Diary of an Espresso Addict

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Jul. 18th, 2008

Computational Theory and Practice

Another B7 ficlet that fell out of the scraps cupboard. This was going to be a long tale of bluff & counter bluff, with lots of hot sex over desks, but I could never be bothered to write the plot. Or the sex. The resulting double drabble backstory in my What Might Have Been universe has no conceivable merit, literary or otherwise.

( Computational Theory and Practice )

Tags: blake's 7, fanfiction

Posted at 03:01 pm | Link | Reply | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

Jul. 17th, 2008

This is the Dead Land

Adding my ancient B7 fiction to the very shiny Hip Deep in Heroes, I came across a story scrap that's been hanging round since 2001 just waiting to be recycled into a drabble. Title from 'The Hollow Men'.

( Drabble set during 'Duel' )

And hey, new icon to celebrate my first ever B7 drabble!

Tags: blake's 7, drabble, fanfiction

Jul. 15th, 2008

Longevity, marital bliss -- and Blake's 7?

I won the

livelongnmarry auction I was bidding on, so hopefully the universe should eventually contain another piece of Blake's 7 fiction by the very generous

kindkit!

Tags: blake's 7

Posted at 11:28 am | Link | Reply | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

Jul. 11th, 2008

Poll on browsers

Interested in what people are using for web browsing these days, as Firefox & IE seem to have more incompatibilities than I'd realised. I'm particularly interested in what you use for recreation, rather than work. I promise not to sell the information to anyone...

( Poll under the cut )

Tags: poll

Jul. 10th, 2008

The Case of the Missing Solidus

Does anyone happen to know what became of Sacrilege, the Holmes/Watson archive? It seems to be unavailable at the moment. I'm particularly keen to trace 'Absurdly Simple' by Irene Adler aka Plaid Adder, which is such a wonderful intro to slash in general and H/W in particular that it would be a shame if it disappeared without trace. (The WayBack Machine hasn't helped.)

Tags: sherlock_holmes

Jun. 25th, 2008

Yet another of those books lists

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
(Most recently from

torn_eledhwen)

( list under the cut )

I've undoubtedly read some of the other classics as a child, but can't remember them. I haven't been reading much, if anything, new these past few years (a number of the newer unread ones are in the growing heap on my bedroom floor), but recommendations for where to start are welcome.

Tags: book

Apr. 18th, 2008

Public photography

There's an article in the BBC news magazine about police preventing photographers from taking pictures in public places. If you're a UK citizen, there's a related petition here.

Tags: petition, photos

Apr. 15th, 2008

Time for another dose of photospam...

Whixall & Fenn's Mosses are a local nature reserve that we visited this time last year but failed to take any decent photos. It's an amazing expanse of flat bleak landscape, silent but for bird calls, that's all the more surprising for being completely surrounded by farmland and not very distant from two towns. We didn't see another (human) soul all morning.

Lake with birds
Tussocks
Bog grass and water
Bleak
Road to nowhere

And something completely different...
What is it about winter trees that always reminds me of ents?

Tags: photos, shropshire

Apr. 3rd, 2008

Lapine coffee consumption

This has probably been the rounds by now, but there's an interesting study in rabbits (J. Neuroinflammation, BBC News summary) which suggests a mechanism for the previously observed protective effect of coffee against Alzheimer's (see eg Lindsay et al. 2002).

Mar. 6th, 2008

Happy birthday, Geograph

Geograph is 3 today. Quite an astonishing success story -- it's already at nearly two-thirds coverage (66.5% when last I looked), with most of the missing squares in Eire.

Tags: photos

Mar. 5th, 2008

Haven't committed photospam for a while

Started photographing again of late. Not many good pictures, but some interesting subjects.

Copper mine chimney: all that's left of the copper mining industry hereabouts
Forge chimney and glass clock: in a tiny shopping arcade, which I barely knew existed
Another of the clock
Droppingstone well: Victorian dripping well near summit of Bickerton Hill
Victorian grandeur: one of my growing collection of local listed buildings
Sandwiched in
Doorway: the other pictures of the church were a bit rubbish, but this one came out nicely
17th C sundial: pity there's no sun
Memorial to A.N. Hornby: famous local cricketer

More traditional photospam...
Leaning tree
Lovely sky
Entish trees

Tags: local, photos

Nicholson Baker on Wikipedia

It was like a giant community leaf-raking project in which everyone was called a groundskeeper. Some brought very fancy professional metal rakes, or even back-mounted leaf-blowing systems, and some were just kids thrashing away with the sides of their feet or stuffing handfuls in the pockets of their sweatshirts, but all the leaves they brought to the pile were appreciated. ... And it grew some more, and it became the biggest leaf pile anyone had ever seen anywhere, a world wonder. And then self-promoted leaf-pile guards appeared, doubters and deprecators who would look askance at your proffered handful and shake their heads, saying that your leaves were too crumpled or too slimy or too common, throwing them to the side.

Tags: wikipedia

Feb. 27th, 2008

Insert earth moves cliché here

Earthquakes don't cut much mustard here -- the timbered part of the house shakes significantly more every morning when the milk lorry goes by -- but I hope anyone who was closer to the epicentre than here survived ok.

Dec. 31st, 2007

Happy New Year!

I'll probably post about Christmas et al. sometime, but for now, I wish everyone reading this a happy and healthy 2008.

And I've just noticed that the livejournal fairy has waved his or her wand yet again. Please accept a belated but heartfelt thank you! If there's anything I can do in return do let me know.

Dec. 19th, 2007

Must get a Ten icon

I got out of the Doctor Who watching habit last year (after disliking several early Season 2 episodes and feeling it was unkind to watch merely to carp). As the 10--Rose relationship was one of the features I most disliked, I decided to give Season 3 a try when it repeated recently -- and now I'm hooked! ( Cut for mild spoilers to a series that everyone here undoubtedly watched months ago... )

Tags: doctor_who

Nov. 16th, 2007

Nature as art

Via

trixieleitz: Prize-winning micrographs (and be sure to check out the honourable mentions, as well).

This one's my favourite, which is yours?

Tags: art, biology

Oct. 5th, 2007

Calling Tolkien experts

Does anyone happen to know of a secondary source, preferably reasonably academic, discussing Frodo's post Ring War experiences in terms of shell shock or post-traumatic stress disorder? A general source on post-traumatic stress disorder in fiction would be useful, too.

Tags: tolkien

Sep. 20th, 2007

Entering the 21st century

Switched a few days ago to Mozilla, as IE 6 seems no longer compatible with editing Wikipedia and IE 7 seems incompatible with my monitor -- unless semi-bold smudgy text is meant to be a feature? So far, despite a few minor glitchettes, I'm liking it, particularly the less-obtrusive search facility.

I do note, however, that Espresso Recs looks completely rubbish in Mozilla, and all you kind Mozilla-using folks refrained from telling me... Memo to self, look up browser-specific stylesheets....

Tags: website

Jul. 27th, 2007

Femtofame

Most cheered that my latest wiki article on William Gaskell has made it to the Did you know? bit of the main page. Well, some of us have got to take all the 6 hours of fame we can get...

And hey, I never knew that he'd been played by Bill Nighy. That guy really does get around...

Tags: gaskell, history, wikipedia

Jul. 24th, 2007

Floods

My e-mail's been down for 24 hours or so because the ISP's datacentre is getting damp. It seems now to be back up, with lots and lots of LJ comment notifications -- 'Oh good', thought I, then 'my, that sounds awfully familiar', then 'but that's dated August?'. Sigh, they're sending me all my old comment notifications & mailing list posts, back (so far) to August last year. Apologies if I miss anything in the (cough) flood.

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