Jesus, you disappears for a matter of days and somebody nicks your art!

I suppose I should... be flattered by this. A little. It at least means I’ve reached a level of ability which means my work is actually WORTH stealing.

Anyhow the culprit of this is this guy here: [link] and... Oh look, he’s been banned. Deviantart is on top of things, I see. Good. Thank you deviantart, and thank you to for bringing this theft to my attention. You’re awesome. I’ll doodle you a thank you, or something as soon as I have time. I really appreciate you mentioning it.

I don’t think I need to say how much stealing sucks. But there are two main crimes involved, rather than one: the first crime is that the real artist is mistreated and unacknowledged, and the latter? Is that the thief is cheating out of actually doing anything worthwhile.

I’d sooner have all the sucky stuff I ever did (and there is a lot of it) out on display for the world to see than gain applause for what was not my own.

So I ordered a book online the other day, because it’s been a while, and I have a long bus journey almost every morning which needs to be filled with something. I figured it was about time I got some fantasy fiction down my throat which wasn’t written by Isabelle Carmody, so I ordered a replacement copy of a book I had a while ago and lost –Poison, by Chris Wooding.

I tend to prefer Chris Wooding’s young adult stuff to his adult fiction for some reason. In fact the same is true for most of the fantasy I read. The teenagers just seem to get a more interesting deal out of fantasy than we do. If I want serious, well written sci-fi or drama or whatever then I tend to go for adult books (though truth be told I haven’t read nearly enough adult science fiction books... I don't even know much Asimov. The latest I’ve tried to read is The Algebraist, and I had to stop that pretty early on, because the chapter with the guys head attached to life support specifically so another guy could beat the snot out of it on a regular basis kind of... freaked me out. Yeah I'm a wimp.

But anyway. Poison. Is a good book. One of those which takes much of it's content from mythologies, the story is basically about a girl going to recover her sister who was stolen by faeries. I didn’t originally expect much from a book that started with the words “Once Upon a Time”... but I was proven gladly mistaken. Wooding really knows how to break the rules. Poison was really enjoyable the first time I read it, and I felt a bit sore about losing the book. So I decided “what the hell?” and ordered a new copy. I’m a sucker for hardbacks, and decided to go for one which looked like it had a variant cover because it looked nicer than the paperback edition. Just yesterday my book arrived through the post much to my delight, until I opened the package and saw the blurb...

...In German.

Sigh.

So any native Germans on this website who enjoy Chris Wooding?

...With uploading their images to devianart today, or is it just me?

ETA: Apparantly at least one other person besides me is having some kind of "server issue" today (see [link]), sooo... if you're worried that your computer is mucking up again, don't. It's not your fault, deviantart is just screwed today.

So asides from a few less than comfortable medical issues amongst friends and family, a couple of months stressing out about getting nuked, problems with University animation software, the death of two famous and influential animators, the death of Majel Barret, a not-really-an apocalypse with the large Hydronical Collider-whatever-the-hell-it-was (which then went and broke down on us), the economy collapsing, and the fact that I finally plucked up the courage to watch Star Trek: Nemesis*... it's been a pretty good year, no?

Seriously, I'm not being sarcastic. You've gotta take the book with the bad here, right? Now, who's up for making some resolutions and trying to keep them past, say, the fifteenth of January? Though in the (paraphrased) words of that girl on television maybe we "should make actions, not resolutions"...

A happy new year to all, then. And to all a good night.

*_{never again, people. never again. It's bad enough that they had to kill the guy in the first place, but the fact that it was the only vaguely decent scene in the whole darned movie was just the icing on the bitterest cake ever baked.}

Heh. World's still here imagine that.

Sorry I actually do make sense, here: [link]

So yes, this is what our public funding has been going on for years, folks (well, the Americans amongst you, anyway): something that can simulate black holes in public space. I'm not sure if it's awesome or intimidating but either way, I'd like to think we have more to worry about Russia aiming nukes at Poland (no they're not, and they're probably not going to, bluster, people. Rational thug in command of government is being rationally blusterful. It's disturbing but that's about as far as it's gonna go. And if I keep telling myself that I'm sure I'll start to believe it eventually.)

I mean, Stephen Hawking reckons it just won't do anything at worst. Seriously, he's got bets placed.

But still, it's an interetsing topic, isn't it? So, out of sheer curiosity what're all your thoughts on the LHC?