Day fourteen. The snow has finally been beaten back. Despite its seeming invulnerability in the face of the best efforts of humanity, it turned out to have a fatal weakness to common heat. Occasional heaped piles stage futile rear-guard efforts, but should be finished off soon.

The infrastructure left in tatters by the white death is not so quick to return, though, still no phone or internet. Apparently an engineer with a hoist is needed (I offered a variety of alternatives including stilts, several sets of garden jenga or a trampoline, but apparently none are suitable), and there’s a backlog of problems caused by the bastard sky ice.

I’d been hoping to take a look at the beta of Kung Foo!, but lack of broadband has driven me to a new diversion, utilising the eyes to gaze upon and interpret patterns printed upon cellulose pulp; I’m dubbing this “Singularly Individual Offline Printed Narrative Consumption” or SIOPNC (pronounced “see-oh-puh-nuck”), though some luddites seem to refer to it as “reading a book”. The single user instancing is absurd and clear evidence of lazy programming and backward thinking by these so-called authors who don’t even appear to be aware of the work of the earliest MUDs in terms of interactivity, though the graphics are similar. Still, it’ll have to do for now.

Luckily Christmas is a time of book-giving so I’ve got a few to hand; after finishing off the rather good Phoenix Squadron I’m now on Neal Stephenson’s latest, Anathem, which sounds a bit odd, but is incredible so far.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to primally scream into a hedge for a couple of hours.