This won’t mean much to those of you who aren’t familiar with my little corner of the world… but I thought I would devote a post to it anyway. Scribes, the premier second-hand boo…| A Phuulish Fellow
I have previously posted a mad chess game, whereby I won an undeserved victory after a desperate king run. Today, I can report something a bit less insane, but which still turned out uncharacteristically elegant by my standards. Sure, it has its blunders, but I think the actual checkmate looks quite pretty. Dance of the […]| A Phuulish Fellow
Completed reads for September: The Wilfrid text is Webb’s translation from the Penguin Classics edition. Yes, another quiet month. I can also report coming down with a nasty case of back pain this month (requiring a visit to the University of Otago’s physiotherapy service), which didn’t help matters. In terms of writing, the publisher finally […]| A Phuulish Fellow
Back in 2020, Scribes, Dunedin’s iconic second-hand bookshop decided to close: I can now report that the Downtown Book Exchange on Princes Street is currently having its own Closing Down Sale…| A Phuulish Fellow
3 posts published by strda221 during September 2025| A Phuulish Fellow
Today I ran across an article about AI killing Universities: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/universities-doomed-terrible-one-silver-141517602.html It’s a fairly smug article, rather than a panicked one – the original source is Britain’s Daily Telegraph – but it has spurred me into writing my own thoughts. Basically, I think it’s right, for the wrong reasons. Specifically, Universities are indeed in for […]| A Phuulish Fellow
You may recall that in February 2024, my local supermarket acquired nationwide infamy for its rat problem: https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2024/02/09/rattus-supermarketicus-countdown-and-the-rodents-of-unusual-location-ii/ It’s no longer my local supermarket, on account of me moving house in March 2025, but I still drive past there on a regular basis. Anyway, as of today, we have the news that the company is […]| A Phuulish Fellow
No, I haven’t vanished from the face of the earth. The past couple of weeks have continued the trend of Real Life being the bane of my existence, together with general tiredness and a sense o…| A Phuulish Fellow
It was a while since I had watched Peter Jackson’s 2001-2003 Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I last saw Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers in 2021. My distaste for Jackson’s Denethor (an enduring stain on the third film) means you have to go back to Christmas 2016 to find my last viewing […]| A Phuulish Fellow
Completed reads for August: The Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe Absinthe: The Green Goddess, by Aleister Crowley A very quiet reading month. Real Life got in the way a bit, and I just couldn&…| A Phuulish Fellow
Hitherto, my posted Chess content has involved oddities played against Martin the Chess Bot and Worstfish. But today I can report a ten-minute rapid game played against a human. Played on a Guest account at chess dot com (so thus unrated), it stands as a monument to the madness inherent within the game of chess. […]| A Phuulish Fellow
In January and February 2025, I started a review of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books… but only managed the first four: I hadn’t forgotten. I had just become distracted. As one does. But I can now continue the series, with a look at the The Voyage of the Dawntreader and The Silver Chair. The Voyage of […]| A Phuulish Fellow
I feel I am in a race against time with these Latin-to-English translation projects. Working through them while the window of free public access to AI is still open. As I have noted before, I don’t think the LLM-incarnation of AI is viable in the long-run, what with the costly energy issues and the issue […]| A Phuulish Fellow
My trend of 2025 being about Dusting Off the Old Stories continues. As noted previously, stories that have sat around forgotten for years are finally getting their day in the sun. Or are earning themselves a re-print. Well, today, I can report that my 1700-word fantasy-horror piece, Fleeing to the Dawn, has been accepted by […]| A Phuulish Fellow
A few days ago, I posted the first English translation of Pope Stephen VI’s Letters: I also noted that the Letters are utterly mundane and administrative in nature, rather than centering on t…| A Phuulish Fellow
Hitherto, my hobby of using AI to translate previously-untranslated Latin texts has focussed on fairly meaty material. Stuff that requires months to check and edit. Well, today I thought to mix it …| A Phuulish Fellow
One occasionally runs into the question of what J.R.R. Tolkien would have thought of George R.R. Martin. For years, I had a go-to online answer: we could use a stand-in. Tolkien’s thoughts on…| A Phuulish Fellow