baloonworld

Inspired by mishearing something that Rachel was saying about having to write terrible fanfic such that the word "thou", while used gratuitously as per the original text was also grammatically correct (a feature not present in the original text). She said "the thous" I heard "the nouns".


"I repudiate and curse," said Father levelly, "Those that are used to name. From now on, I shall insinuate what I am talking about, and use `I', `It' `suchlike' and suchlike."
"What is he up to?" asked Zombina, who thought that avoiding contractions made her speech more elegant.
"I think he's giving something up. Maybe for for Lent." Susan was considering adopting a faith in order to be better fettered by conventional morality, "I don't think anyone's celebrating Easter right now, but he's not exactly good at dates."
"It's the umpty-first." said Father, a bit snappish at the accusation of datefail. There are 19 umpty-firsts a year, and while there are more x0's that doesn't translate to speech naturally, "probably."
He checked his phone, "Seventh, even."
"What exactly are you giving up, Father?"
"Them. Them that I can't name, on account of giving them up."
"Oh" said Susan, "How convenient."

I spent the weekend in bath disgusting ailsa_chan in various ways. I'm sure it helped her recover :)
When I got back, I found out that I had submitted my thesis, so yay.

Got bored. Started thinking about an upgrade for Biccy's armour. Put a de-soled boot, slit up the back on my shoulder; it fits surprisingly well. I think I'll keep it as it is.
Only Spinechewer understands my fashion choices.

I'm reading Rendezvous with Rama. Arther C Clark makes up the sport of airbiking or human-powered flight, only attempted on the moon and mars colonises.
"What's the endurance record for sky-biking?"
"Two hours twenty-five minutes three point six seconds. On the moon of course...blah balh 2 km"

I enjoy the insufferably detailed time given (partly excusable: the speaker is an athlete in the same discipline, so it's the record to beat), but mostly I enjoy that, by the standard of human powered flight, it's pretty pathetic: When the book was written in 1973, the Jupiter flying bicycle had already flown a 1 km course in a couple of minutes. Taking sixty times longer to go twice as far in 1/6 gravity must be some sort of demented scifi insult to his made-up sports man.

To my surprise, searching for "latex german ss" in an attempt to find out how to make the "ß" symbol (pronounced ss or sz) in my favourite typesetting system does not result in Nazi fetish wear.

Sometimes the Internet is less porny than you think, although it does help to have low expectations.

There's probably someone who reads this could do with a audiobook of Michael Moorcock's Black Petals, right?

http://www.starshipsofa.com/blog/2011/05/31/starshipsofa-no-191-michael-moorcock/#comments

(The second and third parts are in later podcasts)

Why is the only specific skill needed for a job buried on page 7/10 of the pdf job description that you can only download from a page 2 links away from the jobs.ac.uk website?

I thought I'd need actual knowledge of neuroscience to get a job at the Sackler Centre for Consciousness so why are they so unwilling to admit it?

Okay, so inserting the command \blurg into a latex document so you can tell where its breaking isn't particularly clever, but its pretty funny when you've forgotten that you've done it, and the computer remands you.


! Undefined control sequence.
l.645 \blurg

I am now referring to George R. R. Martin's fantasy series as A Song of Ice and Fire and Mendelian Genetics.

Can anyone lend/sell me a set of ears for the 24H?

oops!


EDIT: xanthipe is wonderful.