Space Marine and Dragonwrangler Bar & Grill

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Pollyanna, Shedder of Casual Blood
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I'm sorry, but I gotta ask - what's wrong with Richard O'Brien? When I think of men who I consider sexy (and no - you guys cannot question that comment) I would immediately stick him at the top of the list somewhere, along with Peter Horton and - maybe - Gary Cole. So now I'm wondering... Is what I consider stylish and cool in men really so weird? Hmm.

Stylish and cool =/= sexy, BW :D That's where you may have gone wrong :D
 

_Sian_

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Morning :Sun:

Sian, I'm glad you managed to buy something. I thought the internet was supposed to make it easier to do that!

:Coffee:

Okay. Rant warning.

This infuriates me. I understand delayed release dates in terms of real, physical product. Shipping takes time. Distribution takes time. You have to pay shipping companies, thus the higher price.

But when I go online, and am told I can not buy the electronic version of a book, when I can walk down the street and get the physical version, it pisses me off. It's an ebook. It's already here. There's not logical reason to prevent my purchase of it.

The Australian version of electronic goods being more expensive also pisses me off. For the past two years the AUS dollar has actually been higher than the US dollar. We're at something like 1.04 atm. Logically, that means that I should not be paying 5 dollars more for copyrighted data. I should probably be paying less.

And my brother should not be paying at 75% mark-up on games that he downloads for his xbox.

It really annoys me when I'm trying to pay someone, and trying to give a company money, and they refuse to take it. Or they mark something up ridiculously high for the privilege.

This isn't something I've seen in any of the cantinaites books, but it does happen with things like this writing book, and a lot of the more well-known fantasy and sci-fi titles out there.

Okay. /end rant.
 

aliwood

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What lecture? And yikes.

There's a series (from the BBC?) which covered the first world war, and most of the things mentioned were absolutely horrific. If anyone wants nightmares, then reading up on some of the things which went on will do the trick.

I'm listening to an audiobook / lecture type thing called A Short History of WWI by James L Stokesbury.

I had a fair idea from my history o-level (I'm so old that they've since replaced these)*, and other things I had read and seen, but still yikes. The arrogance and inflexibility of the commanders - of any side - is just staggering to my modern day ears.

* A year or so ago I thought about doing the history A-level (for those who don't know, that's the next one up from an o-level, o = ordinary, a = advanced) When I read the syllabus it said that it covered 1970 onward. As I was born then I figured that having lived it I didn't really need to study it. :D
 

aliwood

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But when I go online, and am told I can not buy the electronic version of a book, when I can walk down the street and get the physical version, it pisses me off. It's an ebook. It's already here. There's not logical reason to prevent my purchase of it.

The Australian version of electronic goods being more expensive also pisses me off. For the past two years the AUS dollar has actually been higher than the US dollar. We're at something like 1.04 atm. Logically, that means that I should not be paying 5 dollars more for copyrighted data. I should probably be paying less.

Yeah, that's nothing short of crazy really. And yes, you should be paying less for a book not more. When I buy at dollar prices, it's a lot cheaper for me - even with the bank charge to process from sterling to dollars. There's a lot of marking up going on somewhere.
 

BigWords

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But when I go online, and am told I can not buy the electronic version of a book, when I can walk down the street and get the physical version, it pisses me off. It's an ebook. It's already here. There's not logical reason to prevent my purchase of it.

And people wonder why I have largely given up on buying digital products...

Gotta say - when I do buy things, and mostly physical purchases, I often go outside of the UK to get them cheaper. It is frustrating to see that the issues which plagued digital distribution years ago still haven't been fixed.

I'm listening to an audiobook / lecture type thing called A Short History of WWI by James L Stokesbury.

*adds to list*
 

_Sian_

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It's not a "everybody does this" issue. The digital publishers are generally fine - I pay the same amount or less depending on exchange rates, and can get everything I want.

It's the big publishers that are mostly focused on print that I have myriads of issues with.
 

aliwood

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Sian, I have a book recommendation for you.

Don't buy Story Structure Architect by Veronica Schmidt. Here's why
Part 1: Drafting a Plan

The 5 Dramatic Throughlines
The 6 Conflicts
The 21 Genres

Part 2: Building the Structure

How to Use the 11 Master Structures

Part 3: Adding Stories

Introducing the 55 Dramatic Situations .

I just cracked it open and I've realised that it's one of those 'lets complicate the writing process as much as possible and send the reader screaming from the room' books.

I don't even want to read it now!
 

_Sian_

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Sian, I have a book recommendation for you.

Don't buy Story Structure Architect by Veronica Schmidt. Here's why


I just cracked it open and I've realised that it's one of those 'lets complicate the writing process as much as possible and send the reader screaming from the room' books.

I don't even want to read it now!

Heh. I am a panster, so yeah. That would be next to no hope for me. I like techniques I can use as I go, or think about in little units.

Anyway, I have to be up at 6am tomorrow for a nine hour shift, so I'm off. Have a nice weekend peeps :)
 

Kricket

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When I got out of bed at 5:30 this morning I was in a good mood. Then when I came down stairs and saw that Mr. K had not done the dishes that good mood went away. And I got up this morning instead of kicking him out of bed because I assumed that the reason he came to bed at 1:45 was because he was up late doing the dishes and what not. I'm thinking about going back up there and kicking him out of bed.

:mad:
 

BigWords

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I'm thinking about going back up there and kicking him out of bed.

You want to know a good way of waking people up? Get a glass of water and put it in the fridge for half an hour. Get it cold enough so that it has that slap to it, then pour it over the sleeper's face. Works every time. :D
 

Fenika

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Cheers 10.

I wish I had time for more history books. An audiobook might help.

This morning I experimented with carrot pancakes. Not bad.
 

aliwood

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I wish I had time for more history books. An audiobook might help.

I find audio books invaluable. I can listen while I'm cooking or doing my cycle rollers, or even when I can't get to sleep. I must get through three or four hours of listening a week while I'm doing other things.
 

BigWords

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The only problem with audiobooks, especially those read by the author, is that I pick up and use the accent - weird inflections and idiosyncrasies. When I was listening to The Kid Stays In The Picture, I started using a few of his phrases in everyday use (well... one in particular :D) and people got fed up with me.
 

aliwood

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The only problem with audiobooks, especially those read by the author, is that I pick up and use the accent

I do this in my head so I read in the author's accent. Within memory the cantina folk have all sounded to me like Stephen King, James Marsters, a professor from an audio lecture, Richard Feynman, Harlan Ellison, and several readers from Librivox including a lady with a marked Russian accent.

Sometimes we all sound very funny indeed!
 

maxmordon

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I do this in my head so I read in the author's accent. Within memory the cantina folk have all sounded to me like Stephen King, James Marsters, a professor from an audio lecture, Richard Feynman, Harlan Ellison, and several readers from Librivox including a lady with a marked Russian accent.

Sometimes we all sound very funny indeed!

I wonder who's who now...
 

eyeblink

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It's not a "everybody does this" issue. The digital publishers are generally fine - I pay the same amount or less depending on exchange rates, and can get everything I want.

It's the big publishers that are mostly focused on print that I have myriads of issues with.

That's one thing I noticed straight away when I visited Australia - print books are quite a bit more expensive than in the UK (and UK books are more expensive than US books). I saw a book by someone I know in a branch of Dymocks once - it was the UK edition as also published in Australia with an Australian price sticker on the back. The Aus price converted to quite a bit more than the original UK price. Even some of the small-press paperbacks in the Worldcon dealers' room were going for something like A$35, so I couldn't buy them or I would have blown my already badly overstretched budget. I had to limit myself to buying just two books.

I've bought a lot of Australian DVDs online since 2000, but that was because the exchange rate then was A$2.75 to the pound and I could afford to blind-buy stuff. It was A$1.60 when I visited in August/September 2010 and (looking it up) it's A$1.53 now. And my main supplier for Australian DVDs has whacked up their prices and added international shipping instead of including it. So I have to grit my teeth and not buy them any more, as there's a lot of stuff coming out I simply can't see in the UK.

Swings and roundabouts, though - French and Japanese DVDs are noticeably quite expensive.
 

eyeblink

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In other news, the SS story is getting very close to saying "write me". I spent much of this morning sorting out character names and event timelines in my head

Need to go into town to do some shopping now.

I think it's stopped raining.
 

crunchyblanket

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I'm thinking about going back up there and kicking him out of bed.

:mad:

That's what I do when Mr Crunchy leaves the washing in the machine overnight because he decided playing Skyrim until 3am was more important than actually hanging the washing up. You'd think he'd have learned by now...

I think it's stopped raining.

It hasn't started here yet. It may as well get on with it - I'm at work until 8 this evening. Bloody cold out today, though.
 

BigWords

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I wonder who's who now...

I'm Spartacus.

Sorry. Couldn't help myself...

Swings and roundabouts, though - French and Japanese DVDs are noticeably quite expensive.

It depends where you buy them, and how. There are print catalogs which are really ripping people off (upwards of fifty quid for some of the out-of-print DVDs), though the internet is a life saver. I managed to get a great deal on a lot of recent R1 DVDs through various websites (all legit), and my collection of R4 DVDs has been massively improved though some of the auction sites. For as much as I will bitch and whine about the failings of eBay, it has brought me many DVDs which I could never have got through any other outlet - much of the really hard-to-get stuff (any of those pre-1920 collections, for example) seems like it will never get a proper re-release through lack of interest, but they are out there.
 

Fenika

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In other news, the SS story is getting very close to saying "write me". I spent much of this morning sorting out character names and event timelines in my head

Need to go into town to do some shopping now.

I think it's stopped raining.

Yay for SS :)
 
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