There's a quote by the late Robert Heinlein (and by lots of others too) :
"What a wonderful world it is that has girls in it"
I'm struggling at the moment, through the after effects of things like new shoes, the cold and the various long term niggles that I carry around with me. I try to keep my shoes going as long as I can, because I know that when I do change, there will be a few weeks where they will dig holes in the back of my feet (achilles area). Gets a bit sore and distracting. I have other niggles too, like the continuing saga of the audio blips on the amp ... (they're still happening but I have progress and an idea).
So - struggling on the whole but surviving with a little help. Where's the help coming from ? Well, I wanted to give a special mention to the online people, which brings me back to that quote ...
When I'm in Warcraft, there's often calls of "Ice - come on Mumble". "Ice" is my nickname to the Warcraft people, short for Iceangel. Mumble is the voice chat software we use when people in the guild are doing things together. Usually that's instanced dungeons where 5 of us will team up to spank the bad guys. Or there's just generally kicking back and having a natter.
I've been very lucky in that when the guild on The Maelstrom server broke up, I was welcomed into the Violence Reborn guild as they moved to a different server. The core of VR is Swedish although, as is the norm for online game guilds, it has turned truly multinational. We're all Horde out for a good time. We also stick by each other, which can be tough when you start getting involved with the wider WoW community (think toys escaping from prams). We have fun with our mistakes, whereas people picked up at random just leg it or get an "it's not my fault, must be your's" attitude which isn't helpful.
The blokes in the guild tend to be fairly quiet (although if you start talking WoW Theory, they turn Juggernaut), it's the ladies who make the guild what it is. It starts with the Swedish accents. But it's mainly the free spirited, uninhibited Wanna Have Fun attitude they bring in. They don't take things too seriously, never forgetting that it's a game and games are supposed to be Fun.
They'll quite happily drag the boys along with them too. There's two cases recently where I had the privilege to be included :
Instance run with Shidra and Alex. Alex was being a bit quiet, this was the Shidra show. There was me, trying to learn the place we were in and the rest of the group were nattering away as if they were wanting to get the words out before rationing came in. And it was insane too. I started grinning early and by the end of the activities, I couldn't help myself, the Cheshire Cat Grin and laughter was threatening to turn my noggin into a Flip Top Head.
The other one is just the other night, which starts with an "Alex is singing on Mumble" in guild chat. Gotta check that out, so I join the voice comms server. Within minutes, I'm grinning from ear to ear again and laughing along with the rest of 'em. And that "drag the boys along with them" thing ? Yep. Couldn't help myself, I joined in late with the singing too. And my mic headset is so dusty from disuse, I have to get Rentokil out to fight off the Dust Bunnies before I let it near my head.
A little laughter is good for the soul, so you can probably imagine the boost that comes from being involved in this select group of people.
The Mercs had one or two ladies around too, although they tended not to stay too long. I suspect they didn't want to stay around because of some of the drama the guild had (some of which was centred around me !). Caira was pretty special though, would love to know how Caira & Auraka are doing now.
It's not just in game though. It's the people on Facebook and the people at work. I still seem to be a favourite of the Canteen Girls (although that has implications on my waistline). I've been lucky with work as well as with the VR people, it's a pressure project but we all pull together to get through the work and solve the problems. There's one of us who's trying to give up smoking at the moment ... I'm passing on tubes of mints (I keep 'em to moderate excess stomach acid) to help her beat the cravings. She's probably through half my supply by now but if it helps liberate her from smoking, it'll be so Worth It.
Wait ... Why am I still writing this blog post when I could be in game seeing what the VR Girls are up to ? Cya !
PS English is the second language for a lot of the VR people, they tend to talk in Swedish in places like Facebook. Which is where Google Translate comes in ... It doesn't translate everything but it does a great job. Oh - and even though it's a second language, their English is far better than some of what I read and hear from people born and raised in this country ...
Friday, January 21, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Just finished with : Red Mars
I think I have a new trend starting - abandoning books ...
But that's happened twice now over the last couple of months. I think my fixation with David Weber has been broken by a certain Jack Campbell. On the one hand, you have David Weber who is occasionally brilliant with well structured and decently paced books. However, there's also the David Weber who buries the good stuff in his books in a mire of non-interesting, non-important filler. I gave up on Shadow of Saganami after 300 pages out of a 1000 and I don't think I'll go back to it.
That's one danger of spoilers actually. The giving up with it was born partly out of looking at the sneak preview chapter at the back which is taken from the next book and then me looking up some of that in wiki. Because of that, I have a synopsis of this book and the next, without having to wade through the filler. After 300 pages, nothing had really happened.
On the other hand, there's the Jack Campbell set of 6 books which I raced my way through. They're about 350 pages in each, all structured around Big Fleet action happening in a star system as the Lost Fleet is making its way through. And by Big Fleet, there's several hundred warships in this Lost Fleet. These books keep it simple and the filler is kept to an absolute minimum. Combined with the star system based action, that means the pacing is excellent. Hopefully there will be more to come from this one.
Hey ! How about this Red Mars book ?
It's part of a trilogy of about 5 parts (where've we heard that before ?) by Kim Stanley Robinson. You can tell there's a huge amount of research gone into this trilogy in the engineering and planetology detail that forms its core. There's a lot of good stuff here and it hangs together well with the "could this work ?" feeling always being positive. However ... a good story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Occasionally a bit of the middle gets shunted to the start to kick start the beginning.
What KSR forgets is that End thing. Red Mars ends with an excellent cliff hanger and from what I remember of Green Mars, that ends well too. The last book is a major disappointment though, as it's a collection of travelogues inside the KSR Mars solar system. There's no real End here, although you could say that's the point in a Life Goes On kind of way. However, it feels like the trilogy could have finished after 2.5 books as the last is mostly filler with the Actual Story Detector reading negative all the way.
Anyway, I've given up on this one because :
a) I've read it before (and enjoyed it)
b) There's better Mars books (will read the Ben Bova one again sometime)
c) I could see the travelogue signs creeping into Red Mars
There's the conflict between wanting to know what happens in it and not particularly wanting the tedium of finding out. That's one reason I read a few books in between attempting a Turtledove WorldWar book. I'll put this one in the A to Z but it may well get replaced by something like Return To Mars or something else beginning with R.
Next book is Titanicus by Dan Abnett, where the God Machines walk on Orestes. It'll be the second book I've read by Dan Abnett but whereas the first was centred around the humble Imperial Guard, this one tackles the opposite end of the scale where you have huge war engines 100m tall striding across the battlefield.
I started it last night and am already well over a hundred pages in.
Right - I have a job to do and it'll involve raiding a village under attack to recover supplies.
Will Raid For :
Food
Mini Eggs
Pizza
Or to listen to the Hot Swedish Girls.
But that's happened twice now over the last couple of months. I think my fixation with David Weber has been broken by a certain Jack Campbell. On the one hand, you have David Weber who is occasionally brilliant with well structured and decently paced books. However, there's also the David Weber who buries the good stuff in his books in a mire of non-interesting, non-important filler. I gave up on Shadow of Saganami after 300 pages out of a 1000 and I don't think I'll go back to it.
That's one danger of spoilers actually. The giving up with it was born partly out of looking at the sneak preview chapter at the back which is taken from the next book and then me looking up some of that in wiki. Because of that, I have a synopsis of this book and the next, without having to wade through the filler. After 300 pages, nothing had really happened.
On the other hand, there's the Jack Campbell set of 6 books which I raced my way through. They're about 350 pages in each, all structured around Big Fleet action happening in a star system as the Lost Fleet is making its way through. And by Big Fleet, there's several hundred warships in this Lost Fleet. These books keep it simple and the filler is kept to an absolute minimum. Combined with the star system based action, that means the pacing is excellent. Hopefully there will be more to come from this one.
Hey ! How about this Red Mars book ?
It's part of a trilogy of about 5 parts (where've we heard that before ?) by Kim Stanley Robinson. You can tell there's a huge amount of research gone into this trilogy in the engineering and planetology detail that forms its core. There's a lot of good stuff here and it hangs together well with the "could this work ?" feeling always being positive. However ... a good story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Occasionally a bit of the middle gets shunted to the start to kick start the beginning.
What KSR forgets is that End thing. Red Mars ends with an excellent cliff hanger and from what I remember of Green Mars, that ends well too. The last book is a major disappointment though, as it's a collection of travelogues inside the KSR Mars solar system. There's no real End here, although you could say that's the point in a Life Goes On kind of way. However, it feels like the trilogy could have finished after 2.5 books as the last is mostly filler with the Actual Story Detector reading negative all the way.
Anyway, I've given up on this one because :
a) I've read it before (and enjoyed it)
b) There's better Mars books (will read the Ben Bova one again sometime)
c) I could see the travelogue signs creeping into Red Mars
There's the conflict between wanting to know what happens in it and not particularly wanting the tedium of finding out. That's one reason I read a few books in between attempting a Turtledove WorldWar book. I'll put this one in the A to Z but it may well get replaced by something like Return To Mars or something else beginning with R.
Next book is Titanicus by Dan Abnett, where the God Machines walk on Orestes. It'll be the second book I've read by Dan Abnett but whereas the first was centred around the humble Imperial Guard, this one tackles the opposite end of the scale where you have huge war engines 100m tall striding across the battlefield.
I started it last night and am already well over a hundred pages in.
Right - I have a job to do and it'll involve raiding a village under attack to recover supplies.
Will Raid For :
Food
Mini Eggs
Pizza
Or to listen to the Hot Swedish Girls.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Sleepypete 1 Headlight 0
Busyish evening tonight.
I've known since last Thursday that I had a duff headlight, thanks to the only Brizzle driver to let me know with a flash of his lights. But I've not really had a good opportunity to get it fixed until tonight. So the plan is hatched :
Nip over to the Mall.
Have a peek in Bristol Honda at their CR-Z car
Acquire a headlight bulb from Halfords
Have a rummage in the shops
The snow around here has turned into lots of dampness (I could hear the rain over Suzanne Vega's 99.9 degrees F album) so another Cunning Plan (tm) gets hatched.
And yes - the person who just went "OH NO !" and hid at the mention of a Sleepypete Cunning Plan, I heard you and I have my eye on you.
Not that cunning actually. More a means of getting a headlight bulb changed where there's decent light and something over my head. That's right, the downstairs car park at the Mall. Sheltered from the wind too, as close to garage conditions as I'm likely to get. Headlight changing is boring so I'm not going to say much about it, let's just say that many of the swear words in common use today were invented during jobs like this.
Modern car engineering can be summed up as :
1 - Everything is crammed in to save space
2 - Things are designed to stay put
3 - Things are not supposed to be removed
4 - Owners should not question "£10 for part, £50 to fit" bills
2 and 3 combined to make changing simple stuff an exercise in frustration as you're putting it back together. Add in number 1 in that list and you have a recipe for bruises. Still, the Focus is much easier to work on than the Puma. I'm very glad none of the bulbs blew on the Puma as I didn't have a clue how to get in to where it kept its bulbs.
Next car ? I have the nagging feeling that the Focus is at the top of its Long Slippery Downhill. You know, the time when something mechanical has been running perfectly until ... And then the problems start piling up. The signal this time has been the inlet manifold last year, which took the car off the road for about 3 weeks before it was fixed. It's done about 62k miles so I should have at least another couple of years out of it. Definitely another few months because there's still a loan outstanding on it.
Meh - rambling again. The Honda CR-Z is looking like the favourite at the moment ... My favoured cars tend to be those that fit around the driver like a glove. They'll subtly let the driver know what's going to happen before it does and will obey their every command with the minimum of fuss. The Puma was great for this, a taut, light chassis and responsive engine made for a leather glove of a car. The Focus has more power but is also heavier ... Think boxing glove ... (Nah - that's unfair, think batting glove)
The Honda looks fairly promising and would definitely satisfy the geekiness being a hybrid. The nagging drawbacks though are :
Underpowered - 0 to 60 is quoted as 10 secs. I'm used to better.
(Puma was 9 secs, my Focus is 8)
Chunky - good for that "glove" feeling but ...
Cramped - I didn't get the chance to look in the boot but I reckon it'll fail the golf club test*
Would entail that "just driven off the forecourt" 50% loss of value
*Golf Club Test : Can you fit a golf bag in without having the back seats down. I've not had my golf clubs out for years but I still think it's a good test. When I was looking at the Mazda RX-8, it got vetoed because it would have been downright evil to get a cricket bag out of ... (Let alone shopping or tellies)
Oh - any trip to the Mall usually ends up as an excuse to wander around there for a while hunting bargains. (And shoes, although I ended up disappointed there AGAIN). It does cost less to buy things like blu-rays and music online but there's something about hunting through looking to see what's on offer. I much prefer scanning shelves to clicking "next" a hundred times on A N Other online shop.
Iron Man 1 and Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr version) escaped from a shop today. Iron Man's a blu-ray upgrade, as I know someone who's wanting to pick it up on dvd ...
So - headlight fixed, potential next car checked out (jury's out). Now chilling out to music, listening to a few randoms before Queen's A Night At The Opera (the album where Bohemian Rhapsody is not the best track ...) comes on :-) Since zeroing the play counts, iTunes seems to be turning into a fan of :
Iron Maiden, Little Boots, Chris Rea, Gloria Estefan, Murray Gold ... Must weave some Kate Bush, Alisha's Attic and Goldfrapp into that mix.
I've known since last Thursday that I had a duff headlight, thanks to the only Brizzle driver to let me know with a flash of his lights. But I've not really had a good opportunity to get it fixed until tonight. So the plan is hatched :
Nip over to the Mall.
Have a peek in Bristol Honda at their CR-Z car
Acquire a headlight bulb from Halfords
Have a rummage in the shops
The snow around here has turned into lots of dampness (I could hear the rain over Suzanne Vega's 99.9 degrees F album) so another Cunning Plan (tm) gets hatched.
And yes - the person who just went "OH NO !" and hid at the mention of a Sleepypete Cunning Plan, I heard you and I have my eye on you.
Not that cunning actually. More a means of getting a headlight bulb changed where there's decent light and something over my head. That's right, the downstairs car park at the Mall. Sheltered from the wind too, as close to garage conditions as I'm likely to get. Headlight changing is boring so I'm not going to say much about it, let's just say that many of the swear words in common use today were invented during jobs like this.
Modern car engineering can be summed up as :
1 - Everything is crammed in to save space
2 - Things are designed to stay put
3 - Things are not supposed to be removed
4 - Owners should not question "£10 for part, £50 to fit" bills
2 and 3 combined to make changing simple stuff an exercise in frustration as you're putting it back together. Add in number 1 in that list and you have a recipe for bruises. Still, the Focus is much easier to work on than the Puma. I'm very glad none of the bulbs blew on the Puma as I didn't have a clue how to get in to where it kept its bulbs.
Next car ? I have the nagging feeling that the Focus is at the top of its Long Slippery Downhill. You know, the time when something mechanical has been running perfectly until ... And then the problems start piling up. The signal this time has been the inlet manifold last year, which took the car off the road for about 3 weeks before it was fixed. It's done about 62k miles so I should have at least another couple of years out of it. Definitely another few months because there's still a loan outstanding on it.
Meh - rambling again. The Honda CR-Z is looking like the favourite at the moment ... My favoured cars tend to be those that fit around the driver like a glove. They'll subtly let the driver know what's going to happen before it does and will obey their every command with the minimum of fuss. The Puma was great for this, a taut, light chassis and responsive engine made for a leather glove of a car. The Focus has more power but is also heavier ... Think boxing glove ... (Nah - that's unfair, think batting glove)
The Honda looks fairly promising and would definitely satisfy the geekiness being a hybrid. The nagging drawbacks though are :
Underpowered - 0 to 60 is quoted as 10 secs. I'm used to better.
(Puma was 9 secs, my Focus is 8)
Chunky - good for that "glove" feeling but ...
Cramped - I didn't get the chance to look in the boot but I reckon it'll fail the golf club test*
Would entail that "just driven off the forecourt" 50% loss of value
*Golf Club Test : Can you fit a golf bag in without having the back seats down. I've not had my golf clubs out for years but I still think it's a good test. When I was looking at the Mazda RX-8, it got vetoed because it would have been downright evil to get a cricket bag out of ... (Let alone shopping or tellies)
Oh - any trip to the Mall usually ends up as an excuse to wander around there for a while hunting bargains. (And shoes, although I ended up disappointed there AGAIN). It does cost less to buy things like blu-rays and music online but there's something about hunting through looking to see what's on offer. I much prefer scanning shelves to clicking "next" a hundred times on A N Other online shop.
Iron Man 1 and Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr version) escaped from a shop today. Iron Man's a blu-ray upgrade, as I know someone who's wanting to pick it up on dvd ...
So - headlight fixed, potential next car checked out (jury's out). Now chilling out to music, listening to a few randoms before Queen's A Night At The Opera (the album where Bohemian Rhapsody is not the best track ...) comes on :-) Since zeroing the play counts, iTunes seems to be turning into a fan of :
Iron Maiden, Little Boots, Chris Rea, Gloria Estefan, Murray Gold ... Must weave some Kate Bush, Alisha's Attic and Goldfrapp into that mix.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Blip blip blip - ARG !
Looks like an old problem could be back :
Sound issues ...
The link is what I wrote about it before but the summary is that every few minutes (at worst), there'd be a blip of a second or less where the soundtrack on a dvd would go silent through the new kit.
Thought I'd cracked it by switching to a couple of good HDMI cables but it seems to be back. Ho hum. I suspect it's me fixing another connectivity issue that's resurrected this one, so I'll be managing 2 evils :
1 - silent blips in soundtrack
2 - headscratching over how to get blu-ray player to talk to amp to talk to telly.
The combination will occasionally refuse to connect blu-ray player to amplifier and I suspect fixing that (amp getting confused over which inputs to use) has caused this one. I've done some tweakin' with the software setups and I'm now doing the evaluation thing again, listening out for those silent blips. 1 Babylon 5 episode so far and no blips. Good sign.
Telly off air (except the Ashes !) has been very bare of stuff to watch lately, so I've fallen back on rewatching some old stuff. The 1990s saw some absolutely brilliant episodic sci-fi come to the telly, some of which was so good it got ripped off and retreaded into things like Star Trek. (Deep Space 9 continually ripped off Babylon 5 stories and arcs).
The current catch up is Babylon 5, which spanned 5 series and a heap of TV movies. There was an attempt at a spin off, called B5 Crusade which got killed off due to the networks being numpties. Too much interference and when they didn't get their own way, B5 Crusade was killed off just as it was starting to ramp up.
Anyway ... Babylon 5. It's about a space station named after the series, which is a melting pot for all of the various races inhabiting the universe the series is set in. It's blessed with a series of strong characters and there's enough scope in the writing to inject snippets of humour into the interactions between those characters. It was made between 1994 and 1998 on a shoestring budget, so there wasn't the ability to use Star Trek quality visuals in the programme. In the early days, it was a farm of Amiga computers generating all the images. Saying that though, what they do with the visuals is startlingly impressive.
Low tech can beat high tech if you know what you're doing.
And they definitely knew what they were doing. B5 was the first sci fi series to have a Grand Plan covering what they intended to put on screen. It was originally scheduled to run 5 series (110 episodes), however the networks interfered and the main storyline got squished into 4.
Right - one of the better episodes of season 1 is ramping up so I'll get back to "evaluating" :-) Babylon 5 : second best scifi series of the past few decades. I'd be watching the best (Farscape) if my sister didn't have some of its dvds !
Sound issues ...
The link is what I wrote about it before but the summary is that every few minutes (at worst), there'd be a blip of a second or less where the soundtrack on a dvd would go silent through the new kit.
Thought I'd cracked it by switching to a couple of good HDMI cables but it seems to be back. Ho hum. I suspect it's me fixing another connectivity issue that's resurrected this one, so I'll be managing 2 evils :
1 - silent blips in soundtrack
2 - headscratching over how to get blu-ray player to talk to amp to talk to telly.
The combination will occasionally refuse to connect blu-ray player to amplifier and I suspect fixing that (amp getting confused over which inputs to use) has caused this one. I've done some tweakin' with the software setups and I'm now doing the evaluation thing again, listening out for those silent blips. 1 Babylon 5 episode so far and no blips. Good sign.
Telly off air (except the Ashes !) has been very bare of stuff to watch lately, so I've fallen back on rewatching some old stuff. The 1990s saw some absolutely brilliant episodic sci-fi come to the telly, some of which was so good it got ripped off and retreaded into things like Star Trek. (Deep Space 9 continually ripped off Babylon 5 stories and arcs).
The current catch up is Babylon 5, which spanned 5 series and a heap of TV movies. There was an attempt at a spin off, called B5 Crusade which got killed off due to the networks being numpties. Too much interference and when they didn't get their own way, B5 Crusade was killed off just as it was starting to ramp up.
Anyway ... Babylon 5. It's about a space station named after the series, which is a melting pot for all of the various races inhabiting the universe the series is set in. It's blessed with a series of strong characters and there's enough scope in the writing to inject snippets of humour into the interactions between those characters. It was made between 1994 and 1998 on a shoestring budget, so there wasn't the ability to use Star Trek quality visuals in the programme. In the early days, it was a farm of Amiga computers generating all the images. Saying that though, what they do with the visuals is startlingly impressive.
Low tech can beat high tech if you know what you're doing.
And they definitely knew what they were doing. B5 was the first sci fi series to have a Grand Plan covering what they intended to put on screen. It was originally scheduled to run 5 series (110 episodes), however the networks interfered and the main storyline got squished into 4.
Right - one of the better episodes of season 1 is ramping up so I'll get back to "evaluating" :-) Babylon 5 : second best scifi series of the past few decades. I'd be watching the best (Farscape) if my sister didn't have some of its dvds !
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
A to Z on books
A couple of years ago, I tried one of the challenges that wings it's way around the blogosphere. It was an A to Z on books challenge and a fairly tough one, looking for 52 books to read in a year. Here's how I did.
I got about half way through both the A to Z on authors and A to Z on titles. Figured it would be fun to try again this year, although I'm going to make it easier by just going for 26 books, with the A to Z being titles and authors. One book every fortnight should be doable with the cricket and gaming providing big distractions :-)
I'll keep this post as a running tally, with the labels helping me keep track. I'm through 3 books already :
A - for (Dan) Abnett - First And Only (added Jan)
B - for (Jim) Butcher - Storm Front (added Feb)
C -
D - for (Aaron) Dembski-Bowden - Helsreach (added Feb)
E - for Exiles Trilogy by Ben Bova (added May)
F - for Feersum Endjinn by Iain M Banks (added Jan)
G - for Ghostmaker by Dan Abnett (added May)
H - for (Simon) Hughes - A Lot of Hard Yakka (added Jan)
I - for Inversions by Iain M Banks (added April)
J -
K -
L -
M -
N -
O -
P -
Q -
R - for Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (partial in Jan)
S - for Surface Detail by Iain M Banks (added June)
T - for Titanicus by Dan Abnett (added Jan)
U - for (HMS) Ulysses by Alistair MacLean (added May)
V -
W - for (Chris) Wraight, author of Battle of the Fang (added September)
X -
Y - for (Charles) Yu, author of How To Survive In A Science Fictional Universe (added August)
Z -
The Iain M Banks book was fairly tough to get through, mainly cos I didn't really know when it was going to get good. It meandered badly through the early stages and finished itself off in an awful rush. Not his best. Hopefully Surface Detail will be better, I'll be looking to pick that up when it comes out in paperback later in the year.
First And Only is from an omnibus book called The Founding by Dan Abnett. It's set in the brutal Warhammer 40k universe and tells the story of an Imperial Guard regiment that just escaped when it's world was taken by Chaos. I was impressed enough with this one that after finishing the first book inside, I've ordered a couple more from Amazon after being disappointed with the appallingly low stock at Waterstones.
(The high street retailers will certainly fail if they don't stock what we want to buy)
I've been involved in the cricket world since I was about 13, so reading A Lot Of Hard Yakka by Simon Hughes was a very curious look into the world of professional cricket although the meat of it was from 10 years before I started playing. Fun to see the parallels between the professional world and the amateur world I played in, I have a feeling I played in better facilities than they occasionally did. I could definitely identify with the self doubts and the confidence issues expressed in the book. Every sportsman will suffer confidence crises and there's a certain level of negative feedback implicit in that. Low confidence and doubts make your run up less sure or your reactions slower, which makes it far more difficult to land the ball on the spot or to whack it to the boundary.
It's not a diary of match results, you can get that from Wisden. It's a very interesting look into the mindset and life of professional sportsmen and written far more intelligently than what people lured into getting the average footballer's life story (ages 18 to 23 with the speed they come out nowadays) will get.
Next on the list is Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. I read this one a few years ago but I'm stubbornly reading it again. I'll probably only read the first of the trilogy as this is by far the best. And there's a fair bit of planetary and astronautic engineering in there that always gets me interested.
I'll add in more books as I go (and probably move a few around too!). Hoping to hit 26 this year :-)
I got about half way through both the A to Z on authors and A to Z on titles. Figured it would be fun to try again this year, although I'm going to make it easier by just going for 26 books, with the A to Z being titles and authors. One book every fortnight should be doable with the cricket and gaming providing big distractions :-)
I'll keep this post as a running tally, with the labels helping me keep track. I'm through 3 books already :
A - for (Dan) Abnett - First And Only (added Jan)
B - for (Jim) Butcher - Storm Front (added Feb)
C -
D - for (Aaron) Dembski-Bowden - Helsreach (added Feb)
E - for Exiles Trilogy by Ben Bova (added May)
F - for Feersum Endjinn by Iain M Banks (added Jan)
G - for Ghostmaker by Dan Abnett (added May)
H - for (Simon) Hughes - A Lot of Hard Yakka (added Jan)
I - for Inversions by Iain M Banks (added April)
J -
K -
L -
M -
N -
O -
P -
Q -
R - for Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson (partial in Jan)
S - for Surface Detail by Iain M Banks (added June)
T - for Titanicus by Dan Abnett (added Jan)
U - for (HMS) Ulysses by Alistair MacLean (added May)
V -
W - for (Chris) Wraight, author of Battle of the Fang (added September)
X -
Y - for (Charles) Yu, author of How To Survive In A Science Fictional Universe (added August)
Z -
The Iain M Banks book was fairly tough to get through, mainly cos I didn't really know when it was going to get good. It meandered badly through the early stages and finished itself off in an awful rush. Not his best. Hopefully Surface Detail will be better, I'll be looking to pick that up when it comes out in paperback later in the year.
First And Only is from an omnibus book called The Founding by Dan Abnett. It's set in the brutal Warhammer 40k universe and tells the story of an Imperial Guard regiment that just escaped when it's world was taken by Chaos. I was impressed enough with this one that after finishing the first book inside, I've ordered a couple more from Amazon after being disappointed with the appallingly low stock at Waterstones.
(The high street retailers will certainly fail if they don't stock what we want to buy)
I've been involved in the cricket world since I was about 13, so reading A Lot Of Hard Yakka by Simon Hughes was a very curious look into the world of professional cricket although the meat of it was from 10 years before I started playing. Fun to see the parallels between the professional world and the amateur world I played in, I have a feeling I played in better facilities than they occasionally did. I could definitely identify with the self doubts and the confidence issues expressed in the book. Every sportsman will suffer confidence crises and there's a certain level of negative feedback implicit in that. Low confidence and doubts make your run up less sure or your reactions slower, which makes it far more difficult to land the ball on the spot or to whack it to the boundary.
It's not a diary of match results, you can get that from Wisden. It's a very interesting look into the mindset and life of professional sportsmen and written far more intelligently than what people lured into getting the average footballer's life story (ages 18 to 23 with the speed they come out nowadays) will get.
Next on the list is Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. I read this one a few years ago but I'm stubbornly reading it again. I'll probably only read the first of the trilogy as this is by far the best. And there's a fair bit of planetary and astronautic engineering in there that always gets me interested.
I'll add in more books as I go (and probably move a few around too!). Hoping to hit 26 this year :-)
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Happy new year everyone
Another year gone, kinda surprised I've not posted for a fortnight. One excuse is that I was away for Xmas ...
Rumours of travel problems over here have been fairly exaggerated, although I wouldn't have been saying that had I travelled a day before I did. I went up to my parents place for a few days over Xmas, travelling up on the Thursday and coming back on the Monday. I think I got away with it, as the roads were clear with minimal hold ups. If I'd gone the day before, I'd have run into the aftermath of heavy snowfall that morning which would have got me stuck within an hour's driving.
So much for the snow ... On the roads at least. On the way up, it was cold enough that the washer jets on the car weren't working which got to be a problem after about an hour's driving ... Which gets me off the motorway and into Birmingham services. It was like a different world - going from a clear motorway to what can only be described as a disaster area was quite jarring. Queues to get into the car park suggested what was ahead, snow was still in all the parking bays, the access routes hadn't been gritted and people were just looping through the car park to go elsewhere. That's what I did, although I did jump out to scrub the windscreen so I could see.
I think I benefitted :-) I stopped at the next services (where the car park had been cleared) and got caught by the Starbucks ... One pizza (small one) sized giant cookie and a massive hot chocolate later and I'm ready to hit the road again.
Felt strange driving listening to cd's again. I've gotten used to iPodFM over the past few years, where I just set the little box to shuffle and let it go. I'd forgotten the whole management of cd's thing and quickly remembered that they should be put somewhere they can't slide. Oh yes - even before getting to the motorway, I'd had a cd frisbie incident. I'd gone to cd's because I was listening out for traffic info which I can't get via iPodFM.
Traffic was slow, going there and coming back but I still did the 180 mile trip in under 4 hours each way. Which ain't bad. I'm ok with slow traffic, I just switch into a "cruise" mindset which is much less stressful than the alternate which would have me eagle eyed for the passing opportunities. On most roads, those chances aren't there and in a long line of traffic just lead to shuffling the order a bit with no time gained.
(I still hate slow people but I've learned the futility of looking for gaps that won't gain you anything except high risk)
Xmas was a little different this year, not much present buying going on around me this year. Which isn't as terrible as it sounds, because I also avoided all the "what do they really want ?" rushing around the shops when everyone else is doing the same thing. And if there's one thing that unsettles me more than Slow People it's Too Many People. I like being around people but if my awareness level is being hopped up by there being too many around to do a threat evaluation (pickpockets & the like) then it'll be wearing.
We had a smaller Crazie Gathering this year, which was effectively a housewarming for the Bionic Dwarf. Cosy, relaxed evening with pizza and 3 good movies. 1 of those was mine (Alice in Wonderland), 1 of which will be bought soon (How to Train Your Dragon) and 1 which I won't buy but enjoyed anyway (Son of Rambow)
Not done much shopping over the break, although I'll hopefully hit the shops some time next week to find any of those interesting bargains. Already got a couple on the list like a third Kasabian album and How To Train Your Dragon but I'll have an open mind for more like Up In The Air, which got watched today. I'll only buy films that I've already checked out and a movie channel sub is a decent way of trying before buying. There's hits and misses, like Up In The Air is a hit while Megafault was a waste of 90 minutes.
I had been thinking of upgrading my desktop PC over the holiday but have shelved that because prices haven't budged lately. My sister did the upgrading thing instead :-) Her laptop's in for repairs and because of the delay, a netbook appeared. Pre-buy misgivings were that the netbook wouldn't get used after the proper laptop came back but I have a feeling that the laptop will be the one gathering dust.
Other stuff - back to work at either the end of this week or the 10th. iTunes library has had the playcount zeroed so I get a fresh listen to everything in it. Snow was here and has all gone, melted away by persistent drizzle (I prefer the brightness of light reflected off snow and ice). Gaming is seeing heavy Warcraft and Settlers IV activity with none of the Steam offers proving sufficiently tempting. The offers are good but the games are not.
2010 was an interesting year, with me plowing head first into a different job in the same project. It saw me go back on the cricket field (the shoulder is mostly back to normal). I had a few upgrades appear with the toys collection but still noone to share them with.
2010 wasn't bad but I'm hoping for better from 2011 :-)
Rumours of travel problems over here have been fairly exaggerated, although I wouldn't have been saying that had I travelled a day before I did. I went up to my parents place for a few days over Xmas, travelling up on the Thursday and coming back on the Monday. I think I got away with it, as the roads were clear with minimal hold ups. If I'd gone the day before, I'd have run into the aftermath of heavy snowfall that morning which would have got me stuck within an hour's driving.
So much for the snow ... On the roads at least. On the way up, it was cold enough that the washer jets on the car weren't working which got to be a problem after about an hour's driving ... Which gets me off the motorway and into Birmingham services. It was like a different world - going from a clear motorway to what can only be described as a disaster area was quite jarring. Queues to get into the car park suggested what was ahead, snow was still in all the parking bays, the access routes hadn't been gritted and people were just looping through the car park to go elsewhere. That's what I did, although I did jump out to scrub the windscreen so I could see.
I think I benefitted :-) I stopped at the next services (where the car park had been cleared) and got caught by the Starbucks ... One pizza (small one) sized giant cookie and a massive hot chocolate later and I'm ready to hit the road again.
Felt strange driving listening to cd's again. I've gotten used to iPodFM over the past few years, where I just set the little box to shuffle and let it go. I'd forgotten the whole management of cd's thing and quickly remembered that they should be put somewhere they can't slide. Oh yes - even before getting to the motorway, I'd had a cd frisbie incident. I'd gone to cd's because I was listening out for traffic info which I can't get via iPodFM.
Traffic was slow, going there and coming back but I still did the 180 mile trip in under 4 hours each way. Which ain't bad. I'm ok with slow traffic, I just switch into a "cruise" mindset which is much less stressful than the alternate which would have me eagle eyed for the passing opportunities. On most roads, those chances aren't there and in a long line of traffic just lead to shuffling the order a bit with no time gained.
(I still hate slow people but I've learned the futility of looking for gaps that won't gain you anything except high risk)
Xmas was a little different this year, not much present buying going on around me this year. Which isn't as terrible as it sounds, because I also avoided all the "what do they really want ?" rushing around the shops when everyone else is doing the same thing. And if there's one thing that unsettles me more than Slow People it's Too Many People. I like being around people but if my awareness level is being hopped up by there being too many around to do a threat evaluation (pickpockets & the like) then it'll be wearing.
We had a smaller Crazie Gathering this year, which was effectively a housewarming for the Bionic Dwarf. Cosy, relaxed evening with pizza and 3 good movies. 1 of those was mine (Alice in Wonderland), 1 of which will be bought soon (How to Train Your Dragon) and 1 which I won't buy but enjoyed anyway (Son of Rambow)
Not done much shopping over the break, although I'll hopefully hit the shops some time next week to find any of those interesting bargains. Already got a couple on the list like a third Kasabian album and How To Train Your Dragon but I'll have an open mind for more like Up In The Air, which got watched today. I'll only buy films that I've already checked out and a movie channel sub is a decent way of trying before buying. There's hits and misses, like Up In The Air is a hit while Megafault was a waste of 90 minutes.
I had been thinking of upgrading my desktop PC over the holiday but have shelved that because prices haven't budged lately. My sister did the upgrading thing instead :-) Her laptop's in for repairs and because of the delay, a netbook appeared. Pre-buy misgivings were that the netbook wouldn't get used after the proper laptop came back but I have a feeling that the laptop will be the one gathering dust.
Other stuff - back to work at either the end of this week or the 10th. iTunes library has had the playcount zeroed so I get a fresh listen to everything in it. Snow was here and has all gone, melted away by persistent drizzle (I prefer the brightness of light reflected off snow and ice). Gaming is seeing heavy Warcraft and Settlers IV activity with none of the Steam offers proving sufficiently tempting. The offers are good but the games are not.
2010 was an interesting year, with me plowing head first into a different job in the same project. It saw me go back on the cricket field (the shoulder is mostly back to normal). I had a few upgrades appear with the toys collection but still noone to share them with.
2010 wasn't bad but I'm hoping for better from 2011 :-)
Friday, December 17, 2010
Another year, almost done
It's been quite a year this one. It started out in uncertainty which has turned into security. It saw me return to the cricket field although not as a bowler. New toys appeared which have been greatly appreciated. Disappeared from one game and jumped into another. Expanded my music tastes, with a little prodding from the sister.
As is usual for this time of year, I'm pretty much hanging on until I can do a big crash out tomorrow night. There may well be pizza involved. Currently very tired and feeling the effects of the year gone by.
I came back out of retirement to go back on the cricket field this year, one reason I'd been keeping away was that I really didn't know what my reaction would be to playing in the same team as the bloke that's going out with my ex. Not knowing if you'll stay rational is not a good place to be. Gotta say I'm proud of how I handled it and being chummy with the guy probably messed with his head - muahaha. I broke stuff again on the field as I cannot do any less than 100%, even when I should be taking it easy due to injuries. I have definite damage to the shoulder that's still with me, however it's better news with a (possibly fractured) shin that's completely healed now.
I didn't do any bowling this year, which I have mixed feelings about. There were a few games which we lost partly due to not having enough decent bowlers in the team. A fit and firing Sleepypete with the ball in hand could easily have seen a different result. (Lol - I was that good) But alas the damage to my right side & shoulder mean that bowling is not advisable nowadays. Instead it's fielding, still being one of the fastest in the team despite that damaged shin :-) I help out with the batting too, in a solid if unspectacular fashion.
Would I have made a different decision 6 months ago knowing I'd damage the shoulder and that shin ? Hell no (oops - a "yeah" slipped in there by mistake). There's a buzz that comes with pinning the ears back and Running that I don't get anywhere else.
What toys have appeared ?
My telly + sound stuff has completely changed this year. I've gone from old stuff to a 1080p thin LCD screen, I now use blu-ray discs and I have a surround sound system that I'm very pleased with. I reckon the surround kit is the best of the bunch as it does the business with iTunes audio as well as being awesome for movies. The old surround kit could sound very good but suffered from an inconsistency where it would sound very flat.
Relationship wise it's the same old story. All the interesting people are already very much more interested in other people. And not just that though, there seems to be distance coming in to the friend relationships. Really don't know where that's coming from, apart from maybe people being so focused on their own problems that they're blind to when other people might need a little help. Or maybe in the absence of a relationship of my own, I'm becoming too close to those who do.
Talking of relations ... I started the year in Eve and then halfway through switched back to the old addiction, Warcraft. They're chalk and cheese in terms of how online games go. But - Eve suffers from tedium after a while and if the corp people don't contribute enough to pull you out of the boredom (Saying that, Luth tries his hardest to keep me in interested in Eve !) then you just don't go back. Warcraft is a very different animal, there's huge variation in the world. Plus it's the home of the Hot Swedish Girls. Guild chat in VR is rarely dull.
They've also been redecorating in Warcraft, pretty much everything has changed. And I love what they've done with the place. It's a much richer world than when I started in it 5 and a half years ago. Things like a goblin starting storyline where you go from the Goblin city to a wild island with pygmy voodoo sacrifices, rabid flora and goblin engineering insanity.
It's top stuff, it's kept me laughing.
It's not all dull in the Eve world though. There's a cluster of people who act as a strong backbone to the group I play with. I've already mentioned Luth but there's also Agent Stone and Ham Handerson who were in the mob who I went up Snowdon with earlier in the year. I was woefully unprepared for that and definitely lacking in fitness readiness but we got up and down there. I also did all the driving for the weekend. Got a huge buzz from that weekend, I'll have to try and remember it for drawing on.
Last day of work tomorrow for this year, although I'll be checking in periodically with a working at home laptop (means the inbox doesn't explode). I'll be making the trip up to see the parents over Xmas, most likely picking a time when the impending snow doesn't make things too awkward ...
The job's gone pretty well over the course of this year. My previous post in the project had been disestablished because it was running out of things to do. The biggest contribution it had in its closing days was finance (bleh) and organising some technical documentation (a better task than it sounds). The purpose of it was "system engineering" and there wasn't a whole lot of that going on at the late stage we were at. So I was fairly philosophical at needing to find something different. The new post has led to rediscovering that "making a contribution" sense that was starting to become forgotten. I will be glad of a few weeks off though, definitely need the chance to rest & recharge.
The music tastes have expanded, with artists like The XX, more Cardigans, Kasabian, Goldfrapp, Lily Allen, TingTings, Gorillaz and Franz Ferdinand joining the established favourites. And "Chew Lips" are looking like they could join the collection too ...
So - a better end to the year than it started. Could be better still but we'll see what the new year brings there. It's likely to be Interesting Times still, wouldn't have it any other way.
As is usual for this time of year, I'm pretty much hanging on until I can do a big crash out tomorrow night. There may well be pizza involved. Currently very tired and feeling the effects of the year gone by.
I came back out of retirement to go back on the cricket field this year, one reason I'd been keeping away was that I really didn't know what my reaction would be to playing in the same team as the bloke that's going out with my ex. Not knowing if you'll stay rational is not a good place to be. Gotta say I'm proud of how I handled it and being chummy with the guy probably messed with his head - muahaha. I broke stuff again on the field as I cannot do any less than 100%, even when I should be taking it easy due to injuries. I have definite damage to the shoulder that's still with me, however it's better news with a (possibly fractured) shin that's completely healed now.
I didn't do any bowling this year, which I have mixed feelings about. There were a few games which we lost partly due to not having enough decent bowlers in the team. A fit and firing Sleepypete with the ball in hand could easily have seen a different result. (Lol - I was that good) But alas the damage to my right side & shoulder mean that bowling is not advisable nowadays. Instead it's fielding, still being one of the fastest in the team despite that damaged shin :-) I help out with the batting too, in a solid if unspectacular fashion.
Would I have made a different decision 6 months ago knowing I'd damage the shoulder and that shin ? Hell no (oops - a "yeah" slipped in there by mistake). There's a buzz that comes with pinning the ears back and Running that I don't get anywhere else.
What toys have appeared ?
My telly + sound stuff has completely changed this year. I've gone from old stuff to a 1080p thin LCD screen, I now use blu-ray discs and I have a surround sound system that I'm very pleased with. I reckon the surround kit is the best of the bunch as it does the business with iTunes audio as well as being awesome for movies. The old surround kit could sound very good but suffered from an inconsistency where it would sound very flat.
Relationship wise it's the same old story. All the interesting people are already very much more interested in other people. And not just that though, there seems to be distance coming in to the friend relationships. Really don't know where that's coming from, apart from maybe people being so focused on their own problems that they're blind to when other people might need a little help. Or maybe in the absence of a relationship of my own, I'm becoming too close to those who do.
Talking of relations ... I started the year in Eve and then halfway through switched back to the old addiction, Warcraft. They're chalk and cheese in terms of how online games go. But - Eve suffers from tedium after a while and if the corp people don't contribute enough to pull you out of the boredom (Saying that, Luth tries his hardest to keep me in interested in Eve !) then you just don't go back. Warcraft is a very different animal, there's huge variation in the world. Plus it's the home of the Hot Swedish Girls. Guild chat in VR is rarely dull.
They've also been redecorating in Warcraft, pretty much everything has changed. And I love what they've done with the place. It's a much richer world than when I started in it 5 and a half years ago. Things like a goblin starting storyline where you go from the Goblin city to a wild island with pygmy voodoo sacrifices, rabid flora and goblin engineering insanity.
It's top stuff, it's kept me laughing.
It's not all dull in the Eve world though. There's a cluster of people who act as a strong backbone to the group I play with. I've already mentioned Luth but there's also Agent Stone and Ham Handerson who were in the mob who I went up Snowdon with earlier in the year. I was woefully unprepared for that and definitely lacking in fitness readiness but we got up and down there. I also did all the driving for the weekend. Got a huge buzz from that weekend, I'll have to try and remember it for drawing on.
Last day of work tomorrow for this year, although I'll be checking in periodically with a working at home laptop (means the inbox doesn't explode). I'll be making the trip up to see the parents over Xmas, most likely picking a time when the impending snow doesn't make things too awkward ...
The job's gone pretty well over the course of this year. My previous post in the project had been disestablished because it was running out of things to do. The biggest contribution it had in its closing days was finance (bleh) and organising some technical documentation (a better task than it sounds). The purpose of it was "system engineering" and there wasn't a whole lot of that going on at the late stage we were at. So I was fairly philosophical at needing to find something different. The new post has led to rediscovering that "making a contribution" sense that was starting to become forgotten. I will be glad of a few weeks off though, definitely need the chance to rest & recharge.
The music tastes have expanded, with artists like The XX, more Cardigans, Kasabian, Goldfrapp, Lily Allen, TingTings, Gorillaz and Franz Ferdinand joining the established favourites. And "Chew Lips" are looking like they could join the collection too ...
So - a better end to the year than it started. Could be better still but we'll see what the new year brings there. It's likely to be Interesting Times still, wouldn't have it any other way.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Just listened to ...
I'm stealin' post ideas again :-)
This time it's from my good friend & neighbour Cyberkitten, who's just posted a list of what he listened to over the weekend. He's left out what he listened to through the wall :-) Here's my selection :
Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes
KT Tunstall - Tiger Suit
T'Pau - Rage
Dubstar - Stars, the best of Dubstar
Sleeper - The It Girl
The Hoosiers - Illusion of Safety
Levellers - Levelling The Land
Katie Melua - Pictures
Plus lots more random tracks splitting those up. Well, semi-random as I've been checking out a couple of albums just bought. One's from the Ting Tings, which I'm listening to at the moment. The other is from Kasabian. Ting Tings is rather different :-) Kasabian is fairly mainstream indie-ish rock but high quality for that. I get bored of listening to the same thing and a lot of pop is carbon copied in these modern days of X-Factor ArtificialPop.
I have a feeling it'll be a while before I get bored of Ting Tings, although I wouldn't put them in the Bat For Lashes, Cardigans, Alisha's Attic, All About Eve or Kate Bush bracket of Awesome.
The way I pick out what I listen to depends on two things - what I've listened to least and what's the longest since played. I'll also weave in a few favourites to split up the albums. That then gets fed into iTunes DJ, which picks more stuff out for me. It keeps the ears fresh with lots of variation in what I listen to. It's a bit skewed though, as the iTunes library has grown. The old stuff has 30-40-50 listens, whereas something new like Pictures has only 5 so far.
So what's coming up ? Out of the least played there's :
Bix Beiderbecke - The Beiderbecke Affair, which is a jazz soundtrack from a brilliant and utterly charming series from a few years ago.
Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylym
Ting Tings - more listens to We Started Nothing
Katie Melua - Pictures
Kasabian's self titled album - which got me buying West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
(will complete the collection soon)
Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
Dubstar
And of the Longest Since Played, there's :
Eurythmics - Greatest Hits
Dusty Springfield - The Collection
Gloria Estefan - Cuts Both Ways
The Cardigans - Life
The XX - xx
Elaine Paige - Christmas (and yes, I'll freely admit to that)
Enigma - MCMXC AD
Madonna - Confessions on a Dancefloor
With the system above, since January this year I've listened to everything in the library that's enabled (I disable duplicates or rubbish on collection cd's). There is some of the old stuff I could listen to repeatedly though, like the Alisha's Attic, All About Eve and Kate Bush cds :-) But I keep those as a treat.
Definitely enjoying Ting Tings at the moment for a bit of Insane Rebel. It hangs together well as an album, lots of character.
This time it's from my good friend & neighbour Cyberkitten, who's just posted a list of what he listened to over the weekend. He's left out what he listened to through the wall :-) Here's my selection :
Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes
KT Tunstall - Tiger Suit
T'Pau - Rage
Dubstar - Stars, the best of Dubstar
Sleeper - The It Girl
The Hoosiers - Illusion of Safety
Levellers - Levelling The Land
Katie Melua - Pictures
Plus lots more random tracks splitting those up. Well, semi-random as I've been checking out a couple of albums just bought. One's from the Ting Tings, which I'm listening to at the moment. The other is from Kasabian. Ting Tings is rather different :-) Kasabian is fairly mainstream indie-ish rock but high quality for that. I get bored of listening to the same thing and a lot of pop is carbon copied in these modern days of X-Factor ArtificialPop.
I have a feeling it'll be a while before I get bored of Ting Tings, although I wouldn't put them in the Bat For Lashes, Cardigans, Alisha's Attic, All About Eve or Kate Bush bracket of Awesome.
The way I pick out what I listen to depends on two things - what I've listened to least and what's the longest since played. I'll also weave in a few favourites to split up the albums. That then gets fed into iTunes DJ, which picks more stuff out for me. It keeps the ears fresh with lots of variation in what I listen to. It's a bit skewed though, as the iTunes library has grown. The old stuff has 30-40-50 listens, whereas something new like Pictures has only 5 so far.
So what's coming up ? Out of the least played there's :
Bix Beiderbecke - The Beiderbecke Affair, which is a jazz soundtrack from a brilliant and utterly charming series from a few years ago.
Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylym
Ting Tings - more listens to We Started Nothing
Katie Melua - Pictures
Kasabian's self titled album - which got me buying West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
(will complete the collection soon)
Gorillaz - Plastic Beach
Dubstar
And of the Longest Since Played, there's :
Eurythmics - Greatest Hits
Dusty Springfield - The Collection
Gloria Estefan - Cuts Both Ways
The Cardigans - Life
The XX - xx
Elaine Paige - Christmas (and yes, I'll freely admit to that)
Enigma - MCMXC AD
Madonna - Confessions on a Dancefloor
With the system above, since January this year I've listened to everything in the library that's enabled (I disable duplicates or rubbish on collection cd's). There is some of the old stuff I could listen to repeatedly though, like the Alisha's Attic, All About Eve and Kate Bush cds :-) But I keep those as a treat.
Definitely enjoying Ting Tings at the moment for a bit of Insane Rebel. It hangs together well as an album, lots of character.
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Dreams and ideas
Just finished watching Inception, which is another example of how a certain Leonardo Di Caprio seems to be having the pick of the best scripts to get turned into movies nowadays.
In this one, we have LDC with a crew of people who can use shared dreaming to find things out about people. The object is to get their secrets or their ideas, by taking the subject down into a dreamscape and then manipulating that dreamscape. One of the core ideas is that the subject will put the secret in a safe place, so when that safe place is broken into the secret is exposed.
It's a very smart movie, very well shot, very well made and with decent acting too. I have a feeling that LDC is starting to get cast as LDC though, in the same way as people like Harrison Ford or Nicholas Cage tended to play their parts as Harrison Ford or Nicholas Cage, despite what was intended. Let's get a person to play the psycho ! Call in James Marsters.
(Just taken 10 minutes to think of a stereotyped actress but all I can think of is "sexy, slightly nutty action chick" - Angelina Jolie)
The central idea is a powerful one. It's about how infectious an idea can be. How a small seed can grow into something that will redefine you, change you. That one small observation, does it change how you perceive something ? Do you start to shiver because you're actually cold or because everyone around you is acting cold ? Some people at work at the moment are shivering in multiple layers, others are fine in sleeveless shirts. (True - of the two above, one has done marvellously at losing weight lately but the cost of looking great is that she feels the cold more. The other is a little bigger than me and I have plenty of insulation !)
Similar with dreams vs actual memory. Ever had a dream where it seemed so close to reality that it could almost be a memory ? I've had a few of those, although I've been free of the anxiety dreams lately. Those are the type that seem clearest to me, an example would be me visiting an unfamiliar* place, being there for 10-20 minutes and then going outside to find the car gone. Seems like loss of transport or mobility is what causes me the most anxiety at the moment.
*(unfamiliar but unconsciously built from true memory)
One thing that makes the dream vs reality thing pertinent for me was the formation of false memories after my first Nose Job (hit on head by cricket ball). There was a period of 6 months after that where my grip on what was True Memory and what was False Memory slipped a bit, such that they overlapped. Mental rehearsal of some tasks (to figure the best way to do them) was going a little too far to the point where the rehearsal became actual memory of me doing something I hadn't gotten round to yet. I'd remember doing a task I hadn't actually done.
I don't think I'd have believed that unless confronted with an incident directly related to it ... A document that I was point of contact for needed to be passed around. I was sure I'd done that, however when one of the recipients joined the project a year or so later, he swore he'd never been sent it. So I checked that out and could find no evidence that I'd sent it.
False memory becomes real memory (my marbles were shaken up by the ball more than I'd realised)
I still get occasional flashes of a cricket ball about 6 inches in front of my face, about to crash into my nose. Dunno if that's Real Memory or something from my imagination become real, although it's consistent with what I think happened.
Oh - we saw the lady on our project who had a serious car accident a few months ago. She looked great, bouncy and with heaps of energy. She was only back for today but it was great to see her back. We have an efficient Work-At-Home system, so she's been insisting on keeping busy. She can't remember the car accident, I told her that's probably a very good thing. Some memories aren't worth keeping around.
The brain is a very complicated piece of biology - how much of who we are is based on real stuff ? How many of our ideas came from within, how many came from others ? How many of our attitudes are due to inherited or taught prejudices, how many were earned through observation ?
I had one cricket match where I turned up (a little late) and then jumped straight into bowling. However, it then went Horribly Wrong, because I couldn't land the ball anywhere I wanted. Instead of starting wide and curving into the stumps, it started wide and got wider. I'd obviously been listening to the pro commentators because my usual inswing had turned into away swing. So that seed picked up from listening had grew in my mind to the point where an otherwise well drilled bowling action changed just enough to become something new. Took a few days to figure out what had happened too ...
I'm still kinda wondering if I changed at all due to the cricket ball on head incident, even to the point of wondering if it had a direct impact on my last major relationship breaking down. I don't believe it did, I reckon that was doomed from a while before then. I like to Fix Stuff but had run out of ideas on how to Fix and make better a person who was sinking deeper into depression, dragging me with her. Overlaid on that is a definite "you should not attempt to change the person you love." There are still lingering doubts though.
Doh - the rambling has taken over ...
Ideas - they're a powerful thing. But make sure they're your own and not implanted by someone else ! Value most the opinion you've formed yourself or be in danger of missing out on the experience.
In this one, we have LDC with a crew of people who can use shared dreaming to find things out about people. The object is to get their secrets or their ideas, by taking the subject down into a dreamscape and then manipulating that dreamscape. One of the core ideas is that the subject will put the secret in a safe place, so when that safe place is broken into the secret is exposed.
It's a very smart movie, very well shot, very well made and with decent acting too. I have a feeling that LDC is starting to get cast as LDC though, in the same way as people like Harrison Ford or Nicholas Cage tended to play their parts as Harrison Ford or Nicholas Cage, despite what was intended. Let's get a person to play the psycho ! Call in James Marsters.
(Just taken 10 minutes to think of a stereotyped actress but all I can think of is "sexy, slightly nutty action chick" - Angelina Jolie)
The central idea is a powerful one. It's about how infectious an idea can be. How a small seed can grow into something that will redefine you, change you. That one small observation, does it change how you perceive something ? Do you start to shiver because you're actually cold or because everyone around you is acting cold ? Some people at work at the moment are shivering in multiple layers, others are fine in sleeveless shirts. (True - of the two above, one has done marvellously at losing weight lately but the cost of looking great is that she feels the cold more. The other is a little bigger than me and I have plenty of insulation !)
Similar with dreams vs actual memory. Ever had a dream where it seemed so close to reality that it could almost be a memory ? I've had a few of those, although I've been free of the anxiety dreams lately. Those are the type that seem clearest to me, an example would be me visiting an unfamiliar* place, being there for 10-20 minutes and then going outside to find the car gone. Seems like loss of transport or mobility is what causes me the most anxiety at the moment.
*(unfamiliar but unconsciously built from true memory)
One thing that makes the dream vs reality thing pertinent for me was the formation of false memories after my first Nose Job (hit on head by cricket ball). There was a period of 6 months after that where my grip on what was True Memory and what was False Memory slipped a bit, such that they overlapped. Mental rehearsal of some tasks (to figure the best way to do them) was going a little too far to the point where the rehearsal became actual memory of me doing something I hadn't gotten round to yet. I'd remember doing a task I hadn't actually done.
I don't think I'd have believed that unless confronted with an incident directly related to it ... A document that I was point of contact for needed to be passed around. I was sure I'd done that, however when one of the recipients joined the project a year or so later, he swore he'd never been sent it. So I checked that out and could find no evidence that I'd sent it.
False memory becomes real memory (my marbles were shaken up by the ball more than I'd realised)
I still get occasional flashes of a cricket ball about 6 inches in front of my face, about to crash into my nose. Dunno if that's Real Memory or something from my imagination become real, although it's consistent with what I think happened.
Oh - we saw the lady on our project who had a serious car accident a few months ago. She looked great, bouncy and with heaps of energy. She was only back for today but it was great to see her back. We have an efficient Work-At-Home system, so she's been insisting on keeping busy. She can't remember the car accident, I told her that's probably a very good thing. Some memories aren't worth keeping around.
The brain is a very complicated piece of biology - how much of who we are is based on real stuff ? How many of our ideas came from within, how many came from others ? How many of our attitudes are due to inherited or taught prejudices, how many were earned through observation ?
I had one cricket match where I turned up (a little late) and then jumped straight into bowling. However, it then went Horribly Wrong, because I couldn't land the ball anywhere I wanted. Instead of starting wide and curving into the stumps, it started wide and got wider. I'd obviously been listening to the pro commentators because my usual inswing had turned into away swing. So that seed picked up from listening had grew in my mind to the point where an otherwise well drilled bowling action changed just enough to become something new. Took a few days to figure out what had happened too ...
I'm still kinda wondering if I changed at all due to the cricket ball on head incident, even to the point of wondering if it had a direct impact on my last major relationship breaking down. I don't believe it did, I reckon that was doomed from a while before then. I like to Fix Stuff but had run out of ideas on how to Fix and make better a person who was sinking deeper into depression, dragging me with her. Overlaid on that is a definite "you should not attempt to change the person you love." There are still lingering doubts though.
Doh - the rambling has taken over ...
Ideas - they're a powerful thing. But make sure they're your own and not implanted by someone else ! Value most the opinion you've formed yourself or be in danger of missing out on the experience.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Music Shuffle
Just spotted this one come round again on Facebook ...
(1) Turn on your MP3 player or music player on your computer.
(2) Go to SHUFFLE songs mode.
(3) Write down the first 25 songs that come up--artist and song title--NO editing/cheating, please.
There's more - but it's Facebook tagging type stuff that's not really appropriate for here. I usually tweak my iTunes DJ upcoming songs quite considerably but here's the ones that iTunes picked out for me :
1 - Franz Ferdinand - Michael
2 - Ennio Morricone - Il Tramonto
3 - The XX - Basic Space
4 - a-Ha - Manhattan Skyline
5 - Madonna - Shanti/Ashtangi
6 - Alanis Morissette - Mary Jane
7 - All About Eve - Hide Child
8 - Star Wars (ROTJ soundtrack) - Alliance Assembly
9 - The XX - Night Time
10 - Babylon Zoo - Spaceman
11 - The Cardigans - Little Black Cloud
12 - Evanescence - Cloud Nine
13 - All About Eve - Wild Flowers
14 - Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
15 - Abba - Andante, Andante
16 - River City People - California Dreamin'
17 - Pink Floyd - Speak To Me/Breathe
18 - Sam Brown - Your Love Is All
19 - Goldfrapp - Dreaming
20 - Blondie - Hanging On The Telephone
21 - Paramore - Playing God
22 - Norah Jones - Thinking About You
23 - Murray Gold - I Remember You
24 - Hard-fi - Stars of CCTV
25 - Mansun - Fragile
(1) Turn on your MP3 player or music player on your computer.
(2) Go to SHUFFLE songs mode.
(3) Write down the first 25 songs that come up--artist and song title--NO editing/cheating, please.
There's more - but it's Facebook tagging type stuff that's not really appropriate for here. I usually tweak my iTunes DJ upcoming songs quite considerably but here's the ones that iTunes picked out for me :
1 - Franz Ferdinand - Michael
2 - Ennio Morricone - Il Tramonto
3 - The XX - Basic Space
4 - a-Ha - Manhattan Skyline
5 - Madonna - Shanti/Ashtangi
6 - Alanis Morissette - Mary Jane
7 - All About Eve - Hide Child
8 - Star Wars (ROTJ soundtrack) - Alliance Assembly
9 - The XX - Night Time
10 - Babylon Zoo - Spaceman
11 - The Cardigans - Little Black Cloud
12 - Evanescence - Cloud Nine
13 - All About Eve - Wild Flowers
14 - Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
15 - Abba - Andante, Andante
16 - River City People - California Dreamin'
17 - Pink Floyd - Speak To Me/Breathe
18 - Sam Brown - Your Love Is All
19 - Goldfrapp - Dreaming
20 - Blondie - Hanging On The Telephone
21 - Paramore - Playing God
22 - Norah Jones - Thinking About You
23 - Murray Gold - I Remember You
24 - Hard-fi - Stars of CCTV
25 - Mansun - Fragile
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