I am releasing my first Book Crossing book today.
It's a duplicate copy of Pyramids I happened to own. I will be giving it to my friend who lives in Seattle, so it will kick off with a good number of miles under its feet.
If you are so inclined, you can follow the book.
I finished reading Lord of Light the other day and fancied something a little different.
I spied Harry sitting on my shelf. I've had a few attempts at this book before, but could never get into it. It always struck me as a being a little dull and unoriginal. The Worst Witch and Books of Magic sprang to mind immediately when reading this. Tim Hunter (Books of Magic) bears a striking resemblance to young Harry.
I guess I'm suspicious and biased because Potter went very mainstream. Is the book really that good, or is it just because everyone has hyped it up so much?
I tried to read this book as I might have read The BFG or other Dahl. So I drifted back to my childhood and tried to read it through those eyes. With my childhood-tinted glasses on, this is indeed a fun adventure.
Don't expect high fantasy. This is like Tom Brown's Schooldays with a touch of magic thrown in. I think it works better as a mystery book, but even then quite a leading one.
You might enjoy this book if you're quite young (12 or under) but otherwise give it a miss. If you want a more interesting read about boarding school adventures, then try Dahl's Boy instead. If you want entertaining fantasy, then read some Pratchett.
Reading this book has merely cemented my intial view. Maybe the other books in the series would prove more fruitful, but on the basis of this book alone I don't think I'll ever find out.
Christmas day went without any explosions, which is always a good sign. I prefer the goose we had this year instead of turkey: it's much tastier.
My main gift this year was the iPod (thanks Dad for the cash injection!), but I've come to the realisation that it doesn't stop there.
You will more than likely want a nice case to protect your shiny new toy. Also you'll want a nice pair of headphones to listen to your music. Oh, and you'll need a larger hard drive to store all your music. And let's not forget that you also need lots of new music to listen to! Steve Jobs is an evil genius. Other goodies received included some new Icebreaker gear from Mum, along with socks and underwear - why do I always get those? I have perfectly servicable underwear that has a good few years left in them yet! Thanks Mum!
My sister was very sneaky. She called me up asking me if I would prefer the His Dark Materials trilogy as one book or as 3 separate books. And what do I unwrap on Christmas Day?
Why Quicksilver of course! I'm looking forward to reading that, after I finish this Potter book. She also got me a subscription to National Geographic. Thanks Jo!
I have decided to indoctrinate her into the cult of the iPod, so will hopefully be getting one for her in the next few weeks. Barring any more planes full of iPods going up in smoke (via iPodlounge).
I think the best gift this year was what my sister got. Toe socks! What was the coolest gift in your household this year?
Merry Christmas, if you happen to be visiting today.
You should obviously not be reading blogs, but be eating, drinking, watching TV, sleeping, or engaging in some other low-stress amusing activity.
I'm waiting for people to wake up so I can serve them breakfast. I have smoked salmon and scrambled egg Delia-style planned. I hope they wake up soon - I'm really hungry!
Have a good one.
I first read Zelazny while I was still at school, ordering his Amber series one book at a time. I still consider the Amber series to be the best science-fiction ever written.
It was notoriously difficult to find his other works (my last find was in a 2nd hand bookshop in Fremont, Seattle). Thankfully, someone has had the bright idea of republishing his other works. One of these was Lord of Light: a Hugo award winning earlier work. It takes a look at perception of religion. As I read, I couldn't help thinking about Anne McCaffery's Dragonflight series.
Both take a look at what happens a few centuries after colonizing a planet. Whilst McCaffery deals with more practical issues, Zelazny has chosen to focus on religion.
I don't know if the writers of Babylon 5 (Vorlons, Rangers rebuilding Earth) or Stargate SG-1 (the Asgard and the Gou'ald) were Zelazny fans, but their concepts of technology making men gods certainly echoed. In this book you get to see it from the gods' point of view.
Sam is a familiar protagonist, reminding me of Corwin in the Amber series. He's understated. He's sneaky. He has his own agenda. I liked him immediately. :)
Hinduism and Buddhism feature prominently, so it may be helpful (but not necessary) if you know a little about them. However, I suspect you will have at least heard the names of the gods.
Which faith is best going to serve the populace? Should knowledge be shared or should the mortals prove themselves worthy first? Why choose Hinduism or Buddhism to shape a new world? What happens when the gods disagree?
A thought-provoking book by a great author.
My recent acquisition, has meant that I need to reassess my music collection.
The ideal solution would be to rip each CD and save the tracks with lossless compression (thanks for that one Andy). Then as and when I want to I can encode these to MP3s, or whatever comes along in future. This requires that I have enough space on my HDDs. I don't have enough spare HDD space to do this. I have just about enough disk space to store my collection on MP3s. Now the next step is determining at what quality I will encode at.
I took a look at iTunes, and their ripping/encoding is fast. iTunes is hooked up to the Gracenote CDDB, which I guess means they have cleaner data than FreeDB. iTunes can be configured to automatically rip and encode a CD on insert. iTunes can encode in AAC.
So why did I choose to use grip? Because I can use lame as the encoder. It also means I don't have to spend unnecessary time in Windows XP. Some FreeDB entries are a little messy - please learn to spell rhythm people - but the title of a song is secondary to the quality of the encoding. That was the clincher. Despite the niceness of the iTunes interface, it ultimately comes down to the music.
Hopefully I'll get my music re-ripped and encoded in a few weeks.
How do you maintain your music collection?
It's Christmas on thursday (thank you C for pointing this out).
I guess I had better get started making all those gifts I planned to make. I'll see how far I get, and at least I still have tuesday and wednesday to buy stuff if it all goes horribly wrong. :)
Happy holidays!
The iPod was in the Netherlands on thursday night. Then poof! The delivery man appears at 11am on friday with an iPod-shaped box.
They're evidently on a big drive to get everyone's iPod to them for Christmas.
So I stared at the box for a while. If I opened the box, then I wouldn't get anything done for the rest of the day. I cracked it open. My refurbished 2G 20GB iPod looked like new, which I think is their aim. Quite pleased, as I heard the newer iPods have a shorter battery life. :)
I ordered a Mac iPod, but I knew the only difference was the filesystem they ship with: Mac iPods use HFS+, whereas Win iPods use FAT32. HFS+ support in Linux is still flaky, so I decided to reformat it as FAT32.
Only a few things stood in the way.
So I nipped down to the local computer giblets store. They had a 6-pin Firewire PCMCIA, but not the one Apple recommend. Well I went for a 6-pin to 4-pin cable instead for £9. Note that any Firewire PCMCIA card will not allow charging (unless you use it like a bridge).
Got home and started charging the iPod (should really have started it before I went out, but I wanted to make sure I had all the parts before I started. I think it's the Lego builder in me). I spent the next 3 hours checking the clock every 10 minutes.
Then I booted into Windows XP (I know, but this was the quickest way to a working iPod). I restored a Windows filesystem, and it appeared to be happy enough with that. Dragged some existing mp3s into iTunes, and we were away!
I've been using it all weekend and it's great! Now I'm trying to figure out the best way to get all my music on and how to get it to work in Linux (I've had some success but I think I'm going to have to upgrade my kernel for a more stable solution).
Venue: Odeon, Leicester Square
Well that's the first time I've had to go to the loo mid-movie in a long time - I was in the cinema from 3pm-7pm.
I read the book last year, so it was still reasonably fresh in my mind. I could only spot one part they omitted, near the end. The rest was pretty spot on.
The many battles were well done, although I wished there'd have been some Uruk-hai kicking some butt. Peter Jackson left them out, prefering to squash orcs/humans with large bits of masonary.
The Mumakils finally see some action, although they do appear to be a bit wimpy - apparently you only need an elf about to take them down.
Before I went, I was surprised to hear about people crying when they watched this. There are lots of heroic moments, and acts of humility: you won't have a dry eye.
Here's looking forward to the 10 disc special edition with about a day's worth of footage.
I've come to the realisation that I love my clothes because they are actually pyjamas!
I picked up my current wardrobe in New Zealand. The deceptively sunny weather in Christchurch meant that I was woefully underprepared for Queenstown and Wanaka. Sandals and shorts just weren't going to cut it in the mountains.
A very helpful young sales girl managed to flog me all this lovely Icebreaker gear. They always keep me at a nice temperature. They deal well with water - I won't get cold when my shirt gets wet. As was explained to me: it's because they're made of merino wool. They're like magic pyjamas. If only I could afford more!
Are your favourite clothes actually pyjamas in disguise?
Travelling around the world, I picked up lots of books at 2nd hand bookshops. I'd end up leaving books in hostels, or people's houses.
If only I'd heard of Book Crossing earlier. Heh, it still took seeing it on Twilight Café and Red and Purple Haze to push me into visiting.
The idea is to tag your books and then pass them on some how. Hopefully the next person will update what's happening to the book now.
You can follow the adventures of your book around the world!
Okay, I bought one.
Thanks to a few people giving me gifts and repaying loans. Despite the arguments for a pig, I went for the iPod - just a touch more portable and less feeding involved.
I purchased a refurbished 20GB unit, which I think is 2nd generation - I'm not even sure what else comes with it.
I don't think it will arrive in time for Christmas, but I'm not too fussed. I can spend the time getting my CDs ready.
The concept of the film was intriguing. It was a pyramid scheme, but based on good deeds for one another.
The first person does a big good deed for 3 other people. These people then carry on the good deed cycle by paying it forward to three more people. The deeds have to be significant, almost always life-changing.
It is a simple idea, but does rely on people continuing the cycle; the basis of all pyramid schemes. But why not try it? At the least you will have done a good deed for three people, even if it doesn't continue.
It reminded me of the smiling meme. If you start the day by seeing people smiling at you, you're more likely to smile at other people too. And so on.
Please note that How to Save the World via 3rd House Party, has a more concrete plan for making the world a better place.
My weekend visiting friends was a violent reminder of dial-up connections and Microsoft operating systems.
"Let me just check that on the internet," meant booting into some sort of Windows operating system.
Beep. Ssssh.
Internet Explorer - another blast from the past - apparently hasn't evolved tabbed browsing yet, or the ability not to crash the entire OS when surfing more than one page.
Beep. Ding. Ding.
The fantastically slow connection would also sympathetically die occassionally and downloads would have to be started again. Why do people do this to themselves?
It really made me thankful that I use a completely different setup devoid of such problems: Firebird + Linux + ADSL + Wireless (bonus component).
So be thankful for what you have, and be aware that there are some poor souls out there still at the mercy of their OS and dialup connections.
The Animal Welfare Laws have not been updated in over 90 years.
There is a new bill being introduced in 2004, but it is dependent on public interest. To get the bill to go through as possible, please sign the petition.
This weekend I didn't add an entry on friday, or saturday.
Why?
The entry I wrote on friday was about the hassle and stress caused by someone parking in front of my driveway for most of the day - which I have to stop myself from expounding here. I was visiting friends on Saturday, thus no blogging either.
Why didn't I post the first entry? Why am I even writing this entry? I came back home and checked my regular reads. I found some traffic on Alicia's site about How Not To Blog. For some reason this reminds me of the fact that I'm prepared to fight for someone's right to say what they want, even if I don't agree with what they are saying.
I'm not going to comment on whether the list is justified or correct. They have the right to say how they think people should not blog. Don't know why they feel they have to (the cynic in me says it's near Christmas and they need the ad revenue), but anyway. TMTOWTDI seems to be an appropriate retort.
I write a lot of entries which don't make it to the website. I've written about dreams I've had, politics, privacy, freedom, some plain old rants, etc. I like to write them, as it's good to vent. However, they mostly don't make it to the live site. It's not the right place for them.
I tend to skip blogs which focus strongly on politics (especially American politics) and lack a personal touch. Why? I read blogs for less serious reasons. If I want politics or an impersonal view, I'll read news sites, a newspaper, or a magazine.
I read blogs for amusement, entertainment, and something to nudge the grey matter. The same reasons I read books, comics, or watch films. I hope that this blog will provide a similar appeal to others.
I see this blog as:
If that doesn't match your definition of a blog, then:
These aren't the blogs your looking for.
Move along. Move along.
For those of you interested, the flavour of this blog is: Chocolate Amargo.
What flavour is your blog?
Nothing on at the cinema, besides Return of the King, which I have a ticket to for next weekend.
So we decided to stay in to spill ice-cream on our shirts and watch
Johnny Depp is very good in this - he sounded a little like Richard E Grant. He did have some good lines too:
Yeah, but what happened to the rum?
Maybe he based Captain Jack Sparrow on
Lots of British actors got a look in too, including Mackenzie "
Sword fights. Skeletons. Ships. Monkeys. Pirates. What more could you want?
After delaying watching Kill Bill for several weeks, the nearest cinema still showing it was about 45 minutes away. Braving the fog and cold, we made it in time for the late showing.
Tarantino is back. This is as good as
An unnamed woman (Uma) has taken it upon herself to seek vengence on a few people. She's got a sword and will use it to cut things off.
Blood. Lots of it. Don't go if you're squeamish about the red stuff.
I can't wait to see Vol 2.
After prompting from Alicia, I investigated the comments issue.
MT sets the path on the cookie to the current directory. What this means is that if you are using permanent links, then the cookie will only remember you on an article by article basis.
This article explains a nice fix for the problem: Set the path to be /, and the domain to be your actual domain. I've done this, so hopefully you'll only have to enter your details one more time!
Do people still check their favourite sites in a web browser? I would like to recommend news aggregation as an alternative.
It basically means that all the websites (more or less) I want to watch are in one place. It automagically pulls the feeds from the sites at intervals (usually every hour or two) and shows me them in one page.
I can see which ones have been updated and go on to read or comment on an article that pushes my buttons.
Coz life is too short to be hitting sites which haven't updated their content in days.
Get yourself a news aggregator. I use Amphetadesk with AmphetaFrames. There are online alternatives too.
Well the sites have to offer you some sort of way to get their site in a bite-sized chunk. More than likely a site will identify RSS or XML feeds available.
Here are some examples:
One of the reasons I switched to Movable Type was that their RSS feeds were available by default. They are just another template. Other blogging tools have ways to do this too.
If you want a wider readership, then enable this on your site. People will grow tired that you are the only site they like to read without a feed.
I hope to be adding your site soon. :)
Sonic is recovering nicely.
He is much more perky this morning, even dashing occassionally. Still not eating though.
This is Sonic's debut photo on the web.
Alicia's post has reminded me about a Boing Boing post about a digital sundial. Now all I need is a southern exposure... and some sun.
I've put up some of my photos from Kuala Lumpur.
These were all shot digitally, with the Canon EOS 10D.
I was going to blog about the Turner Prize, but I couldn't really find anything inspiring to say about it.
Of the 4 finalists, I like Anya Gallaccio's work best. I doubt she'll win because the Turner Prize is for the artist who has done the least amount of work.
Fish update: Sonic is looking much better this morning. His rear fin appears to have cleared up. Maybe I'll feed him tomorrow.
After a spot of lunch, we returned to the Natural History Museum for the Wildlife Photography.
When I last went, you could vote for your favourite photo. I couldn't see anywhere to do that this time, so here are my picks from this year's exhibition:
In alphabetical order, I would like to wish a happy birthday to:
Is it a requirement to have your birthday on this day to be my friend? No, but it helps.
If anyone else would like to also have their birthdays on this day, then please let me know. I attend parties on a first come first served basis.
Yesterday was a photo double-whammy.
I met up with C at South Ken. Whilst waiting I observed confused tourists trying to work out the way to the museums due to the tunnel being flooded (a hand drawn map may have been more useful than written instructions London Underground!). Sniggered as an old man muttered about how this never happened in his day. And then C arrived.
Off to the Natural History Museum we went. First stop was the outdoor Earth from the Air exhibition.
The first thing you see is a map of the earth with marks showing you where photos were taken. The photos are mounted around the map, with matching braille text and images.
You can walk on the map, but you have to take your shoes off. I didn't because it was too cold!
Yann's photos are blown up on boards with explanatory text, which I think is the same as in the
They are arranged in a maze like pattern which makes you wonder if more boards are popping up behind you as you finish another row.
Interspersed are global messages. Reminding you of what humans are doing to the earth.
There was a little hut where you could buy all manner of EFA stuff. They showed a short film about how he had taken these shots.
Apparently, all you need is a camera, assistants willing to be abandoned on icebergs, a helicopter, and permission to fly.
The crowd varied from screaming school kids to old people. I think all enjoyed the photographs and hopefully went away with something to think about.
Well Sonic is moving around today, which is a good sign. His fins are still down though. Unfortunately, his skin is looking worse. He's still not eating.
I have been quite shocked at how blasé people are being.
Well I've had this fish for 10 years. Tell me what your reaction would be if I had said it was my dog or cat? It's a living creature; it doesn't have to be a mammal for you to care about it!
I was going to blog about my great day out, but my fish is sick. :(
This morning I went to feed him and he was at the bottom of the tank. He wouldn't come up for food. Looked decidedly ill. Unfortunately, I had already made plans for today (I'll blog them, just not right now).
Got back tonight and gave him a healthy dose of Disease Safe. He moved around a bit, but he may just have been avoiding the chopstick I used to stir in the juice.
We'll see how he gets on tomorrow.
Today was blood donation day in my town.
Unfortunately, I was a few days shy of being able to donate blood. Since I've not been back in the country for 6 months yet, I'm not allowed to donate until next month.
Disappointed, but a little relieved that I didn't have to have a needle stuck up my arm for 15 minutes!
So, I would like to encourage you to go and donate on my behalf this month, wherever you are. It doesn't take long and they'll give you a cup of tea and a biscuit!
You'll feel like a better person aftewards. Promise.
Max Lyons has posted a gigapixel image.
Okay, it's not there, but you can see a resized version. Interesting reading about how he did it.
I'm wondering whether he went for the really big house-sized monitor or a billboard for the prints.
Doctor Who - Scream of the Shalka is a flash animation, with Richard E Grant as the Doctor.
He actually admits to not having watched any of the original series and is acting on the basis that it's Sherlock Holmes in Space. I think that works pretty well.
Episode 4 starts on thursday. There are a few other stories available, with the original Doctors doing the voices.
Cosgrove Hall made the animation. Who? They made classics such as Jamie and the Magic Torch, Dangermouse, and Count Duckula. Glad to see they are adapting to new mediums.
I want an iPod.
Not for any rational reason. I don't think people who buy Apple products buy it after logically considering the alternatives. No, they buy it because it oozes style.
I don't have enough money to buy one. For a 10GB iPod it's £250 from Apple. Maybe because Apple will laser engrave your iPod with text of your choice. You can even see what it looks like before you buy! That's just another one of Apple's stylish ideas.
I'm also wondering if I have enough worthwhile music to put on there. I've got so many CDs that I don't like. My tastes have changed, and I bought many of them for the wrong reason (like listening to one song and rushing out to buy the album).
A 10GB iPod would be able to store approximately 2500 songs. Should be enough. It's a huge leap from my current MP3 player, which holds 128MB.
To put the cost in percpective, you could buy any one of the following instead:
There are just too many choices for my imaginary money.
Please don't steal bandwidth.
Would you eat Nemo? I'm kinda reluctant because of the look on his face.
(via Desde mi ombligo)
Well today the money in the meter ran out and my Pipex account ceased to be.
Website. Email addresses. 56K Dial-up. Poof! They've all gone to the land of dead-links. After 8 years, I have finally moved on.
Bye-bye Pipex.