roxysteve

roxysteve

  • Commented on The one that got away
    But for sheer perversity, I moved to NYC in '84, noted that Les Paul was still playing at Fat Tuesday's every Monday night - which was within walking distance of my workplace and my digs - and still managed to...
  • Commented on The one that got away
    Coventry, Watches of Switzerland. All through my adolescence I watched and wanted a particular chronometer, out of reach until I had a proper job. It was a wonderful thing that could, with a couple of spins of the slide-rule bezel...
  • Commented on Mercury, Retrograde
    My favorite Tech Support from hell story appeared in Computerworld's Sharktank a while ago. A bloke was fuming about how he worked three buildings away from a HP Printer manufacturing and support plant but couldn't get a support visit because...
  • Commented on Mercury, Retrograde
    Satellite dishes illegal? Dear me. Back in the old days of Yagi and X-shaped TV aerials they worked when mounted in yer loft, most times as good as if they were on the roof. The only time you needed a...
  • Commented on World building 101
    Well spotted....
  • Commented on World building 101
    Harlan's World. E.E. Doc Smith did a bunch that don't stand up to rigorous investigation. Trantor. Gehenna. Pell. The Atevi world. Cyteen. Actually, it would be hard to think of an SF author who doesn't do the worldbuilding boogie at...
  • Commented on World building 101
    OTOH, SF novels do seem to have people travel for a long time without every changing clothes or even taking a shower. How realistic is that? (even if clothes were self cleaning...) ;) I agree. What with the blue-shifted 3cm...
  • Commented on World building 101
    I would say that LOTR is unique in how it came about though, as Tolkien himself explained: The book was realy an outgrowth of his world-building, not the other way round, and the world-building itself was actually an consequence of...
  • Commented on World building 101
    Computers were not banned in the Dune universe, AIs were, and then only the AIs that "could think like a man". How else could the technology of the universe have functioned without high-order computational devices of an extremely small and...
  • Commented on World building 101
    Sorry to disappoint you, Charlie, but though "Transit" and "Ford" may, in wikitheory, be connected in the US, in fact you'd just get a blank look from anyone else in my neck of the woods if you used the name....
  • Commented on Thanksgiving on Mars
    Chipped, fricasseed fillets de air filter in a delightful gel-battery gunge sauce, with all the trimmings: Mashed water recycler yeast overbloom, toasted mushrooms (the ones that consumed the upholstery of the ascent module rendering it unusable) with moonboot sole frittes,...
  • Commented on Cooking in zero gee
    Ovens? Convection? Sous-vide? Bah! Just have a traditional fry-up on the casing of the Bergenholm....
  • Commented on I may be being unduly optimistic ...
    Crypto becomes worthless, hence internet commerce dies when Chechnyans get QC kit. Actors all laid off when QC makes CGI versions of old faithfuls like James Stewart and Leo DiCaprio available on request. Real actors go bankrupt attempting to recover...
  • Commented on Another trick question ...
    Managed to redact my own post there. Must've been the thoughts of wealth, health and McScroggins (may his hair fall out and reveal an embarrassing birthmark on his scalp). The wishes I made would ensure I could read more Zelazny...
  • Commented on Another trick question ...
    I want 1) A cheap cure for cancer, retroactive to one year prior to Roger Zelazny's death. None of this "5 years clear" bullshirt either. All gone, and gone for good. 2) Wealth for myself (and double wealth for Arthur...
  • Commented on Design changes
    Actually read the previous comments dept: Apparently, that was specious reasoning. Don't know why, but it's been asked and answered already. Sorry....
  • Commented on Design changes
    Having and eating cake dept: Can't it be switchable? If Yahoo can do it......
  • Commented on Pink Stuff Patrol
    On CAPTCHAs: Shamus Young, when he was in the middle of his justly famous DM of the Rings screencap comic, instigated CAPTCHA-control of comments because he suddenly became very attractive to spammers. He found that after about three days he...
  • Commented on Rule 34
    Thanks for the Anterior Sensory Cluster Nodes-up on the Pennington exhibition Harry. Sadly, I'm in New York where men are men and know what they like to see on their paperback book covers, (which hasn't been Bruce Pennington's work for...
  • Commented on Rule 34
    The blurbs on paperbacks are often a source of amusement. I recall that the one for UK edition of Sign of the Unicorn actually attributed the contents of the book to the wrong character....
  • Commented on Rule 34
    FWIW as a much younger reader I picked up most of my SF because of the cover art. If you had a Chris Foss or better yet, Bruce Pennington, you had my money in all likelihood. The covers for "Dune"...
  • Commented on Going underground
    Ah, the Single Transferable Vote system! Know it well. It was used at my old alma mater, UEA, lately known as the centre of the Global Warming E-Mail Scandal. Clearly STV causes mendacity in the climate-change debate and therefore should...
  • Commented on You probably already saw this, but ...
    all repeat: fusion-power-TOO-CHEAP-TO-METER-is-thirty-years-away. Or Eight and a bit light minutes. Plus all the hard science has already been done by the Great Green Arkleseizure. All that's left is engineering and politics. We can do that. We do them all the...
  • Commented on You probably already saw this, but ...
    Sod the moon and mars. Yes I'd like to see them explored by people, not six-wheeled RC go-carts (though any port in a storm is the rule here) but there is a better reason for space presence and one that...
  • Commented on Obsolete before it ships
    3G signal? How come you're not using a cerebral sub-ether nanophone implant like everyone else?...
  • Commented on "It doesn't have a major theme or anything"
    No, a review by my 15 year old self that has informed my reading policy thenceforward. The point being that although I'm sure my 15 year-old self missed the thrust of the ingenious ACD, my (possibly faulty) memory of that...
  • Commented on "It doesn't have a major theme or anything"
    I know that since I was 15 I've wondered if the whole world was mad for claiming The Return of Sherlock Holmes was a masterpiece. A few pages in Watson asks how Holmes pulled off the scam at the Reichenbach...
Subscribe to feed Recent Actions from roxysteve

Following

Not following anyone

Specials

Merchandise

About This Page

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Propaganda