damerell

I've recently read Sam Stone's _Zombies at Tiffany's_, which is basically a harmless light [1] novella with zombies, a certain amount of steampunk to provide the heroine with a portable machinegun for zombie murder, and any number of anachronisms in speech, set during the American Civil War. I did wonder about this, though:

"Martin had discovered a way to boil a kettle by generating power from steam. He used a mini boiler fire in which he burned a piece of coal. This created steam that in turn ran a small engine, 'not unlike trains', Martin had explained, and it warmed the water."

Martin is certainly ingenious but I think there may be some optimisation work possible.

[1] Very light; "now they discover the secret hidden airship chamber on the top floor of Tiffany's and they escape" light, a plot twist worth of Fanthorpe in a hurry.

I've been chewing through quite a lot of Robin Hobb lately, and have come to the Farseer trilogy, which was her first. I was pretty amused when I read this:

"A very faint scent of her clung to my shirt from her brief embrace, and I agonised over whether to wear the shirt that day, to carry the scent with me, or to set it aside in my clothing chest, to preserve it."

I laughed because in the last chapter a weasel vomited on his shirt. (This is a bit unfair - on careful review, he does spend a sentence changing clothes "hastily", but wouldn't he still be a bit weasel-vomity?)

More seriously, it's not as good as her other stuff. The youngest prince forms a murderous plot, they thwart it, inexplicably they decide he's learned his lesson, rinse and repeat. The protagonist has trained as an assassin, so after a few rounds of this, really, you had one job, Mr Protag. Kindly stab him up so we can get on with the zombies^W Forged ones.

I have not agreed to the new Livejournal TOS (they do it with javascript) but I suspect this is my last crosspost.

Dear Lazyweb, if you live in Cambridge and go to an optician, who is it and are they annoying? Thanks.

It's my birthday on Sunday and I'll be in London. I'm going to see _Pretentious Moi?_ [1] at Nambucca in London on Saturday and in the Pembury Tavern in Hackney from about 3pm on Sunday.

[1] Some of their stuff is on Youtube, Soundclod, etc. They're "modern trad", if one can use such an expression.

I realise about three of you care about Crawl victory posts, so I'm going to set up a custom fiends group to filter these. Let me know if you'd like to be on it.

( Demigod fighter )

Hooray, won again! 2 from 39 games. ( Whoops, knew I'd forgotten something )

I've been playing Crawl recently, which is a roguelike - like NetHack but worse.
( And I won... )

I thought I'd found a bug in The Martian but davidgillon pointed out I hadn't. This is preserved for curiosity's sake.

( Spoilers for the book, and probably for the movie )

I will be 0x28 years old on the 27th November. Queen Edith (Cambridge pub) from about 19:30, anyone? Be there or be elsewhere.