Internet Ham - the origin of Swine Flu?

• 12:53 Godfather theme plays / New van offers a sandwich / That you can't refuse #

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Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik

Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
More rip snorting Napoleonic dragon action from Naomi Novik. This time a delegation of wily Chinese diplomats petitions the British government for the return of the dragon Temeraire to his rightful home arguing that a Celestial dragon should not be expected to fight in battles under the command of a common soldier. Captain Laurence and Temeraire are dispatched on the proverbial slow boat to China, facing numerous fiendish perils on the way including a rather wonderfully described naval boarding action before unpicking the diplomatic tangle that awaits them in the mysterious orient.

There's not a huge amount to say other than if you enjoyed the first book, then you will certainly enjoy this one.

View all my reviews.

• 18:31 RT @charltonbrooker: EVERYONE please pls retweet, this is a very serious threat "cc all your emails to# Jacqui Smith" Day rly.cc/ ... #

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Dead Rising 2 First Full Trailer

Wantage!

• 20:05 I've only just realised that I can plug my iPod into my xbox 360 and play it through the 5.1 speakers - hurrah! #

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• 19:16 Watching Primeval with a gingerbread latte - yum. #
• 23:46 Just watched Burn After Reading - classic Coen brothers! Now time for another shot of Captain Morgan's and an episode of Buffy ... #
• 16:28 I joined twitter 702 days ago - whendidyoujointwitter.com ? #

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大きな箱とねこ。

Best. Video. Evar.

Sunday links

• 'It's a pirate's life for me' The BBC news headline writers have all the fun
• Tone Matrix Fascinating sound generation tool
• Heliotrope Magazine Michael Moorcock special issue, including an excellent Neil Gaiman short story
• Robot Penguins! With frickin lasers for eyes!
• Vampire Ecology Undead population studies
• More hoglets! Who cares about swine flu when these little critters are so cute?
• Meat Cards Tasty and informative
• B-Movie Classics Video Player Lots of free B Movies to watch- excellent!

• 18:51 It's not the number of followers you have on twitter that counts, it's what you tweet at them : bit.ly/A1OhX #
• 19:31 Stand down Gordon! bit.ly/N1FZ #

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Looks like pergola weather!

• 18:11 Downloading Ubuntu 9.04 - Jaunty Jackalope #

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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
From early rumours of outbreaks of "African Rabies" in China and South Africa, to panicked evacuations and disastrously inept military reactions, to entrenchments and quarantines in safe zones to the final total war and recovery, this book gives a complete history of the war with the undead. The author Max Brooks presents this book as a series of interviews with participants in the war, telling their stories from different perspectives - refugees, soldiers, politicians and survivors, and gives a critique of Governmental inertia and complacency.

This is a companion volume to 'The Zombie Survival Guide', and envisions the worst case scenario presented in that book, namely a full scale global zombie apocalypse. Frighteningly believable.

View all my reviews.

RIP Clement Freud

• 12:49 Having a sammin sammich for lunch. Nom nom nom. #
• 15:33 Web product demo / Sunny day, stuffy boardroom / Fighting not to doze #

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Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell

Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Nicholas Hook is an Englishman, an archer and an outlaw.

After falling foul of a rapacious priest he escapes hanging by joining a band of archers fighting in France. He witnesses treachery and massacre at Soissons and hears the voices of the twin saints of that town, Crispin and Crispinian, before he returns to England where he relates his story to King Henry V and finds a place for himself in the company of Sir John Cornwell where he will return to France to fight again. He will take part in the costly and lengthy siege of Harfleur where disease is the greatest enemy, and eventually in the mud of the field of Azincourt where six thousand English longbow men will face an French army that outnumbers them by more than five to one.

This is perhaps Bernard Cornwell's most visceral and bloody book, which as anyone who has ever picked up a Sharpe novel will know is quite an achievement. With his usual attention to vivid historical detail Cornwell really brings the horrors of medieval warfare to life and gives a compelling account of one of the greatest battles of all time, that the French still refer to as the 'Unfortunate Day'.

Perhaps a bit grimmer and not quite as swashbuckling as some of Cornwell's other books, but a good read nonetheless.



View all my reviews.

• 09:41 Morning drive to Leeds / Fog rolls over the roadway / Blue skies occluded #

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• 07:24 Frost on the grass this morning, but clear blue skies and the promise of a glorious sunny day. Shame I've got to go into work ... #

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• 18:58 The Twitter Happiness score for thermalsatsuma is: 493. happytweets.com #
• 19:51 Primeval is set at the Top Gear airfield today - wonder if they'll be hunting down Jeremy Clarkson? #

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Sunday Links

• Two Men For Marriage The creepy evangelical Christians at NOM (the ones behind that stupid advert) have launched a campaign called 2M4M (2 million 4 marriage) to take away marriage rights. It would be nice if anybody searching for that hateful campaign found 'Two Men For Marriage' instead, so please link to this site from as many places as you can!
• SteamPunk Magazine Issue 5 now out!
• Tetris Furniture Do want!
• Pimp your Enterprise The NCC-1701 given a fresh lick of paint
• Readability Turns busy websites into readable text at the touch of a button
• The Flaming Bacon Lance of Death Does exactly what it says on the tin
• Starship Titanic | The Novel now available on the web. Honest.
• Fantastic photomontage a timeline from 1857 - 2007
• 17 More Images You Won't Believe Aren't Photoshopped
• Daft Punk: The Game An 8-bit retro style game - worth a go if you like the music
• DeepLeap Yet another word game, but this one is perfectly paced and has the ability to replay particular rounds to improve your score. It's a beta version, but very playable nonetheless. This will be huge.
  

Six degrees of freedom

I think it was Elite that first grabbed my imagination by the throat and refused to let go.

As soon as launched my ship from the docking bay and flipped round to see the space station slowly rotating above the planet Lave I was hooked by the glorious sense of freedom. I could go anywhere in the galaxy, trade goods, smuggle contraband, hunt pirates for bounty, be a pirate myself if I wanted to. If I'm honest, I never quite made it to Elite status, although if you added up all of the kills from all of the various versions of the game I've played over the last 25 years from the original BBC Micro onward I'm probably close.

There were other games with a similar scope - Sid Meier's 'Pirates!' for one - and I must make an honourable mention of the early incarnations of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Just firing up the engines on a Cessna Skylane and taking off from Meigs Field to fly around the Chicago skyline was a wonderful experience, even in the glorious monochrome CGA graphics and buzzing pc speaker technology of the day.

I've been playing Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas again recently, and it still gives me the same thrill of interacting with an open world. From the sun bleached streets of Los Santos, to the foggy hills of San Fiero and the dust storms and purple skies of Las Venturas it's a delight just to drive, bike or fly around. I remember that some reviews criticised the sheer scale of the game where you could be driving for ten minutes or more to get to a mission start point, but that is really the point for me. If an open world game is not enjoyable simply for the act of travelling through it then you are missing the point.

One element that I particularly enjoy is the flying, where the sheer variety of aircraft available beats the handful of helicopters in GTA IV. Taking off from the airstrip to the north west of Las Venturas and flying around the desert canyons and mesas of Bone County before turning south to fly under the iconic Carver bridge and then perhaps buzzing the Naval base to pick up five wanted stars is always enjoyable.

The excellent soundtrack is always an enjoyable feature too. I have been listening to some old favourites on SF-UR which take me back to the late 80s and early 90s - A Guy Called Gerald - Voodoo Ray, Joe Smooth and of course 808 State whose Pacific Flight is particularly appropriate for taking the GTA equivalent of a Lear Jet for a spin along the coast line before baling out and parachuting back to earth.

If you haven't played GTA:SA, then I would urge you to pick up a copy cheap on PC, PS/2 or Xbox Live, play through the early stages as quickly as you can until you open up the whole state and then kick back and enjoy it.

Caturday

• 11:06 Received my Black Spot for Tortuga in the post this morning - I'll be splicing the mainbrace for my birthday this year! Yaaargh! #

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• 17:02 Just dug a big hole for a dog poo composter in the garden. My back now hurts. #
• 18:07 Scary religious person at the door. Told him that science can fly you to the moon, religion just flies you into sky scrapers. He went. #

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• 08:03 Thieving dwarves cause supernovae. Best BBC news headline ever! I think Justice Cocklecarrot should be told. tinyurl.com/dhrgza #

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Sunday Links

• 10 Best Geeky Last Words
• 7 Insane Soviet Projects Those wacky Reds just like to go one better than the capitalist running dogs of the West ...
• Assorted Street Posters Weird and wonderful street posters from New York
• Street corner photo art Amazing use of photoshop to meld similar looking people into the same image
• 24 hours worth of photos and sounds
• How To: Build Your Own Letterpress Watch out Caxton!
• BallDroppings Another Google toy - strangely addictive
• Watch 10 terrific 'Easter eggs' in action
• Five Hungry Little Hoglets Cute baby animals for Easter
• The Easter Bunny dissected
• Hitch pwns a fundie A smug Christian radio show host tries the old 'you've broken all of the ten commandments' routine on Christopher Hitchens with hilarious consequences. (Part 2)

Holiday!

Crikey, but I'm ready for a break.

It's been a real slog at work, with looming redundancies leaving me in more or less sole charge of the payroll systems at one of the busiest times of the year with year-end and new on-line forms to implement. I've been fighting off a cold for the last week and finally crashed out yesterday, sleeping for most of the day.

I feel a bit better today, and have had my feet up playing GTA : San Andreas which is still as good as I remember from four years ago. I even managed to breeze through the most infuriatingly tricky mission in the game (the one with the pesky remote control biplanes) with only three attempts. The other bit of games news was the swappage of my old DS for a brand spanking new DSi which is luvverly. The larger screens really do make a world of difference, and the built in cameras and new wifi capabilities are nifty too. Jan also got me the new Puzzle Quest : Galactrix game as a surprise which is as addictive as the old one, and the hex based screen makes the puzzles an order of magnitude more complex. Aces!

I am looking forward to celebrating the whole zombie stick man festival with due reverence by watching Doctor Who and drinking beer - hurrah!

Revenge of caturday

Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes

Nothing to Be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
There is one thing in life that we can be certain of - we are all going to die, sooner or later, and there is nothing that we can do about it.

In this book the author Julian Barnes muses on his own mortality, his fears about death and the process of dying, the unreliability of memory and the temptation to try and apply a narrative to your life. He considers the lives of his parents and their respective declines into infirmity and death, as well as the life of his grandfather about whom he knows little other than from a few scraps of letters and a photograph album. He shares conversations and letters with his philosopher brother, where they compare memories of childhood. He also muses on the non-existence of God opening the book with the sentence "I don't believe in God, but I miss him" - a sentiment that his brother dismisses as "soppy".

This is not an autobiography or a structured academic work, but rather it is constructed of short essays that amble through thoughts and themes, turning them over and revisiting them. He returns to particular subjects, bringing different perspectives to bear each time and not being afraid to change his mind as he goes.

Is this the work of someone approaching death, hoping to placate the grim reaper by staring him in the face? Perhaps, but I think it is something that we all need to do in one form or another.


View all my reviews.

• 09:25 I've got a new DSi - hurrah! Traded in my old DS and some games and got it for £18. #
• 10:18 twitpic.com/33byh - Trying out the DSi camera. This is the external camera ... #
• 10:19 twitpic.com/33byy - ... and this is the internal one #
• 10:20 twitpic.com/33bzn - And this is an obligatory picture of a kitteh #
• 12:26 @@divaschematic Prof Layton, Zelda, Puzzlequest and Wario Ware. They give you £25 for 2 at Game, and Layton got £20 #

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Come and have a go ...

... if you think you're hard enough!

• 20:53 Spag bol with fresh basil ... nom nom and thrice nom! #

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Buffy Redux

It can be a strange experience to re-visit something after a number of years - a favourite book, film or television programme.

I first saw Buffy on tv about ten years or so ago, and we've been watching it again recently starting from the beginning and getting through a couple of episodes a night. I was surprised both by how much I remembered and also by the details that I'd forgotten. The characters are engaging, the dialogue is snappy and occasionally very funny, the fights are all pretty good and the plots (even the monster of the week ones) well worth watching. OK, so it all gets a bit emo and angst ridden in places (particularly in the latter half of season 2) and some of the special effects and prosthetics are a bit on the shonky side (but some are frankly amazing on a tv budget), but the two part season finale 'Becoming' had me on the metaphorical edge of my seat the other night (even if David Boreanaz's Oirish accent in the opening prologue is a crime against humanity). Good stuff, and on to season 3 tonight I think.

I also picked up GTA: San Andreas again after a hiatus of four or five years and was very pleased to find it was as good as I remembered. OK, so some things are sorely missed such as the cover and combat mechanics of GTA IV, and the sat nav directions but I can still find my way back to Grove Street by following the old familiar landmarks (take the turning after Ammunation, then down past Glen Park, cut through the back alleys, turn right at the train tracks and then left at the Binco's on the corner). I got through the first act with its depressing faux Gangsta plot line in around a day's play, so that I could head out into the world beyond Los Santos and enjoy driving a truck along the back roads listening to country and western music on K-Rose, base jumping off a mountain, riding a BMX bike through the woods, knocking over liquor stores in rural towns, chasing rednecks on quad bikes and generally raising Cain. Is a GTA IV : San Andreas too much to hope for?

• 20:26 Those little gremliny things on Primeval are actually pretty disturbing ... #
• 20:30 Ooh good, an estate agent has been mauled to death by a gremlin - that's always entertaining #

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Sunday links

• Bicycle Built for Two Thousand Daisy, Daisy sung by a lot of people
• Short Storyspreadsheet Excel as a Trojan Horse for Literature
• Lego Star Trek
• smarthistory Online art institue with lots of stuff to explore
• Joe Cocker Helpfully subtitled
• Complete Nebula Short Story Nominees 2008 Podcasted for your listening pleasure by Starship Sofa
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Your Old Gadgets
• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome exercises that really work
• Amazing art made with old audio cassette tapes
• Conficker Eye Chart Useful visual guide to see if your pc has been infected
• Blackbeard's booty Real pirate loot - how cool is this!

A New Challenge

I've come to realise that I need to keep pushing myself to try new things - it's too easy to put my feet up and vegetate unless I set a goal to aim for. In recent years I've studied Spanish to GCSE level, learnt the physical skills of fencing and kobudo, written a novel in a month and knuckled down to reading at least one book a week, so now it's time for the big one.

After looking at the prospectus and going to see an advisor at an open day this week, I'm going to sign up for an Open University degree which will add up to six years of part time study. It looks like it's going to be a lot of work, but I really need to do something in the evenings other than falling asleep in front of the telly. Bring it on!

Pawz up - it's Caturday!

More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon

More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Lone is a fabulous idiot - a simple homeless man who realises that he has strange, telepathic powers. He draws to himself a collection of other individuals with similar abilities including Bonnie and Beanie, mute twins who can teleport, Janie - a telekinetic and finally Baby, the strangest of them all. Together they learn to "Blesh", to blend and mesh their abilities, to become a gestalt entity, something new, something more than human.

This is a superb book, probably one of the best science fiction novels of all time. It explores the ideas of what it means to be human, memory and consciousness, the next steps in evolution and the morality and ethos that a new entity will require. It is made up of three linked novellas - The Fabulous Idiot, Baby is Three and Morality - that logically enough form something more than the sum of their parts.

Highly recommended.

View all my reviews.

• 09:28 A distant wheezing / Gasometer sounds like an / Asthmatic dragon #

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• 07:01 Amazing sunrise this morning - is that shepherd's warning then? What does that mean anyway? #

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