life, liberty and the pursuit of geekiness

Having done snow last week, the weather has apparently now got stuck at 'deluge'.

We were snowed in on Friday, and we built the biggest snowman evah. He was over six feet tall and rather wide, with a carrot nose and canes for arms, and we named him Horatio. His body was so large it took three of us to push it at the end, and we had to transport his head in a wheelbarrow so that it didn't end up the same size as the body.

Sadly it started to rain just after we had finished and he spent the next three days melting to a small lump of ice like a baby comet.

Has everyone seen the Torchwood clips? Oh, the team is such utter rubbish. It looks like they've given up trying to make out that I AR SERIOUS PROGRAMME and are playing it for the lulz. Crack-canon ahoy!

Happy New Year, everyone!


I am feeling slightly under-enthused by the prospect of staying up to see in 2008. I must be getting old.

A couple from the Vorkosiverse:

The Emperor's Curve

Poor brittle, intelligent, too-adult little Gregor, first wondering 'Can I do this?'.

You are my Tante Cordelia and I am your Gregor.

Ingenium et Fides

Aral and Cordelia struggling with the decision to have no more children. A reason Miles never thought of in Brothers in arms, and very plausible, too.

Via ankaret:

Molesworth Rides Agane

Molesworth doez Xmas pla cheers cheers

Christmas is going very well so far, with only one minor kerfuffle. The haul is quite satisfactory; as well as clothes, I have the stuffed owl toy I mentioned yesterday, a wooden owl ornament, chocolates, coloured sketching pencils, Miles, Mutants and Microbes (it's lovely to have a book where the print doesn't smudge. I wonder if it's worthwhile to replace Young Miles, Mirror Dance and Memory with hardbacks.), and something that elerrina_amanya forgot to order from amazon until after the deadline.

The dinner is cooking, we have watched the Queen and sorted out videotapes for Voyage of the Damned and Shrek 2, went for a short walk, I have picked at a jigsaw with some help from elerrina_amanya, and now I'm catching up on LJ and browsing Yuletide. sadly there are too many fics to read before dinner, which is meant to be in five minutes.

In today's 'Oi, Rusty, nooo!' news:

Ever heard of Godwin's?.

Asked who from the past would he [RTD] would most have liked to play the role [of the Doctor], he replied: “Hitler. He was stern and strong. He would be great.”

Just...take the programme away now, plz?

Doctor Who Christmas story by Paul Cornell. Very cute!

So apparently Rusty said that the Doctor is messianic or something. Oi, Rusty, just stop now, please?

Funniest thing on Radio One today: Silent Night, sung by Chewbacca the Wookiee.

-_O

Vorkosigan series books I wish had been written, in no particular order:

The other half of Diplomatic Immunity.
I'm quite willing to take Ekaterin's word for it that she was fabulous, but I want to see her being fabulous! I wanted to see her facing down the haut and stalling off the imminent war and getting treatment for Miles, knowing it's all hanging on her, again.

The Warrior's Apprentice: The Home Front
This is another book where at least as much again of the action happens off-stage and Miles hears about it in couple of paragraphs afterwards. The Emperor and the Prime Minister on the outs, the head of ImpSec in his own cells for a month-it's a wonder there wasn't a civil war-Miles on trial, Ivan AWOL (having his social calendar organised must have been pleasant for Gregor that month), Gregor doing a number on his own best supports...It would be difficult to write, because the characters are so much more developed now. What I really want to know is what Cordelia thought of it, but I suspect that to get character growth it would have to be from Gregor's pov. That would give a lovely unreliable narrator thing as well.

Barrayar 2: Electric Bugaloo
More detail on Gregor and Laisa's courtship and early marriage. To have married Gregor, she has to be either a Cordelia-calibre heroine (there is a reason for all the Miles/Gregor, I suppose, and if Miles's sister had ever made it into the published Warrior's Apprentice, the shipping would probably have been overwhelming), or too infatuated to think. Obviously it would be preferable if she were the former, as I don't think ImpDivorce would be much of a story. It would have been very interesting, as well, to have been able to compare Laisa's introduction to Barrayar to Cordelias's, a generation earlier. I suppose there is a chance of getting Laisa or Gregor pov in a future book (I am rather bitter that there was apparently Gregor pov in the early drafts of ACC, but the scene(s) were rewritten. I suspect the wedding planning scene, because Gregor is unusually demonstrative, which would make sense if it was the original internal reactions rewritten as external.)

Sergyar
Well, we've had the other two, and I'd like to see what Sergyar's like now it's (semi-)colonised. I'd like to see more Cordelia pov, too, but I suspect that the only way we're going to get it is at Aral's death, and if that's the price, no thanks, not for another dozen books, please. Even apparent from the immediate mourning, I shouldn't think that Miles could be an Auditor and a Count, which would be a shame, and would kind of limit future books.

Once More with Epic Fail, SixApart.

They never do learn, do they? They've introduced flagging adult content and also a 'flag' icon on other people's posts. Apart from the point that IMO those are related but different features and the conflation is not a happy one, they didn't bother telling us in the original post what they'd put in place against trolls, etc, etc, and had to post clarification the next day.

It could do with a bit more clarification, too. what's the definition of 'Adult Concepts', for example? Would it include this fic? (That's not a rhetorical question, btw, I really am slightly concerned about it).

Office spellchecker suggests that I replace Vorrutyer with Corrupter and Vorpatril with Versatile.

Really quite surprisingly appropriate, don't you think?