The Gaming Outpost

Earlier today I posted the final article in the Examiner temporal anomalies series for Timeline, Timeline part 18:  resolution, which covers the changes made by the last trip to the past–the one which trades the amoral chief executive of the time travel company for the three archaeologists he was going to strand in the past.  Monday we’ll begin the eight-week series on A Sound of Thunder, and I’ve got about three and a half weeks of articles on Next.

After that, I’ll probably be breaking one of my rules:  it appears that the copy of FAQ About Time Travel that came to me will only play on the DVD player on my computer (and that only with the help of a thirty-day free trial of a Nero decoding program, so I’ve got to hurry and watch it before I hit something like the problem I had with Turtle Beach).  So I will be watching video on my computer, which I never do because it’s too hard on the computer.  But I’ve had a couple of requests for this obscure film, and I should get to it.

We had a strange music rehearsal tonight for Collision and for the church; but I’m too tired to go into the details at this point and they’re not really that important.  My day was shredded by the expectations of others, which grew more demanding and complicated as the day progressed, and so I’m cutting out stuff I never skip simply so I can get to bed and try again tomorrow.  We’ll see.

I do make it a point to read Eric Ashley’s work as soon as I can, so I don’t miss it (just as with e-mail, I know that if I don’t answer it when I get it, I never will).  He has two new ones.  Practise Bits:  Dozen Steps has me a bit confused on several levels, but the most mundane of them is the mention of the slightly acidic taste of limestone.  I’ve never tasted limestone, but I understand it to be comprised entirely of calcium carbonate, which is used to eliminate acidity in swimming pools, so I would expect it to be a mildly bitter alkaline taste, not a sour acidic one.  That’s picking nits, but then, when a comment in an article sends me on a search to figure out whether I’m misinformed, it’s probably a problem.

Practise Bits:  Shiptree is the other, reminding me of an old Peter Davison Dr. Who with wooden ships racing through space.  I’m not sure why a hemp rope is “natural” but a steel cable isn’t, or indeed how the universe can distinguish “artificial” materials from “natural”–it is, after all, just a matter of degree, whether you turn a hemp plant into artificial fibers from which you make a hemp rope or turn a tree into petroleum which you then convert to artificial fibers from which you make a nylon rope.  But it was a good read nonetheless.

Today is not quite over, but I might just pretend it is.

–M. J. Young