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williamjm

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About williamjm

  • Birthday 04/29/1981

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    Cambridge, UK

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  1. They really dominated Wales today. It's a young team as well so they've got a lot of potential for the future.
  2. North must have quite a high percentage of the total caps in the current Welsh side.
  3. I read R.F. Kuang's alternate history/fantasy Babel, or the Necessity of Violence. I thought it had an interesting premise and I think it is at its strongest when showing how the Oxford Translation Institute where most of the book takes place can both be a place of wonder for the protagonists and also something built on deeply rotten foundations that they are increasingly unable to ignore. I thought that the plot was sometimes not as good as the premise, the plot developments in the first half of the book did often feel predictable, although there are some more surprising events later on. I think the characters also get more interesting in the later sections when there is some exploration of what is really motivating them, they can be a bit frustrating when they come up with some spectacularly stupid plans but it does make sense that a bunch of sheltered academics can be naive about how the world works. The final section could have been the most interesting but it felt a bit rushed, after all the build-up it felt as if it was in a hurry to get to the heavily foreshadowed conclusion. I found some of the footnotes annoying, the notes on translations and etymology are fine but some of them seem to only exist to make explicit things about characters that were already clear.
  4. Another fairly dull race when it came to the front, with Verstappen looking untroubled and Perez also looked comfortable once he got into second while Le Clerc was best of the rest. Bearman followed-up on his qualifying with a strong race considering his inexperience.
  5. I liked the series, I don't think it's quite as good as the First Law books but still definitely worth reading if you like Abercombie's work. I agree with BFC that it doesn't feel very YA.
  6. Congratulations to Italy, this does feel like the best Italian team we've seen in many years.
  7. Away from the off-track drama it was a predictable front row but behind there was an impressive performance by Oliver Bearman to take 11th having had only one practice session to learn the car. There were some mistakes in there, but he's showing plenty of potential.
  8. I remember a former colleague who was from Spain and called Manuel saying that he was confused when he first moved to the UK about why so many British people asked him if he was from Barcelona when they found out his name. Then he saw the original language version of Fawlty Towers (having only seen the Spanish dub before) and he realised why.
  9. I remember in Iain Banks' Transition he suggested that alien tourists might come to Earth to experience our eclipses. What's particularly rare about the Earth/Moon/Sun combination is that the Sun is approximately 400 times further away than the Moon and also about 400 times larger so the Sun and Moon appear to be about the same size from Earth so during a total eclipse the Moon will appear to neatly cover the Sun.
  10. It won't be the same without Hugh Grant and his accent choices.
  11. I watched The Outfit, which I thought was a good thriller. The claustrophobic setting with the entire film taking place in the tailor's shop did help with the tension. The acting was good, particularly Mark Rylance in the lead role.
  12. New Zealand seem to be letting a strong position slip away here with the final wicket partnership getting close to a century.
  13. It feels like it wouldn't be too much to ask for it to be a public holiday.
  14. I watched the first season when it came out but not the others. I remember the Svalbard setting being fascinating (such as the law about having to have a rifle when leaving the town in case of encountering a polar bear) and the mystery was intriguing, although it did get a bit wild by the end.
  15. Having a couple of young spinners emerge who have performed well is definitely a plus for England given how hard they've generally found it to find Test spinners.
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