Month: June 2013

June 24, 2013
Although many of you know me as a science fiction fan, I probably read as much, if not more, crime fiction than sf. Quite a bit of it is American crime fiction, so it is nice to discover a local author.

Jim Kelly has been around for a while, his first novel being published in 2003, but he is a recent find for me. I have my Amazon account set to send me their Kindle Daily Deal offers by email. Most of the time, it is not of any interest to me, but I get enough hits that it is worth receiving the email. I’m not of a mind to buy something just because it is cheap; but I like to look at it, and see if it is something I might have bought anyway. This often has me discover new (for me) authors.

June 24, 2013
Social Networks, such as Facebook and Livejournal, are attractive for the way that they can bring like-minded people together. But they also separate people, if you are not on the same network.

For a long time I was determinedly posting things I find interesting to my own personal blog. This was cross-posted to LiveJournal, as I had a lot of friends there; but any comment was/is imported back into my main blog. Hence a complete discussion could always be viewed on the blog itself.

June 20, 2013
warningFor the past few weeks, I have been receiving silent calls every day from the same fake number – 01001246. When I pick up, the other end is either silent, or a dial-tone. I have reported it, but was told nothing could be done because the caller-id was spoofed. Well duh – I wonder if the NSA and GCHQ are equally stumped by fake numbers?

Anyway, today’s call came through during my tea break, and this time there was a person on the other end, telling me that he was calling about the security of my Windows machine. “Oh, that one”, I thought; but didn’t hang up, as I was curious how these guys go about “proving” a machine is infected.

June 16, 2013
Because of the non-existant spring, and a general lack of organisation, I failed to prepare any planting at all this year. About a month back, I took the lazy way out and bought some seedlings – sugar snap peas, courgettes, carrots and mixed lettuces, which planted up most of 2 of the troughs.

The plants are all doing well, and I have just weeded and sown the other two troughs with seed. More peas, more carrots, more salad leaves; some fancy small squashes, and some other odds and ends.

June 13, 2013
I’d looked at this little beastie before, and managed to resist, but the price is now lower than ever, so I gave into temptation.

The Yamaha GL1 Guitalele is the size of a Tenor Ukulele, but has 6 strings. Commonly tuned to A, it is like playing a guitar on capo 5. It is not a sophisticated instrument, and nowhere near as finely made as my Tenor Uke. But it is cheap (57 quid, including case) and a bit of fun.

June 5, 2013
A couple of days ago, I posted how I was going to put all my Wings of War stuff into a single case, in the hope it might get to table more often.

The case is now here, and having arranged everything and rearranged everything several times, I have to say it is awesome. To give you an idea why, here are some pictures.

June 1, 2013
June 1, 2013
Due to selling off some stuff from the Aladdin’s Cave I call my garage, I’d accumulated quite a large PayPal balance. So I decided to treat myself with some unnecessary, but fun, board game accessories for my Wings of War collection.

I love Wings of War (now republished as Wings of Glory), but it doesn’t reach the table that often. This isn’t due to lack of interest – in fact, recently one of my friends was asking why we haven’t played it for so long – but it is more due to they way I currently have it stored – with each plane individually boxed. This not only makes it a bit of a faff to set up – opening lots of boxes – but also makes it a job to put away, because – of course – each plane must go back in the correct box.