Disco Stu

Always love seeing your stuff on my feed Marc.

It’s lovely to see. But, you would barely see this in Australian media, which is dominated by Murdoch-owned press. One of the two major parties is all but owned by mining magnates and climate denialists, while the other is mouthing platitudes while extending fossil fuel leases. It’s not great here!

Another day, another solo game of John Company. The Sykes Family had an impressive run of military victories only to be undone by rebellions. Walsh dominated the Board of Directors and kept the company out of debt, but it was Larkins - who married well, and retired better - who got the victory.

But the sheer size of these Baroque Cycle tomes are making it difficult on the morning commute. As such, also picked up Gene Wolfe’s Fifth Head of Cerberus and reading that on my train journeys. Haven’t read Wolfe for 35+ years, let’s see what all the fuss is about hey?

Reading update! Finished Neal Stephenson’s The Confusion the other day. It’s a slow start but built tempo as it went on. As I reread the series I do wonder how the pitch to the publisher went. Have started The System of the World (final volume in the series) which I remember quite enjoying.

Catalogue, inventory or compendium comes to mind, although I am sure you have considered and discarded them all. I also do like Curiosa as it implies something unusual about the catalogue.

Today’s view.

Been in bed with the ‘flu for the last couple of days. Good news is that I smashed through Spook Country and my twentieth book of the year, Zero History. I think my issue with SC is that it feels a little unmoored, the overarching story only coming into focus fairly late in the piece.

Now on Spook Country, the follow-up to Pattern Recognition, but I do find it one of Gibson’s weakest works so slowing down a bit. Also a chapter or two off finishing some non-fiction, which‘ll be a first for this year (something I tend to dive into more but I felt like something different for 2025).

So I’m on book 19(?) for the year. Output slowed a bit for a while there, but work trips and shorter books for those numbers up. After reading Virtual Light I couldn’t help but plough through the rest of Gibson’s Bridge Trilogy, along with both volumes of Le Morte D’Arthur and Pattern Recognition.

Looks fantastic!

Book. Coffee. Something burger-like but yet, not one.

Sydney is a coffee and nominal burger from a Japanese restaurant that was, presumably, once a house. Comfort food, like rereading Pattern Recognition and realising, suddenly, how alien the futuristic present of 2003 has become.

The boardgame Maria (2009), depicting France, Flanders and the Holy Roman Empire.

The boardgame Maria (2009), depicting Bavaria, Austria and Bohemia.

The boardgame Maria (2009), depicting Saxon and Prussian forces moving into Austria from Silesia and Poland.

Maria! Played this one last night, recreating the Wars of Austrian Succession between 1740-1748. You can’t tell from the pictures but gorgeous art, clever mechanisms and tense all the way through.

I went to respond but it looks like some questions are miniatures only - I like war games but not those ones so much.

Instagram seems to think I’m a bear. Flattered I suppose?

Put on The Princess Bride for the kids tonight and they loved it. Both of them had seen it before - my daughter watched it maybe four times in two days, at one point - but it’s been a few years and it’s such a damn joy. Perfect dialogue, perfect casting, perfect everything.

I would like to say that I have kept up my ‘read a book every day’ practice but Malory was dense work at times, and I think I skipped a few days here and there. Also picked up a couple of other books and started them. But done now, so will get back into my rhythm.

Caxton published Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur in the last week of 1485, and 540 years later, in the last days of July, I finished it! A tremendous tome, genuinely epic in scope, and I feel better for having read it and for having finished it.

As was I, until I started travelling every few weeks! Small luxuries.

No exciting photos on this trip, best I can give you of Sydney is a poorly cropped G&T in the business lounge.

Hi sister lived in Aachen for a bit and when she came back home to Australia it became part of our tradition. One of the national tv channels (for ‘multicultural television’) would play it every year so there must have been enough expats who loved it.

Updated my profile pic on another social media platform; reader, I aged seven years in a day.

At the Atheneum in Melbourne tonight, and the light fittings made me think of a neoclassical Minion.

I watched it for high school, read it too. Really compelling. I’ve been up there a few times too, although food festivals at the Rock do take some of the mystique away.

In Canberra today. Okay, so my hotel isn’t really giving me the impressive skylines like some of the places I’ve visited recently, but it does have those bright cold mornings that I love.

Nov 30th 1969: Princess Margaret is speaking to David Bowie after the Save-Rave charity concert at London’s Palladium. To Bowie’s right are Dave Cash & Ed Stewart, both Radio One DJs, and singer Clodagh Rodgers.

I am! Just smashed your Netrunner retrospective and a bunch more. Sounds like a lot of you are ex-Vampire: the Eternal Struggle players which made me a little nervous how you’d review it - it is (rather tragically) very much My Thing through thick and thin.

@mattthr.bsky.social I have followed you for a bajillion years on various platforms, but somehow only just found the Cult of the Old podcast? I have catching up to do…

And by a long time, it’s probably been eight years between start and finish of these 16 games. I played through a quarter of those in the last 24 hours, but with a several years between games before then. Kudos to designers for making it so easy to pick up, although plenty of mistakes still made.

After starting it many, many years ago, I finally played through the end of Pandemic Legacy S1! No pictures here for spoiler purposes, but a satisfying finish. (Sorry, London. They know what I did.)