Saturday, February 23, 2002
Repost, my server's case sensitive, so the first time I put these links up, it couldn't find them. Page 22 of Bulletproof Poets and Page 23.
And Page 24.
It's a bit embarassing, because usually I check the links right after posting.
posted by Ian Pattinson at 8:53 PM link
Thursday, February 21, 2002
Let's see, Page 21 of Bulletproof Poets.
And quite a large chunk of The Eliza Effect-
Professionals:
“We run an informal ship here. Everyone calls me George, so call me George.” Sarah nodded dumbly at the mandate. He had talked at her for twenty minutes- The Company was undergoing major changes and expansions, it was an exciting time for all involved, there were great opportunities for those ready to take the risks, the moon was made out of blue cheese, whales were marsupials and lived in trees…..
Now he was taking her Out On The Floor, to meet the people she would be working with and tech supporting. The desk separators weren’t quite high enough to make it cubeville, so the view across the open plan would have played hell with an agoraphobic. “How many of these people am I supporting?”
“Oh, just my department. Forty or so. Most of your work will come from our developer boys. In fact, we go past their office first. You’ll like them, very professional.”
George stopped by the door to a broom cupboard and pushed it open. The room was large enough for two desks and chairs, a small bookshelf, a whiteboard and a bin. At opposite sides of the room, using the chair backs as shields, were the two guys Sarah had watched leave earlier. Foam padded arrows flew back and forth. One of them bounced off the doorframe by George. He closed the door quickly.
Sarah could just control her laughter. “Professional?”
“Well….. They always complete everything on time.” George straightened his undisturbed tie and opened the door again.
The Nerf guns had disappeared and the room’s occupants were each staring studiously at their monitors. They looked around as George entered. Sarah spotted a foam dart atop the bookshelf, snapped it up and hid it behind her back.
“Good to see you two so busy.” George tried his best sarcastic tone of voice.
“We’re just running the documenter over it.” The taller one volunteered. Then he caught sight of Sarah. His gaze lingered long enough for her to feel red.
“Of course. This is Paul” indicating the taller one, “and this is Mike. This is Sarah. She’s joining the department as dedicated tech support, particularly for you two. We're going to give you A one top priority from here on in.”
“Oh goody.” Mike beamed, “Does that mean we're getting a pay rise?”
There was a moment's embarrassed silence. George had taken this suggestion badly. “Well, you’ll find we’re well behaved in this department.” Paul offered as compensation.
“No hogging bandwidth to download MP3s?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. No, we would never do that.”
Sarah flashed Paul a smile, to tell him she knew he was lying. He couldn’t help but grin back.
George considered enough introductory bonding to have been done. “Good. Now, I've got to take Sarah to HR. I'll see you chaps later.”
“Sure.”
“Bye.” Sarah caught herself before she waved. She dropped the dart on the floor as she turned around.
“Bye.” Paul leaned forward in his seat a little to watch her buttocks as she walked away. He nodded appreciation. “We are downloading MP3s aren't we?” he asked Mike.
“We were, then they beefed up the firewall.”
“How much did we get in the end?”
“Oh, only a couple of Gigs worth.”
posted by Ian Pattinson at 9:06 PM link
Wednesday, February 20, 2002
Check out the Seeds scrapbook. There's not a lot in it right now, but this is an on and off thing.
Page twenty of Bulletproof Poets. I've got a few crowd shots from the NME Awards Tour, and I'll be tracing those for inclusion in a few of the pages.
Expect a 'blogged reviews page later tonight, if I can get it all working properly.
posted by Ian Pattinson at 7:32 PM link
Tuesday, February 19, 2002
It's amazing what you find.I spent the whole day watching updates run. Very dull, but I could surf at work without feeling guilty (like I feel that guilty about it anyway) and found, amongst other stuff, this links page. A lot of dropped connections, but what it still points to is interesting in a kitsch way.
I'm off to put a cheesey wallpaper background on the site, but until then, page nineteen of Bulletproof Poets.
posted by Ian Pattinson at 8:54 PM link
Monday, February 18, 2002
Spent the whole day trying to run updates, and surfing whilst doing so. The Seeds project is going to have an early twentieth/ late nineteenth century technology level on the first planet, and a war raging. So I was just trying to find lots of cool battleship and fighter plane stuff, particularly for prototypes which never made it into battle. I'll post a few of the links when the scrapbook site is up and running.
Page eighteen of Bulletproof Poets.
posted by Ian Pattinson at 10:16 PM link
Sunday, February 17, 2002
I've updated the Eliza Effectfront page. Now with comments on some of the subchapters.
Page Seventeen of Bulletproof Poets.
I'm thinking of setting up a secondary Blog, a sort of scrapbook, for all the ideas bouncing around my head which aren't connected to these two projects. One of them is Seeds, a space opera in the Iain M Banks mould. At the start of the 22nd century, man sent giant automated terraforming machines out into the galaxy, pointed at likely stars, which were to be followed by generation ships of colonists. However, then there was a cataclysm- war, plague, I'm not sure- and mankind had to spend millennia struggling back up the development ladder. Along the way a great deal of biological diversity, historical data and information about culture was lost. Now the human race is a genetic dead end, which can only survive by harvesting the genomes from the Seeds. They've discovered wormholes, so the travelling time to some of the seeded planets is far lower (though there's still the time dilation effects) and expeditions are on the way to get what they can.
Of course, it's not that simple. Seeds landed on planets with existing eco-systems and cross bred. And some of the databases were corrupted with Earth cultural and historic references and occasional fantasy. There be Dragons, and worse, on some of the worlds.
Each Seed recovery encounters new and unusual problems. I'm going to start building up details for one world and the adventures on that. If it's a success, I'll move on to others.
posted by Ian Pattinson at 1:27 PM link
