One of the few advantages of working away from home so often is that I rack up the frequent stayer points on various hotel loyalty schemes. I've stayed at Intercontinental hotels enough in the last couple of years to accumulate enough points for £50 of Waterstones vouchers. And this morning I spent them.
This is what I bought:
Joe Abercrombie's most recent novel 'The Heroes', a sort of sequel to the 'Book of the First Law' trilogy, which longstanding readers will remember me praising in the past.
A couple of SF classics (both in their SF Masterworks editions) - Greg Bear's 'Eon' and Dan Simmons's 'Hyperion'.
'Rule 34', the sequel to 'Halting State', by Charles Stross's. Again, long term readers of this blog will remember that I liked that novel a lot.
'Yellow Blue Tibia', by Adam Roberts, which struck me as a fun premise (Soviet SF writers called on by Stalin to create a convincing alien threat to unite the people, then disappear, then one reappears after Chernobyl and Challenger and says the plan is coming true).
'Moneyball' by Michael Lewis, which is a book about how the Oakland Athletics, despite being one of Major League Baseball's poorest franchises were able to compete with much richer clubs. Lewis is the author of 'The Big Short', which I recommend to anyone who wants to know how the credit crunch happened.
Robin Lane-Fox's 'The Classical World - An Epic History of Greece and Rome', which I think (hope) does exactly what it says on the tin.
'Peace and War', an omnibus edition of the trilogy which starts with 'The Forever War' by Joe Haldeman. 'The best military SF ever written.'
If anyone has ever read any of these, feel free to comment...
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.
Or, to put it in role-playing terms, something like "4d6-3d6, but show any negatives as zero".
Doing the 4d6-3d6 bit is easy:
=(RANDBETWEEN(1,6)+RANDBETWEEN(1,6)+RAND
I had thought of then putting this inside an IF function, so that if the formula above was >=0, it showed the formula above, but if it was <0, it showed 0:
=IF((RANDBETWEEN(1,6)+RANDBETWEEN(1,6)+R
Unfortunately, that second function doesn't work. The reason it doesn't work is that it is recalculating the 4d6-3d6 part. That means that if the original 4d6-3d6 is positive, the formula doesn't show that positive number. Instead it rolls 4d6-3d6 again and shows the answer to that.
Any ideas?
ZonalMarking.net looks at Roy Hodgson's appointment.
The thought processes that go into male and female character design in video games.
Bertrand Russell's Ten Commandments for Teachers
France has 2.4 times as many companies with 49 employees as it has companies with 50 employees.
The Boy Scouts are going to have a Game Design badge. How cool is that?
How controversial? 55% abv beer and sold in bottles made out of dead animals as an example.
Pep Guardiola leaves a lasting legacy at Barcelona
Fabulous photographs of some of the last Asiatic lions alive, in the Gir Forest in India
AGW theory from an engineering perspective (thanks to ford_prefect42 for the link)
'The Internet', as portrayed by 1990s stock images
The world's highest-paying sports teams (now dominated by football, but cricket rising fast)
All you need to know about Flat Earth Theory
Lego says no to Lego Firefly. Still, nice model of Serenity.
This difference in tastes probably explains why bunn liked the programme rather more than I did. In fact, I thought MTRWMB was a little bit dull*, a little bit childish**, a little bit sensationalist*** and, dare I say it, a little bit dumbed down.
( Read more )
I can't for the life of me see why.
( Read more )
Amp man Jim Marshall has died.
The Sumatran Orung-utan could be extinct in the wild by the end of the year…
...so it's good to see that the Indonesian government has its priorities right.
(A) Game of Thrones gets a third series.
If even HM Treasury talks bollocks on tax avoidance, what hope is there for journalists?
It didn't take long for someone to try overclocking a Raspberry Pi.
The American school that can make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.
The Best Premier League Celebrations (Cantona for me)
Tragically bad portrait photos
The Apple II is 35 years old. This was the first computer I ever used.
Once again Argentina shows the rest of the world how not to run a country.
The Secretary of State for Education gets involved in a school project. (This is quite sweet.)
The Doctor Who theme tune on a country-style steel guitar
The difference between Scooby Doo and Doctor Who.
Asked to do 'Thought for the Day' on Radio 4. Don't know what to say?
Here’s what you should do. Go to twitter and search for the hashtag “#freeched”. Alternatively, go to facebook and search for the group “Free Ched Evans”.
For those of you who don’t follow the fortunes of Sheffield United Football Club, I’ll explain...
(Warning for readers of a nervous disposition: This really is quite unpleasant. If you thought my Michael Vick posts were bad, this is far, far worse.)
* Or at least South Yorkshire.
( Read more )
Profile
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.6)
philmophlegm- philmophlegm
Syndicate
