June 2013 – Filklore

June 24, 2013

Death Wore White by Jim Kelly

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.

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June 24, 2013

Social Networking

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.

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June 20, 2013

The anatomy of a scam

For 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.

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June 16, 2013

Garden Update

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.

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June 13, 2013

It’s a guitar, it’s a ukelele; no, it’s a Guitalele!

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.

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June 5, 2013

Wings of War – Flight Ready

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.

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June 1, 2013

Flash Point: Fire Rescue (Board Game)

As my last purchase didn’t exhaust my PayPal balance, I treated myself to a copy of Flash Point, together with a couple of expansion boards.

One of the other guys in my group already has this, and I really enjoyed it when I played it. As I love cooperative games, I decided to pick up my own copy.

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June 1, 2013

Wings of War/Wings of Glory

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.

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Month: June 2013