Jack Handys Christmas Lego Adventure
Postal service of the damned^wsaved
Art or arse? – not the answer I was expecting (worksafe text based gooogletoy)
Neil Hopcroft
A digital misfit
Book review: Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding
The heroine of this book, Rosie, had managed to annoy me by the end of page two by sleeping with someone obviously deeply inappropriate. She started the book as such a vacuous waste of skin and air that I considered giving up on her but although she was irritating I felt I had to find out what happened next. Fieldings writing style, although not deep is very more-ish. Besides, Rosie couldn’t be *that* empty, surely?
I’m glad I stuck with it. Through the book she has two lives, the other is as a dynamic and in-control decision maker in a refugee camp in Africa. There is an interesting contrast between her two lives, which is highlighted when people from one of them see her in the other.
There is also some nice social commentary on how celebrities play the publicity game and the public is manipulated into desired feelings by the media.
Who should read this book? Well, its not a very manly book, don’t bother if you’re looking for action or technology, but if you like your romance a little thought provoking this would be a good read.
Book review: Purity by Shaun Hutson
I have something of a soft spot for Shaun Hutson, his writing style is utterly disposable, theres no depth to any of his characters or stories, but somehow I still find it all rather compelling. Its a long time since I read any of his books.
This sees him more in a crime thriller genre than the trash horror I remember of his earlier books, it follows the attempts of a radio talkshow host to find a murderer who appears to be preying on various lowlife people of the city.
I’m not sure theres a lot I can usefully say about the book without giving away too much information…if you like Hutsons earlier work this is a little more mainstream, but its probably worth a read, if you don’t know him there are probably better authors out there for this sort of thing.
A snapshot from the road
I was driving the M25 near Heathrow, the signs showed an accident ahead but it was not busy so there wasn’t a queue. The wheel had fallen off a stretch limo, which had pulled onto the hard shoulder resting on a smoking stub. I wondered what story the foreign passengers would take back home.
I’ve just bought a book containing a section on “poking: effectiveness and danger of reprisal”, complete with a graph and everything.
In other news, my car has started smelling disturbingly of scalectrix. Maybe i shouldn’t push that button again.
Confirmation: Developer of the year: Refresh Mobile, Ltd. Mobizines
Oh dear, I’m feeling restless tonight. Maybe its the rumours coming in from Amsterdam, maybe its something else. No details yet, of course, just a text message, its not hit the blogs as far as I can see, and I’m not going to add fuel to that fire until I see it confirmed.
Instead, let me think ‘out loud’ about Christmas. As most of you know I’m not much one for celebrating it, but it seems like a good time of year for getting back in touch with people I’ve not been good at keeping up with. So, to that end, I would like to write to you, on real paper, delivered by a postman. It won’t be a very long letter as I don’t really have a lot to say for myself (and most of what I do have to say gets said here anyway) – in exchange, I would like you, instead of buying me anything for the festive season (if you were considering that), to write to me, to tell me about your hopes, your dreams, and what you think my future holds.
If you would like to play this game, leave a comment with your address (or a way I can find it). My (friends locked) contact information can be found here. Comments screened.
Book review: Release 2.0 by Esther Dyson
“A design for living in the digital age”
This is now quite an old book – a lot of it is still pertinant but I wish I’d read it ten years ago. Dyson is clearly someone who gets it, she understood a lot of the potential of the internet way before most people out there.
She takes a tour of the important issues of life on the net, without anchoring them too much to a specific time or place covering anonimity, privacy, intellectual property and governance.
This book now, though, is mostly of historical interest, there are better, more recent books covering similar issues, for all her vision the world is a very different place ten years on.
OK, I feel a different kind of stupid now….I guess that shows that you don’t need to be drunk to get home at 4am and pour your heart out on this thing. It would be oh so easy to press the ‘delete post’ button, but that seems like editing history, a betrayal of the me that wrote the last post.
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
Maybe “Wonderful way to go” wasn’t the best choice of music for my journey home tonight.
“Tell me your story, tell me no lies; we touch each other – but only with our eyes.
Some kind of game, to play with desire; it’s just beneath the skin that I’m alive.”
Today I feel stupid. She’s probably got a point, I shouldn’t’ve turned into one of those ‘scary guys with stalker tendancies’. But thats just the kind of thing that happens when the emotional blindness kicks in and theres no feedback, good or bad.
It was time to be moving along anyway, all things considered. The hope has been fun, but its gone now. Thank you. Next time, I don’t fall for the wrong one[0].
(and this isn’t actually as morose as it might seem – its more of an awakening to something that someone has been trying to tell me for a while, I knew she was right, of course, but its all been confirmed today)
I feel the wanderlust returning.
[0] if anyones got any hints about how to achieve this I’d like to hear them