“The world of thoughts, ideas,” Aunt Hilda began again slowly, as though groping for the right words, “is a very real one. There are many other worlds, you know, besides the one we see. Indeed, perhaps we all live in slightly different worlds—I don’t understand these things. But I think I have made a pathway, … Continue reading Joan North: The Whirling Shapes
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Loch Faskally Circuit
19 kilometres410 metres of ascent Ever since I made my ascent of Ben Vrackie from the west, I’ve been hankering to use the Pitlochry Path Network to make a circuit of the waterways between Pitlochry and Killiecrankie. So this one is devoid of hills but replete with rivers and bridges. I parked at the car … Continue reading Loch Faskally Circuit
Moebius 1/144 Discovery Spacecraft: Part 5
By the end of my previous post in this build log, I’d finished lighting the Paragrafix cockpit for my Moebius Discovery spacecraft. Now it was time for the pod bay. When I first bought the Discovery kit, I acquired the Paragrafix photoetch pod bay to go with it, but was a little disappointed with its … Continue reading Moebius 1/144 Discovery Spacecraft: Part 5
Until / Till
ʌnˈtɪl / tɪl until / till: up to the time of (an event); during the whole time before So I was perusing the pre-operative fasting guidelines for a local hospital the other day (as you do), when I discovered a heartening bit of text: Once in hospital the ward staff will allow you to sip … Continue reading Until / Till
Brian C. Kalt: The Perfect Crime
Say that you are in the Idaho portion of Yellowstone, and you decide to spice up your vacation by going on a crime spree. You make some moonshine, you poach some wildlife, you strangle some people and steal their picnic baskets. Brian C. Kalt “The Perfect Crime” Georgetown Law Journal (2005) The content of Kalt’s … Continue reading Brian C. Kalt: The Perfect Crime
Converting Apollo State Vectors To Orbits
OK, another mathematical one. This is the fourth in a series of posts about the orbits followed by the Apollo spacecraft as they travelled to and from the moon—something I suppose is getting a little more topical now that NASA has finally got underway with its planned return to the lunar surface. I started with … Continue reading Converting Apollo State Vectors To Orbits
Moebius 1/144 Discovery Spacecraft: Part 4
Last time, I reached the point at which I needed to start lighting my Paragrafix cockpit. I wanted to provide a source of illumination at the front of the cockpit, which will probably be invisible from outside but will provide a little front-lighting for the couches and pilot, as if coming from the large panel … Continue reading Moebius 1/144 Discovery Spacecraft: Part 4
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Pretentious
prɪˈtɛnʃəs pretentious: professing or making claim to great merit or importance, especially when unwarranted among […a]nd amongst. Most such forms ending in -st, such as whilst and amidst, are archaisms in American English. Amongst is no exception: in American English it is pretentious at best. Bryan A. Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage (2009) I bow … Continue reading Pretentious
Dave Hutchinson: Cold Water
What can readers expect?If they’re already familiar with the other Fractured Europe books, it’s more of the same kind of stuff. Pocket universes, insanely-complicated intelligence ops, hotel breakfasts, huge conspiracies, Texel sheep, trains. That sort of thing. Dave Hutchinson, talking about Cold Water (2022) I’ve reviewed Dave Hutchinson’s previous novels from the Fractured Europe Sequence … Continue reading Dave Hutchinson: Cold Water
The Advent Of Atomic Time
This is, to a large extent, a companion piece to my post about leap seconds, in which I described how the irregular rotation of the Earth means that the time as measured by our atomic clocks would fall out of synchrony with the actual movement of the sun in the sky, were it not for … Continue reading The Advent Of Atomic Time