More new post!

It looks like I'm sorted into updating this thing on a somewhat more regular basis. Go me! Let's see, what's new?

Jenn and I are still well on course for a December landing date (YAY!), I've got my finger out and am looking into getting a new flat (there are some awesome ones out there that we both fancy), one of my major debts is sorted this very month and I'm capable of amusing Jenn with just two fingers and my tongue from 3500 miles away! ;)

Life is good.

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

What's this? A new post?

I look at this page at least once a day. It's the homepage on my 'puter. All I use it for these days is the links for the web comics down the left hand side. However I'm kinda under instructions to bring it up to date. So, here goes...

It's Midnight and I'm quite sober....

Some things are still the same and some are very different. I still work for 'The Man' in the same capacity as I have since 2005. My moods are still up and down like a yo-yo. I still have a bunch of the greatest friends you can get. I still live in Dundee and I'm still a hefty geek.

The major difference is I'm no longer alone!

(Cue fanfares and cheering crowds)

By virtue of an insane amount of luck I've met someone very special, who makes me very happy, is totally nuts (they've fallen for me, 'nuff said) and even likes Doctor Who! Result!

Drawbacks? She's 3500 or so miles away in Connecticut, USA. Poot. We've just spent the week together and she's returned to the States today and that makes me a trifle low but I know that we'll be together soon enough again for Christmas so I'll muddle onwards until this distance thing is permanently resolved.

Blogging on and off (mostly off) since January 2004.

Oh good lord...

...what have they done?

I'm a gamer...I'm a Star Wars fan boy. When these two things combine you may get something like this.

Wish I'd thought of it...


Blogging on and off since January 2004.

With great power comes great responsibility...

...but does it work in reverse? I hope so. I've just been given 'great responsibility' and I could do with 'great power' to have fun with as compensation!

What am I waffling about? On Saturday, Agent Grey asked me to be his Best Man at his wedding to 'Muffin. To say I was stunned and unable to parry would have been an understatement! I'm greatly honoured; now all I have to do is not cock things up.

I've had a look at a few websites already and I had no idea that the BM dealt with so much! I thought it was just rings, speeches and stag night but not so...

For example:

• Plan and pay for bachelor party w/groomsmen.
• Rent and pay for a tux, and go for fittings.
• Attend rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.
• Help bring and boxes to ceremony and reception location.
• Help the groom dress and make sure he gets to the church on time.
• Keeps the bride’s wedding ring until the ring exchange. You may be asked to hold both rings or none at all if the ring bearer has them.
• Sign the marriage license.
• The couple will give you a sealed envelope with the officiant’s or church’s fee in it. You will give this the priest/officiant before the ceremony.
• Sit to the groom’s left at the reception.
• Dances with the maid of honour.
• Make a first toast to the bride and groom. This is usually done before dinner but in some cases right after.
• Arranges transportation or personally drives the bride and groom to the hotel or the airport.
• Collects and returns all formalwear rentals on time.
• Help maid of honour bring gifts to the bride and groom’s house.

And this is one of the shorter lists!

Crumbs.....


Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Hmm, could do better....

YOUR REPORT CARD:
Category	Grade
Love	C
Friends and Family	A+
Body	B
Mind	C
Finance / Career	D
Your Life's Average Grade: B
'What is your Life Grade?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Now that I'm no longer hung over...

...I can write about this year's Nationals (National Student Roleplaying and Wargaming Championships 2007). As usual I was there representing DURPS as I have done over the last 8 years. Christ! 8 Years and 9 Nationals. I first went in 1999 when I was no longer a Student and have been going ever since. Ummm, maybe they should rename it, many of the people going are in the same boat as me.

The Nationals epitomize that old saying, "It's not about if you win or lose but how you play the game." Yes, there is some competitiveness between societies, especially in the Wargaming categories (they have winners and losers), but really it's an excuse for many gamers to assemble under one roof and tell many glorious lies of battle and get totally smashed out of their tiny little minds. At least it is for me at any rate.

As last year, I took part in the Systemless category. No defined rules system or world setting to fall back on, just solid roleplaying. Groovy. Last year I won this category but this year a I only managed fourth (That's me picking up my award). Only managed? Dear Lord, my group was crammed to the gills with top notch gamers. Any one of us could have won. I count it an honour to have played with them and to get recognition as well... A double whammy of good!

The Edinburgh organizers led by Lucy (Pictured with the megaphone) did an amazing job. They entertained us, fed us, made sure we got to our games on time and chased us when we didn't. I wish we could go to Edinburgh every year but next year, Sheffield (damn their wargaming hides!).

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Attack of the Clones....

The new trailer for the new series of Doctor Who can be found here.

There appear to be daleks again, ok. Hopefully the rest of the Time Lords will come out from down the back of the sofa (if motorized pepper pots can then so can the great and good of Gallifrey), and everyone's favorite clone army will be back by the looks of things.

Aim for the probic vent!

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

It looks flashy...

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Water, water everywhere...

...nor any drop to drink.

The weekend's over and I'm feeling a bit low. Need booze or party or something to de-blue me.

Things that haven't helped but are thoroughly recommended....

The tribute to Linda Smith on BBC7, Broadcast on Saturday morning.
This week's Round the Horne, also on BBC7, Daily.
The Fading Suns RPG. Character gen for next week. GM Deviant Boy.

Hope the week only gets better...

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Ohhh, look at the shiny...!

I was at the Foreign Fields LARP Kit Fayre this weekend helping Chocolate Muffin and Agent Grey with their stall. Well I say 'helping', I mean wandering through the Fayre looking at the stuff from the other vendors. Very cool stuff was available, almost enough for me to want to take up my old rubber sword and hack at things again. Latex weaponry and armour, costumes and historical reenactor's weapons and armour too. I was in LARPers heaven!.

The height of my help was, apparently, extra memory and eyesight. I recalled names and things and spotted things at a distance. The other thing I helped with was the fashion show. Yes, that's right, not content with modeling clothes for a flyer, I now model on catwalks. Go me! Zoolander, your days are numbered!



Blogging on and off since January 2004.

The natives are unfriendly...

I've been parking my car on the street outside my flat for about two years now so I was horribly surprised this week end to discover that It had been broken in to. Rear passenger side window broken, my boot and glove box rummaged through and generally a nuisance made. At first I thought nothing had been stolen but when I checked again later all my Deadlands stuff for my current campaign is gone. Even worse, all my dice that were in the same bag were gone too! Some of those dice had been with me for over 15 years. I'm gutted. Not only that but dice are expensive to replace. Bummer. I'm quite ticked off and wondering how I'm gonna break things to the Thursday group....

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Everything I need to know about life I learned from Sci-Fi...

Part One - Blake's Seven

1. If you're a genocidal megalomaniac, over act.
2. Abandoned, drifting space vehicles several hundred years old are bad for your health.
3. The telepath, far from being the detector of the first sign of trouble is the nearly always the first point of trouble.
4. Idealists never win, they get shot.
5. Pacifists never win, they get crushed.
6. Mystic women on dead planets spell trouble.
7. Shoot your enemy when you get the chance, you may not get another.
8. Perfectly functioning super space cruisers that have been abandoned usually have a catch.
9. Prophecies from super computers will come true, just not in the way you expect.
10. If it looks like a trap and smells like a trap and has trap written on it in neon letters ten feet high and is too good to be true anyway then it must be a trap. Trust your first impression.
    

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Poser...

That's me, I'm a poser! Today I became a male model, modeling Amy-Clare Design fashions. Go, look at the website and buy stuff. If I wear it, it must be good!

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Slightly shop soiled year's resolutions...

According to my clock it's Monday 05-02-2007 but I'm sure that it's still Sunday. Ah well, that's the arbitrary nature of time and dates. It marches on even though we're settled in the past...

Anyway, if the clock is right then I'm 33 years and 1week old. Go me. According to hobbit law I have now come of age and it's now time to put my irresponsible 'tweens' behind me. That's a nuisance, I hadn't planned on being responsible. There was a wake for my 33rd year given last Saturday. From what I observed about myself on that night there's precious little responsibility left in me. Two cocktails at once? Dear, oh dear...

So, it's now over a twelfth of the way into 2007 and I thought I should write down a few things that I should do this year in a kind of bloke-y Bridget Jones way. I believe that's the premise of that film, I haven't seen it...

1 Update this thing at least once a week. I have it, I should use it for more than just a handy homepage and link provider.

2 Buy a flat. I'm fed up paying landlord's for no return. I may as well pay the bank instead and have something to show for it.

3 Write something! I have ideas but never put pen to paper or at least finger to keyboard. How hard can it be?

4 Run Spacemaster. I've been threatening it for years. This September, I promise...

5 Visit everyone. I'm an awful friend. I should have been in the Shetlands at the start to this week but I f***ed up. This year, I promise...

6 The big one. Find someone. Without pretending to be something I'm not. Apparently this is tricky. I've never been actively looking before but this year I think it's about damned time.

I'm sure there are other things I should be up to but these seem to be the most pressing half dozen.

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Pre-gens...

Or Pre-Generated Characters to give them their full name. I hate them. I hate playing them and I hate creating them. However if you're a GM (Games Master) planning a one off scenario (a stand alone story for a role playing game (RPG) setting) they're almost compulsory.

Currently I'm wrestling with the AD&D (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons) second edition character creation rules and I'd forgotten why I stopped playing the damn game. Too bloody fiddly by half for the return you get. The things we do for nostalgia and parody...

Coming soon - CSI: Waterdeep.

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Good bye, friend...

I was sad to hear that Joe Barbera died today aged 95. I was born in 1974 and never lost my love of the cartoon and anyone of my generation whenever they think of cartoons thinks of either Warner Bros. and their Looney Tunes format or the Hanna-Barbera studio creations. Both studios are technically before my time but in the UK it's what's on TV that counts as current. Looney Tunes made me laugh more but it's the Hanna-Barbera format that kept me entertained as a kid (and still do today, who says I have to grow up?).

As a kid I couldn't get enough of Top Cat, Scooby Doo, Hong-Kong Phooey and the rest. There were some that I could take or leave like The Flintstones or Hucklerberry Hound but on the whole the studio was more hit than miss. As I grew older and became more discerning in my toon tastes I came to look into who was making my toons and when. I was very surprised to find that Joe was behind Tom and Jerry, the greatest cartoon double act ever. That was in the 40's! Wasn't he dead yet?! Scoob and the gang first appear in 1969! I began to notice that while T&J could do no wrong while he was behind them, Chuck Jones hadn't a clue when MGM gave him the chance. Go figure. A genius with Rabbits and Ducks, clueless with cats and mice. Just goes to show how much love tells with a creation.

I thought of putting a link to the Wikipedia page but it doesn't do him justice. IMDB does it far more eloquently....

Joe Barbera 24-03-1911 to 18-12-2006

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Plagarism is the sincerest form of flattery...

One of these days I'll have an original idea. Until then I've swiped this from The Queen of Procrastination's Live journal...

1. Bold those books you've read.
2. Italicize started-but-never-finished.
3. Add three of your own.
4. Post to your blogg.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien (More times than is good for me!)
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. 1984, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger (I hate this book!)
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (I think)
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's (Philosopher's) Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien (see 1)
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton (Can't abide Enid's work)
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Susskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce (Pretentious wank)
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach, Alex Garland
104. Dracula, Bram Stoker
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2, Sue Townsend (Never appealed to me)
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
119. Shogun, James Clavell
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
134. George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. It, Stephen King
145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
146. The Green Mile, Stephen King
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian
150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling
160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. The World According To Garp, John Irving
166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye
169. The Witches, Roald Dahl
170. Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway
174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco
175. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner, George Eliot
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White (I'll get around to it...)
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews
201. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien (see 1)
202. The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
203. The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan
204. The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan
205. Fires of Heaven, Robert Jordan
206. Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan
207. Winter's Heart, Robert Jordan
208. A Crown of Swords, Robert Jordan
209. Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan
210. A Path of Daggers, Robert Jordan (I started in '91, I'm not gonna quit now...)
211. As Nature Made Him, John Colapinto
212. Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
213. The Married Man, Edmund White
214. Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
215. The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault
216. Cry to Heaven, Anne Rice
217. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell
218. Equus, Peter Shaffer (erk...horses)
219. The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten
220. Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
221. Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
222. The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice ( I know, it's a vampire novel...)
223. Anthem, Ayn Rand
224. The Bridge To Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
225. Tartuffe, Moliere
226. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
227. The Crucible, Arthur Miller
228. The Trial, Franz Kafka
229. Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
230. Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles
231. Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther
232. A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen
233. Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen
234. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
235. A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
236. ALIVE!, Piers Paul Read
237. Grapefruit, Yoko Ono
238. Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde
240. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
241. Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson (not bad if you like winging heroes)
242. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
242. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
243. Summerland, Michael Chabon
244. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
245. Candide, Voltaire
246. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl
247. Ringworld, Larry Niven
248. The King Must Die, Mary Renault
249. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
250. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L'Engle
251. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
252. The House Of The Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
253. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
254. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
255. The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson
256. Chocolate Fever, Robert Kimmel Smith
257. Xanth: The Quest for Magic (Original trilogy), Piers Anthony
258. The Lost Princess of Oz, L. Frank Baum
259. Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon
260. Lost In A Good Book, Jasper Fforde
261. Well Of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
262. Life Of Pi, Yann Martel
263. The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
264. A Yellow Raft In Blue Water, Michael Dorris
265. Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
267. Where The Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
268. Griffin & Sabine, Nick Bantock
269. Witch of Blackbird Pond, Joyce Friedland
270. Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, Robert C. O'Brien
271. Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
272. The Cay, Theodore Taylor
273. From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
274. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
275. The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
276. The Kitchen God's Wife, Amy Tan
277. The Bone Setter's Daughter, Amy Tan
278. Relic, Duglas Preston & Lincolon Child
279. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
280. American Gods, Neil Gaiman
281. Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry
282. The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum
283. Haunted, Judith St. George
284. Singularity, William Sleator
285. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
286. Different Seasons, Stephen King
287. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
288. About a Boy, Nick Hornby
289. The Bookman's Wake, John Dunning
290. The Church of Dead Girls, Stephen Dobyns
291. Illusions, Richard Bach
292. Magic's Pawn, Mercedes Lackey
293. Magic's Promise, Mercedes Lackey
294. Magic's Price, Mercedes Lackey
295. The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav
296. Spirits of Flux and Anchor, Jack L. Chalker
297. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice (see 222)
298. The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices, Brenda Love
299. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace.
300. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison.
301. The Cider House Rules, John Irving.
302. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
303. Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland
304. The Lion's Game, Nelson Demille
305. The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, Stephen Brust
306. Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh
307. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
308. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
309. Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk
310. Camber of Culdi, Kathryn Kurtz
311. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
312. War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk
313. The Art of War, Sun Tzu
314. The Giver, Lois Lowry
315. The Telling, Ursula Le Guin
316. Xenogenesis (or Lilith's Brood), Octavia Butler
317. A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold
318. The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
319. The Aeneid, Publius Vergilius Maro
320. Hanta Yo, Ruth Beebe Hill
321. The Princess Bride, S. Morganstern (I really should)
322. Beowulf, Anonymous (I really should, I know Seamus Heany. Well, I say know... met...)
323. The Sparrow, Maria Doria Russell
324. Deerskin, Robin McKinley
325. Dragonsong, Anne McCaffrey (can't be bothered)
326. Passage, Connie Willis
327. Otherland, Tad Williams
328. Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay
329. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
330. Beloved, Toni Morrison
331. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore
332. The mysterious disappearance of Leon, I mean Noel, Ellen Raskin
333. Summer Sisters, Judy Blume
334. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo
335. The Island on Bird Street, Uri Orlev
336. Midnight in the Dollhouse, Marjorie Filley Stover
337. The Miracle Worker, William Gibson
338. The Genesis Code, John Case
339. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevensen
340. Paradise Lost, John Milton (One of these days)
341. Phantom, Susan Kay
342. The Mummy or Ramses the Damned, Anne Rice
343. Anno Dracula, Kim Newman
344: The Dresden Files: Grave Peril, Jim Butcher (I've read some of these, not sure of this one)
345: Tokyo Suckerpunch, Issac Adamson
346: The Winter of Magic's Return, Pamela Service
347: The Oddkins, Dean R. Koontz
348. My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
349. The Last Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
350. At Swim, Two Boys, Jaime O'Neill
351. Othello, by William Shakespeare
352. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
353. The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats
354. Sati, Christopher Pike
355. The Inferno, Dante
356. The Apology, Plato
357. The Small Rain, Madeline L'Engle
358. The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Richard E Cytowick
359. 5 Novels, Daniel Pinkwater
360. The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Juliet Marillier
361. Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
362. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
363. Our Town, Thorton Wilder
364. Green Grass Running Water, Thomas King
335. The Interpreter, Suzanne Glass
336. The Moor's Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie
337. The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
338. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
339. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
340. The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
341. Pages for You, Sylvia Brownrigg
342. The Changeover, Margaret Mahy
343. Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
344. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
345. Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo
346. Shosha, Isaac Bashevis Singer
347. Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck
348. The Diving-bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
349. The Lunatic at Large, J. Storer Clouston
350. Time for Bed, David Baddiel
351. Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold
352. Quite Ugly One Morning, Christopher Brookmyre (Fun)
353. The Bloody Sun, Marion Zimmer Bradley
354. Sewer, Gas, and Eletric, Matt Ruff
355. Jhereg, Steven Brust
356. So You Want To Be A Wizard, Diane Duane
357. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
358. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
359. Road-side Dog, Czeslaw Milosz
360. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
361. Neuromancer, William Gibson
362. The Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
363. A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr
364. The Mask of Apollo, Mary Renault
365. The Gunslinger, Stephen King
366. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
367. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
368. A Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman (if this is Sandman then yes)
369. Ivanhoe, Walter Scott
370. The God Boy, Ian Cross
371. The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie R. King
372. Finn Family Moomintroll, Tove Jansson (freaky stuff)
373. Misery, Stephen King
374. Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters
375. Hood, Emma Donoghue
376. The Land of Spices, Kate O'Brien
377. The Diary of Anne Frank
378. Regeneration, Pat Barker
379. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
380. Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina Garcia
381. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
382. The View from Saturday, E.L. Konigsburg
383. Dealing with Dragons, Patricia Wrede
384. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss
385. A Severed Wasp - Madeleine L'Engle
386. Here Be Dragons - Sharon Kay Penman
387. The Mabinogion (Ancient Welsh Tales) - translated by Lady Charlotte E. Guest
388. The DaVinci Code - Dan Brown (I'm not proud, I'll admit it.)
389. Desire of the Everlasting Hills - Thomas Cahill
390. The Cloister Walk - Kathleen Norris
391. My Antonia, Willa Cather
392. Bell jar, Sylvia Plath
393. The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
394. Conceived Without Sin, Bud MacFarlane Jr.
395. Pierced by a Sword, Bud MacFarlane, Jr.
396. Tully, Paullina Simons
397. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
398. Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood
399. Earth Abides, George R. Stewart
400. Double Play, Robert Parker
401. Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott
402. Bookman's Promise, John Dunning
403. Julius Caesar, Shakespeare
404. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
405. A Separate Peace, John Knowles
406. The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn, Janis Hallowell
407. The Bible, various authors.
408. The Odyssey, Homer (English trans. only)
409. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
410. The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
411. The Way of a Pilgrim, Anonymous
412. The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, Will Cuppy
413. Song of Eve, June Strong
414. Cyclops, Clive Cussler (see 388)
415. The Light That Failed, Rudyard Kipling
416. Zia, Scott O'Dell
417. Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell
418. The Devil's Arithmetic, Jane Yolen
419. Riddle-master Trilogy, Patricia McKillip
420. Certain Women, Madeleine L'Engle
421. My Hundred Children, Lenah Kikhler-Zilberman
422. Sandry's Book, Tamora Pierce
423. Joona trilogy, Kim Englehart
424. The Dark Is Rising Sequence (set of 5 books), Susan Cooper
425. King of Shadows, Susan Cooper
426. Among Friends, Caroline Cooney
427. Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
428. Anne Frank and Me, Cherie Bennett & Jeff Gotesfeld
429. Shadow of a Hero, by Peter Dickinson
430. A House Like a Lotus, by Madeleine L'Engle
431. Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis
432. A Raging Quiet, by Sherryl Jordan
433. A Ring of Endless Light, by Madeleine L'Engle
434. The Girl Who Owned a City, by O.T. Nelson
435. Below the Root, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
436. Island in the Sea of Time, by S.M. Stirling
437. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
438. Digital Fortress, Dan Brown
439. Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne (I think this is his best)
440. The Bridges of Madison County, Robert James Waller
441. Thunder and Roses, Mary Jo Putney
442. Love Beyond Tomorrow, Erin Klingler
443. Wizard's First Rule, by Terry Goodkind
444. The Neverending Story, by Michael Ende
445. The Hidden Staircase, by Carolyn Keene
446. Chess with A Dragon, by Devid Gerold
447. Dreadnaught, by Robert K. Massie
448. On Basilisk Station, by David Weber
449. The High and the Mighty, by Ernest K. Gann
450. The Old Dog Barks Backwards, by Ogden Nash
451. The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder
452. Startide Rising, by David Brin
453. The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
454. All the President's Men, by Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein
455. Guilty Pleasures, Laurell K. Hamilton
456. Moonheart, Charles DeLint
457. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Alan Garner
458. Lady Chatterly's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
459. Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges
460. Henry V, Shakespeare
461. To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis
462. Elric of Melnibone, Michael Moorcock
463. M.Y.T.H. Inc. Link, Robert Asprin
464. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by J.K. Rowling
465. The Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L'Engle
466. The Kingmaker's Sword, by Ann Marston
467. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone
468. Alvin Maker (et. al.,) Orson Scott Card
469. Jesus and the Lost Goddess, Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy
470. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
471. Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
472. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
473. The Man with a Load of Mischief, Martha Grimes
474. Smoke and Mirrors, Neil Gaiman
475. The Alienist, Caleb Carr
476. Blood Meridian, or, The Evening Redness in the West, Cormac McCarthy
477. The Secret Service, Wendy Walker
478. Let's Go Play at the Adams', Mandal Johnson
479. The Unlikely Ones, Mary Brown
480. Tristram Shandy, Lawrence Sterne
481. Slaugherhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
482. Game Of Thrones, George R.R. Martin
483. Clash Of Kings, George R.R. Martin
484. Storm of Swords, George R.R. Martin
485. Forever Amber, Kathleen Winsor
486. The Other Boleyn Girl, Phillipa Gregory
487. Through a Glass Darkly, Karleen Koen
488. The Silence of the Lambs, Thomas Harris
489. Natural Solar Architecture, a passive primer: David Wright
490. Billy and the Boingers, Berke Breathed
491. The Ordinary Princess, M. M. Kaye
492. Bambi, Felix Salten
493. Strands of Starlight, Gael Baudino
494. The Ground Beneath her Feet - Salman Rushdie
495. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke
496. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Muramki

my three...

497.The Sum of All Fears, Tom Clancy (His best before he loses the plot)
498.The Darkness that Comes Before, R Scott Bakker
499.Carter Beats the Devil, Glen David Gold



Blogging on and off since January 2004.

It's addictive...

Overconfidence, originally uploaded by lord_mcguffin.

This was the best image I could get to use with this idea. Mabe I should have scanned one from one of my big books of Who...

I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on...

It's a well known fact amongst my friends that when it comes to house keys I'm a bit dim. Case in point, the very first morning after I'd moved into the Realm in Exile I locked myself out. Fortunately, having remembered my key forgetting propensities, I had left my spare set with a neighbour. This has continued about once every two months to the present day.

Today, however, I managed to lock both sets of keys into the flat as I hadn't returned the spare set to my neighbour after I'd given it to a house guest.

OOPS!

Locksmiths are expensive. The first one I phoned quoted £84 just to turn up but he wasn't available until tomorrow. Several others just didnt answer the phone. The final one quoted £65 but he was on his way to Perth and wouldn't be with me for about an hour and a half, luck permitting. This was at 4:45pm ish.

At 8:30pm he shows up, waves a bit of wiggly plastic at the lock and charges me £60 for the job, cash. I've a feeling no-one will know about this job, there were no receipts or anything. Just a quiet transfer of the necessary folding.

For £60 he could have at least grunted or made a little fuss over the lock to make me feel like I got my moneysworth...

I really should organise myself better.

Blogging on and off since January 2004.

Eveyone's doing it...

Blogging on and off since January 2004.