In Dino Veritas

Sliders is still cool.

* In some respects, I'm more accepting than I was in the 80s. At the time, the introduction of an astral plane just seemed contrary to the idea that the show was supposedly based on physics. Now, I'm partly more used to people's confused thinking, and partly more used to looking past the superficial problems to see what idea the episode is putting forth.

* On the other hand, some themes I've just seen so often and always seem gratuitous. Unremovable necklaces that electrocute you when you lie are cool, but the social effect is essentially the same as just going "beep", so why does anyone invent the nasty sort? And why is it always suggested that it means people can find out anything -- surely "I don't want to say" is often right.

* Shows about small groups of characters falling into successive situations have a lot of the same aspects as roleplaying campaigns :)

* You need a plausible risk. Sliders always hints someone might really not make it, but you never believe they *all* might not make it, so racing to meet the timer isn't actually very exciting. If you're wondering if a guest will make it, or if missing a slide handicapped them for the next episode that there could be plot about it'd be more interesting.

* It's cool because the characters are you, know, characters. Professor Arturo has unbearable gravitas. Quinn is impulsive. Wade snaps. And you care about them. They always want to fix things, as opposed to being so unbearably moral they make your teeth hurt.

My wife moved to the West Indies

I have a package from Jamaica. Jamaica, NY, but it surprised me :)

Zoe: Oh, hi, Jack! I just put a package in your pigeonhole.
Me: Ooh, thank you! Oh, was it a book sized parcel [little fish gesture] or a shirt-sized parcel [big fish gesture]
Zoe: Book.

Shiny new Atrocity Archives. Thank you to people who made me succumb! Books are good. Mmmm, booooooks.

Inbox

My inbox is down to two emails. There's other things I need to do[1], but the inbox represents that which I haven't yet made a high-level decision about what sort of thing I need to do :) It's not quite empty, but close enough.

I wonder, every so often I make this "inbox empty" post. Are they coming closer together? If I drew a graph, when would I achieve singularity[3] -- having a daily emptied inbox. Before or after I die? Or will some better communication technique take over next decade?

[1] Other folders contain emails which can be processed in a fairly automatic way, eg. fup[2] contains things that I've sent, but should periodically check if they've been replied to or need a folow-up email. These used to either clog my inbox, hanging around but not being anything I could do anything about, or be archived and then forgotten.

[2] I realised "Follow-up something by checking I've done everything I can, and seeing if there's anyone I need to prod" was a concept I needed a word for, so I abbreviated it 'fup'. Although I'm sure there's a pre-existing word, geek-joke or management-buzzword. Other analagous abbreviations I've occasionally been caught using include:

to fup -- to follow up
to fup -- to fuck up
to lup -- to look up
to gup -- to get up :)

[3] "Transcend"

Holiday -- weds

My time-since-woods and time-since-museum quotas had been running low. I'd hope to get out of cam for a bit, but ended up preferring to catch up on flash-game-writing, fiction-writing, and sleep.

Instead, I visited the Fitzwilliam Museum, which I never *had* got to in the last five years. The building itself is lovely -- like being in a modern stately home, all classic and intimidating, but tall and clean and airy too.

I also looked inside LSM as one of the churches that were open. I'm not Christian, but I do like to have seen churches, the sense of peace is great, and the vast stone things say "Here we are and here we stay" better than any modern buildings :)

Mum talked me back all across arbury to Sonic's and to work to pick up the latest cache of books, and to tesco's for quorn and supplies, and home.

I stopped to ravage pillage sonic for 80s cheese -- as in DVDs, not as in cheese, which would be pretty high by now. Which helped relax me the rest of the week :)

Sliders

* Sliders also often has an alternate dimension version of the main characters. It's always interesting to imagine how they might turn out. I'm not sure how the professor feels that his doubles always turn out to be a touch more responsible and complete bastards.

* And also doubles of the minor characters. It must be an advantage that when you want to reuse the same actor as a hotel clerk you can do so -- the same guy in the same job in a different world informing to a different set of cops.

* I do like they seem to have got into a rhythm in arriving in a new world. They find the same hotel, they check the papers to get a sense of the history, they keep their mouths shut and make non-committal comments until they know what's going on. They don't just making the same mistakes -- the pile of troubles they get into come from new mistakes, altruism, and conflicting goals instead :)