hairmonger

I've read this before, but it's more or less appropriate for this time of year.

You see, Hogfather, who wears a red robe, gives gifts to children on Hogswatch (the last day of the year), and whose sled is pulled by four pigs, has disappeared. DEATH has taken over because if people stop believing in Hogfather, he'll stop existing and then the sun will not come up on new year. DEATH gets his grand-daughter to help find out what happened and get Hogfather back. The professors at the University get involved, including HEX, the thinking machine, and find out why you never open doors that are marked to never be opened.

This is one of Pterry's really good books and although it's about belief, you don't need to have any specific belief to read it.

The rain made most of it melt, although places that had piles of snow are taking longer.

I'm very sleepy because I kept waking up last night and my hands hurt like crazy, so I may nap with Spirit when I finish online instead of re-watching Hogfather. I watched all three Librarian movies last night (on TNT), and so far, they've been coming out every two years which would mean a new one in 2010. They don't have any deep meaning or character demonstrations, but they're fun to watch.

Tagging Interfictions 2 as "genre:fantasy" on LibraryThing is probably missing the point.

I have been playing with Scrivener and have got my current project in there all set up for revisions. Not the actual draft, just the notes: it's a nice way to keep them all in one place. Also, I have figured out how to export various lists of scenes from Scrivener and make Mathematica turn them into color-coded charts of, say, which scenes various characters appear in. (Yes, I have been getting actual writing done as well. But, color-coded charts!)

In addition to the Interfictions anthology, which I got from LibraryThing and therefore have to review, I got two Writers of the Future anthologies (part of my "If I am going to submit to this market, I should read it" philosophy). Sadly Santa did not bring me extra time in which to do this reading.

I recently finished the first book in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, which I liked enough to read on my iPod as a converted PDF (from when Tor gave them away) with no paragraph breaks, scene breaks, or italics. I plan to buy the rest of the series as properly formatted ebooks. And I'm almost finished with War for the Oaks, which is very good, but which I probably would have enjoyed more if I'd read it when it first came out.

Officially the next part of the creative writing course I tutor started today. I suspect most (if not all!) of my students are still comatose and stuffed with Christmas food, but I emailed them all to remind them that holidays don't last forever.

Otherwise I haven't done much. I need to get into gear with the courses I'm studying. I have 3 assignments to complete before the end of January and the first (a dramatisation of a story) has to be submitted by 8 Jan, so I need to get a move on with that.

During 2009 I took part in a Photo-a-Week challenge and here is a mosaic of all the photos I took.



1. Assorted chocolate biscuits, 2. St Mary's Church, Dolgellau, 3. Out of use, 4. Field with tree, 5. What makes you think it's cold?, 6. How not to write a novel, 7. Cadbury creme egg, 8. Trees and cloudy sky, 9. Did you want something? I'm busy reading., 10. Barmouth from near Llwyngwril, 11. Mahalo Les Paul ukulele, 12. Chump & Aimee, 13. Cregennen Lake, 14. I picked you a flower, but I'm not sure that you deserve it, 15. Me on Prestatyn beach (Self-portrait), 16. Dec & Erin, 17. Bluebells, 18. Ruthin Church, 19. Pansy, 20. Rainbow with sheep, 21. Remains of slate quarry buildings, Betws-y-Coed, 22. Juvenile Greater Spotted Woodpecker , 23. George & Toll bridge, Penmaenpool, 24. Cloudy sky from my study window, 25. George above the old gold mine, 26. Immature robin, 27. Graham in his PhD robes, 28. Welsh Highland Railway Engine K1, 29. View looking north, 30. Llyn Wylfa, 31. Steam train approaching Barmouth, 32. Cliff Railway and Aberystwyth, 33. Crochet shawl close up, 34. Completed shawl, 35. Low flying rainbow!
36. Sgwd yr Eira, 37. Rowan tree, 38. Wing mirror web, 39 Old mine building, Cwmystwyth, 40. Our Siamese cat, 41. Mail-coach in sepia, 42. Celyn and Fudge, 43. Gwynant Valley, 44. Bracket fungus, 45. Flooded garden, 46. Self portrait, 47. A change in the weather at last!, 48. Transporter Bridge, Newport, 49. Unusual green ball, 50. Thames Barrier and London Docklands, 51. View near Llanelltyd

Yes, if you count, you'll see that I missed one week.

In 2010 I'm going to have another go at a photo-a-day. Last time I tried I managed 90 days, so I am very much going to take it a week (or even a day!) at a time and see how it goes.

But I do find these challenges useful, otherwise it's all too easy to leave the camera in the bag and get out of practice.

A somewhat belated Happy Christmas or Happy Newtonmass, according to your taste. I am currently stuck on a 56k dialup account on a per-minute landline that drops the connection if anyone tries to phone in, and sometimes even without provocation, so am having an almost completely net-free Christmas. (I don't actually mind the 56k so much as the "56k over a wet string that belongs to somebody else who would prefer that their wet string is not tied up for ages".) See you all for New Year's Eve, I hope.

No freezing rain, which is good, and so far, not enough plain rain to cause flooding.

I'm still waking up almost every hour of the night, with too much pain, even though the doctor is letting me take the codeine closer. I see her on the 31st, so I'll ask for something stronger. I'm having trouble even stringing with my beading, and it's worse when Junie sits on the recliner arm and tries to grab it.

It's very quiet here, although about half the neighbors are home.

Christmas morning began with my now traditional dawn run on the beach. Twice in a row is a tradition, right?

I had said I wasn't going to put the computer on today, but we're having our Christmas dinner this evening and it was sunny and comparatively mild around midday, so I went for a walk. Of course I then had to download the photos, didn't I? :)



Not really snowy enough for a Christmas card, but if you look behind the tree stumps in the foreground, you can see that the moles have been busy in the field. ( And another photo behind here... )

I thought I'd try a black and white conversion for this shot.



I hope you're all having a happy/quiet/peaceful/jolly/restful time over the holiday. (Please delete adjectives that do not apply.)

The final day was spent wandering around the RAF museum in Colindale, North London. It was just a short walk from the Tube and despite yesterday's snow, the trains seemed to be more or less running OK.

The museum is huge, with masses of planes of all eras from the beginning of flight to the present day. To take photographs inside, you had to pay about 6 quid for a permit, so I didn't bother. I preferred to just look at the exhibits and read the informative panels explaining the history of each plane. I liked the way they included the personal history of the machine in the exhibition as well as the overall history of the type of plane.

Merry Christmas!

... I can see it moving up the road ...



Well, okay, it's not quite that bad. It would certainly be a good night to watch the original John Carpenter version, but I think I'll settle down with The Wicker Man instead while I wrap a few pressies for tomorrow.

Needless to say, I shall not be answering the door to any loud thumping knocks.

Food shopping is done, we won't starve over the next few days and the last few late assignments have been returned and marked. All I need to do now is go to bed and sleep and then it will be Christmas.

So I'll just wish you all a happy and peaceful few days. I will not be switching on the computer tomorrow, so see you all on or after Boxing Day.

That's the current forecast -- freezing rain, then regular rain, which will melt a lot of snow, so we have a flash flood warning, too.

My arthritis is getting worse, in both hands and feet. Fortunately, I spend a lot more time reading online than writing. Last night, I had to sleep in the recliner with Spirit for three hours after I got offline. Junie was at her again today, so if it keeps up to next week, I'll call the vet.

George Michael died today. He was the sportscaster for the local NBC station for 27 years. He was the best sportscaster I've ever seen -- he was funny, truthful, and made you think. He had a syndicated show called "The George Michael Sports Machine" which I watched when I traveled. When the channel (NBC-owned) required him to fire a lot of his staff, he left, too. I always liked watching him, and I don't even like sports.

It's Christmas Eve and I could post something about the season or last minute shopping or the weather ... but no, I thought I'd post some Baggy photos :).

Remember that sofa arm? As you can see, a 6" plank width is insufficient to contain the overflowing Baggy belly!



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At least that's what Mum said when we arrived home after attending a midnight carol service.

One of the carols talked about how the shepherds had been asleep in the snow. Which is kind of silly because they'd get hypothermia, and also the current weather in Bethlehem is 17 Celsius, and I don't think we've had that much global warming in 2000 years. (Also Jesus wasn't born in December but that only amplifies my point.)

Occasionally northern hemisphere people ask whether it's strange not having a white Christmas, and... well, no, because I've had not-white Christmases all my life. And so did Jesus, so I feel we're doing pretty well upholding an age-old tradition here.

We have our own traditions too: pohutukawa and Christmas lilies (spelled "lillies" by grocers nationwide); barbecues and swimming at the beach; carols by Shirley Murray and Colin Gibson.

And we have family traditions, like all of us coming to the parents' house to stay the night, and me and Mum going to the midnight service, and all of us opening our stockings in the morning, in which there will always be sellotape and a bag of chocolate money (which we've nicknamed "prostitute money" after Saint Nick) followed eventually by presents under the tree and then sometime in the afternoon Christmas dinner.

White Christmases are kind of a cute novelty - I've had a couple in my years of travels - but Christmas for me is spending the long warm evenings in busy shopping malls, and three days of icing the cake, and getting up early on Christmas morning to jump on my siblings' beds (or have them jump on mine) and then our parents' while we go through a prolonged ritual of (re)opening our stockings. (Being cold would really cramp our style with that one.)

Christmas is what we make happen.

Merry Christmas!

I love today's xkcd!

Courtland Milloy is the WashPost's black columnist who mostly writes about black things. Today's column is about Avatar and uses Annalee Newitz's story on io9 to compare to his ideas.

We have news that Robert Byrd is back in form after his recent illness and is doing fine getting in and voting.

Finally, some of you probably remember the Salahis, the couple who crashed the State Dinner for India. The WashPost has just put out a series of very revealing articles on them.

I promised pictures if I did what I planned with the white led light set. I'm quite pleased with this. Suspect this'll become the norm in the future. Rather glad I got the multi-coloured set for the tree because 80 white lights is just perfect for this ...

( photos of lights behind cut )

This is from 1999 and even if the rest of it doesn't sound good to you, is worth watching to see Shatner do Julius Caesar in hip-hop near the end.

Two young boys, Mark and Robert, have Captain Kirk/William Shatner as their dream superhero. He can fix everything for them. When the boys grow up, they get into the film business themselves. Neither of them are very satisfied by what they're doing and then they run into Shatner in a bookstore. He tells them he wants to do Julius as a musical with him playing all the parts but Calpurnia. They go through the actresses they think might make a good Calpurnia, but don't really think Shatner should do it.

Both guys want to date/mate, but Mark is too uneasy to really settle down and Robert puts too much into his collection of action figures and his ego to keep women. When Mark turns 30, he dreams about Logan's Run, and Robert throws him a surprise party and that's where Shatner hip-hops with The Rated R and his posse.

This is a great movie about geeks, love, fantasy, and fitting in to real life. I highly recommend it.