How… is the centre waffle not dry?
It’s wrapped around a partially cooked pork sausage that is actively putting off grease from the inside while it cooks.
Oh, are those the circle things in the first picture? I thought you had just abominably fucked up cooking the little pancakes and had burnt the first batch.
I’m a huge fan of British SF/time travelling TV series Doctor Who. Which today celebrates its 60th birthday. I’ve been blogging and posting about it today, including what it means to me (since starting watching in 1978!), and sharing new blog posts by others about Doctor Who in Scotland, and also a YouTube video from my university archives department talking about Doctor Who and Dundee where I live. I’m planning to watch a Doctor Who documentary shortly, and enjoy some cake and wine to celebrate.
Meanwhile here is a cartoon celebrating the series’s birthday. This is by comic artist Lew Stringer and appears in the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine. I will include alt text after.
Alt text description for the above comic strip
This is a two panel comic. In the first panel various incarnations of the Doctor over time are celebrating their birthday. But Patrick Troughton’s doctor has noticed a problem. Switch to the second panel, where three Daleks (the series’s most famous monster) have stolen the blue box TARDIS shaped birthday cake. They say it’s their birthday too. The female Doctor following replies “Not 'til next month it’s not!”. The Daleks first appeared on Doctor Who several weeks into the first series in late 1963.
Is it Doctor Who that is famous for having early episodes lost to time because BBC just casually recorded over older episodes to save money? Or was that a different series?
You’re probably thinking of Excalibur.
(But yeah, Dr Who is the most prominent example of this policy, though I know they’ve recovered or reconstructed a fair percentage of the lost episodes. I’ve only seen a tiny amount of Dr Who, but a blogger I like recently did a complete rewatch of the classic series so now I know a surprising amount about it!)
Yup, sadly a fair number of the 60s episodes are still lost. Usually parts of wider stories, but sometimes whole stories. Lost episodes have turned up over the years, and there are more out there still today. But yes the BBC was very slack with its recordings. As indeed was ITV on the other side. Doctor Who is the most famous causality of this, but many great programmes were sadly lost.
Yea, also episodes of Dad’s Army was lost, and also not few other 50s/early 60s BBC serials.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
I learned yesterday that there’s such a thing as too much cake. On the one hand, we all felt really sick from eating all the cake and that’s bad. On the other hand, it was glorious to eat all that cake. Everyone at Thanksgiving was reduced to burping, farting lumps of people melted onto the floor rubbing their stomachs. The chocolate cake especially was absolutely smashing, if I do say so myself.
Reminds of the chapter in Roald Dahl’s Matilda where a boy is forced to eat a giant chocolate cake as punishment. All the children cheer him on as he works his way through the cake to a queasy victory.
Another day, another big fandom birthday for me! Today marks 40 years since the publication of the first Discworld novel by the late Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic. This is a series of (often) comic fantasy books, remarkably inventive, incredibly insightful, and often laugh out loud funny. Especially popular in the UK, but also popular with readers worldwide. So I will be eating more cake (still have half a cake left!) and wine tonight.
There have of course been many Discworld interactive fiction titles over the years. In 1986 Level 9 released The Colour of Magic, a traditional text adventure. Later a series of graphic adventures followed from Psygnosis, starting with Discworld in 1995. These can still be played, if you can get the game files, in modern versions of the ScummVM interpreter.
However the longest running text game version of Discworld is the Discworld MUD, which started in 1991 and is still going today. A few years ago the Guardian newspaper in the UK ran a detailed article about the MUD and its players, which is a nice insight into another aspect of text gaming. I need to find time to explore the MUD much more deeply. I’ve just dipped toes into it.
Anyway happy birthday Great A’Tuin, Rincewind and the rest! And huge thanks to Terry Pratchett for creating this world.
I’ll bet Albert wouldn’t mind a little nibble of that cake. Perhaps with something a bit stronger? A small sherry?
Snaffled a Bluesky invite code from kaemi generously offering them up to Interactive Fiction meows, so come say hi if you’re already on there and would like to (I’ve been scrolling through tags/people’s follow lists to find familiar faces, as well as following some artists from a group collective I’m in.)
I also have a Mastodon, (and it seems there are more IF meowmeows on that scene?) but I basically just use it to occasionally check in and reblog some cute plushie or cat pictures.
Glad you got an invite! I have currently 3 Bluesky invite codes going spare - if anyone here wants one PM me. But once they’re gone they’re gone till I get more. I like Bluesky a lot, for engagement with my favourite authors and a lot of academic historians like me who seem to have migrated to there from Twitter more than to anywhere else. But Mastodon is the best for me yet apart from here for IF folks. I need to post more.
I’ve had some of the little meow’s art up on the wall by my head since 2019, and today he moseyed on over to take a good look at them, (was quite pleased they were still up) and declared that it was ‘time to refresh the art gallery,’ so he’s been busily drawing, bless him. Very sweet.
Got a decent chunk of work done today, and spent some lovely time browsing through fountain pen ink colours… I definitely want a green of some sort to round out my current collection, and another warmer toned pink.
Have also received an early gift of a vintage ring- it matches nicely with my usual heart necklace. It has a round centre cut stone, with side flanking baguettes and two small melee meows on either side in a gold setting. It gives off some very light Art Deco vibes because of the baguettes and symmetry to me. Super pretty, and I’m happy to have a new daily wear band.
I just thought of an awesome idea for a game, or at least the song it is based off is awesome and a real horror one. On the other hand, I have a game I should be working on instead of wasting my time making, like, 5 ideas at once. On the newer bright side, I’ll probably write it down.