My first birthday card arrived today. We ordered my pressie last night and an email came in today saying it would be delivered on the 24th. That’s tomorrow!

Now I have the unbearable itch to open things I’m not allowed to open until Sunday. And Mum and Dad have asked me if we’ll go help them dig ditches on Sunday. I pointed out that it’s my birthday and they said I wouldn’t have to do any digging! The cheek of it!

But then Frood would get to play with the Privateer Minidigger again, and he does so enjoy that, bless him.

Has anyone got a recipe for a really sticky sinful chocolate cake that doesn’t involve rum? I don’t like rum. The only one I’ve got is for sachertorte, unless I go prowling through Frood’s randomly ordered bookshelves for another recipe book. I want a cake, dammit, but if I want a cake I’ll have to make it myself.

Received just now in my mailbox from one joshua agundu (or so he claims):

pls iam a nigerian,i want you to lend or conduct a money making ritual for me online i will show an appreciation.thanks

WTF? Doesn’t he have some rich uncle with loads of money who just needs to get some kindly person to help him get it out of Government possession?

And how does one lend a money-making ritual anyway?

Answers on a postcard please (you can also use a sealed envelope if you have no postcards. Or, hell, yeah, the comments box, wtf).

Thanks to Thud I have been made aware that Galactus is coming!

Katie, I think this is a job for Mortimer. Reed Richards is apparently too busy gallivanting in space (although in FF for PS2 he spends a helluva lot of time in the museum) and won’t do fuck all unless we subscribe to FF. I’m an X-Men girl. He’s not having my money.

While perusing the TI website I kept coming across references to ‘fistgloves’. Being a filthy, perverted sort my first inclination was to think this was rude, but no. They are a training aid to help people learn how to swim with finesse rather than brute force.

Intrigued — and not able to resist the challenge posed by the statement “Using them for the first time, you’ll feel relatively helpless for the first 5 or 10 minutes” — in today’s session I tried to emulate some of the effects by swimming with closed fists.

Now logic would dictate that, if propulsion is provided by the hands pushing water backwards, my time per length would drop dramatically by losing the larger, flat surface area of the hand. So I timed myself over a few lengths with open hands and few with closed fists.

Bugger me if it made absolutely no difference at all. I’m still horribly slow at the moment, which I’m hoping is just because I’m still not fully recovered from that chest infection and I’m tired. But I was just as slow with open hands as I was with closed fists.

Now if I can just get this pressing with the buoy thing right I might start getting somewhere. If I use a pullbuoy I can feel the improvement immediately, even though I’m not kicking, so a lot of it must be down to my legs dragging still. I’m also finding the front quadrant stroke tiring on my shoulders, but that could be from digging drainage ditches at the weekend and not having the technique right.

Somewhere between Early Riser and Channel No. 17, both by Plus-Tech Squeeze Box. You can find Channel No. 17 yourself.

Ah, dammit. The entire album is Frood all over. That man does know how to have a happy bum. He must have been run through the Plus-Tech Squeeze Box filter.

Frood‘s declaration that, if we win the lottery, I shall have to wear a very big hat. Of his choosing.

Oh dear.

This is a way of testing your swimming proficiency in the Total Immersion way of swimming, which I’m currently trying to teach myself.

What you do is you swim 50m and count the number of strokes it takes (each time a hand enters the water it counts as one stroke), then add that number to the number of seconds it takes you to swim that distance. The lower your score the better a swimmer you are.

I found counting my strokes the hard part.

I am somewhat gutted to discover that my ‘par’ is a whopping 107. Then again, I am still learning and I haven’t quite got my balance and glide right, and I’m sure I’m putting too much effort into the stroke rather than letting the corkscrew effect do the work.

There was a slight panic when I discovered that the pool is closing for a month on the 4th December for maintenance and they told me the only pools open would be Cowdenbeath and St Andrews. Both of these are quite some distance. However I phoned Kirkcaldy when I got home and they’re only closing for Christmas, which is just as well as I could feel another letter to Fife Council coming on. As much as they said they liked the last one (even though it was a complaint — it was an entertaining complaint), I don’t want to make too much of a nuisance of myself.

This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club.

Bold = read it.

Strikethrough = hated it.

* = loved it

underline = own it but haven’t read it yet

! = heard so much about it I feel that I’ve read it.

Italics = couldn’t finish it.

To spread the meme copy the list and format accordingly.

I’ve decided to treat these as commutative. Therefore, if something is strikethrough and has an exclamation mark I will not be reading it ever because I’ve heard enough about it and probably glanced at the first few pages (or read another book in the series), which is sufficient to decide I hate it. J.K. Rowling I dislike on principle.

Frood and I are both in agreement that this is not a very good list. The problem here is that they are being listed as “significant” rather than “good”. Presumably, for instance, Rowling gets a look-in because she has been made Saint Rowling after saving global literacy or some such rot. The Silmarillion is in there because it was written by Tolkien and thus has to be on the list. It has to be. Not too sure what’s significant about Stormbringer. They should have gone for the Dancers At The End of Time – significant because they show you can get any old rubbish published if you’ve already got an agent.

Very surprised to see no mention of Octavia Butler. Very surprised. Wild Seed is a fantastic work and I’m about to settle down with Fledgling after overdosing on later Pratchett (mostly to do with the Watch, because that’s his best stuff).

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert*
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin*
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick*
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester**
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
!26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling!
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny *
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
!39. Ringworld, Larry Niven!
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
!43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester** (I read this when it was called “Tiger, Tiger”)
!46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein!
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock*
!48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks!
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Snaffled, in case you were wondering, from Estara.

Took Fingal out yesterday. First time on a bike in a month, after a chest infection that cleared up and then came back. I’m still coughing a bit and a little snotty, but with the Embra Tri on the 1st January I thought I’d better get some bike time in.

Frood was going along to Mum and Dad’s shed to play pirate in their hired minidigger so I said I’d take the bike and meet him there. It’s about 45 minutes ride to Mum and Dad’s house from here (at a comfortable 17 – 18mph) and then the shed is another 45 minutes past that. The roads between Kirkcaldy and Largo are quite busy, but the lanes to the shed are quiet.

Oh gods. It was humiliating. I was gobsmacked by how little strength I have, and I’m not just talking dead legs. Also it was pretty bloody cold yesterday and the air was torture on my upper airways, which I suppose must still be inflamed. By the time I got to Mum and Dad’s place I realised that while I had head to continue, and could have got there, it was probably a bloody stupid thing to do.

I called Frood and he said they were only going to be another half an hour anyway. It was getting dark — I have plenty of lights, but dark means colder — and so I took the sensible option and went into the house to drink tea and wait for them.

I am starting to get seriously concerned about whether or not I have time to get properly fit for this tri. Right now I’m pinning a great deal of trust on my ability to pick up the Total Immersion technique quickly for the swim section, and make up some time there.

This is why I shouldn’t race, Munky. I’m too competitive for my own good. And I have this habit of finding stuff I want to buy because I have an excuse in the form of an event: like this Orca women’s tri suit, for instance.

The RF FAQ is now accessible from the front page.