The Stochastic Game
Ramblings of General Geekery

Went to see Project Hail Mary with the family! Verdict: good good amaze amaze

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Fuck me, my NAS is detecting some potential upcoming failures on one or two of my drives… luckily, it seems that the crazy storage prices are mainly for SSDs, and good ol’ NAS drives only went up by a (comparatively) small margin. But still…

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If you design a Medieval Japan TTRPG, you really need a character class with flatulence fighting feats, as the He-Gassen tells us. Don’t look at me like that, people, it’s just historical fact, I don’t make the rules.

Three farting attackers are thwarted by two men with fans, while one of their buddies counterattacks
Two horse riders do some drive-by farting. They're like the Huns of Flatulence. Unbeatable.
A big showdown between two groups of farters
A small animal (a cat? a dog?) is caught in the crossfire between two farters

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More first impressions on The Avengers: we know that Emma Peel, played by the forever wonderful Diana Rigg, is everybody’s favourite, but her predecessor, Cathy Gale, played by Honor Blackman, is super awesome too! And probably even more groundbreaking for the time!

Steed and Gale having a toast, with Gale showing a rare smile. Apparently the showrunners told Blackman to smile as little as possible, because Gale isn't supposed to like Steed! Steed is supposed to be annoying!
A signed picture of Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale.
Cathy Gale in a full leather outfit. Emma Peel got that from Gale, it seems! Gale was supposed to know Judo, and so Blackman had to learn it. She did most of her own fighting, and had trouble with her wardrobe. That's when she decided to wear leather, and that decision seems to have had long-term repercussions all the way to the present with characters like Black Widow!

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Another old TV series I’m (re)watching is “The Avengers”. I skipped season 1 since almost all episodes have been lost, and headed into season 2. Episode 7 has Steed being tortured by Nazi dentists! Almost 15 years before Marathon Man! Amazing.

"The Mauritius Penny" has a pretty cool plot: a stamp collector gets murdered because he sees an ultra-rare stamp on a delivery list, gets excited and starts talking about it... only that stamp was just a code-name for a clandestine delivery of weapons for an underground neo-nazi group! Simply picking the "wrong" code-name triggers a series of events that brings the group to the attention of our heroes, Steed and Gale!
Steed gets tortured by neo-Nazi dentist women! He goes undercover as one of the Nazi group's members from another chapter, but they see through his ruse when his teeth don't match the records! As the woman proceeds to threaten Steed, she lists all the different cavities that Steed has and that the other guy didn't :D
The neo-Nazi group having a meeting to organize the take-over of Britain.
Steed and Gale are looking at some stamps or something.

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We still have some pretty spectacular hair-ice here every now and then. That is, until the good fluffy boy completely destroys it.

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A few weeks ago, the good fluffy boy and I were up in Squamish and we found an off-leash park that apparently doesn’t really “end” anywhere as much as it leads up out in the wild and onto the mountains…

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“This is Free Trader Beowulf” by Shannon Appelcline is to Traveller what the “Meints Index to Glorantha” is to, well, Glorantha. We need more books like these! It’s so interesting to read about the history of classic #TTRPG games.

The coffee-table-sized "This is Free Trader Beowulf", described as "A System History of Traveller". It talks about the history of the game, the people behind it, the various publications, editions, publishers, and more.
The book includes "collector checklists" which is actually quite useful when you're a collector! :)
This is the kind of content you'll find in there, some interesting stories, some fun pictures, and some very nerdy-looking people with 1970s hair styles.
The book even has maps! Woohoooo!

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A couple weeks ago, the good fluffy boy and I went over to Burnaby mountain! Nice view and crisp, fresh air as always.

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Next on my first-time Trek watchlist was “The Undiscovered Country”. Wow, this is probably my favourite Trek movie so far. There’s action, comedy, intrigue, moral questions, suspense! The plot goes places, there are great characters, an even greater cast… it’s just good Trek!

The movie poster for "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country". Frankly, the title is the only mediocre thing about this movie.
Christopher Plummer gives great gravitas to "Chang", the main antagonist of the movie. The only problem is I would have preferred him to quote some Klingon war-literature in the original language!
You can totally tell who the traitor is but it was still a good story arc!
Yes it's a giant mess but we are the protagonists and goddammit we will fix everything with just one short speech from Captain Kirk! And then everybody will clap!

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