The Kriptonomicon
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The Kriptonomicon, Dont read everything you believe
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Sat, 26 Jul 2008
Richard III
The Yates, A and I went to see this in Downing College Gardens last week. I'll have photo's of the grounds to upload when I pay my Flikr subscription.. A superb performance as always, with the usually irremediably evil Richard played with sardonic humour and evil leers to the audience beautifully by (goodness, I don't remember his name, and none of the actors appear on the website - how odd!). Still irremediably evil, of course, but... Having seen this many, many years ago at the Arts Theatre, I was expecting a worthy play, not an enjoyable one but I was forgetting that;
A) Shakespeare's quite good actually..
B) The Shakespeare festival always manage to delight
So I really enjoyed it. Not sure I'd go and see it twice in one year, as we did (slightly by mistake) with Macbeth (the scottish play? ;-) last year..
oh, and for Madhatter and anyone else interested, I looked up the play when we got home, and the famous line (no, the other one, about the nail), is just a line, and the entire verse about the kingdom being lost wasn't in the play. Damned where I heard it though...
Anyway, if you haven't been to any, please go and support them. We're turning up without booking tickets these days, with no problem - this performance had more audience than actors, but not by even 100%, which given the performance standard, is a crying shame.
Posted at: [/live] permanent link
The Name of The Wind
by Patrick Rotherfus
Hmm. This is the third time I've tried to write this before the Mac has wiped it in creative ways - seems like it doesn't want this review written. Well, the truth must be told!
The Truth is that this is one of the best fantasy books I've read in a long while. Patrick has a plot, characters, and a believable world. The magic system is constructed along sympathetic magic and scientific lines, and the only niggle I'd have is that the hero, Kvothe, is just TOO damn good at everything, and that for a kid, he's pretty bloody precocious and worldly wise. The author works this into the plot, and does a good job, but it does stretch credibility at times. The way he most does this is by reminding the reader that he, Kvothe, knows nothing about women, but let me tell you, I was never that smooth at 15. Hormonal, yes, smooth, not so much.
Another slight niggle is that with the scientific understanding they seem to have, along with the interworking of magic, would imply to me that they'd have a greater technological basis than they do. There may be reasons for this revealed later, and its not enough of a niggle to interrupt the verisimilitude.
Patrick has some genuine laugh out loud conversations in the book, and generally writes dialogue well. Its a big book, and at times I felt it could have been trimmed, but never enough that I felt it suffered overmuch from it.
I'll definitely be buying the next volume when it comes out - had it been possible, I'd have bought it right now, but it looks like I have to wait a few months.
If memory serves, I found this in Waterstones, on one of those pleasurable browsing sessions that turn up a load of books you'd like to read - increasingly rare in the mainstream bookshops, I'm finding.
Posted at: [/books] permanent link
Digital Music from Play.com
I bought Bellowhead's first album from Play.com following the their toe tapping performance on the folk Proms last Sunday (I'm not jealous that several of them can play the Violin while jumping up and down in time, no not at all..), and it was a thoroughly pleasant experience. Cheaper than iTunes, and in 320kps mp3, my only complaint would be that album art wasn't included, not was a digital booklet of the album slip cover, and that the track number wasn't encoded into each file, so I had to add it manually. iTunes added the cover art fine, as will Banshee on my Linux box, I expect, so no worries there. I'll be using them more!
Posted at: [/music] permanent link
Thu, 24 Jul 2008
Ode To Joy
Ode Indeed...
Posted at: [/music] permanent link
Sat, 19 Jul 2008
Defender of The Favicon
Is your blog's Favicon a little boring? Why not
have it run a game instead
Amazing what can be done in such a small space..
Posted at: [] permanent link
Unbreakable Fighting Umbrella - for the very British Mrtial Artist..
Saw this on
BoingBoing, redirected to Wired.
Can't find a place to buy it, and am not sure I'd want to spend ~£100 on a umbrella, but I do so want one.. How can anyone resist the chosen weapon of the Philipino Secret Service!
Wait, no, you can buy it at this
rather scary shop..
Still, £100..
Posted at: [/gadgets] permanent link
Mon, 14 Jul 2008
Neal Stephenson talk, redux.
Apparently it was video'd;
Posted at: [/live] permanent link
Sun, 13 Jul 2008
Dust
By Elizabeth Bear
A. bought this, via an amazon wishlist she'd had success with in the past, unaware that I'd been considering picking up some of her work after reading
Shadow Unit, the collaborative (and excellent x-files like short fiction, nto to mention the two wonderful short stories by her read out on Escape Pod and (I think) Starship Sofa. "And the deep blue sea" is one of my all-time favorite short fiction podcasts..
Dust is a hard science fiction novel, in that it takes binary stars, colony ships, nanotechnology, genetic (and social) engineering, and extrapolates a 'what if'. I'm not usually a fan of such fiction - the last one I read (Blindsight by Peter Watts), was technically good but had no soul or decent characterisation. Dust doesn't have this problem - its definately character driven, with mostly-believable protagonists. Some of the sexual politics in the book were just odd - Bear doesn't seem to have made up her mind how she wants to portray certain characters - or perhaps thats her way of conveying the confusion within them. I liked the way that the background and such of the world were not laid out, but enough hinted that you could work some out, and wonder about others. It carries, like all of her work, an underlying theme of redemption (English Lit essay; all of Bear's work address redemption in some form or other, discuss.). Overall, it wasn't as engrossing as some of her other work - A thinks its an earlier work, and later work (Like "New Amsterdam", which I'm keen on getting) would be more polished. Well, it was published first in 2007, so maybe - she certainly seems a more prolific author than I thought.
I'll be purchasing more of her work, for certain.
Posted at: [/books] permanent link
Mon, 07 Jul 2008
The Website is down
Warning, requires flash.
I'd like to think this doesn't conjure up a sense of familarity, but...
the website is down
Posted at: [/work] permanent link
Sat, 05 Jul 2008
I Am Legend
by Richard Matheson
The book that inspired both 'The Omega Man' and the film of the same name, but don't hold that against it. Matheson is allegedly an early influence on Stephen King and it shows. The book is a gripping post apocalyptic tale about...well, I'll leave you to read it and find out. I've not seen the Will Smith film, but I can assure you the book's nothing like the Charlton Heston flick.
The book shows its sixties roots, but not in a bad way. A combination of Horror and Sci-Fi, its good plot, characterisation and a cracking pace. I read it in one day. I'll have to check out more work by him. But I might leave it a bit. I might also leave the light on. Is that movement outside..?
Posted at: [/books] permanent link
Riddle Of The Seven Realms
By Lyndon Hardy
I finally found a copy of the last of Hardy's books in the Amnesty International bookshop on mill road. I probably could have bought it via the internet before hand, if I'd tried, but had never really thought to look.
Hardy's style is applying psuedo-scientific principles and method to fantasy magic. His characters are never particular developed, and the plot revolves around the macguffin, but they're intriguing takes on the fantasy magic angle.
Not the best of his works - the 'Master Of The Five Magics' is by the far his best book, as the style is new to the reader, and there is a semblance of charcterisation.
I enjoyed it somewhat anyway, good nostalgia for the fantasy & sci-fi of my youth, when all the books I read came from second hand stores!
Posted at: [/books] permanent link
Tue, 01 Jul 2008
Dr Horrible's Sing-along blog
What hath the Writers Strike of America wraught?
this
Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.
Posted at: [/tv] permanent link
An Utterly Impartial History of Britain
By John O'Farrel
I borrowed this from A - I'm not much of a history buff, but the Temeraire books and 'In Our Time' program have whetted my interest somewhat, so I thought he'd be an entertaining narrator. As indeed he is! Its a thick book - 551 pages, but I read it fairly quickly and feel I've retained some. its got O'Farrel's trademark laconic wit, which makes what could be dry reading quite enjoyable. the middle ages gets a little slow going, but then, its not the dark ages for nothing, I guess..
Posted at: [/books] permanent link
The Intruders
By Michael Marshal
I bought this cheap in Asda - I thought it was the next in his horror/thriller series, but in truth its more of a blend of the more outre of the thriller, and the weirder of his speculative fantasy. I found it a little too immersed in conspiracy theory and so forth - more the ramblings of an internet nutter as a backdrop, but Marshal does take that and weave it into a story. Not sure about the ending though - he hints at it throughout the book, true, but it still feels wrong as it happens. Anyway, I'll be looking to get his next book in paperback when its out for sure.
Posted at: [/books] permanent link