? ? I have been teaching myself hiragana, one of the three Japanese scripts. I’m using Mnemosyne, a flash-card program that schedules cards cleverly so that the cards you remember well get scheduled less and less. I don’t remember learning to read English – as far as I am concerned, it’s as natural as breathing [...]

I am no longer a member of the Great Unwashed. I am now Gainfully Employed, or Sold Out To The Man, depending on your point of view. The Man in question is the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Glasgow, where I shall be helping keep their computers up and running. I shall be [...]

I have, somewhat to my surprise, managed to survive England. After an ungodly amount of travel (10 hours or so?) I finally dragged myself back to my flat (be it ever so humble). Nicely, it would appear that my fears for my potatoes were somewhat unfounded. I have put together a Flickr photoset to show [...]

I’ve not been blogging much – Twitter has been my normal outlet. But there have been a few things that I could have used longer-form writing for, like my spud-growing project (which I shall be calling Balcony Farm). However, I’ve been particularly away recently, as I’ve been Down South visiting my family. This was triggered [...]

You are The Sun Happiness, Content, Joy. The meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent. Young, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way. The Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light [...]

The latest episode from Star Trek fan film-makers USS Intrepid, Transitions and Lamentations has just been posted. I wasn’t involved in this one (although I am in the titles!), but it’s a cracker. Recommended.

Today – well, yesterday, as it’s well after Midnight – was Hourly Comic Day, and I had a go.   The idea is to do a comic for each waking hour of the day, documenting that hour.  Didn’t manage it entirely, as I was running a Dark Champions game at Livingston.  Turns out you can’t GM [...]

What your cat does when you’re asleep Freezebubbles

Found this really cool thing – excerpts of an atlas where all the names are investigated to find out their original meaning, and then translated into English.  It’s quite fascinating, and as someone who has had thoughts of designing the occasional country, a real eye opener.