This is a random collection of essays, discussions and links which interest me. Please note, this collection of webpages is put here purely for my entertainment, and while I welcome comment, I make no apology for half finished pages. Better unfinished than unstarted.
These are extracts from books I have enjoyed. If you like the quote, please, buy the book.Memes: The New Replicators by Richard Dawkins from "Selfish Genes". An excerpt from the book in which he defines the word meme. A neat and elegant concept.
English Spelling; or Would you like to be Phtheighchound for a Ghoti? by Margaret Visser from "The Way We Are." (Published by Viking, 1994. ISBN 0-670-86680-6)
In Search of Excellence, subtitled "Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies " by Thomas J. Peters, Robert H. Waterman, Jr. (1982 Harper Collins, ISBN 0-06-015042-4)
The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew L. Sands. (1964 Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, ISBN 0-201-51004-9.)
Designs. I have been doing bits and pieces of graphic design for some years, some of them are available here for viewing.
Good GMing is all in the Timing, an essay on the use of time and timing in Roleplaying systems.A Comment on organizations. Some random thoughts and scribbles on organizations. See also the excerpt from In Search of Excellence.
A Comment on Comments. A discussion of my personal lack of essay style.
Computer Related Topics
Computers and Your Time. An article for Pelican on using computers, and wasting time.
Banking on the Internet. A little discourse on how and why one would run a credit facility on the Internet. I wrote this well before this recent surge of net commercialization.
Why Web? What is the point of making a Web site?
Reviews
Shopping. A movie review for Pelican articles.
This section covers some of my roleplaying interests.
Roleplaying
Roleplaying in general.
Live Roleplaying
- The Leaving
- A LARP adventure.- One Sunny Day
- A LARP adventure.- Making LARP weapons and props- Making LARP stuff props and weapons.
Final Orbit- Classic cult Science Fiction.
'Yang Mills Theory in Two Dimensions'. The introduction of my honours dissertation.
A list of interesting links, and a little commentary.
The WombatThe wombat lives across the seas,
Among the far Antipodes.
He may exist on nuts and berries,
Or then again, on missionaries;
His distant habitat precludes
Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
But I would not engage the wombat
In any form of mortal combat.- Ogden Nash (1902-71)
Glossary
essay n. 1. a short literary composition on a particular subject. 2. an effort to perform or accomplish somethingl an attempt. 3. a tentative effort. -v.t. 4. to try; attempt. 5. to put to the test; make trial of. [MF essai, from LL exagium a weighing. Cf. ASSAY] - essayer, n. - essayistic, adj.implicit, adj.1.(of belief, confidence, obedience, etc.) unquestioning, unreserved, or absolute. 2. implied rather than expressly stated: an implicit consent 3. virtually contained (fol. by in). 4. Maths. (of a function) having the dpendent variable not explicitly expressed in terms of the independent variables. 5. Obs. Entangled. [L implicitus, var. of implicatus, pp., entangled, involved] - implictly, adv.
serendipity, n. the faculty of making desirable but unsought-for discoveries. [Serendip (former name of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) + -ITY; coined by Horace Walpole, 1717-97, English author, from the Persian fairytale The Three Princes of Serendip, in which the heros have this faculty)]
kelling, participal v. A person searching for something, who has searched in all the places the have looked already, is said to be kelling.