![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Mar. 8th, 2009 01:03 pmI read Blindsight. And yes, it was hard sf with vampires, as advertised. I'm just . . . a little unsure why there were vampires. Did some Laurea-analogue rogue geneticist just decide "Hey, you know what I could do? I could clone some VAMPIRES!" and then do it, and then people realized they were useful and things escalated from there?
The book jacket description made it sound like just about the least enticing thing ever, but once I started reading the actual book I enjoyed it.
Also, is Technological Singularity the Next Big Idea? I'd never heard of it until I started reading Charles Stross about six months ago, and now it seems like everybody's using it without explanation. (In addition to the mention in Blindsight, it got mentioned with literally no explanation in Numb3rs on Friday.) Or is it just one of those things that you don't notice unless it means something to you?
I don't think I could handle going to outer space. Not for any reason that one might expect--simply that I seem to have major difficulties with recycled air.
Also, long train rides are long. And now I should be doing homework or something vaguely productive, since I'm not going to the grocery store (until tomorrow, I guess) because the buses aren't running (because it's technically still break) and I don't want to walk. Three topology problems for tomorrow isn't very much, but I don't yet have any brilliant ideas for the third one--so even if I don't write them up until tomorrow morning, I still need to have answers to write up. And there's definitely an argument to be made for starting the grading. But since it's still technically break, I will probably just do the minimum necessary (i.e. the topology) and put the rest off to tomorrow. Not that this makes things different from any other weekend, at all.
My sister had a snow day last Monday, and managed to convince some of her gaming buddies to brave the snow and come play a \geq one-shot (which she apparently works into their on-going campaign by describing it as strange dreams the characters have). I . . . introduced them to Cae (who exists as a D&D character as well as in that story). Her general modus operandi is to be obnoxious and rude to anyone who happens to be nearby. Which meant that a lot of conversations consisted of
NPC: [things you might want to know about the plot]
Cae: [rudeness]
Other players: [discussion of something I'd not really heard of before, out of character]
NPC: [expresses offense]
Cae: [makes no effort to appease him/her]
Other players: [continue irrelevant ooc conversation until my sister yells at them]
because my sister's friends are the most distractible bunch of gamers ever. Cae also decided she didn't trust one of the NPCs we were traveling with (just to be contrary, as opposed to showing great discernment), and I am reliably informed that he was actually a bad guy (we didn't get all the way through the adventure), so Cae can feel vindicated. Or something. (We'd been told that we needed to escort an Initiate and a relic to someplace or other, and we were met by a small child in robes and a scruffy guy, so Cae asked the scruffy guy whether he was the Initiate or the relic, and received no satisfactory answer. Things went downhill from there.)
I keep thinking it's a week later than it is. Somehow this doesn't strike me as a good idea.
The book jacket description made it sound like just about the least enticing thing ever, but once I started reading the actual book I enjoyed it.
Also, is Technological Singularity the Next Big Idea? I'd never heard of it until I started reading Charles Stross about six months ago, and now it seems like everybody's using it without explanation. (In addition to the mention in Blindsight, it got mentioned with literally no explanation in Numb3rs on Friday.) Or is it just one of those things that you don't notice unless it means something to you?
I don't think I could handle going to outer space. Not for any reason that one might expect--simply that I seem to have major difficulties with recycled air.
Also, long train rides are long. And now I should be doing homework or something vaguely productive, since I'm not going to the grocery store (until tomorrow, I guess) because the buses aren't running (because it's technically still break) and I don't want to walk. Three topology problems for tomorrow isn't very much, but I don't yet have any brilliant ideas for the third one--so even if I don't write them up until tomorrow morning, I still need to have answers to write up. And there's definitely an argument to be made for starting the grading. But since it's still technically break, I will probably just do the minimum necessary (i.e. the topology) and put the rest off to tomorrow. Not that this makes things different from any other weekend, at all.
My sister had a snow day last Monday, and managed to convince some of her gaming buddies to brave the snow and come play a \geq one-shot (which she apparently works into their on-going campaign by describing it as strange dreams the characters have). I . . . introduced them to Cae (who exists as a D&D character as well as in that story). Her general modus operandi is to be obnoxious and rude to anyone who happens to be nearby. Which meant that a lot of conversations consisted of
NPC: [things you might want to know about the plot]
Cae: [rudeness]
Other players: [discussion of something I'd not really heard of before, out of character]
NPC: [expresses offense]
Cae: [makes no effort to appease him/her]
Other players: [continue irrelevant ooc conversation until my sister yells at them]
because my sister's friends are the most distractible bunch of gamers ever. Cae also decided she didn't trust one of the NPCs we were traveling with (just to be contrary, as opposed to showing great discernment), and I am reliably informed that he was actually a bad guy (we didn't get all the way through the adventure), so Cae can feel vindicated. Or something. (We'd been told that we needed to escort an Initiate and a relic to someplace or other, and we were met by a small child in robes and a scruffy guy, so Cae asked the scruffy guy whether he was the Initiate or the relic, and received no satisfactory answer. Things went downhill from there.)
I keep thinking it's a week later than it is. Somehow this doesn't strike me as a good idea.
