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ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
RanaldClouston
@ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
37 followers 1 following 220 posts
Lecturer in Computer Science at Australian National University.

See my introduction post https://fediscience.org/@RanaldClouston/111372747473214344

He/him.

[bridged from https://fediscience.org/@RanaldClouston on the fediverse by https://fed.brid.gy/ ]
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ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
My votes for the famous annual Australian music countdown, the #triplej #hottest100 for 2025:

For the first time since I moved to Australia and started voting the kids are grown up & independent enough to want to cast their own votes, so I have no one to […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
Votes for the Triple J Hottest 100 (in no particular order): Baker Boy — RUNNING LOW [Ft. Pardyalone] Emma Louise & Flume — Monsoon Fred again.., Skepta & PlaqueBoyMax — Victory Lap Lorde — What Was That RAYE — WHERE IS MY HUSBAND! Tame Impala — Dracula Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers — MOTHER Vv Pete, UTILITY & Formation Boyz — WASSA 3% — Our Greats Carla Wehbe — Gentle With Me
December 21, 2025 at 5:56 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Cats love to sit in boxes. Or anything that could be plausibly parsed as a box. #Caturday
A calico cat, Sweet Pea, sitting inside the frame of an open rubbish bin lid.
December 20, 2025 at 5:16 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
A very rare DNF for me on this one, 220 pages in. The prose is the main thing that killed it for me, full of cliches. I gritted it out to the half way point to see if it went anywhere but although the main character Zelu carried some of my interest, nothing […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor
December 16, 2025 at 10:52 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Since discovering them a couple of years back, #KatharineKerr 's Deverry series has become my fantasy comfort read; it's so easy to slip into her world with its particular catchphrases and characters that reoccur, but change, across hundreds of years of […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
A Time of Exile,by Katharine Kerr
December 14, 2025 at 1:20 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
In the post-mortality far future, an experiment with quantum gravity goes wrong and starts consuming the universe. Greg Egan is always worth a read and I really enjoyed the final chapters in particular, but I didn't love this one overall. I found the […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
Schild's Ladder, by Greg Egan
November 30, 2025 at 11:04 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Slightly odd issue of #asimovssciencefiction with four of ten stories which I wouldn't call science fiction at all. Not that I'm particularly invested in policing genre boundaries, but it seems strange to stray so far from the magazine's strengths. My […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, with cover story 'The Ghost' by John Kessel, and other stories by Ted Kosmatka, Leah Cypess, Karen Heuler, Alexander Jablokov, and Bruce Sterling & Paul Di Filippo
November 25, 2025 at 11:24 PM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Baby #currawong fledging next to our house. What a fluffy baby. #birdsofmastodon
A fluffy chested grey currawong perching on a fence
November 21, 2025 at 7:06 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Finished reading #ursulakleguin 's 1820s historical novel set in a (fictional) part of the Austro-Hungarian empire - Orsinia, a setting she has returned to, in various time periods, in a few of her non-SFF works. The story does eventually feature a violent […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
Malafrena, by Ursula K. LeGuin
November 20, 2025 at 6:34 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
New #asimovssciencefiction in the mail! Looking forward to getting started on it once I've finished my current read.
Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, with cover story 'The Ghost' by John Kessel, and other stories by Ted Kosmatka, Leah Cypess, Karen Heuler, Alexander Jablokov, and Bruce Sterling & Paul Di Filippo
November 15, 2025 at 11:17 PM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
"Avrana Kern has only limited and artificial emotional responses, being dead and a computer composed at least partially of ants."

#AdrianTchaikovsky 's Children of Time was one of my favourite reads this year. The sequel took a little bit longer to grow on […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
November 6, 2025 at 9:37 PM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Set up to play #beyondthesun with the family. #boardgames
Beyond the Sun boardgame box. Designed by Dennis K. Chan and published by Rio Grande Games The starting setup for Beyond the Sun, with its stupidly big technology tree board, and another board with a universe to explore.
November 1, 2025 at 5:32 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
The weekend. #Caturday
A calico cat (Sweet Pea) sleeping in an improbable position on an office chair.
November 1, 2025 at 3:46 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Not quite a biography, given so little can be known of Pythagoras's life, but instead a history of how his name and ideas associated with him have been used across the millennia. The most interesting part was how Kepler was convinced that the ratios for […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universe, by Kitty Ferguson
October 22, 2025 at 10:34 PM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Just a quick update for my academic reading #blog today, on an award-winning paper from 2007 that extends separation #logic to the concurrent setting. https://blogs.fediscience.org/the-updated-scholar/2025/10/22/discussing-a-semantics-for-concurrent-separation-logic/
The parallel composition rule of Concurrent Separation Logic.
October 22, 2025 at 6:11 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
The artist. #Caturday
A calico cat relaxes on a box. Her paw is flung out on a child's painting in an easel.
October 18, 2025 at 5:32 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
The flower beds this year have arrangements themed around different sciences. This one, obviously, represents computer science. #Canberra #floriade
A large bed of various flowers, with a sign indicating that the arrangement was inspired by computer science: "code, circuit boards, and digital connectivity".
October 12, 2025 at 1:44 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
On the final day of #Canberra 's flower festival #floriade the dogs get to have the run of the place. #dogsofmastodon #bloomscrolling
A bed of colourful mixed flowers, with our black shaggy labradoodle Brombær looking over them.
October 11, 2025 at 11:42 PM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
#gardnerdozois 's yearly #scifi collections are slowly taking over my bookshelf. This one from 1991 starts extremely strongly with Nancy Kress's 'Beggars in Spain', which I believe she later reworked into her most well known novel. She really is the best […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
Best New SF 6 (published elsewhere under the title 'The Year's Best Science Fiction, Ninth Annual Collection), edited by Gardner Dozois
October 11, 2025 at 1:30 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Second hand book sale purchases for our family of four - how did we do? @bookstodon #bookstodon (bonus photo: our #kitten exploring the shopping bag we brought them home in #Caturday )
A collection of second hand books, including multiple Georgette Heyer, Katherine Kerr, Ngaio Marsh, and Arthur Conan Doyle A calico kitten looking out of a large blue Ikea shopping bag
September 27, 2025 at 3:31 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
#Canberra #lifelinebookfair , our twice yearly war on the capacity of our bookshelves. Featuring @consequently
A crowd of people in a big barn, with trestle tables covered in books Logic, by Greg Restall
September 27, 2025 at 2:48 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
@comics #comics Did anyone else collect or read these Dial H comics from 2012-2013? On a re-read I still think they're pretty great fun, with #ChinaMieville 's brain fizzing away at inventing absurd new heroes, brought to life by #mateussantolouco and […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
A stack of 'Dial H' comics. The visible covers credit China Miéville and Mateus Santolouco.
September 26, 2025 at 7:17 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
That's an absurdly impressive list of authors giving cover blurbs - Alan Moore, Samantha Shannon, and Adrian Tchaikovsky! A body-warping plague escapes from thawing Siberian permafrost and changes how a series of narrators experience death and loss, with each […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
How High We Go in the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu. Front and back cover feature blurbs by Alan Moore, Samantha Shannon, Aimee Bender, Chloe Benjamin, and Adrian Tchaikovsky
September 24, 2025 at 7:14 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
Just finished reading The Lord of the Rings with my son. He enjoyed it a lot, which is in contrast to the first time a few years back that he attempted it and found it too heavy going, and rearranged the book spines to record his review! @bookstodon
A box of seven Lord of the Rings books (two volumes for each book, plus one of extra material), with the spines each displaying one letter of the name TOLKIEN. They have been rearranged to spell NOT LIKE.
September 20, 2025 at 6:06 AM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
King Arthur's life story is told across 4 novellas published between the 1930s-50s, collected in one volume here. The first half stands with the most fun I've had with a book in hand: startlingly hilarious and studded with bizarre passages like the full page […]

[Original post on fediscience.org]
The Once and Future King, by T. H. White. Cover image is a poorly drawn medieval falconer with a strangely hangdog, morose expression.
September 17, 2025 at 12:06 PM
ranaldclouston.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy
12,000 citations for 4 pages of paper is not a bad hit rate... today's #blog is a very short post on the announcement paper for the SMT solver Z3. https://blogs.fediscience.org/the-updated-scholar/2025/09/15/discussing-z3-an-efficient-smt-solver/
The Z3 logo
September 15, 2025 at 2:04 AM