Raithe

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?

Far Cry Primal. I can see some of the points people made about it dragging along. The story side isn't very pointed or guided, so it's very much a free-roam build things up, explore the world, gather resources, gather more resources, then "oh wow, I found a story related mission!" Still, it's a pretty gorgeous looking game, and the roaming and exploration is entertaining in its own way.

The Count of Monte Cristo is one of those books I pretty much read at least once a year. There's just something about it that always manages to pull me in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTwJzTsb2QQ&

I was somewhat amused to see all the outrage Trump has caused... by driving a golf buggy on the driving green at the golf course.

Looked at the steam sales, but eh, having just had to spend money to replace the damn DVD drive on my PC I think I shall hold back for the moment. I'll continue to hunt animals in Far Cry Primal for the time being.

I have to admit, with the mix of handling the job hunt, life chores, relationship breakups and all the rest of it, I've been letting my usual exercise routines drop out of practice the last month or two. I need to get back into the proper rhythm of things again. Edit: After a year of job hunting, I've decided to bite the bullet and go back to university to finish off my degree. Got my acceptance letter today, now I just have to see if I can secure the student loans to cover tuition and living fees....

Had the joys of my PC lock up, stutter, then crash last night. Before rolling into a very, very slow boot up to BIOS screen, followed by black screen of "Unable to find boot device" with occasional angry beeps. The moment I unplugged the DVD drive from it's sata connection, the whole thing worked again. I guess since it looks like I have to replace said DVD device, I might as well do the upgrade to an internal Blu-Ray...

For that oddity of legal issues... NC law - woman can't back out of sex once underway

First hour or so of Far Cry Primal. Have to admit, it is a beautiful looking game.

Ah....found it. DramaFever website. Awesome. Now to immerse myself. You might want to hunt down Sars-Fansubs. They do a lot of unofficial translations and providing for download, but for various reasons it doesn't qualify as illegal torrenting or wotnot. When a Japanese or Korean drama show actually comes out on an official translatable dvd or what have you in the western world they take down the shows they've made available through fan subbing.

Hm, and Far Cry Primal is on Amazon.co.uk for only £21.50 - just for digital copy. So that's half price by all the usual places for it. Treating myself and planning to give a try at some primeval roaming and hunting.

The one thing to pay attention to with Jules Verne, is that due to various reasons, there is a large amount of badly translated books out there. In fact a lot of the original translations added pages, words, and renamed things. It's more the last quarter of a century or so that decent translations have been published, but a lot of the freely available from public domain versions are based off the original translations from back in the day rather than the more accurate recent ones.

He does kind of clock up there with H G Wells as one of the fathers of sci-fi. Plus these days he's considered fairly influential on the steampunk genre. I'm trying to ponder if you're serious about asking if anybody had heard of him, or if it's just my general case of bookworm/geek-hood that makes me think he's much more wildly known than he is.

For those people across the Atlantic, this might be one worth a considered check up.. Millions got free amazon credits from an apple lawsuit and it expires this following Saturday