Year: 2009

I’ve noticed that I’m not going through quite as many biscuits lately as I usually do …

I think it’s cos my habits seem to have shifted a bit. Tonight is actually the first time I’ve been gaming on my desktop pooter for about a fortnight. Which is an amazing length of time away from games for me. I’d have had nosebleeds if it had gone on much longer 🙂 My Warcraft characters are kinda sleeping at the moment as I’ve not had that much interest in games. Dunno why, I’ve just lost the interest somehow, the games seem to be more chore than fun.

That hasn’t stopped me collecting the games though 🙂 I picked up Dark Messiah at PC World last week at the same time as Kaspersky Anti Virus 2009. Well – it was only 97p. Less than the price of 2 Mars bars and it should last me longer. Muahaha – I reckon I could eat the 2 Mars bars in less time than the game took to copy on to the machine. I’d test that but I don’t have any Mars bars in the house. (And the shop is shut!)

Sooo :

Pooter potato – goes through the biscuits like a logging machine at a sawmill. But I’m cleaner with the crumbs.
Coach potato – not snacking nearly as much 🙂

No visible signs on the waistline yet, my energy output isn’t nearly high enough to shift weight around. Must start doing things like walking around the block (to be followed by running around the block when my legs are healthier). The trouble I’m having is that even though I’m not snacking so much at home, the canteen are doing Orange & Chocolate Chip Muffins. And they’re addictive. I think the site might need a new club : Muffin Addicts Anonymous. “Hello everyone, my name is Sleepy and I’m addicted to the Orange & Chocolate Chip muffins”

Tried out the webcam on this laptop last night and got a shock. HEY ! The screen did not crack. Shame on you for thinking that ! 🙂 Only kidding. The shock was actually my nose. It’s weird – in the mirror, the bent nose isn’t too noticeable. But on the webcam, it looks like it’s pointing off in completely the wrong direction. Bit like as if I’d run into a wall and not had it straightened back again.

I had to ask a few people at work today if it looked bent. I’ve just checked again and the webcam has it appearing well skewed. But the work people reckon it’s ok. Our BYT (Bright Young Thing) couldn’t tell it was broken at all, said it looked ok 🙂 Which as you can imagine, a comment like that from a pretty young lady leads to me bouncing around with a grin for the rest of the day.

There are after effects still from the broken nose, as always with bones when they heal. The nose isn’t quite square and with fingers in the right place you can feel the edges where the fracture occurred. I can breathe again properly now though 🙂 and my head seems clear of the amnesia and false memories I suffered in the months after I broke it.

Right – game’s been closed down, it could well be time for me to move back to the couch and my book, before the contents of the biscuit packet mysteriously disappears.

Gotta cue up Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall again soon – not listened to them on the decent speakers for a while 🙂

That’s another thing about playing less games lately – it’s easier to listen to music when reading a book than to listen while playing a game 🙂

Oops forgot to mention…

Tanya (NetChick) sent me here.

Wish you were here is such a beautiful song. Pink Floyd & Led Zeppelin…I can listen to them all day long and not get bored.

I’ve not been playing games much at all lately, so how have I been spending my free time ? Apart from listening to music that is 🙂

Latest book to be well and truly devoured is The Dragons of Heorot by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes.

It’s actually the sequel to the Legacy of Heorot, both books are pictured above. The setting is a planet in orbit of Tau Ceti, a star 10 light years from Earth. The first book has the colony in the early stages of setting up. There’s not many of them but unlike a few other colonisation books, they really mean business. Most “new colony” books tend to have the people bringing lots of equipment. That kinda takes up lots of space … These guys do bring a decent amount of high tech but there’s a long term view where they’re looking to maintain that technology by building from local materials.

So not so much bringing tanks, guns and steamrollers but bringing the means to build. That said though, they have a main colony defended by a series of electric fences, minefields, heavy machine guns, with that defence being coordinated by a supercomputer. All of the high technology you would expect but technology that seems lacking in most “humans colonise planet” books.

I’m rambling again ! Book 1 has humans vs Grendels … What’s a Grendel ? The name comes from what the colonists think of one of their number, a military man called Cadmann. Because Cadmann is not as confident in the colony’s security as the rest of the people, they accuse him of being a “Beowulf” that’s looking for a Monsta (think Ray Winstone voice) to fight. That Monsta takes the form of the Grendels … The image I got was a cross between a mean nasty crocodile and a stegosaurus. But the novelty with the Grendels is they take advantage of “speed”. So a tonne or so of armour, spikes and claws that can accelerate to 120km/h in nothing flat.

The first book tells the tale of the colonists struggle to firstly come to terms with what Grendels are and then to survive the onslaught. It has the story of their attempts to conquer the small island they’ve landed on. Not a bad book but I found it a bit of a struggle. Maybe the committee effect of 3 authors made things a little confused.

The second book takes over the story about 20 years after the first concludes, with the tag line at the back being :

“But the dangers awaiting them on the mainland are far greater than anyone could imagine, for lurking there is something even worse than grendels … something that eats grendels.”

And on that, you’re thinking, ok … grendels are these invincible killing machines. Where humans defeat them by technology, how could anything natural get the better of them ? And I’ll say no more there cos it’s big plot spoiler stuff 🙂

After a slow start (blaming it on being distracted by other things), when I picked this up again last week it didn’t take long to finish it. Think 500 pages in under a week 🙂 There’s a good cross section of characters in this one, which helps its readability. There’s the exploits of the characters themselves, plus there’s a rich ecology which is steadily explored through the book. Whereas the first is mostly Human Vs Grendel, this second book is a lot more Human Vs Planet.

I think the star of these books is Cassandra but then as a self confessed geek, I tend to be highly interested in the technology 🙂 The problem most sci-fi has is in describing the computer technology available. Some do it well, some not so. Think computers in sci-fi that are less powerful than we have today, that’s where it goes wrong. The Cassandra of Heorot is a fully fledged supercomputer AI, which gives the colonists a resource that allows them instant global communication as well as library and analysis tools. It’s a lot more advanced than we have now but as a logical progression it seems perfectly reasonable. If you think Jarvis from Iron Man but on a planetary scale, that’ll be Cassandra.

To finish up, not a bad pair of books but the sheer power of the grendels made the first book seem a little silly. Worth a read if you’re a Niven fan but the Ringworld series of books are a better introduction. Footfall and Lucifer’s Hammer are other Niven books I’m going to be reading again sometime soon.

Next book – To Sail Beyond The Sunset by Robert A Heinlein 🙂

[biggrin] One reason why I’ve turned into a big fan of iTunes is cos it lets me listen to all the variation in what I have …

Before iTunes, I’d just listen to the same cds over and over again and a lot of the others would just gather dust. Now, I’m using the Party Shuffle to queue up what’s coming next, which also lines up some interesting stuff on its own random initiative.

And iPodFM is also a lot easier to handle in the car than fumbling with cds 🙂

What a delightful list! Always knowing what side you ought to be on has been an important life’s lessons for me ever since I can remember. Nicely said…and oh so perfect for the theme!

I popped by from Tanya’s to say one thing: DAMN, you have amazing taste in music!

In so many cases – Knopfler, Evanescence, The Hoosiers… – I saw absolutely clearly why you’d chosen them. In others, you’ve given me some new artists to appreciate. Thank you!

I knew there was someone I hadn’t visited for far too long* – Hello Thumper 🙂

*(I blame Blogrolling’s troubles – need to use that second blog of mine to testdrive a workaround…)

Based on some of what you listed, it looks like we have similar taste in music. and you have things I haven’t heard…always a good thing to find new stuff to listen to. Thanks 🙂

Here via Net Chick today!