tigerfort

Life having been complicated round here recently, we hadn't defrosted the freezer for a while. Quite a long while. More than two years, actually, and it wasn't a new (never mind frost-free) freezer, by any means. Having been given a new freezer for Christmas by our families, we finally found ourselves in a position to clear out (and then probably get rid of) the old one.

On Wednesday evening, I started the process of defrosting it, having transferred the contents. Many times in the past I've speeded the defrosting of a large freezer with careful application of a hammer, but Wednesday evening was the first time I've ever used a chisel. However, suitable application of brute force via mallet and cold-chisel allowed me to get through the ice sheet that blocked access to the bottom drawer and recover the items stored therein. Well, most of them: there was a bag of chopped peppers that was sufficiently frozen in that I simply couldn't get it out without damaging the freezer or injuring myself.

This morning, I was finally able to remove the sliced peppers, and pull out and throw away the last chunks of ice in the bottom of the freezer. I can only assume that there were a number of ice elementals resident in the thing after all that time, and I hope they've found new, more appropriate homes.

If most people's lives are best measured in terms of what they eat and who they talk to, does that mean that the appropriate co-ordinates to use are Nomitude and Nattertude?

This post is really a message for those who were members of the Oxford Arthurian Society; sorry to those on my Flist (most of you) to whom it's of no interest.

Sorting through piles of papers, I recently rediscovered* three boxfiles full of ArthSoc stuff - Presidential and Secretarial, so essentially meetings of committee meetings and the like. (Some of you probably have a better idea of the specific contents than I do:) I don't want to have to keep them forever more, but don't want to throw them away unless I have to, so unless anyone objects I'm proposing to try and find a suitable collection at the Bod to give them to. Anyone who wishes to object is welcome to do so, provided they suggest an alternative plan that doesn't involve me keeping the things for more than another month or two ;-)

* I knew they were in the house somewhere, but hadn't seen them since we moved and wasn't going to go looking specifically. But now that I've found them....

We now return you to your normally scheduled LJ-ing.

I've been meaning to post for ages, but totally failed to do so. Some of this is generic fail, some is personal computer-specific fail (playing games in my limited keyboard time has seemed more appealing than actual communication rather more than usual recently; I suspect this is weather-related), some is technical computer-specific fail. But anyway, happy Christmas/New Year/Winter festival(s) of choice to all, and happy birthday to those who've had birthdays recently.

Also, we haz snow. This will not surprise anyone, I imagine :) OTOH, since we're both inclined to hoarding, we'll only run out of food without resupply in about April, and anyway I've been going round the corner to the supermarket most days because it helps keep the cabin-fever under control.

I'm probably planning to continue with the book-commentaries if I can (and do something about November and December, come to that; I reached 120 new books in 2009 in total), but I'm not (for the moment) going to set myself a target number. I might try and post a bit more frequently, since doing a whole month's worth at a time got a bit daunting at times.

Incidentally, for those who think that there's no need to worry because this year's Queen's speech is "all posturing for the election", you do know that this bill is being fast-tracked and has already had its second reading in the Lords, yes?

Further to my last two posts, more information on the appalling "digital economy bill" keeps coming to light. There's a nice post at booktrade.info describing how the bill "inadvertantly" imposes potentially huge new costs on small publishers of pretty much anything (books, games, photographs... anything with copyright potential). (Specifically, it creates new registration and licensing requirements for any 'organisation' which licences any copyright material created by more than one different individual, or acts as agent for any such owners. So of course, that applies to authors' agents as well as small creative companies.) The Open Rights Group has a post up from a specialist lawyer, giving chapter and verse on what's wrong with the bill. It's long, and fairly detailed, and well worth reading. One simple point of particular note, though, is that the so-called 'three-strikes rule' is nothing of the kind - not only is there no requirement for such disconnections to relate to a number of "strikes" there is no need for disconnection to be linked to infringement of copyright. Nor is there any requirement for evidence of any wrongdoing, or any allowance for an appeal. (Although I believe the EU is hastily passing some legislation to insist on something resembling a fair judicial process; somehow this seems likely to be the one piece of EU law that the UK gov't doesn't insist on applying over strenuously. Sigh.)

Tell everyone you know, and complain to your MP, please. The bill is very nasty indeed (for everyone except big media, natch), and needs to be stopped.

There's now a Number 10 petition against a small part of the proposed law; please go and sign it. Petitions don't mean much, and there are a lot of other things wrong with the proposed bill, but every little helps.

In case anyone has missed the BBC's round-the-clock coverage of absolutely no articles at all, or the slightly better information in the papers (being this 'we support big media' piece in the Torygraph and this slightly better one in the Gruaniad), our beloved leaders have published a "Digital Economy Bill" as part of this year's legislative program.

The proposed law scares me, and not just me. It scares everyone who actually has an interest in constructing (rather than preventing) some kind of useful digital economy; it scares every serious creative worker who knows anything about the subject (I imagine the record companies will wheel out the usual collection of hugely rich tools who know nothing about computing to support the insanity, but...); if you know about it and it doesn't scare you, then it should. Why? I think I'll let Cory Doctorow at Boingboing express some of the problems:

It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the "three-strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system

In addition to which,
These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson -- or his successor in the next government) the power to make "secondary legislation" (legislation that is passed without debate) - including creating new remedies for online infringements, the ability to "confer rights" for the purposes of protecting rightsholders and also the authority to impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement.

There's a good deal of additional discussion elsewhere (see, for example, Charlie Stross, Talk-Talk's understandably unhappy response to a proposed law requiring them to spend vast amounts of money spying on their customers for the benefit of another industry, and the thoughts of the Open Rights Group. [ETA: I'm pleased to see that at least one UK political party appear to have their communal head screwed on correctly about this; can't say I'm surprised which of the three main parties it is, either....]

Join the ORG, write to your MP, express to someone somewhere what a really bad idea this is. Either that, or move to Sweden.

Current Mood: Stressed

Thus beating my initial target in ten months instead of twelve. (And I'm only a fortnight behind on the write-ups, too.)

90) Trick or Treatment? (Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst). A sensible, rational book that examines the evidence for "complementary and alternative medicine", reaching the conclusion (fairly obvious to anyone paying attention to the real world, rather than webternet frothing or newspaper 'debate') that some kinds of "CAM" are appropriate for treating some conditions (but are often oversold as panaceas by their advocates) while many don't work at all. The advocates of the latter, funnily enough, range from genuine (but sadly mistaken) believers to deliberate frauds preying on ill people. The front cover quotes the Daily Mail describing the book as "definitive - if controversial"; controversial only with people who make money selling CAM that doesn't work, oddly enough.[borrowed]

91) Going Under (Justina Robson). The third part of the series that started with (69) and (74), which continues to improve with each book. The porn and Sue-ism have now essentially departed, and the protagonist faces some interesting and difficult situations. I still don't feel any particular sympathy with any of the characters, but they're not actively problematic and the story and writing are both good.[Library]

92) The Android's Dream (John Scalzi). The first thing of Scalzi's that I've read. He has a good reputation, and I can see why. A book about robots, aliens, human identity, scientific dilemmas, and... sheep. Great fun, in a bouncy personal-action sci-fi way.[Library]

93) The Time-Traveller's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger). The story of a woman who spends her whole life waiting for Mr Right, with the unusual twist that she really does know who Mr Right is - and that he will turn up and marry her. Well written and enjoyable; I can see why it won awards, even if no aspect of it is particularly groundbreaking. Also, as an afterthought, it's interesting to see a book about a time-traveller that's written largely (about 2/3, at a guess) from the point of view of the primary non-time-travelling character.

94) The Reality Dysfunction (Peter F Hamilton). A vast book filled sci-fi space opera stuff. The writing isn't bad, but the problems are many. Some - most notably the apparent anthropocentrism, and the fact that the author appears to use sex scenes as a substitute for character development - are countered in later volumes, but some aren't. In particular, I found the author's violent (but probably unconscious) homophobia both disturbing and offensive, and that (while less obvious after the first book - mostly because they lack the continual sex) is a running sore throughout the trilogy. (There are problems with the depiction of female characters, too, but nothing to compare with the sole non-heterosexual.)

95) Counterfeit World (Dan Galouye). An interesting, gratifyingly complex book about the problems of artificial intelligence - both definitional and moral and ethical - as well as some nice work on questions like whether it's possible to distinguish reality from simulation - and whether it really matters. I'll be looking for other stuff by the author.

96) Brontomek! (Michael Coney). For the first few chapters, I wondered how this had won a "best novel" award, but I did come round to it. The eponymous big machines only turn up a couple of times, and are frankly irrelevant to a really quite interesting (and cynical) book about identity, humanity, slavery, and corporate ethics. Worth reading, if you can find a copy.

97) The Neutronium Alchemist (Peter F Hamilton). Which resolves some but by no means all of the problems I had with the first one (without introducing any new ones), and is slightly smaller but still a humungous wodge of a book. I'm really not sure I would recommend the trilogy to people, simply on the basis that there are plenty of well-written books out there that have caused me far less desire to thwap the author round the head with a copy of his own substantial work.

98) Shadow of the Torturer (Gene Wolfe). "The Book of the New Sun" is widely held to be one of the classic decaying-high-tech-universe fantasy novels, and in some ways I can see why. Unlike (48), this is Wolfe at his (famous) best; well written, involving, and memorable. But the story of Severian's journey from apprentice ~~Torturer~~"Seeker for Truth and Penitence" to Autarch does seem to me to be telling in ways that the writer never intended. If this was the only thing of Wolfe's I'd read, I'd be uncertain whether the powerful misogyny was that of the author or the - self-admittedly self-centred - narrator, but it isn't, and I'm not (although, to be fair, I think it might be intentionally emphasised here). The four novels that make up TBotNS are worth reading, but with caution, because of this attitude.
99) Claw of the Conciliator (Gene Wolfe). Probably the best of the four, overall; the interplay between the characters is interesting, and there's plenty to learn about Severian's world. Provided you can cope with having to read about ~~Wolfe~~Severian's assorted lust objects all the time, of course.
100)Sword of the Lictor (Gene Wolfe). Not as good as the first two, but with slightly less of their weaknesses, as well as less of their strengths.
101)Citadel of the Autarch (Gene Wolfe). Which comes to a reasonably satisfying ending, but is probably the weakest of the four novels nonetheless given how much it flops in the middle.

September contained a lot of re-reading, hence only four new books.

86) The Meaning of it All (Richard Feynman). Strangely, I've never previously read this collection (three short essays on science and society), which achieves the usual brilliant Feynman qualities. They're straight transcripts of lectures, rather than 'proper' written essays, and thus less focussed than Feynman's written works, but still much more worth reading than many more recent (not to mention lengthier:) books on the subject.[Library]

87) Dark Space (Marianne de Pierres). Good grief, what an awful book. Skiffy that doesn't even try to achieve "Sci-fi" status, with a rather thin plot and pretty poor writing to boot. The one-dimensional female characters cover a range from monomaniacal to utterly selfish, while their male counterparts vary from monomaniacal to simplisticly evil. Then, twenty pages from the end, the author decided to try rape-as-plot-device to see whether that made anyone want to read the next volume. I certainly don't; I needed a wash after merely remembering reading this one.[Library]

88) Blue at the Mizzen (Patrick O'Brian). Alas, no more. Well, there's the "unfinished voyage", which I might read, and unless O'Brian's will was written carefully, there'll probably be a generation of descendants who decide to go all Fleming, but I almost certainly won't be reading those....

89) The Blind Watchmaker (Richard Dawkins). Dawkins is a bit variable, to my mind. Most of this book is good, but it suffers from what I've come to regard as his usual problem - he's much more readable when discussing something he's interested in (like evolution) than when ranting about something he disapproves of (like religion); this book is, of course, mostly the former. I'm not entirely convinced it deserves its high status among popular science books, but it certainly isn't a bad explanation of how evolution works (and how we know how it works - and can prove it).

Bringing me up-to-date (or at least up-to-only-a-month-behind), at last. October's list takes me over a hundred new books for the year with two months in hand!

Whoops; none of these got written up at the time, although thankfully they weren't too hard to dig back for. Once again, I'm cheating a bit by not saying anything about individual Aubrey/Maturin books (some of which are better than others, but they're all fun;). Still, I'm only six to ten weeks behind writing these, and I have actually done half of September's write-ups already. I'll try and get the other two done this week :)

76) Marcher (Chris Beckett). A gratifyingly twisted novel of a nastily familiar parallel near-future visited by drug-powered dimension-travellers. Dark, but very entertaining; excellent thinking and superb writing combined in one interesting and enjoyable package.[Library]

77) Replay (Ken Grimwood). A very worthwhile entry in one of the assorted "masterworks" series. Good writing and some interesting playing around with the traditional human motivators in a nice (sort-of-)time-travel story that carefully (and deliberately, and also - for once - unproblematically) avoids issues of how and why to concentrate on the ever-moving present.[Library]

78) Unspeak (Steven Poole). Politicians, journalists and PR/spin-~~droids~~people deliberately load the language they use in order to try and prejudice your thinking. Who'd have guessed? Sadly, the author doesn't seem to have anything interesting, original or thought-provoking to say on the subject. Yawn.

79) Who Runs Britain? (Robert Peston). Peston, as the BBC's business editor, has better access to the people who own and run the big banks and dodgy megacorps than most of us, and yet still manages to not be entirely seduced by their world. An intelligent and pleasantly unbiased discussion of the financial crash and the behaviour that caused it, along with some sociological and psychological commentry on the latter.

80) The Thirteen Gun Salute (Patrick O'Brian). The library copy and I were finally in the building at the same time.[Library]
81) Clarissa Oakes (Patrick O'Brian).
82) The Wine-Dark Sea (Patrick O'Brian).
83) The Commodore (Patrick O'Brian).
84) The Yellow Admiral (Patrick O'Brian).
85) The Hundred Days (Patrick O'Brian).

Still catching up; some of these were written up at the time (or not long after), while others have just had notes made based on what I remember two to three months later. This may or may not show :)
No O'Brian this month, alas; I had to wait until August to get my hands on a library copy of "The thirteen-gun salute".

69) Keeping It Real (Justina Robson). In my traditional threeway classification, this falls on the boundary between sci-fi and skiffy. I'm sure someone recommended Robson to me, and I can only assume that some of her earlier books (nominated for a whole range of SF awards) are better than this. After a few chapters of pretty tedious and clumsy exposition, it settles down into a lightweight but moderately entertaining adventure story, but there's no science and very little depth, and the heroine rapidly goes from slightly overpowered to full-on raging Sue-ism. Then the final third of the book descends into "Mary-Sue has l33t healing sex with elves" (complete with classic hurt-comfort. Yaay!) interspersed with occasional moments of rampagingly obvious political allegory and stunningly trite moral observations. Since Robson can certainly write well, I'll probably try and look out one of her earlier, award-nominated, books, in the hopes of some proper science fiction, rather than this self-indulgent second-rate-fanfic stuff. I might consider reading the sequel for light entertainment, since I can cope with the awful cheese between the adventure bits, but I'd probably rather have... well, about anything from June's list, to be honest.[Library]

70) Nation (Terry Pratchett). Which is a good book and highly recommended, and which I should probably read again so that I can offer some more coherent comments now that I'm trying to write about it a couple of months later. I did have slight problems with the couple of points where (things that are very difficult to explain without resorting to) supernatural events are used to hurry along the plot of a book that is, basically, a diatribe about the need to apply rational thought to everything without exception, but mostly it does pretty well. Good solid Pratchett, and definitely recommended to all three people who hadn't read it before me :)

71) Science of Discworld 3 (Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen). Um, not bad, I guess. The story parts are fairly entertaining (if unavoidably anthropocentric), and the other half is perfectly adequate pop-science explanation of evolution and related stuff (which totally failed to grab me because I know that much anyway).[library]

72) Unjust Rewards (Polly Toynbee, David Walker). Another polemic against the way that the country (and most of the world) is run for the benefit of the few rather than the many. Unlike many, however, Toynbee and Walker don't just complain about the problems - they suggest solutions (and indeed solutions that might actually work, in many cases, since they're much less based on wild-idealism-against-the-facts than some I've seen). Also well-written and, for both those reasons, much less depressing than most similar books I've read.[Library]

73) In God We Doubt (John Humphrys). "Confessions of a failed Athiest", the cover has it, and in theory he's talking about agnosticism, which I thought might make for a good book; there are plenty of books advocating either religion or atheism, but rather fewer for the position of doubt. The early parts of the book, where Humphrys is discussing his research and discussions with various theologians, are excellent. Then he starts burbling and giving his own thoughts on matters, and the prose style falls off rather - while the content disintegrates completely (anthropic fallacies and argument from incredulity everywhere, never mind the other problems). In addition to showing that Humphrys is a good journalist but a poor theologian, I have to agree with the various interviewees who told him that he was a confused theist rather than an agnostic - he so obviously wants to believe in something (anything!).[Library]

74) Selling Out (Justina Robson). OK, so I saw this (the sequel to (69)) in the library and decided to have a quick flip through the first few chapters. I then proceeded to read the rest of it, with some degree of skimming. Much better than the first; still no science, but highly enjoyable writing, an entertaining spy-thriller plot, and no cheesy porn.[Library]

75) Bad Science (Ben Goldacre). Which is very much in the style of his blog. I don't think I gained anything from the book except for details relating to a few specific cases, but it would make a fairly good basic primer for people who need an introduction to thinking sceptically and doubting authority - which is, after all, Dr Goldacre's intention. I'm a bit uncertain how much of an audience it's likely to get among the people who actually need it, though; it seems more likely to be picked up by people who already read his blog or Guardian column....[Library]

Still catching up on my backlog. I'm cheating a little bit here by not putting individual comments for each volume of the series, but there is some overall commentary in the notes on the first book in each case.

50) Between Planets (Robert Heinlein). Solid plot, plausible characters and good writing; one of the best Heinlein "juveniles", IMO, though not as good as "Have Space-suit - will travel".

51) Rocketship Galileo (Robert Heinlein). An OK "Boys' Own Adventure" type story, but nothing special. To be fair, it is Heinlein's first published novel, and not bad for a first novel, if very much of its period.

52) His Majesty's Dragon (Naomi Novik). Pretty good, although I found the structural flaws became more obvious in the sequels. The errors of fact were irritating (all the more so because I actually read these three interspersed with the early O'Brian novels), but the world-building failures were more problematic, for me at least. So fun, but frustrating, and arguably a good demonstration of the problems with using not-quite-the-real-world; the contingent changes aren't thought - or followed - through. ISTR that I also found the way that the ethical issues of the relationship between the two sentient species - humans and dragons - were (largely not) treated in the first three books more than a little disturbing.
53) Throne of Jade (Naomi Novik).[library]
54) Black Powder War (Naomi Novik).[library]

55) Master and Commander (Patrick O'Brian). Strangely, although I've been surrounded by these for a long time (as

mobbsy has cause to know:), and I've read and enjoyed short passages from several, I'd never previously read any of the series properly. So, I started at the beginning.... (Arguably cheating a little, since while I haven't read them, they're not coming from my bookcase full of unread books, but hey ;-) I can happily assure anyone here who hasn't read them that the series lived up to my high expectations with ease.
56) Post Captain (Patrick O'Brian).
57) HMS Surprise (Patrick O'Brian).
58) The Mauritius Command (Patrick O'Brian).
59) Desolation Island (Patrick O'Brian).
60) The Fortune of War (Patrick O'Brian).
61) The Surgeon's Mate (Patrick O'Brian).
62) The Ionian Mission (Patrick O'Brian).
63) Treason's Harbour (Patrick O'Brian).
64) The Far Side of the World (Patrick O'Brian).
65) The Reverse of the Medal (Patrick O'Brian).
66) The Letter of Marque (Patrick O'Brian). Where I had to stop, for the time being, as we don't seem to have a copy of the next one ("The thirteen gun Salute").

67) The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester). (Originally published in the UK as "Tiger, Tiger!".) Perhaps less well-known than "The Demolished Man" (which won the first-ever Hugo best-novel award), but IMO a better book (and a better story) - and TDM is extremely good. Everything by Bester is good, but Haldemann is right to describe this as one of sci-fi's "few works of actual genius".[library]

68) Changeling (Roger Zelazny). An entertaining, although not wildly original (especially by Zelazny's standards) magic-versus-technology tale of stolen and swapped children. Good enough to pass a couple of hours in light fluffy reading, but no deep thoughts here. [Library]

Which leaves me only two and a half months behind.

I rewatched the HP4 (Goblet of Fire) film last night, and had to stop a couple of minutes before the end to allow the hysterical giggling to come to a halt. Why? Because when Voldemort says "I'm going to kill you now", he sounds exactly like Rimmer in the "Quarantine" episode of Red Dwarf. He's even zapping his victim with a red beam at the time.

The mental image of the already more-caricature-than-scary Voldemort advancing on Hogwarts wearing a red-and-white checked Gingham dress (and army boots), and discussing his plans with Mister Flibble (who is understandably very cross) was a pleasure to behold, and everyone knows pleasures should be shared :)

I seem to have got a bit behind, somehow, and a four month backlog is a bit embarrassing, so I've finally got round to making notes on the missing one of these ((46), for what it's worth) and put them up. June's batch to hopefully follow fairly soon, followed by July and August :)

42) Professor Branestawm's Perilous Pudding (Norman Hunter). Fairly standard Branestwam fare, with the usual mixture of stories from so-so to brilliant illogicality.

43) A Plague of Demons and other stories (Keith Laumer; ed Eric Flint). There's some good stuff in here, but nothing really brilliant, and either the author or the editor is obsessed with the idea that teh hooman brane is speshul and not subject to the laws of physics. And the title story is actually two unrelated shorts nailed together; it's just that the author didn't know how to finish one or start the other. Definitely disappointing relative to (38), but I don't know which is more typical.[Library]

44) Morning Child (Gardner Dubois). It occurred to me that while I'd read numerous collections edited by Gardner Dubois, I'd never read any of his work as an author. All of the stories in this collection are well written, and present interesting variations on the themes they consider, but somehow they never quite clicked with me. I'd definitely recommend that other people try Dubois's work, but I probably won't be reading it again. Strange, really.[Library]

45) Newton's Wake (Ken MacLeod). Not at all bad, and suffers less from MacLeod's problems with producing endings than some of his other stories, many of which seem to just trail off while you're waiting for the.... I'll probably be reading this one again at some point.

46) Seeds of Earth (Michael Cobley). Highly enjoyable, with some interesting ideas. There's some rather obvious political stereotyping-cum-association, and a total of exactly one major female character, but definitely better-than-average sci-fi.[Library][ETA: I've just bought a cheap s/h copy of this, and might add more detailed commentary when I've re-read it!]

47) Born Under Mars (John Brunner). From Brunner's ridiculously productive patch in the mid-1960s. Simple but ingenious, with a plot that works and nicely drawn characters (no female ones of any significance, although the female walk-on parts do at least get to be doctors and scientists in higher proportion than the men). Not heavy-weight Brunner, but enjoyable and well worth reading twice.

48) Starwater Strains (Gene Wolfe). Five weeks on, I remember nothing about the contents of this book except that they didn't excite me much while I was reading them. I don't think the stories were bad, particularly, but they've very completely failed either to grip me or be memorable in any way at all.[Library]

49) Queen of Candese (Karl Schroeder). Which, by the time I finally wrote it up in September, I still remembered more about than I did about (48) after a fraction of the time. But I couldn't remember all the details, so I got it out of the library to reread. Worth re-reading, although slightly disappointing in comparison to many of Schroeder's other books. I suspect (and the reread reinforced the suspicion) that that's because it takes place in a world that he's already described in a previous book (Sun of Suns); this is an excellent story, with well-written text and solid characters, it's just that - unlike most of Schroeder's books - you're not having to get to grips with the physical and social properties of a weirdly-constructed world at the same time. (While this is set in a different part of Virga to Sun of Suns, and the local societies behave somewhat differently, there's nothing very startling about them, and the underlying physical structure is already known.)[Library]

I'm going to get my book posts a bit more up-to-date, honest (being four months behind is a teeny bit embarrassing), but in the meantime:

One of the books I've not written up yet was Robert Peston's Who Runs Britain?. Coincidentally, Peston recently gave a very interesting lecture on the future of the media and journalism, which I recommend to anyone who hasn't read it.

Like most people I know, I don't have enough shelf space. I want Neil Gaiman's bookshelves. (I wouldn't mind his library, too, and I suspect his house is nicer than mine, but you can't have everything, can you? :)

I also want one of these. OK, it's idiotically impractical for pretty much any actual washing scenario, but with design like that, who cares?

Continuing the vaguely sciencey theme, Ben Fry has put up a rather neat Flash program that compares the text of the different editions of Darwin's "Origin of the Species" (and allows the viewer to look at them, word by word).

A few months ago, the Hubble Space Telescope had a camera upgrade. The new camera is now operational and taking awesome pictures, while Ethan Siegel has put up a nice compare and contrast of the capabilities of the old and new cameras.

Speaking of pretty pictures, Michael Dashow's website includes a rather neat piece of art he did demonstrating the dangers of mistakes in a Cthulhu-oriented workplace. A lot of his other stuff is good, too :)

Happy Birthday to all the assorted people who've had birthdays in the last few months, and also congratulations, good luck and commiserations to everyone who need(s|ed) them for whatever reason.

I was going to try to post every day while stripey_cat is away, and I've failed already[0]. Um, yaay. But I did get lots[1] of tidying done yesterday, which is something. Today, after months of completely failing at sociability, there are three parties I'd like to go to, which will be attended by largely non-intersecting groups of people I've not seen for ages, and which I can't possibly get to all of. So I shall go to the one I was invited to first, and wish those holding the other two happy birthday and good luck in the new house from here. YKWYA.

[ETA: Actually, one of them is on Sunday, so I can in fact go to two. Maybe I should try reading things properly.]

[0] given that there are three months worth of new-book reading notes waiting to be posted, it really shouldn't have been that hard, should it? Although of course, there is actually one gap that I need to backfill in May....

[1] where 'lots' is a term of purely relative meaning. But about as much as I can physically manage, and definitely more than would be possible in a single day if stripey_cat were here.

Nothing much else has changed, either. Stripey_cat is visiting her parents for a few days, so it's quiet (and I'm trying to get some tidying done while I can). Oh, and I realised at the end of June that I hadn't posted my new books for May and wasn't even quite sure what all of them had been, since when I've at least been keeping a list and trying to make a few notes while I'm actually reading each one. I've still got one more (fairly memorable:) book to backfill for May, and then I'll try and get that block posted. June and July should follow in fairly short order, as they're also mostly written up. I'll try and get round to some of the other stuff I've been meaning to do, too....

Incidentally, I still have lots of Dreamwidth invite codes (cos I'm useless, that's why) if anyone needs one.

Ed Yong of "Not Exactly Rocket Science" has done a fantastic parody of the media's deranged excesses over Darwinius masillae. Presumably as a break from his continued excellent writing on actual science.

Today, I bought a second-hand (mass-market fiction) book with the explicit intention of defacing it by writing in it. This feels terribly wrong; it actually feels even more wrong than the time I bought a brand new book with the explicit intention of taking it home and gutting it with a Stanley knife. (Possibly because that was in a good cause(tm), while this is for personal entertainment.) Hopefully I will still feel able to go ahead with the plan - otherwise I'll have wasted 25p!

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tigerfort

February 2010

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In Stripes We Trust

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Fearsome monsters of the cold!

A passing thought

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Sooner than you expect....

Further to my last

Soon there'll be a law against it....

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My brain is weird.

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Life continues

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Reality bites.

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February 2010

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