Category: NEW/Random

New/random posts

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Daily snippet NEW/Random

BOOKSHELF BLUES

Hands up who’s run out of paper-and-pages books. Everyone, right? I mean, actual bookshops are expensive and, well, lockdown. Ordering online to be delivered is a hopeless idea where I live – I’m not sure about other countries. It’s either expensive, slow or lost-in-post. Possibly the delivery guy was hijacked. Maybe he hijacked someone else and left the stuff just lying there. Who knows. This is now. Digital is perfectly OK, or preferable.

Continue reading “BOOKSHELF BLUES”

Hands up who’s run out of paper-and-pages books. Everyone, right? I mean, actual bookshops are expensive and, well, lockdown. Ordering online to be delivered is a hopeless idea where I live – I’m not sure about other countries. It’s either expensive, slow or lost-in-post. Possibly the delivery guy was hijacked. Maybe he hijacked someone else and left the stuff just lying there. Who knows. This is now. Digital is perfectly OK, or preferable.

Continue reading “BOOKSHELF BLUES”

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Codes&Ciphers&Stuff Nerd-out Corner NEW/Random

Codes and Ciphers 4

I don’t think that this actually counts as a cipher, but it might be that it doesn’t count as a code. Possibly both. You decide.

I use this as a very quick way to disguise words. Don’t ask why or what sort. It is very easy to write and read on the fly. I just want to see if you need to know how it works to figure it out. I came up with it myself, but it isn’t at all original. Try it.

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Book reviews NEW/Random Stuff to Do When You've Got Too Much Time

Stuff to Do: Draw Every Pratchett and Kate Milford Character You Can Remember and a Bunch of Others

Long enough title?

Okay, please don’t kick me out of the Pratchett club, I do actually remember more than 4 characters. It’s the same with Kate Milford. They are just the only characters important/detailed/interesting/unique enough to draw, or that I have already drawn. I am considering doing the men black-on-black from The Left Handed Fate (Milford), and maybe Clem and Georgie.

I apologize for the following few italic paragraphs. They are just me trying to make myself feel better about my hobbies. Summed up: I DO NOT LIKE FASHION DESIGN. Shorts & a T-shirt for me. I just like drawing and books, specifically Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and Kate Milford’s less creepy ones. I also apologize for writing so much/too much/nonsense. All you need to know is from ‘I have‘ (head of the list) to the end of the bold text following.

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Book of the Week Book reviews NEW/Random

UPDATED REVIEW: Wintersmith

WINTERSMITH

Author: Terry Pratchett

Ages: 10+ (adults and not-creeped-out 9-year-olds included)

The previous review on this book isn’t very informative, and it was written when I was 11. Writing another one will be difficult, since I have read this book so many times and first when I was 9. I’m not sure what I would say if I had read it for the first time this year. This is just an addition, to get the full story see the previous review.

Tiffany has been lodged with the oldest witch in the country. She is technically blind, but that doesn’t matter – there are always Tiffany’s eyes… Everything is black. She has to make black cheese, clean the black floor and the windows are so dirty that you can’t see the so-red-they’re-black roses. Which will, soon, be made of ice so thin they melt from the pressure of being looked at.

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All Things Dog Chloë the Basset Hound Marshall the Bluetick NEW/Random

Bath Day

Marshall has had an itchy face for a long time. Sometimes he also licks some other random area for a few weeks, e.g. paw, leg… But since he has no coords, when he tries to scratch with a back leg he misses and when he tries with a front paw he claws himself very viciously. Early this year, the vet said to bath him weekly. They offered to do it for the first three weeks, because MARSHALL HATES BATHS

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All Things Dog Chloë the Basset Hound NEW/Random

Unislips & Crumpets – Chloë the Basset

Somewhere around six thirty this morning, a Younger Human came downstairs (not really downstairs, just down the stairs, the house has two different ground-levels with stairs in the middle). Marshall jumped on her and she started scratching him. Then an Older Human called Marshall onto the bed. And so the weekend begins.

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Book of the Week Book reviews NEW/Random

UPDATED REVIEW: A Hat Full of Sky

A HAT FULL OF SKY

Author: Terry Pratchett

Ages: 10+ (adults included, 10s might find creepy/confusing, but manage. No inappropriate stuff)

As with my second review of the previous book in this sequence, The Wee Free Men, I don’t think I can make this a very detailed review. I grew up on this sequence; I’m not sure what I would say if I had just read it for the first time yesterday. It will help you get a better view if you also see my first review of this (although it’s very short), written when I was eleven.

Tiffany Aching, 11, has left her land for the first time ever. To learn to be a witch – not the sparkly or cackling kind. She will be working with Miss Level… who might have two noses (Tiffany can only see one at the moment) and rides behind herself on broomsticks. But witchcraft isn’t all whizzing around on brooms and glittery spells. It seems to be mostly gross chores. And being teased for, effectively, being an amazingly talented witch. (So, the usual eleventh year of life – plus a few pointed hats). And now she is being hunted by an invisible, bodyless

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All Things Dog Marshall the Bluetick NEW/Random

New Clothes – Marshall the Bluetick

red.jpgGot some new stuff on Sunday. Including a New Harness. We went to the Park to try it out.

It’s very red. The girl Younger Human says red isn’t my colour. She says I’m more blue and black, but that This Red is still Handsome.

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Book of the Week Book reviews NEW/Random

REVIEW: The Last Continent

THE LAST CONTINENT

Author: Terry Pratchett

Ages: 11+ (adults included)

The Librarian of Unseen University (home of wizards) is having problems with his morphic field – one moment his usual shape (orangutan), the next a large furry sea shell. The only way to save him needs a person who is now either on the probably non-existent continent of XXXX or over the edge of the world. Rincewind is in fact busy fighting for every scrap of food and water in a barren red desert, avoiding talking giant rabbits and trying not to save the continent this time. Except that he finds gooseberry sandwiches under every rock, and he always ends up falling into the only waterhole for miles. Every attempt to talk with the locals (but not the giant talking rabbit), about simple things like the weather, results in him running away very fast

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Book reviews Nerd-out Corner NEW/Random

Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension: an essential addition to the nerd-kit

Like mathematics? Puzzles? Thinking? Prime numbers? Pi? You need this book.

‘Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension’, written by Matt Parker (if you’re reading this, you probably know him), is the most enjoyable maths book you could hope to find. Learn about hexahexaflexagons (almost as awesome as dodecahedral not-Rubik’s not-cubes), the official way to colour in knots, four-dimensional straws, base-three card tricks, domino calculators, impossible-but-not numbers, binary scarves and Klein bottle beanies

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