https://blog.firedrake.org
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1984 SF comedy, dir. W. D. Richter, Peter Weller, John Lithgow: IMDb. The Oscillation Overthruster allows passage through solid objects… but it may lead to the end of the world.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved word counting and character swapping. (Note that this ends today.)
The free-trading tramp starship is a standard element in Traveller, but was never a part of the 2300AD setting. Mongoose's version does suggest that it might now be a thing, though. Can their rules support it?
1920 adventurous SF novel. Bored after the War, "The Master" determines to gather some like-minded people and find Adventure!
2021 historical detection short stories, in Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series (1920s flapper detective in Australia).
2024 SF/romance, sixth in (and a late addition to) the Class 5 series. Dav, Sazo and a pregnant Rose are on the expedition to make contact with the race that built Irini, the thinking-system ship recovered from thieves in Dark Class. But then Rose is kidnapped…
This will be about the biggest naval gun ever. Eventually.
1985 fantasy for children (and everyone else), second of its series. Nita and Kit are on a family holiday on Long Island, when a whale-wizard in distress invites them into a great ritual…
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved string mangling. (Note that this ends today.)
This is part of an ongoing series about the preparations I've made to run Mongoose's revised edition of the Bayern campaign for 2300AD. Spoilers for Interlude 5.
2025 fantasy. Fern the bookseller, whom we met in Bookshops & Bonedust, sells up and moves to the city of Thune to set up again next to Viv's coffee shop. But it turns out that's not enough to fix her life.
More gaming with nearby friends.
I've been setting up Anubis. This turns out to be not trivial, especially if you only know the most basic bits of Docker. So here's what I did, based on the documentation, and a lot of advice, and a lot of trial and error. (This is mostly for Future Me, but I hope it may be useful to other people too.)
I gather the cool kids are getting back into alignment charts these days.
1968 horror, dir. Terence Fisher, Christopher Lee, Charles Grey: IMDb. Satanists! They're everywhere!
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved character replacement and prime factor analysis. (Note that this ends today.)
2021 historical mystery; ninth in Huber's Lady Darby series (post-Regency amateur detection). As the cholera epidemic is starting to fade in Edinburgh and Lady Darby waits for her child to be born, a wildly popular rogue's biography in the Jack Sheppard mould rakes up old scandals…
2015 police procedural mystery, tartan noir, ninth in the Logan McRae series. As the rescue of a serial killer's victim involves enough procedural irregularity to lead to the killer's lawyer inducing reasonable doubt in the jury, Logan gets a "development opportunity" back in uniform, in rural Aberdeenshire.
Just what is it that brambles do to plants they grow up?
Just what does sucrry down the corridors of Telehouse anyway? Now the truth can be told.
2026 SF, eighteenth of its series. Chimera is still occupied, and the force that's hiding to conserve its strength for the day of liberation is having to watch as the population is oppressed. Mage-Captain Roslyn Chambers, who wasn't even supposed to be on-planet, is going to do something about it.
I'd like to take a moment to praise Brenda.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved bit rearrangement and range overlaps. (Note that this ends today.)
I was idly musing over the unpublished nameless system from Paul MacLean and the Yog-Sothoth.com crew, and a trick occurred to me…
2026 romantic fantasy, second of its series. Gerard de Moireul is the Golden Beacon, the Empire's most popular and successful general. He's clearly going to lead the invasion of Belravia that everyone's expecting, so the scandalous half-fae Queen Lorelei kidnaps him from his camp…
Well, I tried geocaching and enjoyed it, but it hasn't really grabbed me enough to go out and look for more sites. But there's an allied trade¸
I am starting an APA (Amateur Press Assocation). Like contributing to one, this is not a thing I expected to do at my time of life…
1890 horror, dir. Stanley Kubrick, Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall: IMDb. Months isolated in an otherwise empty hotel, that doesn't sound stressful at all.
I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved prefix testing and time validation. (Note that this ends today.)
