Raithe

I now know the secret of seeing it via the official BBC site while still in the US. So I have. I'll still watch it on PBS, too, tho. And buy the DVD's. Anything with Benedict, really. Yes I'm sad. Side note: he actually vaguely reminds me of my husband, only hubby doesn't have an accent. Could be why. Congratulations then. Apparently Benedict is an amazing mimic and can do an awful lot of accents and voices when he wants to. So did you enjoy that mix of humour that ran through most of the episode?

Not strictly news, but kind of interesting for some of the points raised... io9 - Is Bitcoin evil or just dumb?

"What happens in Vegas.. stays in Vegas. Well, at least until everyone started bringing smartphones...."

Okay, here's a really weird thing.. Steam on my sister's laptop. If I login as me, it works fine. If she tries to login as her.. it keeps throwing up the "steam is having trouble connecting to steam servers" message. Anyone have any clue as to why? Edit: Never mind. She gave me the wrong bloody login details for it. And steam won't tell you they're wrong, it just gives you that bloody annoying message instead.

Nope. It's because he doesn't do Christmas decorations. But there's still the standard of: "Can I have your help with something?" "Sure, right now or is it something later?" "Oh later. Let me know when you've finished whatever it is you're working on now." Which you would expect to mean let him know when you've finished what you're doing and can go help him, yes? No. What it means is that from that point on he's going to come by and poke at you every couple of minutes, not saying "I need help now" but that constant poke of "Are you done? Are you ready?" which interrupts your current task, and leaves you either having to spend twice as long on it because of the bloody interruptions or just dropping everything and helping him right that instant. Once again, if you call him on it, it turns into a wide-eyed "No, I was waiting for you to let me know when you could help" followed by "There's no need to raise your voice" and the stomp off.

When you're actually in the middle of work, and it's a chore that you've mentally scheduled to be done at a later point in that day because you're, you know actually working... That's not stopping you procrastinating. It pretty much comes down to my father really not liking Christmas decorations and he wants to delay putting them out till the point he can say "well, there's no point in doing it now because we'll be taking them down tomorrow.". Once they go up, he's insistent on trying to get them all down. But he won't demand it. He'll just push and grouch in the background. Then when I've actually got them taken down and have a bunch of things to take care of, and I have the "I can finish packing them away in boxes and get them in the attic at this point in the day because I need to work on actual paying work during this point of the day..." Then he basically pulls that routine. He does it on a lot of stuff. If he decides that it must be taken care of this instant, he won't ask for it to be done now. He'll just start offering to help you do it when you plan to get it done. And keep asking if you need that help yet. And various other elements to just make it too much grief to do it when you actually plan to do it because you can't do any work. Then if you call him on it, it's that mix of "I'm just trying to help." followed by "There's no reason to raise your voice" when you're still talking in normal tones, before he basically stomps off to his room. Ah. The joys of family politics and relationships.

Is this your sister? No that's my father. Between that and things like finding open scissors buried in the folds of my mothers bed sheets when I was tidying things up, there are times I really do feel like I'm the parent ...

Don't you just love passive aggressive family members? - decided that now must be the time that something must be done so.. "Are you going to want help doing that today?" Sure, it'll need two people when I do it later, I'm working on something now and I'm planning on doing that this afternoon. - 15 minutes later "So when are you going to want help to do that?" "As I said, later this afternoon, not right now." - 10 minutes later "Do you need help with that thing now?" "No, as I said I'm working on something and I'm doing that later.." - repeat, on a 5-10 minute cycle until the hassle just isn't worth it and it gets taken care of now -

To start the week on the random bunch... And just for the naughty eye glint..

I'm never going to be able to take any group called ISIS seriously after watching Archer.

Heh, I was once inside a gold-plated Land Rover that had a foldable back roof section and elevating gun seat in the rear. Of course, I was about 10 at the time so it made a different impression on me back then.

I seem to be running on around 5 hours sleep a night for the past 4 or 6 days. It's starting to blur a bit. Also, my sister turned up a the weekend to have me look at some troubles on her laptop once more... has anyone mentioned how much Win8 should be loathed recently?

Come on, anyone who watched the episode where Sherlock died saw Sherlock alive at the end of it

To do another spate of "Nah-Nah-Naaah!" at the Americans.. Sat through episode 2 of this seasons Sherlock. Lots of good moments, as we see Sherlock attempt to be the best man at Watson's wedding.

And just for those yanks still waiting Sherlock to make it's way across the Atlantic a tease.. an example of the cunning editing in play Mrs Hudson "You really should talk to John" Sherlock "I have, he doesn't want to talk" Mrs Hudson "Why, what did he say?" Sherlock turning to look at her "F..." - scene switch to Watson in his Doctor's practice with a patient - Watson: "Cough now please."

Steam Legion by Evan Currie. An interesting twist on steampunk by sending it back to the Library of Alexandria in the Roman Era. A nice mix of characters set in an unusual time zone, a mix of the early Israeli revolts and elements of corrupt Roman politics in the time of Nero as the kick-off, leaving the Spartan lady Dyna heir of the line of Spartan kings and current student of one of the leading inventors of the time to organise the defense of the Library as it's threatened to be razed by the zealots. Thus, leading into practical applications of Archimedes Steam Cannons and various other devices that can be fashioned in the midst of old-fashioned clash of Legions. Although it wraps up one element of the central storyline, it certainly leaves it hanging and room for sequels to follow.

Hm, puttering around on a really grim, windy and off/on rainy day. Actually poked a bit at some work matters, slipped in some gaming time on Kotor 2, read a little Roman Era steampunk that was interesting, pondering on twelfth night and making sure all the decorations are down by manana, and got into an interesting talk with an old girlfriend of mine. One of those interesting look back at where things went wrong as it were, and how we're still friends with the occasional flirt without it causing any trouble. Heh, although it was interesting to hear her try to explain to me that I have a very good effect on women that I don't realise I have, since I tend to view myself as that slightly thin, incredibly pale geek type with glasses and what's now becoming a receding hairline.. While she was all "no, you're tall, lean, dress up very nicely, smart, humorous, and when you talk to a girl you talk TO her not AT her and we feel like we've become your sole focus on the planet, and your voice is amazing. The fact that you don't realise any of that just makes it hotter." I'm not sure I'm really synching up the two images there. Ah well, still nice to be told that sort of stuff.

I'm tempted to say that if you want horror then try playing Oblivion. I find it amazingly horrifying that so many people liked that game.

I've been in a few campaigns where the folks with "weaker" characters pulled off way more amazing stuff then the "powerful" statted ones because they got way more inventive in how they tried things to balance it out. Sure, they'd have more chance of screwing up by not making stat rolls, but either way it would turn out to be some really fun game time.

Hey, Throne of Blood is a damn incredible version of Macbeth set in Japan. That's certainly worthwhile watching.

"Sleep. It is for the weak...."

Re-playing KotOR2 with the 1.82 tslrcm. It's amazing how it can throw you to play a game where the Quick Save is F4 and the Quick Load is F5... Muscle memory has me way too used to using F5 for quick save on so many games..

Well we might as well end the week in black and white..

Well no-one on my friends list apparently has (of course, I've only got about half a dozen people on my friends list): Hitman Absolution AI War: Fleet Command Alan Wake Armada 2526 Back to the Future Episodes 1-6 Bully: Scholarship Edition Chronicles of Riddick Ghost Master Ghostbusters The Video Game Lost Horizon Saints Row 2 Secret Files: Tunguska Sid Meier's Pirates Star Ruler Star Wolves World of Goo