- 08:56 Listening to Dolly Parton singing 'Stairway to Heaven' - aces! #
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Tweets for Today
Sandman Volume 1 Preludes and Nocturnes - Neil Gaiman
The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil GaimanMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
I stopped buying monthly comics around the time that Alan Moore finished writing Swamp Thing, so the initial run of Sandman by Neil Gaiman passed me by. I've been slowly working my way through the collected editions to rectify that omission, and enjoying it hugely.
This first volume is a little shaky in places, with references to some highly obscure characters from the DC universe, but it all starts falling nicely into place with a story featuring Death in the person of a young woman with a penchant for gothic fashion going about her business of claiming dead souls with no particular fuss or drama.
View all my reviews.
Time Bomb - Gerald Seymour
Timebomb by Gerald SeymourMy review
rating: 2 of 5 stars
In the chaos of the end of the Soviet Union, a disgruntled officer at a nuclear weapons decommissioning facility steals a small tactical weapon and buries it in his garden under a sheet of lead. Fifteen years later he digs it up and arranges to sell it to a Russian Mafia boss for the sum of ... one million dollars (try not saying that in a Doctor Evil voice!). An intercepted mobile phone call from a certain town in Russia to a Russian 'businessman' in London rings alarm bells in the headquarters of the British secret service and Christopher Lawson, an old school cold war spy, takes control of an unrelated undercover operation being run by the fraud squad of Scotland Yard on the businessman. He engineers events to force the undercover policeman deeper into the confidence of the Russian gangsters to find out exactly what is being planned.
This is a bit of an odd book - for about 90% of its length it flies along at a cracking pace, with secret agents, elderly Russian soldiers, brutal gangsters and Islamic terrorists all converging on a rendezvous at the site of a former concentration camp in a Polish forest, with the nuclear weapon being the maguffin that draws them there. At the end though, it all falls apart with some highly improbable coincidences and deus ex machinas and an oddly abrupt conclusion. I get the feeling that the author really wanted to write about the true history of a mass revolt and escape by prisoners at the Sobibor camp, but for some reason he shoe horned the story into an otherwise fairly run of the mill spy thriller.
I won this book in a free draw at My Favorite Books so I was not quite as disappointed as if I'd paid cash money for it. Only recommended if you see it cheap at an airport bookshop and have a long journey to kill.
Oh, and the cover is highly misleading as well!
View all my reviews.
Tweets for Today
- 09:16 Magpies wheel and swoop / Using the gasworks as an / Urban hunting ground #
Friday, January 30, 2009
By the pricking of my thumbs ...
Well, it took four months, but I fell off the proverbial wagon this morning.
Let me explain. Every morning at around eleven o’clock a van pulls up outside the office and tootles a Colonel Bogey horn which is followed by a mass exodus of hungry looking programmers. The van sells the usual sorts of sandwiches and cakes, but they also do a range of hot pasties and pies. I haven’t availed myself of their services before, but this morning my resolve weakened and I bought myself a hot cheese ‘n’ onion pasty for the princely sum of 98 of your Earth pence.
All I have to say in my defence is – yum. It was spanking gorgeous. I now throw myself on the mercy of the people’s court and promise faithfully not to have another one for at least four more months have passed.
It really does feel as if this winter is dragging its heels before making way for the spring. I thought that the days were warming up a little, but it seems we are in for another blast of the cold. I looked out of my office window on Wednesday afternoon and was delighted to see that it was still light and sunny at half past four, but by the time I actually left the building, a dense freezing fog had gathered, like something straight out of a Sherlock Holmes novel. Needless to say, the traffic crawled along, no doubt avoiding stray Hansom cabs and sundry hounds of the Baskervilles.
In contrast, the roads this morning were practically empty, and I was at the office for twenty past eight. How strange. It was still grey outside, so I had to resort to setting my desktop wallpaper to a nice mountain scene with clear blue skies stretched across both of my screens.
In squamous news, the skin seems to have stopped peeling off my hands and it is now just my thumbs that are affected. The intensive Vaseline cream seems to have done the trick in softening the dry and cracked areas, so hopefully that will reverse the tide, as it were.
In podcast news, the comedian and activist Mark Thomas has recently launched a series of interviews with economists and politicians, explaining the economics behind the credit crunch and asking exactly how screwed we are, exactly. Frightening and enlightening in equal measure, and I think it is a fair question to ask exactly what these merchant bankers (yes, that is rhyming slang) did to deserve $20 billion in bonuses last year. W, as they say, TF?
Finally, you don't have to be mad to be a Muslim suicide bomber, but it helps ...
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Sunday links
- Battle in Outer Space! If there is ever a film made of 'Matter' by Iain M Banks, I hope that these guys get to do the special effects. Revolver beams fire!
- The disaster database
- How to make your own 3D Obama Art Cube
- How to make smokable freebase caffeine I'll stick to the drinkable sort, thanks.
- How to make your own Nuka Cola
- Top 25 Dangerous coding errors
- Paleo-walkman of 1957
- A very small record player
- Sex smell lures vampire to doom Best BBC news headline - EVAR!
- A real Portal gun!
- THE NEW FRONTIERSMAN
- Henchman's Helper Need ideas for your underground lair?
- That money was just resting in my account!
- Flash Earth An intriguing alternative to Google Earth
- Time lapse aurora
- Galactrix Flash demo of the new Puzzle Quest game - I want this now!
The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman
The Complete Maus by Art SpiegelmanMy review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Maus is a biographical graphic novel telling the story of the author's father, Vladek Spiegelman, his life in Poland before the second world war and his experiences in Auschwitz. The book uses the device of representing different nationalities as animals, drawn in a simple cartoon fashion - the Jews are represented by mice, the Poles are pigs, the Germans are cats and so on. This initially seems like a simplistic and heavy handed metaphor, but depth and complexity of the narrative quickly becomes apparent. In fact, the very simplicity of the style underlines and accentuates the true horrors of the holocaust.
The book does not pull any punches, and it is particularly honest in its portrayal of the author's difficult relationship with his father who is shown as a rather mean spirited and manipulative old man. In contrast, Vladek during the war is shown as a brave and resourceful young man, prepared to take risks to help and protect others. The book also examines the author's difficulties in composing the narrative and trying to understand exactly what his father and mother experienced.
This is a book that should be compulsory reading, particularly when we have a German Pope who thinks that it is acceptable for his Bishops to say that the holocaust is "lies, lies, all lies" and for a Jewish theologian to say that there is nothing wrong with the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians. The events described in Maus are still within living memory, and they should not, must not, be denied lest they happen again.
View all my reviews.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Crawling King Snake
I seem to be shedding my skin.
It started a couple of days ago, with the skin on one of my thumbs feeling a bit odd. I then noticed that it was flaking off and then the other fingers on both hands followed suit. By this morning it was if I had dipped my fingers in PVA glue and then allowed it to dry before peeling it off in ragged strips. Yikes.
I went to the chemist and he thought that it was probably a reaction to something rather than an infection, but if it doesn't clear up by Monday I need to go to the doctors to see what it is. I've got some super intensive hand cream, so hopefully that might help a bit.
In other news, I've spent four hours hunting a vampire cult in the wastelands of Fallout 3, finally tracking them down to an abandoned subway bristling with bear traps, mines and trip wires. Yum. This game just gets better and better.
It started a couple of days ago, with the skin on one of my thumbs feeling a bit odd. I then noticed that it was flaking off and then the other fingers on both hands followed suit. By this morning it was if I had dipped my fingers in PVA glue and then allowed it to dry before peeling it off in ragged strips. Yikes.
I went to the chemist and he thought that it was probably a reaction to something rather than an infection, but if it doesn't clear up by Monday I need to go to the doctors to see what it is. I've got some super intensive hand cream, so hopefully that might help a bit.
In other news, I've spent four hours hunting a vampire cult in the wastelands of Fallout 3, finally tracking them down to an abandoned subway bristling with bear traps, mines and trip wires. Yum. This game just gets better and better.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice BurroughsMy review
rating: 3 of 5 stars
As a child I read a great deal of pulp fantasy from the shelves of Harpenden public library, but for some reason I never picked up anything by Edgar Rice Burroughs, probably because I mainly associated his name with Tarzan - a character that never really appealed to me. Recently I noticed that the first of the John Carter novels was available on Project Gutenberg, and so I downloaded it to have a read.
The story opens with a framing device with the author describing a manuscript entrusted to him by the late John Carter, a veteran of the American civil war. The manuscript gives an account of how John Carter, on the run from a murderous posse of Apaches, hid himself in a mysterious cave and from there was somehow projected from his Earthly body to find himself on Mars. There then follows a breathless series of adventures amongst the various warring tribes of Mars, where Carter's martial skill combined with the benefits of the lower gravity gives him a distinct advantage. He struggles to understand the various strange cultural mores of the inhabitants of Barsoom, as their world is called, and he fights for and eventually wins the hand of a beautiful Princess.
It is a novel very much of its time, but there are some fine speculative ideas about the nature of life on Barsoom amidst all of the sword fights, swashbuckling battles and general derring do. The romantic subplot threatens to go a bit Mills and Boon in places, with tragic misunderstandings and each believing the other to have died, but on the whole it does take a back seat to all of the action.
It's not a great work of literature, but then again it doesn't pretend to be. If you don't take it too seriously, and treat it as a historical romance rather than a work of serious science fiction, then it is an enjoyable light read.
View all my reviews.
Tweets for Today
- 10:27 Perfect Ten, Phill asks / How cold is it in Detroit? / Much hilarity #
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Apocalypse Now (ish)
I was a teenager in the early 80s, so all of my nightmares (apart from the ones about going to school without any trousers on) were about the imminent threat of nuclear war. The iron curtain was firmly drawn, Thatcher and Reagan were rattling their various atomic sabres and showings of ‘Threads’ and ‘The War Game’ were grist to the mill of my fevered imagination.
Looking back though, I now realise that all of my dreams stopped at the moment the missiles launched. I would run through the streets, the air attack warning sirens wailing, looking for shelter, but as soon as the first bomb landed that was it. The aftermath of the apocalypse just seemed to be too unthinkable a prospect to even dream about. The other night, I had a fevered dream with a vivid view of the missiles launching from their silos, leaving vapour trails curving upwards into the sky. My viewpoint moved closer and I saw the warheads splinter and separate from the missiles, heading towards their individual targets scattered across the United Kingdom. I then remember opening a door and seeing a landscape glowing red, like looking into a furnace, before waking up in a sweat.
The reason for the dreams is not hard to fathom. Apart from reading The Road, I have been mostly playing Fallout 3. It’s a superbly atmospheric game, but walking through the ruins listening to the eerie sounds of the 1950s music playing on a radio is haunting to say the least. I may need to go back to Albion in Fable II for a bit of light relief from the blasted remains of Washington DC, but I just keep wondering what is lurking inside the next flooded subway or behind a collapsed freeway. Maybe I’ll just try to get to Rivet City, if I don’t get sidetracked by another community of inbred cannibals with refrigerators full of ‘strange meat’ to deal with first ... Poppa, I’m scared ...
What else? We’ve been looking at getting a new kitchen to replace the current units which are getting a bit tatty, and also to make better use of the space, but the quoted price comes out at a $hilariouslylargemadeupnumber of your Earth pounds, so it may be a case of either putting it off or biting the proverbial bullet and going for it. Watch this space.
In DVD news, we finally got around to watching the Collins and Herring video podcast (Vidicast? Vodcast?) from off of Richard Herrings’ new dvd, which was an excellent way to spend an hour. These two have turned aimless rambling conversation into an artform, and it was fun to finally see the attic where most of the podcasts are recorded. It amused me that you could choose between a good soundtrack and the traditional lo-fi recorded off of the internal microphone on Andrew Collins’ macbook version.
Looking back though, I now realise that all of my dreams stopped at the moment the missiles launched. I would run through the streets, the air attack warning sirens wailing, looking for shelter, but as soon as the first bomb landed that was it. The aftermath of the apocalypse just seemed to be too unthinkable a prospect to even dream about. The other night, I had a fevered dream with a vivid view of the missiles launching from their silos, leaving vapour trails curving upwards into the sky. My viewpoint moved closer and I saw the warheads splinter and separate from the missiles, heading towards their individual targets scattered across the United Kingdom. I then remember opening a door and seeing a landscape glowing red, like looking into a furnace, before waking up in a sweat.
The reason for the dreams is not hard to fathom. Apart from reading The Road, I have been mostly playing Fallout 3. It’s a superbly atmospheric game, but walking through the ruins listening to the eerie sounds of the 1950s music playing on a radio is haunting to say the least. I may need to go back to Albion in Fable II for a bit of light relief from the blasted remains of Washington DC, but I just keep wondering what is lurking inside the next flooded subway or behind a collapsed freeway. Maybe I’ll just try to get to Rivet City, if I don’t get sidetracked by another community of inbred cannibals with refrigerators full of ‘strange meat’ to deal with first ... Poppa, I’m scared ...
What else? We’ve been looking at getting a new kitchen to replace the current units which are getting a bit tatty, and also to make better use of the space, but the quoted price comes out at a $hilariouslylargemadeupnumber of your Earth pounds, so it may be a case of either putting it off or biting the proverbial bullet and going for it. Watch this space.
In DVD news, we finally got around to watching the Collins and Herring video podcast (Vidicast? Vodcast?) from off of Richard Herrings’ new dvd, which was an excellent way to spend an hour. These two have turned aimless rambling conversation into an artform, and it was fun to finally see the attic where most of the podcasts are recorded. It amused me that you could choose between a good soundtrack and the traditional lo-fi recorded off of the internal microphone on Andrew Collins’ macbook version.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sneaky bastards
The High Court has ruled that MPs expenses are a matter of public record and that we have a right to know exactly how much is being spent and on what. If somebody is claiming £20,000 without submitting any receipts then they must be called to account. The House of Commons is going to try and push through a vote on Thursday to block the freedom of information act from applying to their expenses.
If this annoys you, then you might like to remind your mp that they work for you ...
If this annoys you, then you might like to remind your mp that they work for you ...
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Tweets for Today
- 19:24 Smoke trails arc skywards / MIRVS splinter and fall to Earth / Nuclear fires burn #
Sunday links
- Top 10 Evil Computers
- Top 25 Bushisms of all time
- Geometry Wars Megamix Guaranteed to get your thumbs twitching
- The David Lee Roth Soundboard Oh yes!
- How to hallucinate using a ping-pong ball and a radio
- Maggot cheese that tries to eat your eyes I think I speak for everyone here when I say 'Eww!'
- Brave, Stupid and Curious Dangerous Psychology Experiments from the Past
- Do Androids Pray to Electric Gods? Robot religions
- The Scrabble Keyboard
- Say it loud… Road safety made easy
- Write or DieThe answer to writer's block
- The Best Job in the World
- Bastard Tetris Seriously evil
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Road by Cormac McCarthyMy review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Set in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse that has left the world a burnt ruin, devoid of nearly all life, The Road follows a man and a boy as they travel south. The road is a dangerous and violent place, raided by gangs of psychopathic cannibals, and there is precious little food to be scavenged from the ruins. There are no animals, birds and the plant life is mostly dead, choked by ash.
Faced with such overwhelming despair, why are the man and the boy travelling? Is there any point in continuing the struggle for existence in a such aworld? How will the man use his two remaining bullets that he has in his pistol? Are they the good guys?
This is a bleak novel, without a doubt, and yet it is a extraordinarily powerful metaphor that only becomes apparent as the journey nears its conclusion. It is written in a spare and economical style that perfectly evokes the ruined world that the pair traverse.
Highly recommended.
View all my reviews.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Tweets for Today
- 09:40 Circular email / Warns of fir alarm test / No christmas trees here! #
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler
A Patchwork Planet by Anne TylerMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Barnaby Gaitlan is just a regular guy.
A former teenage delinquent and the black sheep of a wealthy (and socially ambitious) family, he has just turned thirty, with an ex-wife from an ill starred early marriage and a nine year old daughter who he sees once a month. He never completed college, owes his parents money, has a beaten up old Corvette that is always giving him trouble and scratches a living for a company called Rent-a-Back doing odd jobs for old folk. His life is drifting – the world seems to have low expectations of him, and so he has low expectations of himself. However, a chance encounter in a railway station causes him to engineer a meeting with a woman who might just turn out to be the angel who will turn his life around.
The events of the thirtieth year of Barnaby’s life are related as a first person narrative. Whilst he may have a poor opinion of himself, we soon come to realise that Barnaby is actually a pretty decent fellow. He may sometimes think of something hurtful, but more often than not he bites his tongue and does not say it. He is thoughtful and conscientious, particularly in his work running errands for the various demanding old folk that employ him. He may sometimes act like a bit of a doofus, but on the whole he is ready to learn from his mistakes. He grows to understand why his mother is the way that she is, and also that the saintly Sofia – his angel from the train – also has flaws of her own. Most importantly, he learns just what it means to grow older.
This is an excellent novel, and it gives a real insight into the mind of the flawed, yet likeable protagonist. The experience of moving from your twenties into your thirties and wondering if there will ever come a moment at which you finally feel like an adult is one that I can certainly relate to.
Two thumbs up!
View all my reviews.
Tweets for Today
- 11:49 Bug escapes testing / Object not created first time / A face palm moment #
Monday, January 12, 2009
Tweets for Today
- 09:09 Monday morning rain / Washes the streets and pavements / Confusing the dog #
Sunday, January 11, 2009
The Zombie Survival Guide - Max Brooks
The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead by Max BrooksMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
There's a game that we play in this house, and I imagine that most of you will have played something similar, where we talk about our plans for a zombie apocalypse. We discuss our options for safe hideouts, preferred weaponry, sources of food and water and long term escape plans. For the record, I would go for the local Costcutter supermarket (solid, defensible structure, well supplied), weapons of choice would be my Paul Chen katana (good for decapitation) and sais (close combat, last resort) and long term we would head for Hunt House in Swaledale - a remote, easily defended 16th century farm house.
If you haven't considered the likely consequences of a zombie outbreak, then the author Max Brooks has done the job for you. This book is a comprehensive catalogue of tactics for survival against the undead horde, including weapons and combat tactics, defensive strategies and plans for going on the offensive and fighting back. He considers every possible level of threat from a minor type 1 outbreak all the way to a full blown global apocalypse ("Living in an undead world"). Also included is a chapter on zombie attacks through recorded history back to prehistoric times, with useful examples of tactics that worked and the horrific consequences of those that didn't.
An essential guide to survival, you know, just in case ...
View all my reviews.
Sunday Links
- Death by Black Hole
- 3-D Fly-Through of Supernova Remnant
- Galactic Core in Unprecedented New Detail Yay for Hubble
- Hi-res images of the whole Earth
- How to Bend a Spoon with Just Your Mind
- 'Spookfish' has mirrors for eyes Blimey.
- Gordon Brown Is a Murderous Two Faced Cunt A headline from the Pakistan Daily that tells it like it is ...
- Top 50 movie special effects shots
- Top 24 worst special effects of all time
- I Spy Book of Bad Films How many have you seen?
- Secret of Monkey Island - the school play!
- Retro Sabotage - Super Mario Bros Customize your very own Super Mario level
- Writing in the Age of Distraction Cory Doctorow explains all
- On the origin of species The first edition, online
- Scientist Action Figures - Curie, Einstein, Newton, Darwin, Tesla WANTAGE!
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Friday, January 09, 2009
Stop the week
Is ‘Stop the Week’ still on?
If I recall correctly, it was a chat show on Radio 4 – the companion show to ‘Start the Week’ – which would feature various high brow arty intellectuals, luvvy actors, literary authors with a book to plug discretely and the occasional token scientist, unpicking the events of the week in a light hearted sort of way.
Anyhoo, can we stop this particular week, please? It seems to have simultaneously dragged and flown by in equal measure. Getting up early on cold, dark mornings has been a shock to my system, not surprisingly, and has left me jiggered – falling asleep on the sofa on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings – but I seem to be re-adjusting bit by bit.
The slightly odd mood of the week started with watching ‘Barton Fink’ – a Coen brothers movie that I hadn’t seen before, and a rather good one too. I had been expecting a comedy of sorts, but the off-beat nature caught me by surprise. The use of unsettling, almost subliminal, background noises and the skewed perspective of the cinematography made the slow descent of the eponymous playwright, turned Hollywood screenwriter into his own, very personal, hell all the more convincing. Probably not one to watch if you have a fear of writer’s block.
Work has been pretty good on the whole, although our Subversion source control system has been running like treacle this week. I fixed one bug which was literally a one character change – switching the test for a return flag from ‘0’ to ‘1’ – which took nearly half an hour of code branching, committing and then merging back into the main code trunk, all dead time watching update windows chuntering. Hopefully the tech bods will sort it out, otherwise my coffee intake is going to increase as there is nothing much to do whilst these admin tasks are running other than to make hot drinks.
Yesterday was an odd day.
Next door’s pet rabbit had escaped sometime on the previous day, and Barney the dog had found the corpse of the luckless bun and buried it in a corner of our garden. We don’t know if it had expired of natural causes, or if he had chased it. There were no teeth-marks or obvious signs of injury, so he hadn’t bitten or mauled it first. All a bit upsetting really, although the neighbours have been fine about it and not as worried about it as we were.
Back to Kobudo last night for the first time in a month, and it certainly blew the cobwebs away. My samurai sword kata was a bit rusty, to say the least, but it will come back. However, you really can’t beat training with three black belts for sharpening up your skills. I got to play with Bo vs Naginata for a while, and then some work on the eight Wakizashi techniques that I need for level two sword. I picked up a fun new one that includes a cut with a concealed reversed blade to the inside of the opponent’s sword arm, followed by a swift disembowelling stab to their stomach. Lovely.
What else?
The ‘In Our Time’ podcasts about the life and work of Charles Darwin have been most interesting this week, and well worth a download. They have inspired me to read ‘Origin of Species’ which is being collaboratively blogged over at Blogging the Origin. This will also count towards my not-a-resolution book-a-week tally for 2009 (one book down, three others all at around 50% completion so far). Could this be the new obsession to replace Nano? Could be.
Telly wise, I was rather disappointed with ‘Demons’ – the various demonic villains of the piece were far more interesting than the bland lead character (whose name I can’t even remember), and all Phillip Glennister needed to do in his ‘Watcher from Buffy Lite’ role was reprise Gene Hunt as a vampire slayer (“Oi! You’re staked you slag!”) rather than attempting a bizarre and oddly unnecessary American accent. A missed opportunity.
The prog rock documentaries and music on BBC4 were much better though, with a remarkable vintage live performance of ‘Tubular Bells’ played by various po faced beardy hippies who all seemed to be inexplicably wearing tank tops (which I refuse to believe were ever fashionable, even in the 1970s). Also fun to see clips of such sundry crimes against music as Peter Gabriel poncing around dressed as a daisy and Rick Wakeman’s bonkers King Arthur on Ice. Even though my heart belongs to the essential purity of punk, I do have a sneaking fondness for the pomposity of prog.
If I recall correctly, it was a chat show on Radio 4 – the companion show to ‘Start the Week’ – which would feature various high brow arty intellectuals, luvvy actors, literary authors with a book to plug discretely and the occasional token scientist, unpicking the events of the week in a light hearted sort of way.
Anyhoo, can we stop this particular week, please? It seems to have simultaneously dragged and flown by in equal measure. Getting up early on cold, dark mornings has been a shock to my system, not surprisingly, and has left me jiggered – falling asleep on the sofa on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings – but I seem to be re-adjusting bit by bit.
The slightly odd mood of the week started with watching ‘Barton Fink’ – a Coen brothers movie that I hadn’t seen before, and a rather good one too. I had been expecting a comedy of sorts, but the off-beat nature caught me by surprise. The use of unsettling, almost subliminal, background noises and the skewed perspective of the cinematography made the slow descent of the eponymous playwright, turned Hollywood screenwriter into his own, very personal, hell all the more convincing. Probably not one to watch if you have a fear of writer’s block.
Work has been pretty good on the whole, although our Subversion source control system has been running like treacle this week. I fixed one bug which was literally a one character change – switching the test for a return flag from ‘0’ to ‘1’ – which took nearly half an hour of code branching, committing and then merging back into the main code trunk, all dead time watching update windows chuntering. Hopefully the tech bods will sort it out, otherwise my coffee intake is going to increase as there is nothing much to do whilst these admin tasks are running other than to make hot drinks.
Yesterday was an odd day.
Next door’s pet rabbit had escaped sometime on the previous day, and Barney the dog had found the corpse of the luckless bun and buried it in a corner of our garden. We don’t know if it had expired of natural causes, or if he had chased it. There were no teeth-marks or obvious signs of injury, so he hadn’t bitten or mauled it first. All a bit upsetting really, although the neighbours have been fine about it and not as worried about it as we were.
Back to Kobudo last night for the first time in a month, and it certainly blew the cobwebs away. My samurai sword kata was a bit rusty, to say the least, but it will come back. However, you really can’t beat training with three black belts for sharpening up your skills. I got to play with Bo vs Naginata for a while, and then some work on the eight Wakizashi techniques that I need for level two sword. I picked up a fun new one that includes a cut with a concealed reversed blade to the inside of the opponent’s sword arm, followed by a swift disembowelling stab to their stomach. Lovely.
What else?
The ‘In Our Time’ podcasts about the life and work of Charles Darwin have been most interesting this week, and well worth a download. They have inspired me to read ‘Origin of Species’ which is being collaboratively blogged over at Blogging the Origin. This will also count towards my not-a-resolution book-a-week tally for 2009 (one book down, three others all at around 50% completion so far). Could this be the new obsession to replace Nano? Could be.
Telly wise, I was rather disappointed with ‘Demons’ – the various demonic villains of the piece were far more interesting than the bland lead character (whose name I can’t even remember), and all Phillip Glennister needed to do in his ‘Watcher from Buffy Lite’ role was reprise Gene Hunt as a vampire slayer (“Oi! You’re staked you slag!”) rather than attempting a bizarre and oddly unnecessary American accent. A missed opportunity.
The prog rock documentaries and music on BBC4 were much better though, with a remarkable vintage live performance of ‘Tubular Bells’ played by various po faced beardy hippies who all seemed to be inexplicably wearing tank tops (which I refuse to believe were ever fashionable, even in the 1970s). Also fun to see clips of such sundry crimes against music as Peter Gabriel poncing around dressed as a daisy and Rick Wakeman’s bonkers King Arthur on Ice. Even though my heart belongs to the essential purity of punk, I do have a sneaking fondness for the pomposity of prog.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Tweets for Today
- 21:22 getting some beer out of the garage and putting it into the fridge to warm up ... #
- 11:30 Ice obscures windscreen / Scraping with frozen fingers / In dawn's early light #
Sunday, January 04, 2009
An Ungodly Child - Rachel Green
Harold Waterman is a perfectly normal, perfectly respectable Englishman with a modest junk emporium to his name. He is therefore rather surprised when the Angel of Pestilence walks into his shop one day and infects him with an incurable disease, giving him just months to live. He would be even more surprised to learn the facts about his true parentage, or exactly why a trio of meddling angels seem convinced that Harold is a potential candidate for the role of Antichrist and want him to trigger Armageddon.
It's a good job that Harold can (with the aid of a bit of careful research) summon the erudite demon Jasfoup to his side to help him work out just what the hell (literally) is happening. All Jasfoup requires in return is a nice cup of tea and maybe a biscuit.
Oh, and the head of a saint.
This is a charming and engaging first novel, featuring a sprawling cast of demons, angels, some who fall somewhere in between, vampires, ghosts and others. It is full of sly biblical allusions, groan worthy puns, a sword fight or two and plenty of inventive ideas. The plot may be a little tortuous in places, but the journey is an enjoyable one and it promises good things for more books in the sequence.
Two thumbs up!
It's a good job that Harold can (with the aid of a bit of careful research) summon the erudite demon Jasfoup to his side to help him work out just what the hell (literally) is happening. All Jasfoup requires in return is a nice cup of tea and maybe a biscuit.
Oh, and the head of a saint.
This is a charming and engaging first novel, featuring a sprawling cast of demons, angels, some who fall somewhere in between, vampires, ghosts and others. It is full of sly biblical allusions, groan worthy puns, a sword fight or two and plenty of inventive ideas. The plot may be a little tortuous in places, but the journey is an enjoyable one and it promises good things for more books in the sequence.
Two thumbs up!
Thought for the day
You are probably aware of the two minute slot given over to a different speaker each day to provide a moral perspective on the day's news. Since its inception the slot has been reserved for religious speakers pretty much on a pro-rata basis, so we get mostly Christians (either avuncular C of E bishops or huffing evangelists), a weekly Rabbi, the occasional Hindu or Sikh and once in a blue moon a Buddhist.
However the producers seem to be resolutely opposed to any secular speakers appearing in the slot, as only belief in a imaginary deity (and it matters not which one) qualifies one to speak about moral issues. Well, it's time to fight back. A petition has been organised with signatories agreeing to email the programme if 100 people signed up. At the last count 1660 have signed, so now it's time to get busy. Just go to this page and send short message to ask for the slot to be opened up, or to be scrapped altogether.
Fly my pretties, fly!
However the producers seem to be resolutely opposed to any secular speakers appearing in the slot, as only belief in a imaginary deity (and it matters not which one) qualifies one to speak about moral issues. Well, it's time to fight back. A petition has been organised with signatories agreeing to email the programme if 100 people signed up. At the last count 1660 have signed, so now it's time to get busy. Just go to this page and send short message to ask for the slot to be opened up, or to be scrapped altogether.
Fly my pretties, fly!
Sunday Links
- 12 Elegant Examples of Evolution
- 20 Things You Didn't Know You Could Stick In Your USB Socket
- Top 10 Sceptics of 2008
- Top 10 Jackasses of 2008
- Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time
- More (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers
- cubeecraft.com Easy papercraft, honest!
- Build your own giant squid
- The Secret Origins of That Sodding Paperclip
- Twit 4 Dead
- The 150 Best Online Flash Games
- 101 Free Games 2008
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Book compo
Here's another book give away, but you have to work for it. Nik Jones new novel 9987 is set in a DVD rental store and in order to win one of three signed copies of his book you have to describe a customer in the store in twenty five words or less. Details at the above link and email your entries to iheartlesbiannurses@gmail.com.
Here is my effort:
Lucy scanned the shelves – romance, comedy or both? Fat chance of either in her life, she reflected, picking up the jumbo coke and chocolate offer.
(H/T Rachel for the heads up!)
Here is my effort:
Lucy scanned the shelves – romance, comedy or both? Fat chance of either in her life, she reflected, picking up the jumbo coke and chocolate offer.
(H/T Rachel for the heads up!)
Tweets for Today
- 12:44 Cutlass cleaned and oiled / Katana polished, gleaming / Brasso and sword oil #
Friday, January 02, 2009
Back to life, back to reality
After nearly two weeks of eating, drinking and being merry, not forgetting extended snoozling opportunities in the mornings, it was something of a shock to the system when the alarm tootled at a quarter past six this morning. Mind you, I’d already had a bit of a restless night with anxiety dreams about having to get up and drive to Swansea to collect my dad for some unspecified reason, so I was half awake in the morning gloom. I had to use my torch to pick my way round the icy wilderness of the woods, although this extended freeze seems quite odd with the weather being overcast rather than clear as you might expect on a still morning with the temperature somewhere around minus three or so.
It seems that most people are still in holiday mode with the drive into work taking less than half an hour, and there was only one other person in my section when I booted up my laptop at half past eight. All of the festive tat has been packed away now, which always makes the place feel brighter and fresher, and it didn’t take too long to get back into the swing of things.
I’ve not made any new year’s resolutions to speak of, other than to get organised about updating the books that I’ve read on goodreads.com. I won two books in the My Favourite Books draw, so I’ve got those to look forward to, and I’m about two thirds of the way through ‘An Ungodly Child’ which I am enjoying enormously, particularly the sly references to Bartitsu and obscure bits of the bible.
In podcast news, a couple of programmes have caught my ear recently. Frost Fair is about the celebrations that were held on the Thames when it froze over in the seventeenth century, and includes music, prose and even details of the powerful sounding alcoholic beverages on sale in the ‘Fuddle Tents’ including Pearl, a sort of absinthe beer containing wormwood and served hot, and Mum which was alleged to render the drinker mute with its strength. As a complete opposite, The Long, Hot Summer is about the place that the heat waves and bushfires of the Australian summer have in the national psyche – fascinating and evocative, and a welcome antidote to the winter chill.
It seems that most people are still in holiday mode with the drive into work taking less than half an hour, and there was only one other person in my section when I booted up my laptop at half past eight. All of the festive tat has been packed away now, which always makes the place feel brighter and fresher, and it didn’t take too long to get back into the swing of things.
I’ve not made any new year’s resolutions to speak of, other than to get organised about updating the books that I’ve read on goodreads.com. I won two books in the My Favourite Books draw, so I’ve got those to look forward to, and I’m about two thirds of the way through ‘An Ungodly Child’ which I am enjoying enormously, particularly the sly references to Bartitsu and obscure bits of the bible.
In podcast news, a couple of programmes have caught my ear recently. Frost Fair is about the celebrations that were held on the Thames when it froze over in the seventeenth century, and includes music, prose and even details of the powerful sounding alcoholic beverages on sale in the ‘Fuddle Tents’ including Pearl, a sort of absinthe beer containing wormwood and served hot, and Mum which was alleged to render the drinker mute with its strength. As a complete opposite, The Long, Hot Summer is about the place that the heat waves and bushfires of the Australian summer have in the national psyche – fascinating and evocative, and a welcome antidote to the winter chill.
Tweets for Today
- 07:04 back to work this morning ... oh joy. #
- 15:36 Half hour drive each way / Phones quiet, few distractions / A productive day #
Thursday, January 01, 2009
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