inc., and watched the 2009 Star Trek reboot movie with the Mark Watches commentary running in another window.
( Read more... )

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