Recent content by Dante Dases

I have a couple of Sandersons sitting, waiting on my device. Worth it? (Bearing in mind both were 99p impulse purchases).

The discovery of white chocolate creme eggs. This may be an acquired taste, but it's very much something firing me through the world's biggest half-term workload (which has basically been a week working from home rather than working in school).

Is it fair to say Morning Star is leaving me a little underwhelmed? I really enjoyed the first two in the Red Rising series, and I'm still enjoying this one to a point, but it feels unevenly edited, and somewhat overwhelming with its constant names and machinations. It feels slightly over the...

This talk of aging badly... I've just read (well, listened to on Audible) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It wouldn't get published today. Mysogyny writ large on every page. And it's quite right that it wouldn't; we've moved on as a society. At least, I hope we have. That being said, I don't...

I completely sympathise with you on the rejection, but the news that Interzone is still running is very welcome. After the financial problems and ownership issues I had feared for it.

Barrister (non-practising these days) of quite a few years' call here. Seconded. In the UK, jury trial has been removed from civil cases and remained in the Crown Court. Now we see changes afoot to restrict this further, and it is, quite frankly, the worst idea about justice I've heard in an...

For the past month or so I've been easing my way back through Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy. I can't call them the Wolf Hall books; only the first is called that and the running theme is Cromwell, even if the third book is a very different book, in its way, than the first two. Wolf...

Agh. Kindle Fire has packed in - wouldn't connect to my account, and now won't reconnect. It is 12 years old, but it's highly frustrating that it's decided to die now.

Planet. Possibly.

After many years of hoping and asking and being mildly disappointed (I am, after all, a responsible, mature adult who still thinks Lego is the best Christmas present) I have finally got my mitts on a PS5 this Christmas, thanks to my lovely wife. After downloading the obligatory football title...

Read it! Read Hyperion. Read Fall of Hyperion. Don't be so bothered about Endymion and Rise of Endymion as - although they're very, very good - they're not in the same superlative class as their predecessors. Two of my favourite works of SF, leaning as they do on previous masterworks of the...

So UK teacher standards include responsibility for pupil outcomes. Unfortunately many schools interpret this as undermining staff and giving kids carte blanche to do as they please. Under our old head, that would never have happened. In truth, it isn't the current head who undermines - it's...

Ten years in to exactly the same (plus law) and I share the sentiments all round. Although the way pressure has shifted from students to teachers is problematic. It's on us to get results, rather than on students to do the sodding work. One conversation with a deputy head recently asked me what...

Ditto. Much as I sing the praises of AI as a labour-saving tool when used judiciously, what it then takes away to train itself is concerning. Add to that, everything now is cloud-based so I actually own nothing. The solution, of using USB sticks and external hard-drives, is increasingly hard to...

I've been polishing off a few series before the end of the year. Margaret Barnes' Cassie Hardman books - focusing on a young(ish - she's taking silk by the third book) female barrister's trials and tribulations - are done and dusted. I'm beginning on the third book in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Dogs...