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I'm sitting by a driftwood fire, miles from the nearest people, thirty feet from the sea, my tent pitched on the dunes behind me. I'm drinking red wine from the bottle (hey, if I can be bothered to carry it...) with two dogs curled up a few feet away...
From Tabula Rasa, my annual meme. Based on some list of 100 popular books (or ones that people pretend that they have enjoyed in order to impress the survey-taker), the point is to bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you loved, italicise...
I despair again at the vapidity and foolishness of the British press and public. A few people run in circles slightly faster than some other people born elsewhere, and the Russians correctly calculate that they can shell cities without the risk...
The French military, desperately short of good results recently, launched a new offensive today ...and shot seventeen of their own fans.
The fact that so many stationary targets were injured but none killed does point up worrying problems...
Yesterday saw me complete the Ben Lawers group of mountains, with an ascent of Meall nan Tarmachan - the Hill of the Ptarmigan - at the western edge of the range.
A look at the map in the link above will reveal that the hill has crags and cliffs all...
Like Cuppycake, I sometimes read Tobold's blog, and find it interesting from time to time. But his recent post attacking Richard Bartle was awful, awful stuff that revealed a mixtue of intellectual shallowness and vapid foolishness that I found...
This is going to be a bit shorter than my last wall of words on the subject of D&D Insider.
I just read a piece by Timothy Burke where he describes the perplexity experienced when hunting through the Wizards of the Coast website a few days...
There has been a fair bit of coverage, recently, of Wizards of the Coast's launch of the 4th Edition of the Dungeons and Dragons game. I've already had the chance to play my first couple of sessions of it, and the game itself is an imaginative reinvention...
Since I had the pleasure of my wife's company for this weekend's climbing, I decided to tackle one (and only one) of Scotland's easier Munros: Meall Buidhe.
The hill is a bit too easy by itself, so we took a circular route up to it, over a couple of...
It turns out that I am exploring the Ben Lawers massif. Having climbed all five munros on the main ridge a couple of weeks ago, I was back again yesterday to climb the next two peaks: Meall Corranaich and Meall a Choire Leith.
One advantage of...
Here is a musician who is great fun to watch, talented (although not above the odd duff note), and who seems to really adore what he does. He posts his jams on youtube, improvising over his sequenced riffs, enthusing sbout ne technology or even just...
In Scotland, the highest mountains - those over 3000 feet (914 metres) in altitude - are known as Munros. These 288 (it varies, depending on revisions of the list) tops range in difficulty from gentle (Ben Chonzie) to decidedly unpleasant (ascending...
Like a good (occasional) PvP gang leader searching for an edge, I ordered the Eve Maps product a couple of weeks ago. Upon enquiring as to why I had had no delivery, I received an email, part of which said:
"..due to the release of The Empyrean...
Like most people with an interest in MMOs - as well as a great many who would deny having any such hobby - I played World of Warcraft for a time. Recently, three workmates started playing and I was invited to join them but, despite getting...
I have had harsh things to say about L. Ron Hubbard in the past, but I was perhaps too quick to judge. So what if he made up a bunch of dreadful space opera sci-fi, slapped the title "religion" on it, and profited from the gullibility and desperation...
Those who know me are aware that my views are hardly those of a right-on, Guardian-reading liberal.However, to turn on the television today and see Gordon Brown whoring out the city of London to the single most murderous regime in the world today - China...
I listen to a lot of music, by a lot of bands. Every now and then, every few years, a song truly strikes me, to the extent that I (with my butterfly's attention span) can listen to it dozens of times in a week, finding new twists, harmonies, intricacies...
So the NUT have decided that army recruiting material should be blocked by their members in schools. They have not, as the Daily Mail has it, banned the army from schools. Thankfully, the teachers' unions have no such power, nor was that...
Since it is topical again, an old joke
The scene is Kimberley, South Africa, and we fnid our protagonists far below ground, mining for precious metals in a four-foot seam, amidst stultifying heat and horrendous working conditions. The two - Makhenkesi and...
There is every chance that you don't really care that E. Gary Gygax is dead. I, on the other hand, owe the big fella quite the debt. As the joint progenitor (with Dave Arneson) of Dungeons & Dragons, he spawned a hobby that influenced...
Life happens the wrong way round.If life happened the right way round, I would have remembered my cat Piglet for all my life, ever since my old age. Today would have been a special day that I had looked forward to all that time, and I would have...
I just received an entirely welcome email from Amazon, which boiled down to "we wish to give you three free things a month". OK, not quite free. But close.
I sometimes review stuff on Amazon, and people, in the main, seem to find what I say...
... we run ops from the official Eve-O forums.
For those who are interested, this is a real operations post by the Mittani, and it is proceeding exactly as it would normally on the goonfleet com forums, when they haven't been down for a day or so: people...
OK, the Bob video was very good, but was limited its essentially recycled nature: the CGI work was borrowed from CCP and the voiceover was largely stolen from The Empire Strikes Back.
A Goonfleet member has come up with something in response. ...
"...It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
I have various things about which I need to post, soon. Things unrelated to Eve. But this one will be quick and easy, as well as satisfying a few...