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Everything you need for your own GURPS 4E tabletop roleplaying campaign.

Bundle of Holding: GURPS 4E Essentials (from 2022)




Volume 3 (Nov 2008 - Dec 2018) of Pyramid, the Steve Jackson Games magazine for tabletop roleplaying gamers. Sixty issues and more!

Bundle of Holding: Pyramid 1
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
2004: Labour spares no effort to liberate Britons from human rights, UKIP's electoral successes surely do not reflect fundamental flaws in the British psyche, and London voters are heartbroken to discover the Livingstone who was just elected mayor isn’t the Livingstone who co-wrote the Fighting Fantasy books.

Poll #33332 Clarke Award Finalists 2004
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 27


Which 2004 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
16 (59.3%)

Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
3 (11.1%)

Darwin's Children by Greg Bear
10 (37.0%)

Maul by Tricia Sullivan
3 (11.1%)

Midnight Lamp by Gwyneth Jones
2 (7.4%)

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
11 (40.7%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.


Which 2004 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
Darwin's Children by Greg Bear
Maul by Tricia Sullivan

Midnight Lamp by Gwyneth Jones
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
teaotter: (Default)
I am knitting the simplest possible* bottom-up sweater, and today I reached two simultaneous milestones:

1. I finished the main torso of the sweater to the point where I divide for the armholes.

2. I finished exactly one third of my total yarn.

Is that an appropriate amount of yarn to have used to this point? Will there be enough to knit the entire sweater? I HAVE NO IDEA!! One of my reasons for knitting a simple sweater is to give myself an idea of a yarn baseline. I want to find out what is the least amount of yarn I can use and make a sweater.

*Simplest possible for me, and yes, I am aware of the irony there. But it's stockinette, in the round, I'm really very close to the stitch and row gauge called for in the pattern, and I'm only making really very very few modifications as I go. (Just the ribbing depth and the body shaping and the total length and the sleeve-cap type and probably the sleeve shaping as well.) Practically no modifications at all!

I'm very happy with it so far, and am looking forward to seeing what happens with the rest of it. :D

SI/AI/UI

2025-07-06 19:44[personal profile] l33tminion
l33tminion: (Default)
Sandy Island Camp was nice this year, though Melissa and Simon unfortunately had to punt mid-week after kid got an ear infection and had some spectacularly rough nights. Erica was very independent-minded about getting to activities by herself. I really enjoyed dancing with her at the camp dances. The weather was pretty good. Saw some interesting wildlife, including a pileated woodpecker and some extremely successful spiders.

I didn't get as much reading done as usual. Too much distraction. I did read two books:

Polostan by Neal Stephenson - It was all right, but felt much less substantial than a lot of Stephenson's other books, in part but not just because it's much shorter. It's meant to be the start of a series, so maybe the publishers persuaded him to split up what would've been a much longer book. If so, I think it probably suffers for it.

Connectome by Sebastian Seung - Pretty good popular science introduction to the study of neural connectivity. Though the book might be a bit out of date, as it is from 2012. I wonder if there's a good more recent take on the subject, and I wonder whether any light will be shed on that by analogy from some of the more recent AI neural net stuff (especially the work on AI interpretability).

On a related note to that second book, I also finished the animated TV series Pantheon. Really good, probably one of the best sci-fi shows in recent years (and it's in really good company, even among animated shows specifically). If you have a hard time with time-skips in stories, you'll have to hold onto your butts at the end of this one. But I think it justifies it, it's a story about the singularity and it's fitting that the epilogue feels like taking a gravitational assist past a black hole. The ending is poignant and hopeful and tragic, and the choice that the protagonist, Maddie, considers at the end is fascinating. (Also David is best dad.)

On another related subject, this essay, The Void, contemplating what's really at the center, conceptually, of these new AI chatbot models has been sticking with me. (Also worth reading the follow-up here.)

SGDQ is this week, so that's fun! Erica is heading out for grandparent time with Julie's parents for the next two weeks, starting tomorrow. A lot is going on.
conuly: (Default)
Eirenicon: A proposal to resolve disputes and reconcile differences in order to advance peace, strengthen or establish unity, or foster solidarity.

************************


Read more... )

Miscellany

2025-07-05 19:26[personal profile] mtbc
mtbc: maze M (white-blue)
It has been some days since I made an entry here. While R. works on making some ube (purple yam) cake, I can write up and share various tidbits. R. is pleased to have found salted duck eggs at a good price earlier today in what passes as the closest area Glasgow might have to a Chinatown.

I watched some science fiction. )

I found myself in an odd mood for more mellow electronica lately, Alexa managed to play me things like Synergy's Ancestors and Jean-Michel Jarre's Computer Weekend without getting songs mixed up.

eBay irritated me. I bought two of an item, then found it difficult to request a refund for one, then the other. )

At work it's interesting to see how I have a pattern of afternoon meetings at the moment, given that I work closely with US-based colleagues, though we do also have engineers in Pune. Back at Zilliqa my meetings tended to be in the mornings, as I worked with people in the Middle East and Asia.

I found that I have various money, and I read some science fiction. )

I am still experimenting with commuting for days that I work on-site. )
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
Sometime in the last couple of months, someone posted a link to a site that had interesting looking shirts made of linen, for lower prices than most places charge. I forgot to bookmark it. Can anyone point me to it? or to something else that fits that description, even if you didn't see it here?


Edited to add: A the shirts were less expensive than I expected, which is a large part of why I'm interested. Those may have been sale prices, I don't remember.

Also, the were made of either linen or a linen blend, not "line".
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
This is much easier for Martin's New Voices series....

Read more... )
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)


Four works new to me. One is SF, two fantasy, and the magazine (which I have not yet looked inside) likely both. Two of the novels are series novels, one does not seem to me.

Books Received, June 28 — July 4



Poll #33326 Books Received, June 28 — July 4
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

FIYAH No. 35: Black Isekai published by FIYAH Literary Magazine (July 2025)
18 (50.0%)

Aces Full edited by George R. R. Martin (November 2025)
3 (8.3%)

Only Spell Deep by Ava Morgyn (March 2026)
6 (16.7%)

The Damned by Harper L. Woods (October 2025)
3 (8.3%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
29 (80.6%)

conuly: (Default)
Though, upon reflection, it's surprising that this hasn't happened before in 30+ years of menstruation )

I'd say that was the worst thing to happen this weekend, but then I glanced at the news, and how do things keep getting worse? I thought we might at least get a reprieve over the holiday weekend, Congress would all go on vacation and not pass any terrible bills in the interim, but I guess not.

I'm not linking to it, not today. I know how to take a break, even if they don't. Take this article on amenorrhea instead.
fennectik: Anime (Anime)
So it seems Usagi will once grace us with her magical girl adventures.

"To celebrate the birthday of Sailor Moon’s main protagonist, Usagi Tsukino, new colored manga art has been released by the series creator, hinting at the publication of the next two volumes in the Japanese 'all-color' digital manga release."-CBR

Link to the full article

https://www.cbr.com/sailor-moon-naoko-takeuchi-usagi-birthday-art/
turbobeholder: (periscope)
Just think of the possibilities!

July 4th

2025-07-04 11:55[personal profile] redbird
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
Jay Kuo takes a break from chronicling the regime's crimes to share some honest hope for today, and the days and months ahead:

https://statuskuo.substack.com/p/celebrating-independence

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