Comments | andrewducker: Interesting Links for 31-03-2014

andrewducker

Interesting Links for 31-03-2014

Mar 31, 2014 12:00

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Comments 29

a_pawson March 31 2014, 11:18:10 UTC

Damnit I've been doing it wrong all these years. Apparently we're supposed to marinate the sausages in the beer before eating them.

andrewducker March 31 2014, 11:19:14 UTC

Before, during _and_ after. You can't be too careful...

danieldwilliam March 31 2014, 11:32:45 UTC

Ah, Moffat, a riddle, wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma which has fallen down a plot.

danieldwilliam March 31 2014, 11:34:51 UTC

I'm a Moffater.

The problem with Moffat cartesiandaemon March 31 2014, 11:47:58 UTC

Yeah, exactly. Although I don't think the best way of writing is to start from the beginning and make everyone act in character and consistent with physics until you get to the end -- just that if you don't make it look sufficiently like that, it throws people out of their suspension of disbelief. Good writers totally exist on a spectrum between "writing cool moments" and "writing a story that makes sense", but Doctor Who has been falling too far on the first side.

Re: The problem with Moffat andrewducker March 31 2014, 12:01:18 UTC

Yes, it's not simple - some people are thrown out much more easily than others, or by very different things - but it has to feel at least somewhat consistent, or you're doomed.

The final Matt Smith story felt like Moffat had suddenly realised he had a whole season of plot he had to fit in to make Matt Smith's leaving make sense, an hour to fit it into, and too many Awesome Moments Of Awesomeoness that _had_ to be in there to leave room for sense.

Re: The problem with Moffat cartesiandaemon April 1 2014, 10:43:24 UTC

Yeah, I sometimes think suspension of disbelief is a bit like a rubber membrane: you can stretch it a lot in service of a good story, but once it ruptures, it generally completely unravels and it's almost impossible to get back. So people sometimes tend to divide sharply into "it was silly but I loved it" and "I couldn't stand it" depending whether their suspension of disbelief ruptured or not.

I actually liked the last Doctor Who episode more than the rest of some recent seasons, it crammed all the over-the-top stuff into an episode which at least made use of it, even if it didn't really make sense, so I could see why, rather than just "look, more drama-for-the-sake-of-drama for no reason".

When you start out making a coffee shopping list, and end up running a bank... cartesiandaemon March 31 2014, 11:50:33 UTC

I've often wanted to do something like that coffee bank, which records debts backed by social trust, but doesn't pretend to enforce them. Although I think rebalancing the books has to have some sort of consent involved, so everyone can confirm the debts are of equal value. Actually paying them off is mostly redundant, until they get big :)

simont March 31 2014, 11:58:47 UTC

rebalancing the books has to have some sort of consent involved

Yes. Another failure mode is where your £5 debt to the person at the desk next to you suddenly gets reassigned to someone much harder to get in contact with (e.g. a mostly-teleworker); you want whoever borrowed from the hard-to-reach person in the first place to have to bear the inconvenience of arranging to pay it back, which is a much more important factor than the fiver itself.

The last shared house I lived in had (and, with me long gone, still has) a similar sort of mechanism for tracking debts, only instead of growing out of a coffee ordering system it grew out of the system for remembering who owes how much toward the next lot of bills and rent. More or less any casually incurred debt between housemates (typically of the form 'oh, if you're going to the shop, can you get me an X while you're there') can be resolved just by adjusting the balances of the two people involved, and then you never even need to worry about who you pay back, it just all comes out in the ( ... )

andrewducker March 31 2014, 12:08:37 UTC

Oh yes, I've done that. You can easily wobble back and forth over amounts of money for ages, never quite balancing things out - and sometimes being quite glad that you have £10 available at the bank of Dave if you ever have an emergency!

I don't drink coffee, but I found this discussion of Flat White vs Latte fascinating cartesiandaemon March 31 2014, 11:52:48 UTC

Yeah. Lots of things are apparently incomprehensible, but fascinating when you actually hear what some of the differences actually are.

Re: I don't drink coffee, but I found this discussion of Flat White vs Latte fascinating andrewducker March 31 2014, 12:07:34 UTC

Yeah. Which is why I don't really care that I'm not interested in some stuff that Julie is (and vice versa) - I'm interested in (a) anything that she is and (b) anything that has some depth to it.

So I'm very happy for her to tell me about recent stuff she's been obsessed by even if I'm not into it (providing it's not too gory).