Book Review – The Unofficial Lego Technic Builders Guide by Pawel Sariel Kmiec
The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide by Pawel Sariel Kmiec My rating: 5 of 5 stars I bought this for my son to go with his Christmas presents of Lego Wedo and a couple of Lego Technic sets. It is a totally amazing book, with really clear and easy to follow explanations of the engineering concepts along with fully illustrated step by step building diagrams in the style of the official lego sets. As well as explaining the technology in a way that I could see you using to pass an A Level in it, there is also a heavy focus on how to build lego models of all sorts of things. There is a section towards the back of the book about how to design your own models from blueprints and scale drawing. On top of that there are…
A215 Notebook Entry – Modern Witches
I wrote the notebook entry pictured below in support of the story I've written for TMA02 of the Open University A215 Creative Writing course I'm doing at the moment. While it was mostly written from memory it was evolving the role of 'cunning folk' as explained by several books on my 17th century bookshelf that I don't have time to properly reference (not least because I wrote this from memory and without re-consulting books I read some years ago for the most part). Handwritten notebook entry Related articles Writing, The Open University and Something Hidden Writing Exercise - Bored Athlete meets Lovesick Witch Cunning Folks Writing and Tension/Conflict Writing Exercise - Lovesick Witch Permission To Write Starting a blog December 2013 Blog-a-Thon: Get to Know Annalisa Carr!
Book Review – The Place-names of Scotland: A First Introduction by George Harris
The Place-names of Scotland: A First Introduction by George Harris My rating: 4 of 5 stars A very short introduction to where the place names of Scotland come from by George Harris, who is on twitter as This is a little tour around the peoples that lived in Scotland in the dark ages and a bit about the languages that they spoke. There are a few example etymologies of place names, but not a whole list of them, that would need to be a much longer work than this. I got this for free on an promotion, and it passed an entertaining half-hour one evening. View all my reviews Related articles Nae Gods, an' precious few heroes: no place for racism in the new Scotland Top Twenty scariest road names Crowdsourcing to Record Welsh Place Names
Book Review – Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett My rating: 4 of 5 stars To begin with I was worried that Pterry had lost his touch. This book is somewhat different to the earlier discworld stories in that it lacks a geographic focus, however once I got into it I realised that this was because the coming of the railway means that the world is so much smaller. The focus in this book isn't a handful of characters in a limited environment, but the handful of characters spread all over the area covered by the trains. The introduction of steam to the discworld gives it a very 19th century feel. Somehow this does it in a way that the clacks didn't. The main protagonist is Moist von Lipwig but Vetinari, Vimes and the Watch feature as support along with dwarves and goblins. Unusually…
The Stress of Battle 5 – WW2 Heroism & Surprise
This is the fifth and final part of my extended review of The Stress of Battle by David Rowland. It is such a strong piece of operational research that I thought that it would be useful for wargame designers (and players) to understand what the research evidence is for what went on in WW2 battles. This part is on the effects of heroism and combat degradation. Combat Degradation Combat degradation is a measure of how less effective weapon systems and individual soldiers are in actual combat when compared to training exercises and range work. A score of is equivalent to not being degraded at all. Degradation to would mean that it was operating at 30% of its peacetime range effectiveness. the analysis by Rowland's team broadly matches that done by Wigram in 1943, that there are three classes of effectiveness. About 20% of those involved could…