Goodreads recommendations

[igenlode]

Based on my "sailing shelf", Goodreads thinks I might want to read "Ortho's Home Improvement Encyclopedia" or "Ethical Data and Information Management".
I'm not sure what that says about the type of person who reads books such as Josephine Tey's "The Privateer", Eric Newby's "The Last Grain Race" or C.S. Forester's "Mr. Midshipman Hornblower"...!

(Ebay always recommends me things in which I have not the slightest interest, as well. Today it thinks I might want a "Canterbury Kid's Rugby Jersey" (I have no children and have never played rugby in my life), "Superdry Men's Pool Sliders" (I've never worn flipflops in my life either), or "DKNY Women Eau de Parfum 100ml" -- which costs £34, apparently. I've not only never bought any of those items from their site, I've never bought any such item or anything remotely related from anywhere, ever.)

In a sense it's flattering to know that my habits apparently so utterly confound data collection algorithms -- just as the careers advisory questionnaire at school so completely (and prophetically) failed to come up with a suitable career path...

Comments

[betweensunandmoon]

Sounds like me and my YouTube recommended page. :P

[igenlode]

YouTube has successfully recommended to me things that I had no idea I would be interested in -- including Jay Leno's Garage (I'd never even heard of Jay Leno), 'blob opera', The Sims playthroughs (I'd never owned a copy of "The Sims" or known anyone who played it), pro-corset advocacy, and CallMeKevin (though I'm more of a fan of RTGame ;-)

[betweensunandmoon]

*is trying very, very hard to picture you watching RTGame and failing*

I guess I thought of you as being far too sophisticated to watch funny video game montages. :P I'm not subscribed to either him or CallMeKevin, though I watch quite a few similar channels. My subscription feed is made up of more gaming and commentary videos than anything else.

What are your favorite channels? And what on earth is blob opera?

[igenlode]

I find RTGame rather endearing; 'skinny shy boy' is my aesthetic. I don't find him all that funny as such, but I do find him reliably entertaining (and I've always preferred watching video games to playing them, back since the days when I used to hang around the arcades watching Out Run).

You can picture me watching RT play with penguins and get scared by sea monsters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTAte8a00bM

The Phantom of the Blob Opera
Most of the 'blob opera' stuff just degenerates into someone yanking one blob up and down wildly and captioning it 'but purple hasn't rehearsed' or something along those lines :-( All the same, it was interesting to see the qualities of the different vocal types distilled, as it were. Not sure why YouTube suddenly decided to introduce me to it -- that Phantom one was not the first thing it came up with, but something I ran into when trying to discover what this 'blob opera' stuff actually was...

[erimia]

You do know someone who plays The Sims. :D Most Let's Plays of it are boring, though.

[igenlode]

I suspect that it takes an innate talent for story-telling to interpret the computer-generated behaviour of the characters into a meaningful plotline -- a lot of the Let's Plays I've seen have been challenges of various kinds, where there's an external constraint of some kind on what you're allowed to do.
(Apart from that, the basic activity does seem to consist of 'make Sims get married and have babies' for the female players and 'kill off Sims in bizarre ways' for the males ;-p)

[erimia]

I suspect that it takes an innate talent for story-telling to interpret the computer-generated behaviour of the characters into a meaningful plotline

Oh, definitely, and that's why I usually get tired of the game quickly - my lack of such skills makes playing it not that interesting.

(Apart from that, the basic activity does seem to consist of 'make Sims get married and have babies' for the female players and 'kill off Sims in bizarre ways' for the males ;-p)

I guess both playstyles can be combined in playing a family of cultists that practice human sacrifice. :D Though I'd say that killing sims in inventive ways is a quite gender-neutral thing, and have been tried by nearly every simmer at least at some point.

[watervole]

I think you would like The Benden Voyage by Tim Severin. Fascinating account of making and sailing a leather boat in the North Atlantic.

The kind of sailing craft Irish monks used.

[igenlode]

Yes, I read it back in the 1980s.
And the sequel, The Sindbad Voyage :-)

I seem to remember bits of "The Brendan Voyage" made their way into Arctic Raoul, specifically the pack-ice encounters in a small boat...

[watervole]

The Sinbad Voyage was good, but no where near as good as Brenden.

[igenlode]

Apparently he also built a Greek galley and did "The Jason Voyage" along the traces of the Argonauts -- I may have read that one...