Duke Street Alley

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been meaning to post this for some time, and am only now getting around to it. I’d like to draw your attention to a blog about beekeeping, titled “Beemused”. Amanda and Justin (who’ll be familiar to those of you on LJ as cissa and cosmicirony) are documenting their adventures in beekeeping, and doing a sterling job. My father has kept bees for years, and while I’m allergic to and phobic of bees, the whole thing still fascinates me.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

So, a wee while ago, Google bought Doubleclick. As the rest of the market realises what’s happening, there’ve been howls of indignation, and the amusing notion of Microsoft complaining that that’s anti-competitive. The Financial Times, however, first took a while to notice, and then produced this article, which has got to be closing on award level for incoherency and poor research. For incoherency, I give you:

Google plans to acquire the oddly named Doubleclick - most web adverts land you in an online casino with one or sometimes zero clicks - for $3.1bn.

and for poor research or perhaps complete loss of contact with reality:

The real questions are why Google wants to be in advertising, and whether agencies such as WPP should be worried. Google is good at wacky stunts and has unusual office furniture, both advertising staples, but its laid-back computer engineers probably lack the necessary lunching skills.

That’s a hangover-written article if ever I saw one, and the editor must have still been drunk.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’ve just hit the publish button on wyvernfriend’s second article on dukestreet: Libraries & Bookshops. Go read it!

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

So, watched Doctor Who. Wrote a brief commentary. Not really impressed, and concluding that Russell Davies’ writing is rather juvenile.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

Those of you trying to decide between other appointments and the Starbound Economics Forum - go for the other one. A total of one person can definitely make it (that person being me), so I’m going to postpone it. Work is a bit berserk at the moment, so I haven’t the time to work out better scheduling right now, but as soon as I do, it’ll be up here.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

For those interested, I have some content up on the World Building section of Black Satchel. More may appear over the weekend, if the fancy strikes me.

Originally published at Now Is A Long Time Too. You can comment here or there.

I’ve edited, adding some details to answer questions people had on the Starbound: Economics post - head along there and add your thoughts. Some excellent stuff coming in.

A quick enquiry... in this world, when we say someone is "powerful", we usually mean they can get things done, that they have people around who will do what they're told. In fantasy worlds, however, it can mean "can drop-kick you over the horizon", "can melt steel with her mind", or "can blow up continents with 2.5cc of mouseblood and a bit of concentration". Is there an adjective in English to describe that kind of inherent power?

Hair. Bastard stuff. My hair is curly - tangly might be a better word it, and just beyond shoulder length when wet. When I haven't combed/conditioned it for a bit, it forms a dense, impenetrable mass. I spent half an hour last night hacking through the worst tangles with a hairbrush, and trying not to scream as my scalp went at leaving with the tangles. Ugh. And already, I can feel another knot developing back there, and that's after I brushed it this morning.

Anyway. Still out. Coughing, just, and still unwell feeling. Should be good to go back tomorrow, for what it's worth. Have played more Civ. Not sure why I bother - it's evident that I'm going to be crushed, bug fashion, in the late game, but I'm taking a vindictive pleasure in stomping on the Chinese.

Speaking of Chinese, I've been reading, in off moments, a Chinese cookery book. I like cookery books, although they make me want to have a real kitchen. I'm not quite sure what a real kitchen is, although it may involved the twin miracles of having every possible foostuff within arm's reach and never having to wash up. However, with some judicious shopping, the kitchen here can be made semi-real. It's a pity I can never quite harness these urges properly.

Not just one, but two copies of Dragonhave arrived, and I fully intend to sit down and read them cover to cover. I spent a lot of yesterday evening, while Nina translated Latin, in reading stuff on rpg.net. There's good, discursive stuff there.

I'm approaching a zen state of contentment at the minute. I have no money, but I have money coming in soon, and this means we won't starve. I spent a while starving in college, and have no intention of repeating the experience. So for the minute I can do nothing, but am content to just be.

I'm also planning stuff for Other Dublin. I plan to have it much less intensive, and much less work needed than on Angwels. The main channel of output will be the mailing list rather than the website, I think, the website serving more as a nice interface to an archive than anything else. This cuts down on the need to put everything in HTML - all I need to do is look down through incoming stories, and forward them to the list. This is good. If I get really lazy and really clever, I might even hook up a mail-to-web program that will take in a story by mail, and store it on the website. That'd be nice.

I'm eating instant Pasta Napolitana from a black bowl. It looks good. It tastes pretty good, too. The smell reminds me exactly, though, of the smell of oxtail soup from National School. My school had a kettle, which would be ritually boiled every day at lunchtime from October through March, and tea or instant soup or Bovril made. Nobody drank coffee back then. I usually had chicken or vegetable soup, usually, to go with the egg sandwiches that I ate every school day for eight years. I still like egg sandwiches, although I've gone off oxtail soup.

We really need some more non-stick pans. The saucepans we have are stainless steel, and while they're good, stuff does stick to them. I'd prefer good old cast-iron pots from a cooking point of view, but they're bastardsto clean, even if they're enamelled.

And we do need a new frying pan. That one is falling apart now. There's an old cast iron one at homehome, which gets sandblasted or something every few months, and has lasted for centuries, it seems. Certainly, the same pan - different handle - is the one my mother taight me to fry eggs in. Eggs in enough grease that you could flip it up onto the topside, so the yolk became this pink blister. I must look up her recipe for fish pie, too.

After I finish eating, I'm going to make myself some coffee - unusual enough at home, cos it requires more thinking than tea - and read those magazines. Comfort. Good.