Raithe

Gah. Somehow climbed and jumped over a cliff I guess I wasn't meant to in Far Cry Primal. This led to achieving a story objective prior to getting there in the storyline, and now the storyline breaks so I can't actually finish the game. Hm, and the way it works, the previous save I have was already autoupdated , and hm, the next previous save is 4 hours of gameplay earlier. Joy. Now I have to find the appropriate time to stir up enthusiasm to replay 4 hours to get back there.

I always favour Lewis' Screwtape Letters to his Narnia chronicles.

The Black Company starts off quite well, if you like your Fantasy with a certain Vietnam War element. Although when you get down to it, it should technically be considered more a linked set of shorter series. The Books of the North (a trilogy), The Books of the South (a duology), and the Books of the Glittering Stone (a quartet) plus a spin off stand-alone story. The whole thing covers about 30-40 years of the mercenary company. The Books of the Norh start off as the viewpoint of a group of mercenaries who end up working for the Dark Lord. But the good guys are pretty crappily "bad" good guys as well, there's that vein of black humour that crops up in seasoned soldiers stuck in the trenches as it were. The Books of the South follow the company as they try to re-trace the origins of where they came from, and the Books of Glittering Stone turn more.. hm, philosophical in some sense about who they are as they head on to their glorious destiny. In regards to the Wheel of Time - Personally, I really loved the majority of t he series. As has been mentioned the middle few books start to stretch and slow down some. Part of it is the abundance of characters and sub-plots and how it shows the ripple effects of actions taken. Which, your mileage may vary. Most fantasy stories seem to treat the main party as if they're in a bubble. They act, but the world only changes in specific manner to their actions, they move on and the world goes back to what it was. The Wheel of Time expands on so much of the consequences of the initial actions, and pretty much compounds it as the story goes on. So by the last few books there is a LOT going on and a lot of characters reacting and acting to various events. To me, it felt like a much more living, breathing world than most other series I've read. Thomas Covenant... eh, it's one of those that can impress me on a certain literary level, but storywise it left me fairly repulsed. Cosmere - Again this is an odd one. Basically Sanderson has said all of his various series are set in this fictional universe. They don't really cross-over, each series is stand-alone to read. So it's better to take Elantris, Mistborn, Warbreaker etc on their individual series merits rather than go through them en-masse.

Detachment. The story of a substitute teacher and the three weeks he spends at an inner city American school. Full of quite serious names, Adrien Brody, James Caan, Christina Hendricks, Lucy Liu, William Petersen, Bryan Cranston.... Good acting, great writing about the flaws of humanity and dealing with each other while trying to connect and find relevance with life, but oh so incredibly depressing.

Did the trundle into the university to handle some of the basic admin, then query the course leaders about prep work before the September term starts. Got a few more details about the optional units and what they entail, then got given the advice that a lot of people on the course do some form of website creation as part of their year long project/research thesis but that those who do never get good marks or win any of the awards. Was told the best approach is to pick three optional units on an Easy / Medium / Hard approach. Pick one unit you know you can handle in your sleep, one that's a bit of a reach and one that's interesting but you'll have to work your ass off. And to make sure they'll all have some relevance to whatever I pick and that I should focus on one of four areas : Data - Analysis and Presentation, Security, Connectivity - Networking / Internet, and Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality. I'll have to sit down and put some thought into this. Also, how best to do the "creepy mature student" :

Dabbling around with GalCiv 3. They've made a few more changes over the years.

It's amusing when people don't quite get the difference between the "radiation monitoring facilities" and "actual reactor". But while the amusement factor did posit putting that comment in the funny things thread, the actual cyber-attack made it more of a weird news thing.

CNN - Chernobyl Cyber Attack So the bit I heard had the wonderful way of saying it:

Jeez, B5 really was a ticket to an early death. It's seeing those convention reunions getting smaller and smaller and the way they all choke up together when they start talking about the ones gone beyond.

Handling all sorts of things, plowing through the list, ticking things off, waiting to hear back from other people, pause, have that blink moment and suddenly realise...

Hmm... Tor - Tremors small-screen sequel with Kevin Bacon for SyFy

Watched the new Power Rangers out of curiosity. They walked the fine line of pushing it serious enough to avoid falling into the silly-camp and somewhat ground it in reality, but without going so far it be became grim-dark and angsty. The first half being that slow introduction of the characters, the usual mix of teenage oddballs learning to trust each other and becoming friends, then a section of training not-quite-montage, followed by last quarter consisting of a batch of overly stylistic combat and some cgi monsters as they figure out how to really pull together.

Did people actually consider the eu anything other than fanfiction? Maybe very early on but at some point, given the volume, I'd expect people to wise up. Lucasarts merely opened the flood gates to rack in licensing revenues. Lucas Arts had an entire department dedicated to nothing but keeping the EU in "check" and to develop storylines with the publishers and authors. I suppose they still do, considering that current Star Wars novels are once again considered canon. Officially sancitoned fan fiction, in other words, like Rogue One. Considering that there are Star Wars novels by respected (and popular, although that says little about quality) fantasy/science fantasy authors like Michael Stackpole I'd also argue against it all being awful. Of course Stackpole isn't in the same ballpark as Clarke or the aforementioned Jules Verne but he's a far cry from being a terrible writer and far away from fan-fiction level of awful. If you want awful check out E. L. James or Anna Todd. Let's not get into the whole Karen Traviss thing and the clashes she had with the SW fans.

It still kind of surprises me how many sci-fi readers I know who had no clue that Baen Publishing have a Free Electronic Library that offers a selection of their books in various digital formats. Along with a batch of Reading / Teachers guides on a mix of their books. I mean seriously, they were offering that years before Kindle ever happened and I still find avid readers who don't know that. So yes, just as a reminder to all who might not know it : http://www.baen.com/catalog/category/view/s/free-library/id/2012

Kong: Skull Island. A slow start, some gorgeous visuals of the island and locations. A bit of cgi monster, and that slight touch of serious mixed with pulp adventure. They've thrown in a few strokes of Ahab/Heart of Darkness, and Samuel Jackson chews the scenery with quiet intensity while Tom Hiddleston takes the lead as the slightly broken former SAS tracker/guide. You do have the fun of playing "spot the corpse" and figuring out who is going to get eaten/maimed/picked off by the various wildlife as it plays along.

A salt rifle.

He's spent months saying "no, it didn't happen" and now it's suddenly "oh yeah. it did happen. and it was Obama's fault."

Okay, so after everything has been said and done.. Trump suddenly decides to tweet this last night.. Is it just me, or am I squinting over the unreality of Trump saying that?