Blog & White

Wikipedia

Stanley Ipkiss is a an insecure bank clerc who someday gets his hands on a mysterious mask. When he puts it on, he becomes an extravagant cartoon character. To be able to enter a posh night club, he needs money and therefore robs the bank he's working at, just as a local crime lord Tyrell's goons attempt to rob it too. After that the Mask goes to the club and dances exuberantly with said crime lord's girlfriend Tina. Stanley, suspected to be the robber, is then betrayed by a journalist to Tyrell (who wants to recover the cash) and sent to prison. Tyrell then wears the mask and plans to get rid of his crime boss during a charity event. Stanley manages to escape from prison and goes to the club. Tyrell plans to detonate a bomb to kill all witnesses (including Tina), but she tricks him into taking the mask off. Stanley then saves the day as The Mask.

Wikipedia

Princess Elsa has the power to create snow and ice at will. As a child, she accidentally wounded her younger sister Anna, prompting her father to isolate her in her room and to lock the doors of the castle. The king and queen later disappear at sea, and the castle's doors reopen only on Elsa's 18th birthday when she becomes queen. During the celebration, Anna meets, falls in love and accepts to marry prince Hans, but Elsa becomes angry, plunges the whole region in perpetual winter, and flees to the mountains where she builds a castle of ice. Anna also leaves after her, in the hope to talk and convince her to lift the curse. On her way, Anna meets Kristoff the iceman who helps her reach the castle. But Elsa admits she does not know how to lift the curse and wounds Anna accidentally again. Kristoff takes Anna to his friends the trolls to treat her, but the only thing that could save her is an act of true love. Kristoff rushes Anna home so that Hans could give her a true love's kiss while Hans' men capture Elsa and put her in jail. Kristoff then reveals himself as a manipulator who is only interested in taking the throne and locks Anna in her room to die. Elsa provokes a blizzard and escapes when Hans tells her she killed her sister and Anna escapes into the blizzard to meet Kristoff (whom she learned is in love with her). Outside, Anna interposes herself as Hans is about to strike Elsa and gets frozen. Elsa then hugs her sister who thaws out, her heroism being an act of true love. Elsa then discovers that love allows her to control her power, and she then lifts the curse.

© Amazon.fr

In the BookWorld, the written Thursday struggles to keep the few readers of her books interested, after the remake of the BookWorld where the Great Library setting is replaced with an hollow planet setting where different genres are regions of islands, and books are organised geographically along streets in cities. Thursday also works for Jurisfiction's Accident Investigation Department and is asked to investigate the crash of a self-published book that was flown on its way to be destroyed after the last copy in the real word has been destroyed. She meets a strange character who tells her that ‘one of our Thursdays is missing’ and slips the real Thursday's Jurisfiction badge in her pocket before being arrested by the Men in Plaid, an independent militia obeying directly the Council of Genres. During her investigation, Thursday saves a mechanical man who becomes her butler and helps her discover that the accident may not have been an accident. Moreover, the real Thursday has not been seen for a long while and the written one starts to suspect that the disappearance is linked to the accident. Thursday decides to report that the accident was just an accident, but continues investigating on her own time. With Bradshaw's complicity, Thursday briefly visits the real world and meets Landen who confirms that the real Thursday has been missing for over a week. Upon her return she tries to find the taxi whose rear axle was found on the crash site and the taxi's driver, during which she survives multiple murder attempts by the Men in Plaid and the fact that the real Thursday was working with a geologist who got killed just before he could give any useful explanation. Thursday is then ordered by senator Jobsbworth to pose as the real one during the peace talks that are planned to take place a few days later in the North, in an attempt to prevent a war between Racy Novels and its two neighbours Women's Fiction and Dogma. A delegation travels up the Metaphoric River and discovers that there has been a terrible battle at the resupply station between a battalion of clowns from Comedy and an unknown opponent. During the remainder of the journey, Thursday discovers that Red Herring, her boss from JAID has been replaced by a double during the journey and has planted a bomb on the boat. She eventually figures out that Red Herring has learned that there is a large deposit of raw metaphor (a very valuable substance in the BookWorld) under Racy Novel and had manipulated the Daphne Farquitt genre to start a war, invade Racy Novel and take control of that deposit. Thursday then realises that the real Thursday may have survived the crash and be hiding somewhere in Psychological Thriller; she indeed finds her severely wounded but alive. In the end Thursday becomes a Jurisfiction agent and gets permission to change her books' story to mention the BookWorld and make them more interesting to the readers.

© Amazon.fr

Fourteen years after Something Rotten Thursday is working for ACME carpets, which is a front for the now-defunct SpecOps 13 and 27; most of the members of the service are still working, funded by Thursday's operations on the cheese black market. But her work at the unofficial SpecOps is itself a front for her work at Jurisfiction. Over the past years, five books telling Thursday' adventures have been written. The first four have lots of sex and gratuitous violence, perpetrated by Thursday1-4. The fifth one is Thursday's attempt to take control and represent herself as she imagines herself, and Thursday5 is a soppy new-age fan. Thursday's current assignment is to train and evaluate Thursday1-4 and Thursday5 to become new Jurisfiction agents. The former is however too volatile to be trustworthy, and the second is too soft to make a good agent. In the meanwhile, Thursday also tries to convince her teenage son Friday to join the ChronoGuard, as he is supposed to become in the future the head of the organisation, but the boy is not interested at all. This is the source of tention, as the potential future Friday, head of ChronoGuard, explains that if the principle of the time machine is not invented within the next few days, time travel will not exist and all the work made by the ChronoGuard until now will be cancelled and some very influential members of ChronoGuard who have invested a lot of money with their knowledge of the future are really pushing to prevent this from happening. Thursday discovers, thanks to the phantom of her uncle Mycroft the inventor, that he had hidden the principle of time travel in a poem years ago, when he was hiding in the BookWorld, so it should be safe. In the meanwhile, the perspective of having no time left is causing people to lose interest in books and prefer reality television and the Council of Genres is planing to turn Jane Eyre into an interactive book that would change its story for good. Friday reveals that he is not the lazy teenager he has been pretending to be, but that it was just an act to prevent the discovery of time travel. Soon after Thursday is attacked in the real world by Thursday1-4 and loses the TravelGuide and therefore her ability to go to the BookWorld and veto the CoG's plans. Aware that the Goliath Corporation as an almost ready means of travel to the BookWorld, she makes a deal with them, but she is betrayed and stranded, while the Goliath agent attempts to travel to the poem and recover Mycroft's invention. The agent is however killed and Thursday destroys the invention. She is attacked by DanverClones and saved in the nick of time by Thursday5 disguised as Thursday1-4. Thursday rushes to the CoG to confront Thursday1-4 who has been pretending to be the real Thursday and approved all the stupid decisions from the CoG, but she eventually defeats Thursday1-4 while she was locked in Thursday5's book by destroying the said book.

Wikipedia

Toomes has got a contract for cleaning up the city of New York after the battle in Avengers, but as the contract is cancelled and the task given to the Department of Damage Control, he decides to steal some of the alien technology. Eight years later, he has a successful underground business of making futuristic weapons and selling them to criminals. At the same time, Peter Parker is called to join the Avengers and since then hopes to be called again at any time to help them. While stopping a robbery, Spider-Man discovers the existence of Toomes' weapons. Soon after he witnesses a sale of such weapons, but Toomes attacks him and Spider-Man is saved in the nick of time by Iron Man who still keeps an eye on him. Spider-Man then finds a part of one of the weapons and with his friend Ned they extract its alien power source. Having set a tracker on one of the villains, they track them to a location in Maryland. They take advantage of a school trip to Washington, D.C. to get closer to the location. Spider-Man manages to prevent another theft of alien artifacts by Toomes' team but finds himself locked in a DODC storage facility. He discovers that the power supply in Ned's backpack is a grenade, and the latter indeed goes off as Ned visits the Washington monument with his schoolmates. Trapped in the elevator, they are saved in the nick of time by Spider-Man. Spider-Man then attempts to stop another arms deal on the Staten Island ferry, but it goes wrong and people's lives are saved only thanks to Iron Man. To punish his recklessness, Tony Stark then confiscates Peter's high-tech Spider-Man costume. Peter then tries to become a better student at school, but he discovers that Toomes is the father of his date for the homecoming dance. Peter then realizes (from bits heard here and there) that Toomes plans to hijack the DODC plane transporting weapons from the old Avengers headquarters to the new one. Using his old Spider-Man costume, Peter prevents the theft and catches Toomes. In the end, Stark offers Peter a membership in the Avengers, but the latter declines.

“Nelson Sauvin hop… passion fruit, gooseberry and mango aromas”

A bit sweet and slightly bitter, very fruity. Quite good.

Thornbridge brewery, Bakewell, Derbyshire, England. 5.2% alcohol.

For quite a while, I've been wondering what to do with movies or games which have been rated with a small number of people, such as the ones found on IMDb or BoardGameGeek: users can give a 0 – 10 rating to items, and the users' average is then shown. Is an obscure movie rated 8 by 42 people actually worth an 8?

Putting aside the actual usefulness of those ratings, I wanted to know how much uncertainty there is on those values, knowing only the arithmetic mean and the number of people who have voted.

Given population (i.e., all the users who have seen the film or played the game and who could vote), when we take a sample (i.e., the users who have rated the item) of size n, we get a sample mean m. But if another sample had been taken, we would have gotten a slightly different sample mean. How much much different would these two values be? In other words, how close is this value from the value we would get if the whole population would have rated the item?

The standard error of the mean indicates how much the sample mean m can vary by calculating its standard deviation s_m = s/√n. The problem is that it is based on the standard deviation s of the population, which is unknown. Given that we do not know the users' individual ratings, we cannot either calculate the standard deviation of the sample.

All is not lost, however: since the ratings are always between 0 and 10, we can estimate the maximum value of the standard deviation. My best guess is that this value is maximal when half the ratings are 0 and the other half are 10, leading to a standard deviation of 5.

Given that the means of 96% of the samples of size n falls within ±2s_m of the population's mean, we know that the mean of the population is very likely to be between m−10√n (but no less than 0) and m+10√n (but no more than 10). So this obscure movie rated 8 by 42 users is worth between 6.5 and 9.5. Given that on IMDb movies rated above about 7 are reasonably good, the obscure movie may be worth watching.

“paahteinen, vaniljainen… kahvi, kaakaonibs, habanero, vanilja”

Tosi makea, maistuu suklaalle ja vaniljalle. Sisältää ohramallasta.

Panimoyhtiö Hiisi, Jyväskylä, Suomi. 11.0 % alkoholia.

‘Mosaic and Amarillo hops, Sigmund Voss Kveik yeast… Kalamansi fruit. Juicy, citrusy’

Indeed fruity, quite sweet, slightly bitter, overall very good. Contains barley and wheat.

Bone Machine Brewing, Hull, Yorkshire, England. 6.2% alcohol.

“tropical flavours of tangerine, papaya, citrus and mango”

Definitely mangoes, very nice. Contains barley malt, flaked oats, wheat.

Carlow Brewing Company, Bagenalstown, Carlow, Ireland. 7.2% alcohol.

Not bad, a bit citrusy, but not notice the blood orange. Contains barley.

Beavertown Brewery, London, England. 5.5% alcohol.

Very citrusy, quite good. Contains barley.

Beavertown Brewery, London, England. 4.3% alcohol.

Mise à jour du Noursella v2 avec de la vanille et adaptée à de nouveaux ingrédients, disponibles en Finlande.

Ingrédients

• 56g chocolat noir (Pirkka luomu reilun kaupan tumma suklaa 72%)
• 250g pâte de noisette (100% noisette, Rapunzel Haselnussmus 100% Haselnüsse)
• 70g cacao en poudre (Callebaut Cocoa Powder CP-E0-776, 22/24% matière grasse)
• 110g sucre glace (Dan Sukker tomusokeri)
• 30g sucre vanillé (à base de sucre glace, Dan Sukker Vaniljasokeri)
• 20-30g huile végétale neutre (Apetit rypsiöljy)

Préparation

Faire fondre le chocolat (cassé en petits morceaux, 2 min au micro-ondes), y mélanger la pâte de noisette (d'abord l'huile qui surnage, puis la partie solide) jusqu'à obtenir un appareil homogène. Placer le cacao, le sucre glace et le sucre vanillé dans un tamis à farine, et ajouter en plusieurs fois dans le mélange chocolat-noisette, en mélangeant bien à chaque étape. Ajouter finalement de l'huile en fonction de la texture souhaitée: 20g d'huile donne une pâte plus difficile à tartiner sur une crêpe, 30g d'huile donne un pâte plus liquide mais une petite partie de l'huile va remonter à la surface au bout d'une semaine.

Conservation

Dans un pot en verre (propre…), plusieurs semaines dans un placard à température ambiante.

Des chiffres

Masse totale: 540g

• Lipides: 42g pour 100g
• Glucides: 31g pour 100g (sucres: 30g pour 100g)
• Protéines: 10g pour 100g
• Fibres: 5.5g pour 100g

Prix: 16,42 EUR (30,41 EUR/kg)

© Amazon.fr

After two years spent in the BookWorld as Jurisfiction's Bellman, Thursday returns to the real world, accompanied with her son Friday and Shakespeare's Hamlet. She discovers that the Whig party leader Yorrick Kayne (who has already caused some trouble earlier) is campaigning to become dictator of England (a fact confirmed by Thursday's time-travelling father who warns her that if the Swindon croquet team does not win the finals, Kayne will eventually cause a nuclear holocaust; the 13th century St Zvlkx, who has made remarkably accurate predictions in the past however predicts that Swindon will win the game). Kayne is very successfully misdirecting the population's attention to hating the Danes, who are accused to be the source of all of England's problems, ordering all Danish books to be destroyed. Equally surprising is the fact that the Goliath Corporation is transforming from a company into a faith organisation where customers would become followers; as part of the process they offer to repair all the damages they have caused in the past, allowing Thursday to ask Goliath to un-eradicate her husband Landen (which eventually happens, after a few cycles of him appearing and disappearing). In parallel, Thursday gets her job back at SpecOps (despite having been AWOL for two years) and promises she would find a way to hide several truckloads of books in Wales. The solution arises when she discovers that in order for Swindon to win the croquet game after Goliath, supporting Kayne, has scared off its best players, she needs the help of the genetically re-engineered neanderthals (who play croquet very well but are not at all interested in competition). The neanderthals, who cannot make children, accept on the condition that she helps them find their species' blueprints from the lab at the Welsh border where they had been created decades ago. The trip to Wales allows her to hide the books and secure the cooperation of the neanderthals for the croquet game. Thursday then confronts Kayne, and while she has failed to recover the self-published novel by a Danish author from which Kayne has escaped, the latter is transformed into a human during a duel with the Cheshire Cat and loses his inhuman ability of persuasion (which was amplified by the ovinator, an invention by Thursday's uncle Mycroft). The ovinator is destroyed by Hamlet just before the croquet game, which Swindon wins by a hair. Just at the end, Thursday is mortally wounded by the Minotaur who had escaped from the BookWorld two years ago under the action of an accomplice of Kayne's, but as she enters the Underworld, the assassin who had been paid by Kayne to kill her and had been mortally wounded in an accident decides to take her place. When she wakes up from her coma a few weeks later, she learns that St Zvlkx was a time traveller who had been placing bets on future events with England's oldest betting shop before reappearing in the present and dying in a road accident. The betting shop now must pay several billions of pounds in gains; being indirectly owned by Goliath, it forces the corporation to sell half of its shares to Zvlkx's sponsor.

Wikipedia

Steppenwolf is back and recovers the Mother Boxes in order to once again take over the Earth: one Box was guarded by the Amazons, one by the Atlants and the last one had been found recently and kept at S.T.A.R. Labs, where it had been used to save the life of Victor Stone, progressively transforming him into Cyborg. Warned by the Amazons, Wonder Woman joins forces with Batman to find more metahumans who could help them stop Steppenwolf. They manage to convince the Flash and a reluctant Aquaman to join them. They also decide that they need the help of Superman (who is currently dead) and manage to revive him using S.T.A.R. Labs' Mother Box, but Superman has lost his memories and is of no use; in the confusion, Steppenwolf takes the third box. The team tracks the villain to a village in Russia where they start fighting him, and are able to prevail only after Superman arrivers (having recovered his memories thanks to Lois Lane).

© Amazon.fr

Thursday hides from Aornis in a never published story stored in the Well of Lost Plots, the counterpart of the fiction world's library (where published books are stored) which preserves unpublished books. She discovers that books are actually created in the Well and the stories are simply sent to the mind of real-world authors whose role is only to write them down. The Well is filled with generic characters, plot devices, various imaginary creatures, as well as misspelling vyrus, grammasites and other creatures who affect the text, sometimes to the point where it becomes useless. Unpublished books are preserved for a limited time, before they are taken apart and their components reused in other books. As Aornis exists in Thursday's mind in the form of a mindworm, trying to destroy her personality one memory at a time, Thursday quickly forgets about her husband Landen; thankfully her Gran helps her fight the mindworm and recover her memories. At the same time, Thursday completes her training as a Jurisfiction agent with Mrs. Havisham and becomes a fully qualified junior agent. She investigates the suspicious deaths of two of her Jurisfiction colleagues and some time later of Mrs. Havisham herself. All had been investigating BOOK version 9 (a.k.a. UltraWord), the new operating system allowing the Well to produce stories, send them to authors, let the readers actually read the book. UltraWord is created and promoted by Text Grand Central, and Thursday eventually discovers that UltraWord will not only severely limit stories to a very bland form of description and narration, rendering most of the jobs in the Well redundant, but it also allows the technicians of Text Grand Central to rewrite at will any text without anyone noticing. She makes those revelations during the Annual BookWorld awards, where a majority of the BookWorld population is asked to vote for or against the use of UltraWord. Only the apparition of the Great Panjandrum, summoned by Thursday using the emergency button of her Jurisfiction TravelGuide allows for the vote to take place without interference from Text Grand Central. The Great Panjandrum also names Thursday to be the next Bellman, superintendent of Jurisfiction.

Wikipedia

Diana, daughter of Zeus and Hippolyta lives on a hidden island with the amazons, preparing for return of Ares. The latter had killed most of the gods and was defeated by Zeus, but is said to return one day. In 1918, Steve Trevor, a British spy, crash lands near the island and describes World War I to the amazons and the secret research by Maru and Ludendorff for the ultimate chemical weapon. The amazons are not convinced that it marks the return of Ares, but Diana decides to help Trevor return to Britain. Back in London, they meet Sir Patrick Morgan who tries to negotiate an armistice; the military is not interested in Trevor's discovery, but Sir Patrick decides to financially support Trevor in his attempt to destroy Ludendorff's secret weapon at his base in Belgium. Trevor recruits a small commando and leaves for Belgium with Diana. They first observe Ludendorff at a party where he attempts to gather support against the armistice and his plan to demonstrate his secret weapon by using it on London. Trevor and Diana then discover the secret base and while Diana seeks to Ludendorff, convinced that he is Ares, Trevor attempts to prevent a bomb raid to London and dies in the attempt. The death of Ludendorff does not stop the war, and Diana understands she was wrong. Sir Patrick then appears out of nowhere and reveals himself as being Ares, justifying his attempt to kill humanity by the fact that humans are not the perfectly good beings that Zeus claimed having created. Diana eventually kills Ares just as the war ends.

“pohjaa brittiläisiin perinteisiin… cascara eli kahvin hedelmäliha… sisältää coffeiinia”

Ei mitään erikoista. Sisältää ohramallasta.

Panimoyhtiö Hiisi, Jyväskylä, Suomi. 5.5% alkoholia.

© Amazon.fr

En vacances à Sète, Léo accepte d'enquêter sur la mort suspecte d'un ostréiculteur de l'étang de Thau. Ce dernier refusait d'élever des huitres triploïdes (et était donc moins victime du virus OsHV-1 que ses voisins) et s'opposait activement à l'ouverture d'une écloserie. La rumeur prétend que la victime infectait ses concurrents avec le virus, mais l'assassinat d'un ingénieur travaillant sur une méthode permettant de se passer d'écloserie ainsi que le témoignage de deux ostréiculteurs fait penser à Loden que la victime est morte dans un accident et que le directeur de l'écloserie est responsable de la rumeur et de l'assassinat de l'ingénieur.

“fruity… malty caramel… Galena, Nugget, East Kent Goldings hops”

The smell reminds me faintly of strawberry. Otherwise just another ale, but quite nice. Contains barley malt and wheat malt.

Porterhouse Brewing Company, Dublin, Ireland. 4.2% alcohol.

Wikipedia

As Gru fails to catch Bratt, a child-actor turned super-villain, he is kicked out of the Anti-Villain League. The minions expect him to become a villain either, but when he refuses, most of them leave. Gru then discovers that he has a twin brother Dru, who invites him and his family to his estate on a paradise island. Dru dreams of becoming a super-villain like their father was and asks Gru to train him. Gru refuses at first, but when he learns that Bratt has stolen the world's largest diamond, he accepts to take Dru with him to Bratt's lair to steal back the diamond (and get reinstated in the League). The attempt fails due to Dru's lack of experience, and Bratt uses the diamond to power a super-laser installed in a giant robot, meant to cut Holywood out of the city and lift it into space (as a revenge for his show getting cancelled, many years ago). Dru manages to stop the robot, Gru defeats Bratt. Gru in reinstated in the League and send to catch Dru, who has become a real super-villain and has been joined by the minions.

“with orange blossom, honey, pear drops, lavender, jasmine floral nose and biscuit aroma… matured for 6 months”

Very sweet and very strong, plenty of aroma, but I could not distinguish any of the above.

Adnams, Southwold, Suffolk, England. 10% alcohol.

© Amazon.fr

Harry's second son Albus has been sorted into Slytherin, and his best friend is Scorpius Malfoy, Draco's son. Burdened by his father's aura, Albus has difficulties understanding what he expects from him; Scorpius suffers from the premature death of his mother and from a rumor that he is in fact Voldemort's son. In his fourth year at Hogwarts, he and Scorpius meet Amos Diggory's niece Delphi, a young adult. Learning that a Time-Turner has been found (the Ministry of Magic having previously destroyed all Time-Turners to prevent nostalgic Death Eaters from changing history)but that Harry would not use it to save Cedric's life, the trio steals the time-traveling device from Hermione's (current Minister of Magic) office and travel twenty-four years back to the Triwizard Tournament to prevent Cedric from winning the first task. When they come back to their own time, things have changed: Albus is in Griffindor, Ron is married to Padma instead of Hermione, etc. The trio then decides to go back to the second task and get Cedric to ridicule himself; when they are back in their own time, Albus has disappeared and Scorpio discovers that Cedric had become a Death Eater and indirectly prevented Voldemort from dying. Scorpius in now a very popular, powerful and evil boy. Knowing the history from his own reality, he seeks Snape's help and meets what's left of the Underground (Hermione, Ron and a few others). They accompany Scorpius can return back to the first task of the Triwizard Tournament and prevent Albus and himself from tampering with Cedric's task. On their way back Hermione, Ron and Snape are killed by Dementors, but Scorpius succeeds in going back to the second task and undoing their previous attempt. Back in their original reality, their are caught by their parents and severely punished. Harry also noticed that his scar has started to hurt again, for the first time in over twenty years. Albus and Scorpio meet Delphi again, and she takes them back in time to the third task of the tournament. She reveals that she wants Cedric to become a Death Eater and recreate the reality dominated by Voldemort that Scorpio has witnessed. The two boys manage to stop her, but she takes them back it time and space to Godrick's Hollow the day before Voldemort's attempt to kill Harry and she destroys the Time-Turner before disappearing. In the future, Harry and Hermione discover that Delphi is not Cedric's niece, but actually Voldemort's daughter. They then receive a message from the two boys through an artefact that Harry had kept from his childhood, and thanks to a Time-Turner inherited by Draco from his father, they travel back in time. Harry transfigures into Voldemort and attracts Delphi; the gang eventually manages to restrain her and take her back to their own time. In the end Albus and Scorpio have come to terms with who they are, and Albus reconciles with Harry.

“spiced berries and caramel… resinous pine and freshly-cut citrus zest”

Sweet, a bit of roasted. Quite good. Contains malted barley.

BrewDog Ltd., Ellon, Scotland. 7.2% alcohol

Aika hyvää, maistuu vähän makealle valkoviinille. Sisältää ohramallasta.

Panimoyhtiö Hiisi, Jyväskylä, Suomi. 8.0% alkoholia.

A.E. van Vogt and E. Mayne Hull (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1944-June 1944)

An American submarine in the Pacific is transported from 1944 to the year 1,000,000. The crew meets a society of winged men who live in a city floating in the air, above a planet Earth mostly covered in water (brought several hundreds of thousands of years earlier by meteorites) where solid ground is not anymore solid and therefore unsuitable for building and living. They learn that the humans at the time water started to raise have designed two new species, winged men and fishmen who live in a city under water. The fishmen have access to natural resources and devices inherited from the original humans, and have decided to get rid of the winged men by attracting the flying city towards the water. The winged men, who have not access to natural resources and build no devices, have used a time-travel device to fetch war machines from various times in the past. The humans' submarine, equipped with explosive torpedoes, is the only one able to destroy the underwater city of the fishmen. All are promised to be sent back to their time once the city is destroyed. As the commander of the submarine has been taken by the fishmen and is presumed dead, the first officer is taken to the flying city to meet the “council”, an omniscient computer that shows him the lives of both the winged men and the fishmen. He is then returned to the submarine who has been taken over by warlike women from the year 10,000 who are in a hurry to go back to their time. But they do not know how to operate a diesel submarine, allowing the first officer to retake his ship and instead of destroying the whole city, only destroys its core that controls the devices inherited from the humans ancestors, putting the fishmen and winged men on equal footing. As promised, all are then returned to their own time.

Leigh Brackett (Startling Stories, Fall 1944)

On Mars, in the city of Ruh, Rick tries to escape the goons of the Terran Exploitation Company. He hides in the house of a seer who predicts he will cast a shadow over Mars if he lives, and attempts to kill him. Rick kills her, but is caught by the Company's men and sent to work in a deep, dark mine. Having caused a riot, Rick manages to escape in the company of Mayo who was looking for proofs that would convince the weak Martian government to do something against the slavers of the Company. They end up in the hands of the Martians, who punish Rick for having killed the seer, but somehow their boy King makes Rick his successor in the hope that he would unite the oppressed humans and the Martians against the Company's rule. Back to the surface, Rick organizes the said rebellion, but he is betrayed and sent away. He then attempts to catch Jaffa, now head of the Company after having murdered his boss and kidnapped Mayo, and the chase eventually takes him through the jungle to the North pole. There he manages to kill Jaffa, free Mayo and come back to Ruh where he decides not to become the supreme ruler of Mars despite the prophecy.

The Changeling

A.E. van Vogt (Astounding Science Fiction, April 1944)

In 1972, Leslie Craig discovers his life only started a few years ago. While investigating, he is first interviewed by the US president and then taken prisoner in his own house. He learns that he is mate of totipotent cells that give him the ability to regenerate his body. He also needs to go through a few cycles of regenerations and loses his memory in between those. The reader also learns that the president wants to obtain Craig's blood to become immortal and thus become forever dictator of the country. Craig then escapes from his home, goes on the run, and is eventually arrested after having been setup as the organizer of an attack on a Women's march. He however manages to escape and is contacted by a group of totipotent people. After his next regeneration, Craig develops mind-control powers and in a final part of the story that makes no sense, manages to modify the president's mind to give up on its dreams of immortality.

A God Named Kroo

Henry Kuttner (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1944)

Kroo is god without any believers left. When Danton, a westerner accidentally enters his temple in the Himalayas, he is unwillingly promoted high priest, and forced to travel (more or less randomly) to a small village in Burma, occupied by Japanese troops who secretly manufacture bombs for a future invasion, using a hydraulic power station. Kroo decides the dynamos will be his altars and with a few demonstrations of his powers, Kroo forces the villagers to believe in him. Unable to destroy the dynamos due to Kroo's taboo, Danton's only preoccupation is to alert the American forces of the imminence of a Japanese invasion. After convincing Kroo to hibernate for a month, Danton travels downriver but fails to find an allied base. When he wakes up, Kroo finds the village deserted and the dynamos are gone. Danton reasons that the Japanese have taken them downriver, and convinces Kroo that a competing deity has taken possession of them. Kroo then destroys them, getting killed in the process, but finally joins the other “dead” deities in their afterlife.

Intruders from the Stars

Ross Rocklynne (Amazing Stories, January 1944)

During the war, a trio of adventurers find a spaceship in Africa. They wake up Bess-Istra, former dictator from another planet, who escaped after a revolution. Bess-Istra uses her technology to end the war with minimum damage, becomes dictator of Earth and reforms it to make it an actually nice place to live. But Bess-Istra's two associates want to take the power for themselves and make Earth a military dictatorship. In the end, they are overthrown by a Bess-Istra apparently converted to Christianity and everything ends well for the humans.

The Jewel of Bas

Leigh Brackett (Planet Stories, Spring 1944)

On a distant world, people live in fear of the Kalds who take people as slaves. Ciaran, with the help of a hunter he freed from the Kalds, wants to save his wife Mouse, taken as a slave. They discover that the slaves are used for building a large machine in a maze of caves, taking orders from androids. As they are discovered, Ciaran flees through the caves and eventually arrives in front of a boy who is asleep. Upon waking up, the boy, named Bas, explains he had come a long time ago from Atlantis, rejected by his people because he had accidentally become immortal, and has built Ciaran's world. Eventually tired of it, he had gone to sleep and has built a more interesting world in his dreams. In the meanwhile, the androids build a machine meant to overthrow Bas. Ciaran eventually convinces Bas to disable the androids and free the humans.

Killdozer!

Theodore Sturgeon (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1944)

A crew of earthworks workers must build an airfield on a remote island. They accidentally free an incorporeal being from a buried building who takes possession of a bulldozer and attempts to kill the workers. At first they do not believe their foreman's depiction of the first murder and believe he is the culprit. When trying to repair the bulldozer with an arc welder, another worker is killed. The eventually recognized that the bulldozer is possessed and that it is afraid of the electric arcs. After a long battle, the manage to destroy the bulldozer.

Trog

Murray Leinster (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1944)

In 1956, American civilization has almost disappeared due to the influence of Trog(lodyte)s whose purpose seem to destroy key infrastructures, the theory being that some sort of global conciousness that rejects industrial civilization. No-one has seen a trog until a group of three parapsychologists use their lab's video-surveillance system to observe one. Trogs use a device triggering narcolepsy in people, allowing them to act undetected. They reason that trogs are actually Germans who, having failed previously to conquer the world because of the superiority of the American industry, now use psychology to diminish their enemy before invading the country. The heroes thankfully manage to counteract the trogs' devices and prevent the invasion.

A couple of months ago, I discovered D100 Dungeon, a free print-and-play (at least up to version 2.2) dungeon crawling game where most aspects of the game are randomly generated by rolling dice. While it is yet-another game where you walk into a room, kill the monster and loot the treasure, I was especially enthusiastic about generating the dungeon's map randomly (look at the pictures on BoardGameGeek, some people have taken the time to even make very nice looking maps) I've played a few games before feeling the itch to design such a game myself (game design is something that has been itching every now and then, but without much result until now).

Roll through the Dungeon (RttD) is the result of scratching that itch. The structure of the game is very much inspired by D100 Dungeon, but I changed some of the mechanisms that I didn't like with what I consider better ones.

Inspired by the James Bond 007 role-playing game I played as a teenager in the early '90s, skill tests have an associated success grade, indicating how well your character succeeds in doing a given action. This success grade then determines how much time is spent on doing the action, and in case of fights, how much damage is inflicted to the opponent. This contrasts with D100 Dungeon's two-step fights, where the skill test tells you whether you have hit the opponent, but an second, unrelated roll determines the damage. I find it more intellectually satisfactory that the damage depends on how successful the action has been, rather than being an independent event, but I am aware it is nothing more than a design decision and it does not model reality any better than the two-step model. I'm particularly proud of the nomogram I have designed for computing the success grade, but I must admit that it is actually not very practical (the table is much faster to use, as it does not require manipulating a ruler). But I did it for fun, and that is the kind of geeky stuff I consider fun :)

Another important difference between D100 Dungeon and RttD is the construction of the dungeon's map. The map is a grid of adjacent squares rooms, and in the former game, a single D100 roll determines most of the characteristics in a square: the three exits from the room (corridor, door or wall) and what you find in it (a feature, a monster or nothing). This leads to paradoxical maps, where on one side of a room is a door, but the same side seen from the adjacent room is a solid wall. RttD solves this at the cost of more dice rolls: room sides are determined by independent D10 rolls, and the room's content is yet another roll. That means that you need to roll up to four D10 instead of one D100.

Many design decisions from D100 Dungeon have become apparent when trying to solve the same problems, and have led to the same solutions, reinforcing the similarity between the two games: roll tables are ordered, with the not-go-good stuff at the beginning of the table, and the best stuff at its end. This way, it is possible to get better stuff in some circumstances by offsetting the dice roll (i.e., adding 10 to the D100 roll). This is especially important when searching the rooms: feature rooms may contain a trap, so when searching a feature room, you add 5 to your roll to make it impossible to find a second trap in the same room, as well as increasing the chances to find better stuff.

The hardest thing for me in working on this game has been (and still is) to invent thematic elements, such as monsters, quests, room features, treasures. I tried not to simply copy D100 Dungeon (partly because it's copyrighted, and partly because I wanted to prove myself that I could do it), but it has been really hard. Most monsters and features are coming straight from the NetHack wiki, monster HP and damage are generated by a script to create a progression in the difficulty, but the hardest has been (and still is) quests. Some are more or less direct adaptations from the quests in D100 Dungeon, a few are from my own imagination (especially in the “Ridicule does not kill” they say chapter), but the list of quests is still incomplete (actually, it's the only thing that justifies not releasing a version 1.0 of the game).

I have now played about 25 games of RttD to test the game, fix the problems and try and improve it. I'm a bit sad to say that the novelty is wearing off and that the game feels quite repetitive (it is, by design). What has been the most fun until now has been to use LaTeX again to produce the PDF booklet and to develop macros for generating some parts of the tables and making cross-references. It is nothing fancy, but as a software developer, it's the kind of things I enjoy doing.

I feel like running out of steam about RttD so I don't know how long I will continue working on it; certainly I won't anymore spend several hours daily as I have in the beginning. But as the game is released under Creative Commons BY – SA, anyone can work on it, write changes, and generally improve it. The PDF booklet has a section about developing the game, if you are interested. Among the things that are not implemented yet are curses and blessings (which D100 Dungeon already has), I was considering making them more like NetHacks curses i.e., items you find may be cursed and detrimental to your character if worn or used.

Sweet and malty. Contains barley.

Wychwood Brewery Co. Witney, Oxfordshire, England. 5.0% alcohol.

Arena

Fredric Brown (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1944)

Just before the decisive battle between the humans and the Outsiders, one individual of each species is pulled out of time by an unknown entity and pitted together on a deserted place, separated by a force field. The entity promises to wipe out the species of the loser of that fight. Both try building various weapons with rock and wood from the few plants and discover that inanimate objects pass through the force field. The human, very near death due to lack of water understands that unconscious beings can pass through too, including when asleep, and that's how he manages to kill his opponent. He then wakes up, the battle over before it even started.

The Big and the Little (The Merchant Princes)

Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1944)

The Foundation has expanded by imposing its technology along with its religion to its neighbours. Mallow is sent to Korell, where he escapes a plot involving a missionary from the Foundation to discredit the Foundation and its religion, but still manages to get the elite interested in the technology, ignoring the religious aspect. A few years later, Mallow is tried for causing the death of the missionary, but shows proof that the missionary was in fact a member of the local political police. Mallow thus discredits his political opponent, head of the Foundation clergy and becomes Mayor of Terminus, having gained popular support by having started a fruitful trade with Korell and much reduced the influence of the clergy by exposing its head for conspiring against him. When Korell declares war on the Foundation, Mallow shows that as Korell's industry and society now depends so much on Foundation technology, its people will refuse the war in order to keep their way of life. Mallow thus has resolved the current crisis foreseen by Harri Seldon and taken the Foundation the next step in its History.

The Children's Hour

Lawrence O'Donnell (C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner) (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1944)

With the help of his psychiatrist, a man tries to remember what happened to him a year earlier, when he was in love with a strange young woman, around whom impossible things tend to happen. As he recovers more and more memories, he concludes that despite looking like a human adult, she was a multidimensional child who was left to play with humans, her guardians making sure that nothing inappropriate happens to her. In the end, the therapy only reinforces the memory block and the man loses memories of his loved one forever.

City

Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1944)

Forty years in the future, thanks to individual and fast means of flying, inhabitants of cities have mostly moved to the countryside, isolated from each other. Only businesses and civil servants remain in the deserted city, against all logic. As the empty houses are invested by squatters who cannot afford to move, the mayor wants to burn the houses to chase the squatters away. But the grandson of a now-rich man decides to buy the houses (in particular the one where his grandfather lived) and turn them into a park and a museum.

No Woman Born

C.L. Moore (Astounding Science Fiction, December 1944)

A famous singer and dancer who had tragically died in a fire a year earlier reappears in a robotic body, her brain having been preserved. Certain that her fans will still love her in this metallic body, she successfully reappears on television. But the man who has constructed her body is convinced that the people will soon forget her, once the novelty has faded out. She is convinced of the contrary, but is still unhappy as she foresees that she will miss a companion like her.

When the Bough Breaks

Lewis Padgett (C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner) (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1944)

A group of small men arrive from the future into the lives of young parents, telling them that their boy is the first of a generation of super-humans, and his future self has sent them to educate him so that he does not have to wait until he is fifty years old to discover his super powers. The child quickly turns into a tyrant and eventually comes to his doom, thus preventing the advent of the super-humans. The parents are in the end rather relieved.

And the Gods Laughed

Fredric Brown (Planet Stories, Spring 1944)

Asteroid miners spend their free time telling ludicrous stories. In one of those, the narrator recalls a trip to Ganymede, where the natives were controlled by sentient beings in the form of earrings, who also took possession of his shipmates. He ends the story without telling how he escaped, convincing the audience it was all a lie. The narrator is in fact possessed as well, but without any visible item, proof that this form is suitable for invading Earth.

Desertion

Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science Fiction, November 1944)

To study Jupiter, volunteers are transmuted into Jovian beings to be able to bear the enormous pressure and caustic atmosphere and sent down. As none has ever come back, the director of the program decides to go there himself with his dog, and discovers that under the Jovian form Jupiter appears as a paradise, his dog can communicate with him, and he feels better than ever. They too then decide not to return to earthling forms.

Far Centaurus

A. E. van Vogt (Astounding Science Fiction, January 1944)

A small crew has spent several hundred years in hibernation travelling to Alpha Centauri. Upon arrival, they are greeted by humans who had colonized it after their departure thanks to a faster-than-light travel technology, and because of their body odour are asked not to meet the population without an airtight suit. One of them, believed to have become mad during the trip actually finds a way to travel back through time and space to Earth only a year after their departure.

Huddling Place

Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1944)

Telecommunications have allowed people to live in relative isolation from each other, causing an increase in agoraphobia among humans. When a surgeon is asked to got to Mars and save the life of a martian philosopher friend of his, he hesitate, but the martians announce they are sending a ship anyway. But the robot butler sends it away, as it is unthinkable that his master would leave his home.

I, Rocket

Ray Bradbury (Amazing Stories, May 1944)

A rocket tells its story, from its first commission as a warship, considering its crew somehow as its blood, and witnessing a failed sabotage attempt. After the war, it becomes a merchant ship, and eventually crashes on an asteroid, its whole crew dead. Some time later, its first captain finds its wreckage and plans to salvage it and use it in the coming war again.

The Wedge (The Traders)

Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1944)

A Foundation agent, posing as a merchant, is held prisoner on a planet which forbid buying atomic technology from other worlds, and demand a ransom in gold for the man. One merchant, sent to his rescue, demonstrates a matter transmuter as a way to produce the required gold, and succeeds in selling it to a high-ranking official, recording the transaction and blackmailing him into not denying it officially. As the official will use the machine to recoup his investment and progress his political career, this event will gradually change the society's opinion about atomic technology.

Wikipedia

In 2054 Washington, D.C., the Precrime unit has prevented all murders in the past six years by using three Precogs, children of drug addicts who developed the unexpected psychic ability to foresee murders, the visions being then recorded. One of them, Agatha, shows John Anderton, head of Precrime, images of a past foreseen murder of Ann Lively. Soon after, the precogs forsee that Anderton will murder a Leo Crow whom he does not know. Anderton flees, chased by his former colleagues. He meets the scientist who discovered the precogs abilities, who tells him that sometimes the three previsions do not match, but the inconsistent one (called a minority report) is erased from the records and remains only in the head of the precog. Anderton starts to wonder how many potential criminals have been arrested for a crime they would not have committed. After getting his eyes replaced (as all identification is done by scanning the irises, everywhere), he comes back and kidnaps Agatha hoping that her vision would be different from that of the other two. Anderton learns that Ann Lively was Agatha's mother and that she had disappeared after being saved from her would-be murderer. Anderton and Agatha eventually find the place where the crime is supposed to happen, and Anderton discovers that he had been setup by someone using the death of his son to motivate him killing his victim. Anderton refuses, but the victim commits suicide, and Anderton is then caught. His ex-wife discovers that Burgess, founder of Precrime knows about Lively's disappearance; she then helps Anderton escape and confront Burgess. The latter had paid Lively's would-be murderer to get caught so that he could kill her in the same manner soon after the police had gone; the precog's visions of the attempted murder and the real one would be very similar, and the real murder would be disregarded as a memory instead of a vision. Lively wanted to get her daughter back, which would have meant the end of Precrime, which Burgess would not accept. The precogs then foresee Anderton's murder by Burgess, but the latter decides to commit suicide, proving that the visions are not always correct and that people always have a choice.

Wikipedia

In the year 2000, the police is using non-lethal weapons, while criminals still use conventional guns. When the mayor is murdered, the Knight Foundation scrambles to get its new prototype ready within 30 days, and get Michael Knight out of retirement as a test pilot. As KITT has been taken apart and some of its components resold, he installs what remains in his vintage car. In the meanwhile, police officer Shawn is left for dead by the mayor's assassin, but she is saved by copying her memory into a chip implanted in her brain (a chip that used to be part of KITT). Having left the police, she applies to the Knight Foundation and Michael reluctantly accepts to work with her. While the 4000 model is being prepared, they use KITT to try and find out who has attempted to kill her, assuming it has been in relation with her stumbling upon a traffic of former police, lethal weapons. While having been told her recent memories were gone, they manage to find a recording of those at the clinic where she had been treated, proving a conspiracy between the new mayor and a sentenced murderer whom he freed from cryo-prison. In the end, the murderer meets his death, the mayor is arrested, and Shawn becomes the driver of the 4000 model while Michael goes back into retirement.

Hyvä, mutta ei mitään huomattavaa. Sisältää ohramallasta.

Panimoyhtiö Hiisi, Jyväskylä, Suomi. 4.4% alkoholia.

Se on hyvää, mutta ei mitään erikoista. Sisältää ohramallasta.

Panimoyhtiö Hiisi, Jyväskylä, Suomi. 5.5% alkoholia.

© Amazon.fr

Tiffany leaves the Chalk to train as a witch with Mrs Level in the mountains. She is followed by an ancient creature, a hiver, who takes possession of powerful persons' bodies and drives them mad. The Nac Mac Feegle, aware of the threat, send a small group after Tiffany to protect her, but the hiver takes possession of her before they arrive. The hiver looks at people's thought and give them the power to get what their primitive instinct wants; Tiffany thus becomes a bully of a witch. Able to travel between worlds, they enter Tiffany's mind, where a small part of what is left of Tiffany tells them to fetch objects which smell like her most powerful memories of the Chalk. Awoken by the smell, she uses the power of the Chalk to reject the hiver. Soon after Granny Weatherwax, who has been aware of the hiver when Borrowing from bees, arrives and together with Tiffany they go far in the mountain, where the hiver could not harm anyone. But it does not attack, and in the morning they return to the village for the Witch Trials, a yearly fair that Granny has never missed. This is where the hiver attacks, just after Tiffany understands that the hiver does not think and only gives the people what they think they want. She talks to the hiver in her mind, and it tells her that it is as old as the Disc and it wishes to die. Tiffany then opens a door the realm of Death to let the hiver go; since the door has closed behind her she is almost stuck there, but Granny comes and takes her out, telling her that it is sometimes the duty of a witch to help people to die who don't know how. As Tiffany has no witch hat, Granny gives her her hat, which gets all the other witches talking. Later Tiffany brings the hat back to Granny, and they become closer, Granny being very impressed by the young witch.

Sweet and quite nice. Probably the same as McCallum' Stout but in a simulated draught package. Contains malted barley.

Belhaven Brewery Company, Dunbar, Scotland. 4.1% alcohol.

Wikipedia

As his neighbour and best friend Fred Flintstone has helped him adopt a child, Barney Rubble cheats at a company evaluation test by exchanging his answers with Fred's so that his friend gets the job of vice-president. The test is a ploy by the crooked Vandercave for finding a patsy who would take the blame for embezzling. Fred becomes suddenly rich while Barney is fired (because of getting the worst grade) and loses his house. Barney's family moves in with the Flintstones, but the latter become more and more arrogant, inducing the Rubbles to move out. Vandercave tricks Fred into firing all the company's workers, attracting the wrath of his former colleagues. Fred eventually discovers Vandercave's plan but has to flee as his former boss denounces him to the police. Fred's wife Wilma remembers the Dictabird on Fred's desk records all conversations and contains the proof of her husband's innocence. In the meanwhile, Vandercave kidnaps Fred and Barney's children and demands the Dictabird in exchange, but the two fathers manage to save their children and neutralize Vandercave. As he accidentally invented contrete, the company's CEO wants to make Fred a real vice-president, but Fred refuses.