Bellinghman

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• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Tofu can have quite different textures, from silken (about as solid as cheese curds) through to as firm as bread. I'm not a fan of silken, but I (finally) opened and fried a pack of fish tofu cubes a couple...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  My general rule of thumb is that when someone mentions water power I immediately think "cublic (kilo)metres", with the prefix depending on whether they're talking grid or personal scale. 40 cubic metres falling 100m gives you 10kWh (assuming ~90% efficiency)....
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  Here be dragons...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  I independently invented the idea many years ago, but I was far from surprised to find that it was already in use. (My concept was pretty much the same as the Moseley 1913 one - I didn't actually get to...
• Commented on Announcement: 2nd edition Laundry Files RPG is coming
  Oh, that's why a friend is going there (Her original London to Toronto flight got cancelled, she got to Toronto a day late having been diverted via Zurich, and now she's on a flight to Winnipeg that may or may...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  ...so you wrote a cron job that would touch the files once every 2 months... Not my systems, so no. The network admin just had to update the rules for the data directories in question...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  There is a hierarchy of memory in your computer. Typically a small amount of fast memory, with layers of cheaper, slower memory outside it. These are generally "registers", L1 cache, L2 cache, sometimes bu not always L3 Cache, main memory,...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  I swear I've read at least one story where there were demons who will do a task but will take your ability to feel certain sensations/emotions as payment, but I can't remember the title or any additional details. In one...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  Likewise the Canada Line in Vancouver. The link to the airport is a terminus station, but the line it connects to services the suburbs We were in Vancouver when that line first opened, and it ran from close by our...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  We would have liked a Nozomi, but the JR Pass-compatible Hikaris were sufficiently fast for our purposes, so we didn't splash out on the Nozomi tickets Kyoto Shinkansen station was quite something though...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  As a data point, when we were in Japan in (checks polo shirt) in 2007, we covered 1500km of Shinkansen route in 10 hours, three trains in a row from Akita down to Hiroshima. Those were all standard gauge, but...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  For those unsure, a morningstar is a ball, spiked or not, on a chain. It looks like The Royal Armouries disagrees with you. But it's possible that it's a case of two nations divided by a common language....
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  I think it was designed to target the female mozzies for somereason? It's the females who bite us. It doesn't hurt that it's also the female who end up as the bottleneck for the next generation: it doesn't matter how...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  I wear a suit for weddings and funerals. I usually do, but as it happens I went to a funeral yesterday, and although I do have proper tailored suits (why yes, I have been to Hong Kong), I didn't wear...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Oh right, Pyramiden is closed, and Baretsburg (currently) isn't...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Are you thinking of Pyramiden on Svalbard? Yeah, but the Svalbard treaty where Norway got sovereignty came with interesting additions allowing a whole bunch of other nations to go undertake economic activities there....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Yes. I remember one person of sub-Saharan ancestry who used the word 'black' in public to refer to himself, and was damned for being racist. There's a lot of illogic and inconsistency in this whole mess. Much is an attempt...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  And see also fermented meat, such as salami...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  My wife has just tested negative, which suggests to me that I will test negative by the end of the weekend We reckon that she was one of many who got infected at Eastercon, and then gave it to me,...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  Charlie is a writer, not a bookseller. I'm pretty sure you'll never find him camped out in the dealers' room - it's too far from the bar...
• Commented on Place your bets
  My wife and I will be heading out at lunchtime, because we need to get the membership badges to the convention. You'll be pleased to know that your badge is among them...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  I have read, from a source I cannot recall but I thought at the time reputable, that Princess Kitty is not a cat, but a young woman (possibly furry-adjacent), and even has a pet cat of her own. Possibly here...
• Commented on Place your bets
  When we visited Iceland for the first time, back in 2004, our host only used cash for parking meters. Even buses took credit cards, so your credit card company ought to have been with it if they dealt with Icelandic...
• Commented on Place your bets
  I can't see us building the national grid with this stuff... If only because, at that price, the cables would be being stolen almost instantly...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Right now, Suella...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Nah, they're all working in the same shared universe...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Yeah. If your mode of transport takes so long that you have to carry along beds and showers and eateries, the per-person load will increase. This applies to long distance trains too - multi-day ones, that is where you have...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  I've been reminded (via Twitter) of the disappearance of Helen Bailey of this parish. She and her dog also went missing, and evidence initially suggested she'd gone to the family holiday home in Broadstairs. But nobody could find her and...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  We've had lovely clear skies here in recent days, with the exception of Sunday night/Monday morning, when the asteroid impact happened. I was outside just before 03:00, but it was solid cloud Yeah, pretty much what usually happens...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  The only other poster I am likely to have co-located with is Bellinghman, and I don't know if that has happened. I think we may have met once at a BSI meeting down in Chiswick. My wife (who doesn't share...