Nearly at the end of term, thank heavens.

First off, the student teacher did not come back. I'm hoping it's been suggested to her that perhaps teaching is not really her thing and she ought to consider something else, but I have no idea if that's the case or not. I'm currently in the middle of organising and managing exams, not to mention ( Read more... )

Maybe it's because I don't have a commute as such any more, but there's very few out there which can get and keep my interest beyond an episode or two - listening to something sat on your butt at the computer is a very different experience than listening while driving or whatever. I've not tried listening to spoken word stuff at the gym, so if ( Read more... )

It's been an interesting couple of years to be a fan of SFF, that's for sure. The latest kerfuffle is over the subject of an award, given by the World Fantasy Con every year, which currently is in the shape of what I can only describe as a caricature of the fizzog of said HP Lovecraft. I'm not going to post a pic here, because it's pretty awful, ( Read more... )

Since we're almost at the end of the year, I thought I'd post a number of my top 5 lists of things for 2014:

Top 5 books:

1. Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie - I can have these two as one, can't I? Cracking space opera, first book very rightly won All The Awards, can't wait for book 3.

2. Gemsigns by Stephanie Saulter - a ( Read more... )

Five online things:

Some old, some new...

1. Welcome to Night Vale - do I really need to explain what this is?

2. Musketeer Space - currently reading this after briefly meeting the author at WorldCon and hearing about the fact she's writing what it says on the tin, the Musketeers as space opera.

3. Tea and Jeopardy - another post-WorldCon ( Read more... )

• That I have just bought comics for the first time since before the people creating those comics were probably born (Hawkeye1 - My Life as a Weapon and Captain Marvel 1 - In Pursuit of Flight trade paperbacks, in case anyone was wondering).
• American-style pancakes. Mmmm. Totally pic-spam related addiction going on there.
• Significant levels of ( Read more... )

For my fellow Brits: Campaign asking the UK government for a posthumous apology to Alan Turing.

Clearly the fact that I saw morganmuffle mention Tom Baker on my friendslist last night was enough for said former-Doctor to make a starring appearance in my dreams, playing professional football and scoring a couple of goals past a zombie goalkeeper ( Read more... )