2017-03-02 20:54:39

Wow is it March already?
Well for all those who know (and those who don't), welcome to a slightly belated monthly chat topic. Feel free to jaw on any subject you wish, what your playing/watching/listening to/reading/ingesting, what your school or work or whatever is like, how many people you've murdered etc etc.

Myself things are a little quiet since I'm waiting for a new date for my phd second viva after the one professor I was going to have bowed out, and mrs. dark is waiting for her new dog.

Mostly I've been playing aardwolf, getting used to windows 10 and reading David eddings, which has been surprisingly fun, I've not even done some reviews.

I will say, Aardwolf is more fun than I initially thought, though mostly due to me using some tools such as accessible maps and an item finder, also people are a bit nicer about goals in the game.
I've even got the mccp working to give extra quest points, but I'll update the aardwolf db entry with a bit more information.

The only thing I do wish aardwolf did have was a way to instantly check status such as hp or mana without reading the hole score card.

Other than that as I've said, things mostly pretty qiet up to now, though probably won't remain so for too long.

#What's everyone else up to?

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-02 21:24:57

well in regards to games, I've been playing a lot of desafio mortal which is unfortunately not possible right now because of the whole business of it being down for maintenance. One thing I've recently discovered is The Soul genre of music, which I've found my way into and I'm planning to stick with that for a while. What got me into it was probably the various escapades of my sister and her bands, yes that's a plural, one of which I'm a part of as of last week. School's been kinda getting in the way of things though and there's some things to sort out there, but I guess I've got that mostly handeled.

I used to be a knee like you, then I took an adventurer in the arrow.

2017-03-06 20:07:47

I've been playing quite a bit of Crazy Party. I hadn't really gotten into the battle mode until now, and, well, I'm kind of hooked. I'm glad there's 19 jims, because I'm already at 6, so at least there's a litle ways to go yet. Trouble is, after that, I don't know what I'm going to do.
Slight
Spoilers
Ahead
What's this about some sort of unlockable six battle mode?

2017-03-06 22:26:35

you can buy the 6 turn battle after completing the grand council gym, for 20 gems in the rewards room.

I used to be a knee like you, then I took an adventurer in the arrow.

2017-03-07 00:40:06

Then when that happens, will it expire or will that become a permenant option, or will it always take up gems?

2017-03-07 20:05:13

Hello, was a long time since i posted on these monthly chats.
About the battle question it becomes permanent.

2017-03-08 16:28:29

aaron, i can give to my crazy party save, all gyms allready unlocket, all minigames allready unlocket, all boards already unlocket!

If that's helpfull, why don't you press Thumbs up?

2017-03-08 22:17:04

I've never posted on a monthly chat, but here goes!
Nocturnus and I welcomed our third child, our second baby girl, into the world on Feb 20, 2017 at 4:51 PM. She was born about 5 weeks early so was somewhat small at only 6 pounds 4 ounces, and 18 inches long. She lost some weight after birth, but is regaining slowly.
Her name is Lisa Aurora. Sister is Lilyanna Faith and brother is Noah James.
She's such an adorable baby, and Lily who is 15 months, and Noah who is 5 and a half now, are both liking her, though I think Lily likes her quite a bit better.
Noah is struggling a bit with some jealousy issues which we're working through. He had some nightmares last night, poor guy, so he came to bed with mommy and daddy for a bit, too. Glad we have a king size bed, cuz he's a big boy and 2 adults, a baby, and him would have gotten cramped in anything smaller.
Lily is cutting 3 molers at once so is pretty miserable. She is almost walking completely on her own now though.
As for other things we've played a little alter lately, not much, and are sad the tros are gone, but there are some nice pieces in the new skull place.
We started a New Testament in a year reading plan which has been quite nice both in instruction as I've never read the entire Bible before, and in sparking conversations about different Biblical subjects between us.
We've also been reading some books like Robinhood, The Shadow Children series, and of course we listen to Harry Potter every single night.
While awake we're working on Agents of the apocalypse which has been quite interesting and has sparked a lot of conversation between us.
We've also listened to some Arthur episodes, because we're both kids at heart.
Other than that, time is spent sleeping, or trying to, taking care of babies, and feeding the littlest one, as she eats a lot right now, and I'm loving every minute of it, with Nocturnus always at my side helping and encouraging me.

2017-03-08 22:44:12

@nightshade: wow, congrats! I feel happy for you guys.
@tabutcu: thanks for the offer, but I would still like to play through the game myself.

2017-03-11 18:08:16

Wow you can tell I've not checked this topic for a while what with things happening :d.

@aaron, about crazy party, what happens is once you defeat all the gyms you fight the grand council, this is a gym round with six battles not three. Once that is done you can go to the rewards room and unlock the six battle mode. This lets you play online battle matches against others with six battle rounds just like the council.
The council is also good because you can earn 10 card per victory rather than just rhee, can test your deck against a varied type of enemy, and also you get a gem for completing it too.
Myself, I'm at the moment trying to unlock all the cards, though it's nearly done.

@Nightshade congrats, also hope things aren't tooooo! crazy. Recently one of mrs. Dark's best friends has a son who is now approaching two years old, and a couple I know very well (the gm of our rp group and his wife), have a son who is near the same age and both are in dire streights, I dread to think how it works with more kids big_smile.
Then again I confess that while I love babies and find them easy to deal with the sort  not quite animals, not quite people stage between 18 months and  the time child achieves rationality is not one I've ever been comfortable with big_smile.
It's ironic most people (and a lot of men), tend to be the other way around. Babies I find easy (once your familiar with looking after a puppy the principles are rathe rsimilar), but kids no. So you definitely have my admiration on that score.

Love the oraura bit, is that because you hope she'll emulate sleeping beauty? big_smile.

right now my lady and I are reading together "rescuing the bible from fundamentalism" by bishop John Shelby spong (yes spong!).
It's nice for me to read a crytical book which is not written by a rabbid atheist but does acknolidge some of the serious problems with literalism, also nice to read an interlectual book which is not! about my thesis.

It's actually a subject that bothers my lady given she has relatives who are rather of a loopy conservative persuasion, though we have occasionally been taking breaks from that  to do things like watch the starwars prequals. The phantom menace my lady did not like, but then again that's possibly the worst of the films ---- or maybe counting rogue 1 indeed one thing I notice with the prequals is that even though they're very rough and no where near good as the originals, at least they don't feel flat the way that the recent films have.
Oh well, we'll see what starwars 8 has to offer later this year.

As to other things well a lot is going on. My lady and I be singing in a live film score playing someone has written for one of the first sf films ever written, journey to the moon from 1927 which is being shown. it's threw a theatre near my parents and should be fun, we're also auditioning for parts in pirates of penzance soon enough, though whether that will work I don't know.
Othwrise basically it's usuall things.
I'm still reading david eddings, and finding them lots of fun.

games wise, I'm actually finding I am etting well into muds at the moment. Aardwolf is fun for a bit of monster bashing, but I'm enjoying 4dimentions, particularly because the developers are quite responsive to comments about in game problems with quests etc, indeed I'd recommend it to anyone who is looking for a mud not all about combat.

I also want to get back to cosmic rage, though right now my ship is stuck and I can't get it to stop recharging d.

So lots of stuff happening, or at least it soon will be.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-16 07:53:10

Hi.
Well I've just recently gotten into playing bass guitar so that's been a lot of fun. In fact I'm picking up a bass amp tomorrow so I can play properly. Lately I've been reading the abduction by james grippando. I like james grippando's series of legal thrillers very much. This is a stand-alone novel so I don't get to see the same series characters which is disappointing. I'm actually beginning to like legal thrillers their a lot of fun to read. Although I don't like those fake ones where instead of taking place in court the lawyer gets a case and then goes out running, fighting, and shooting people, until the end of the story lol! I'm finding that I like these legal thrillers as much as I like murder mysteries and thrillers.
Tomorrow I'm excited to be working at my local thrift store and going to a bass lesson! I haven't played audiogames at all lately, I miss them. I might play world of war that's an awesome one!
@Nightshade, well congrats on the new baby that's really cool! You and nocturnus are lucky to have each other. By the way how is nocturnus? I haven't talked to him in a while but last time I talked to him he said he was losing his hearing. I can't imagine something awful like that. I'm totally blind so losing my hearing would pretty much be the end of everything. Well went off on a tangent there lol, just wanted to congradulate you!
@Dark, I'll have to pick up this book you were talking about sounds very interesting. David Eddings I've been meaning to read for a long time but I keep getting distracted lol. Singing in that movie sounds like a lot of fun. You two should do duets to put on youtube I'd definitley watch them. That's really neat you have windows 10 I've been hearing a lot of good things about it. I should probably get it but I love windows 7 so much lol! Cosmic rage I haven't played in a long time but last time I logged on it had changed so much it was almost unrecognizable.

Guitarman.
What has been created in the laws of nature holds true in the laws of magic as well. Where there is light, there is darkness,  and where there is life, there is also death.
Aerodyne: first of the wizard order

2017-03-17 07:49:52

@guitarman, cool about the base amp. I confess anything with strings has never been my forte music wise.
The singing thing is this saturday and the audition for the production of pirates is this sunday so hopefully our voices will hold up, that is of course assuming that the guy in the audition doesn't just do the "bugger off we can't have blind people on stage" which unfortunately I have encountered before.

James Gripando is a name I recognize, though I'll have to ask my lady if she's read any of those.
For me, most of my general reading matter is speculative fiction of one sort or another, fantasy, sf, horror etc, though I don't mind stepping out of that occasionally. My lady does enjoy murder mysteries and suspense on occasion and she does sometimes recommend me things.

David Eddings is almost the definition of a very typical fantasy quest, companions from different countries meet up, travel around, evil gods, one of his series even has the generic luke skywalker style boy hero. What saves him from being totally standard though is very witty dialogue, great characters and interesting politics.
I will say if your reading Eddings I'd recommend his primary series more than his sequel series since when he tried to carry stories on he didn't quite achieve the same hights, so for example I'd

recommend reading the first elenium trilogy, ie, the diamond throne, ruby knight and saphire rose, but not the second trilogy.
I'm actually finding this opinion reinforced since right now I'm reading the sequel series to the belgariad books, and while I loved the belgariad, I am not liking the mallorean as much. If's definitely fun and nice to read, but not imho as good as the first lot.

When I'm done with this though I fancy something sf.
Actually since my lady and I have been doing the starwars films recently I might check out the ovelizations of the second two, attack of the clones and revenge of the sith. the novelization of sith in particular was realy! amazingly awesome when I read it, and I think that was an abridged copy so now I've got my hands on the full book I definitely want to see what it's like, ----- after all what is more cool than a first hand description of what it feels like to be darth vader?

Game wise, I am a little restricted since while I'm at my parents I'm on my xp laptop, though I do have vipmud on this machine. However with muds I seem to be running in to issues, eg, in cosmic rage I can't find a way to make the latest activities work, and four dimentions is great but I keep running into bugs, indeed I don't think I've found a game I have both really liked and also really been exasperated by quite as much as I am in 4d.

I did however take a little time off recently to do some more crazy party which is cool, and I'm really! looking forward to seeing what gets added next version.
Anyway since it's close to five thirty in the morning over here i probably ought to cut this ramble short and get some coffee big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-19 09:00:02

I am about to start the DragonLance series, just because I heard so much about it.
I can't remember if I mentioned this book on this forum before, but I am reading "Dawn of Wonder" by Jonathan Renshaw, and it is amazing! It's one of those books that captivates you from the first page. The main character is Aedan, a twelve-year-old boy, and it's all about his friends, and his travels, and adventures. It also has a much deeper layer though, as he has to face down a lot of demons within himself, to achieve what he wants. I don't know if you'd call it epic fantasy, or high fantasy, but if you love characters you can care about, exquisite writing, and a story that keeps you turning pages, check it out.

I have also gotten back into some Muds again. I am giving Achaea another try, as well as CoffeeMud.

Meanwhile, I am busy outside of the books and games. I am still writing, and I am planning to take a course in general transcription, with hopes of starting my own business there.
I'm also making more of an effort to eat healthier and cook at home, so just learning to prepare things I like takes up some time.

As always, Non 24 sleep disorder and epilepsy are in the background, but I have felt so much better in the last few months. I managed a huge declutter and deep clean of my house, so overall, I feel reasonably accomplished lately.

Glad to see that everyone is doing well.
Dark, best of luck to you and your lady with the auditions.

2017-03-19 12:03:11

Hmmm Mirage, I don't think I've run across Jonathan Renshaw before I'll have to check out what he does.

In terms of dragonlance, my brother loved the series back when he was first getting into D&D back in the nineties, but at that point I couldn't find accessible versions. I was interested, especially given the reference to dragonlance in some of the second ed D&Dmanuals. Now I've found them, I need to sit down and work out a chronology and where to start. My lady did read a couple of them but she said the series ended really badly, then gain that was a trilogy in the middle of the chronoology I think.

I will say in general my liking for standard d&D style fantasy has somewhat faded due to the fact that a lot of the character architypes feel so familiar it no longer seems particualrly fantastic, indeed check out my review of Raymond E Feists' magician over on www.fantasybookreview.co.uk for some thoughts about this, though I do intend to read more of the riftwar books and in particular the servant of the empire trilogy which is set on kelowan which is imho a far more interesting world than the usual rather standard D&D type Midkemia which most of the rift war books are set in.

Then again since I've been reading eddings, I think I will want to do some scifi when i've finished, either I'll check out some short stories or maybe start on the starwars novelizations, or perhaps do something I've been meaning to do for a while and get into David Brin's new uplift trilogy (I also want to review those).

Books aside I do seem to have solved my cosmic rage issue, albeit again it requires buying more upgrades for my ship which I will do though again it's a bit of a hassle getting them all in, likewise with 4d I alternate between loving the game and being exasperated big_smile.

I think actually it'll do me some good to try something different from muds for a bit, and I have been enjoying crafting kingdom.

Yesterday was rather fun, since we went to a community project providing a soundtrack from trip to the moon, the first science fiction film made in 1902. It wasn't exactly demanding vocally, but it was fun. The audition for pirates is today and we'll see how it goes, though my parents have been a little pushy about "accept anything even back row chorus" which hasn't made it an encouraging process and has made both mrs. Dark and I a little irritated.

anyway it'll be done today one way or another and then I can get back to other stuff and actually looking at singing opportunities that might be a little more possible than some ameter dramatics community theatre project.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-20 10:25:50

If I'm not mistaken, I think this is Jonathan Renshaw's first book. I found it on Audible.

Oh, that's going to make me mad if any of my favorite characters in Dragonlance have unhappy endings. I'm reading "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" and I love this little band of friends. But at least you warned me in advance, so it won't be a complete shock.

Everytime you mention books on this forum, they almost always get added to my gigantic to-read pile. You and your lady have great taste in books!

2017-03-20 16:12:31

Well Mirage according to my lady the problem with the trilogy she read was the final book basically involved one of the supposed good guys creating a  1984 style distopea, it might have resolved later in the series, but she was sort of put off by that given that she really hated 1984.
For myself I can't say. I know my brother loved the books, but I don't know how many of them he read and there are just soooo many I don't know about starting on them as yet.

The audition yesterday was okay, I didn't sing my best but there you go, still we'll see what these people say.

I did finish David eddings mallorean this morning which had a rather sweet ending, although i have read it before. Actually mirage if you like books with a band of friends who you really get to love then Eddings is probably one you should check out, especially since he's generally lighter than most of the fantasy I like such as Tad williams.

Next I want to get into something scifi I think, which possibly means David brin or another nebula stories collection.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-20 19:10:44

@dark,,
Concerning post 10, she was named Lisa Aurora after both her grandmothers; Lisa is Nightshade's mother while Aurora is mine.  Both the babies are getting along quite nicely; it's the 5 year old who worries us.  We're not certain whether his most recent behavior is an attention grab or a more sinister matter we just haven't considered yet, but he's started doing things like swiping Lily's favorite toys and making her watch him play with them, taking food he knows she likes and eating it in front of her, not listening to simple instructions, going up to the youngest when she's in her cradle and tickling her feet until he gets a reaction of some sort which is usually a cry as she hasn't learned how to laugh and thinking it's funny, and more recently, stealing from public places, which just, blows me away.
We were supposed to take him to Chuck E. Cheese's which, for those not familiar with the place either because you've never been or don't have it where you live, is a pizza place that has all sorts of electronic entertainment for kids.  We told him if he managed to behave himself decently for a month we would reward him with whatever he chose, a goal we allowed him to set himself and that he could work toward.  He was doing quite nicely, honestly, until roughly a couple of weeks ago, but things really came to a head within the past three or so days, when he decided to hide in a store so that my mother-in-law and her friend couldn't find him.  Thinking he might have been hurt or abducted or goodness knows what have you they went looking for him outside and still couldn't find him.  Eventually they went back inside and found him in the store itself where I imagine he hid himself in some clothes or goodness only knows what else and thought the whole thing was absolutely hilarious.  To add insult to injury, he stole a necklace, which we later took him to the store and made him both pay for out of his allowance and return the thing.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

2017-03-22 05:38:37

Youch Nocturnus, that sounds rather worrying indeed I confess this is one reason why i tend to find kids of that age rather harder to get on with.
Lisa Aurora is a great name though, indeed Mrs. Dark instructed me to pass on her congratulations as well when I told her about said arrival.

The last couple of days we've been mostly recovering from said irritating auditions and even worse arguements with my parents regarding said irritating auditions which preceeded the irritating auditions (can you tell I wasn't a huge fan of these auditions?).
Ironically we've heard nothing, which hopefully means they'll just have done the usual "oh if we pretend blind people don't exist they'll go away" type of thing rather than offering us something tocan.

Either way in happier news, I'm really enjoying yet another nebula collection. Rather scary this one has reviews of Terminator 2, hook and the adams family (yee gods I feel old). 
On the plus side there have been some awesome stories, indeed reading that sort of thing makes me want to sit down and actually write for a change, which is something I've been planning to do but thus far hasn't really been on the cards due to said phd thesis which needed finishing.

I have however been doing some writing for the db recently which was rather necessary, in particular I feel quite guilty that we've largely missed so many of the blindfold games, so i'm trying to remedy that situation as I can.
I'm a littlelimited in what I can try here both because this is my old xp laptop (which I probably will replace at some point when convenience, time and money allow), and because this has no mouse, meaning fps games are out, still a chance to catch up on some Iphone titles, and play some crafting kingdom too big_smile.

I have also just now finished something I've been trying off and on for months now. Namely unlocking all the cards in crazy party.
i thus far have eight deks, which I occasionally tweak, though there are other elements I want to investigate. I am a little sorry though that now if I make a new deck and try it out on the grand council I don't get anything worth while in terms of unlocks, but ah well.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-25 05:33:32

Hello.
Well the wheel of time turns and life moves forward quickly! I got an amp so I can play bass guitar which has been fun. It sounded so good I wanted to play my electric guitar on it, which works fine but like I found out bass amps have no distortion so it just sounds like a loud acoustic guitar lol.
I haven't been reading much lately I keep going back and forth on what I want to read. I've been starting books but haven't found anything that catches my interest.
I moved back in october so I still have things in boxes. A couple days ago I found my mac and my android tablet. The bad news is I can't find the chargers for either one of them lol! I want to find the chargers because both the tablet and the mac need updating. I really want to try os sierra it sounds very interesting. I think the last time I updated the mac was to os x mavericks so it's been outdated for a while.
As far as music I've been listening to taylor swift lately. Yes I know guys shouldn't listen to taylor swift, that's what people keep telling me, but her music is awesome! It's the perfect combination of country and rock and a little rap which I'm not really a fan of. I've been listening to all kinds of good stuff: foghat, the police, stryper, metallica, supertramp, skillet, casting crowns, and a whole bunch more. I never get tired of music, listening to it and playing it are still so much fun.
I haven't been playing audiogames much lately but I did play some super liam and judgment day. There both a lot of fun, but I always die on judgment day once I get to the boss level the satellite always kills me lol.
Lately I've been considering trying to learn to program again. I've tried many times in the past: bgt, python, some others. I always fail. I can imagine perfectly what I want to do but for some reason I can't put what I want into actual code. I've had so many ideas for great games over the years that I've never been able to make. In the past I've gotten as far as printing text and making variables then I start getting confused. The strange thing is when I read posts from other developers I understand what they're talking about and how they do things. Anyway I'm going to try my hardest this time hopefully I can get things done.
Well that pretty much covers most of what I've been doing lately. If you have gotten this far through this long boring post then I hope you enjoyed it at least a little lol!

Guitarman.
What has been created in the laws of nature holds true in the laws of magic as well. Where there is light, there is darkness,  and where there is life, there is also death.
Aerodyne: first of the wizard order

2017-03-25 10:22:52

Guitarman sounds like you've been busy. Amusingly enough thinking of supertramp, according to my lady her x husband (who is German), used the supertramp logical song in his English class to speak English. that one sort of amuses me big_smile.
Well said crappy auditions resulted in a stat rejection, which isn't about them not liking blind people honest gov pull the other one it has got bells on big_smile.

this is in fairness exactly what I expected from a crappy community theatre production, but it's still bloody annoying.

Oh well other than that lots of fun stuff happening.
Today we're going to go and sing in that collaborative film score thing I mentioned  previously. It should be fun, even though it's a million miles from serious singing, then my mum's made an afternoon tea, complete with small sandwiches, and lots of cakes (we made rocky road last night), and this evening we're going to a concert of orchestral scifi themes which should be good.

Game wise, as people noticed from the aformentioned news, the db is doing well, though of course there are still more games to add. I'm especially pleased to have added survive the wild, since that's needed doing for quite a long time, indeed with a little more work I think we'll be a bit more ontop of things.
MRs. Dark and I also went to maplins yesterday and picked up various necessities. Replacement wireless keyboards for the faulty ones we had, a new headset (since my lady's is sort of dead), and best of all two stand mikes.
I'll be interested to see what I can get out of cortana when I get back to my desktop and my windows ten machine, plus of course there are plenty of games to try.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-27 09:40:29

Hey everyone,
I'm sorry to hear about how your son's been acting lately Nocternous, youch is certainly right. Honestly thinking back on my own thought processes at that time I think lots of kids are just a little sociopathic. It's hard to stop thinking about yourself at that age long enough to consider what sort of effect your actions are having on others. It wasn't in vogue at all in my generation but a little corporal punishment was used in my case until I smartened up. Not enough to really hurt, just enough to let me know that my antics weren't being tolerated.
    I've been meaning to check out David Brinn myself, and started an anthology of his short stories entitled otherness. His writing impresses me more than his plots, but a perfectly crafted short story that gives you a kick in the pants and leaves you contemplating it for weeks is a rare gem. I'm still really enjoying him though, his writing is really engaging and I love his ideas. The concept of the uplift books sounds right up my street. I'm so tired of evil aliens bent on taking over the world.
    As of a month ago I've started my life in Japan and it's been very exciting, in spite of the challenges. Similar to dark's experiences with auditioning, interviews for English teaching positions have been stiff and awkward. And without fail I get a polite, but cold and non-explanatory rejection e-mail a week later. Though much of that could be my own fault admittedly. I get very nervous in interviews. Does anyone have strategies for handling them?

2017-03-27 13:56:21

Hi Nial.

No suggestions unfortunately. It's stil the case that while people aren't officially allowed to den positions to blind people based on site, unofficially it happens all the time, it's bloody frustrating.

David Brin is awesome, though thus far I've only read his uplift books, the plots of which I've rather liked, indeed my only major cryticism of his writing is that he does have a tendency to forget or sideline characters you like when he has a lot to deal with.
I reviewed both the uplift war and star tide rising for fantasybookreview.co.uk if you want more direct thoughts on them.

Paradoxically, wanting something scifi, I actually started on Iron council, the third of China Mievil's new croboson series.
I'm not sure if you'd call these sf or ssteampunk fantasy or not, but the first, perdido street station was nothing short of amazing and the second, the scar was pretty good.
Iron council is a really interesting story, I don't know if it's quite up to the shear amazingness of perdido street station, but I probably like it more than the scar, mostly because the main character in the scar was a bit of a git, iron council also has far more links back to perdido street station though we've yet to see many recurring characters unfortunately, still an amazing bok if bloody dark in parts.

other than that lots of games to try, new equiement to set up and as usual work for the db, though today my lady and I are having a little time off since saturday was hugely busy, sunday involved lots of travel and it's nice to have a break.

The concert on saturday was amazing though.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-03-29 13:22:23

No worries, I know it's quite the quandery for most of us. Paradoxically, I need to be in a really good mood to read China Meilleville, since his books tend to be pretty bleak. He's a brilliant writer and thinker, but I need something cheerful after 10 pages or so to escape the abyss. I should give him another shot though, everyone says perdito street station is his best book.

2017-03-29 14:02:17

I haven't done any reading lately.
Unless you count browsing the net. Oh, and, um I tried something quite ridiculous today.
I went to my profile, clicked show all posts, and then went to the last page. Oh my word. It's ridiculous, it doesn't even look like me but I remember posting this stuff! I know I was young back in 2005 but, well it's hilarious. Seriously it looks really childish.
I'm wondering when I stared to write more formal-style posts, because going backward through these, at the moment, is a little cringeworthy at points lol.

2017-03-29 14:02:30

Well I just finished Iron council, and bleak it certainly was. I actually remember reading somewhere that it was Mievil's attempt at a western theme, and while I could see that, mostly it reminded me of les miserables, and that very much because pretty much everyone died big_smile.

I probably enjoyed it more than the scar though over all and the ending worked, even if it was pretty dam grim, though I wish there had been more links back to perdido street station (there were a couple but not quite enough).
Perdido street station is not just good though it's frankly amazing, indeed it's one of the handful of books I've reviewed that ever got a perfect 10 from me, (you can check out my review on fantasybookreview.co.uk). I don't think Iron council was quite that good, but it was still pretty awesome, indeed I'll be writing a review in the next couple of days since fbr don't have a review of it.

I will say not all of mievil's books have been quite as grim though. Railsea was actually pretty upbeat, for all it was wonderfully weerd in most places, and embasy town, though it had a bloody awful appocalypse had actually a good ending for once big_smile.

Well not much to report since mostly it's been recovery for a couple of days, with lots of reading, game playing and large amount of backing up for me, still all necessary jobs that need doing I think big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)