Month: June 2011

HMS Ulysses is a very good (if brutal) book. I really liked it.

I’m a Culture fan.

They’re the centrepiece of a series of books by Iain M. Banks, starting with the outstanding Consider Phlebas where the benevolent Culture dominate the galaxy. There’s 3 distinct type of being that inhabit this universe, humans, drones and Minds. The Minds run the universe for the benefit of the humans and are the ones firmly In Charge. I’ll not say too much more there as Consider Phlebas gives an excellent introduction to the Culture. Excession is the next best.

I’ve just bought the newest … Surface Detail. I’m amazed it took me this long to find a copy, it’s been out in paperback for just about a fortnight now and I’ve literally only seen the paperback in one shop … (Waterstones at Bristol’s Cribbs Causeway). Got it now and in a 3 for 2 offer where I found 2 easily and then took half an hour to choose a third.

New books :
Iain M Banks – Surface Detail – 3 for 2
Chris Wraight – Battle of the Fang – 3 for 2
Charles Yu – How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe – 3 for 2
(yes – I was really struggling to find a 3rd!)
E.E. Doc Smith – Triplanetary – Hay
R.A. Heinlein – Between Planets – Hay
R.A. Heinlein – Beyond This Horizon – Hay
Larry Niven – Convergent Series – Hay

While away for the week I managed to read :

Ben Bova – Exiles Trilogy

This one continues Ben Bova’s favourite theme of near future scifi. The basic premise is that scientists in fields including genetic engineering have been identified as a disruptive influence and the world government has decided to get rid of them.

The trilogy weighs in at about 480 pages (shorter than a lot of single books) and tells the tale of the originals escaping from Earth, the machinations of the second generation and finally the arrival of the last generation. They’re ok as books go but they don’t develop as deeply as other authors. That’s good and bad, some authors can flog the dead horse and drag out a story for far too long. With these, there’s not really enough meat on the bones.

Dan Abnett – Ghostmaker


This is the second novel in the Warhammer 40k Gaunt’s Ghosts series. It’s a bit disjointed because the narrative jumps from short segments on Monthax to what amount to flashbacks focusing on one of the Ghosts at a time.

It works after a fashion but the focus is not as tight as in the first book in the series. Hoping for better from the third in the series (Necropolis) which I’ll read after gapping to different authors for a couple. It kept me reading because the characters are interesting enough for you to want to know what happens with them. The Warhammer 40k universe is brutal enough such that anything can happen, no character is safe.

There’s a contrast here between Ghostmaker and Exiles. Ghostmaker gives a good look at individual characters during their flashbacks but the narrative suffers for it. Exiles keeps a reasonable narrative going but at the cost of limited characters.

Alistair McLean – HMS Ulysses

Last book I managed to read while away is set in World War Two and is centred around the fictional ship HMS Ulysses, an advanced heavy cruiser charged with defending the convoys of war materiel being shipped to Russia.

This book is quite possibly more brutal than the Warhammer 40k books. At least in WH40K the characters get some respite, here there is none. Everything is against the crew of the Ulysses, including the elements, the naval hierarchy and not least, the Germans.

We should never forget what we ask of our Servicemen and women. Books like HMS Ulysses bring home the fact that conditions they face can be every bit as bad (or worse!) than what we read in books or see on the screen. And they don’t have the option of putting the book down when they’ve had enough.

If you can find a copy of this one, it’s well worth a read. Very instructive.

What’s next ? I had started Triplanetary by E.E. Doc Smith but with the arrival of Surface Detail, I’m swapping to that because it fits the A to Z that I’m a bit too close to schedule on, having read 11 of 26 in 5 months.

Last note – I’ve reawakened the techie blog with a post about that Easytether app. Managed to avoid using too much GeekSpeak too 🙂

Hmm – week away, where to start ?

The Crazies, including the Sleepypete, Cyberkitten, Craziequeen, Bionicdwarf, RCA and the HamsterKat went to Herefordshire last week under the pretence of visiting the Hay festival. We were holed up in a cottage near Clohengar. Well recommended that cottage, although with 6 of us the single loo was in high demand.

So – here’s a few numbers from the stats junkie :

2.5 books read (was in the middle of one)
4 books bought (all written before I was born I believe)
5 cds bought (technically*)

*Yes – I went to Hay and bought more cd’s than books. Maybe that’s a sign of Modern Times. Or it could have been that 2 of the cds were for RCA and were part of a 4 for £10 deal.

Much music listened to
Lots of tasty dinners from Craziequeen and RCA
159 tracks added to the library (I bought a couple more things after coming back)
135 miles from me
450 megabytes of internet consumed (see gremlins below)
101 chavs spotted (at least !) in Hereford
6 movies watched
1 cathedral and 1 chapel visited
1.1 castles scouted (Hay castle only counts 0.1)
1 tour guide lusted over (BD and CK have pictures)
Too many biscuits bought (I had to bring some uneaten ones back)
And a bunch of technical gremlins taken out back and shot

Fun, relaxing week. Really don’t want to go back to work tomorrow. Although that last could have something to do with me taking a trip down south for the day. I got my prep for that out the way before we broke up.

Bit more detail ?

I love helping people out (sometimes whether they like it or not, which can get me into trouble) and big aspect of that this week was the internet connection … Since I changed to an Android phone (SonyEricsson X10i mini) I’ve been finding new stuff it can do. This last week’s new thing was being able to provide an internet connection :

Take 1 Android phone (with slightly dodgy in-the-country 3g signal)
Connect to laptop
Apply software to both (Easytether Lite)
Laptop can now speak to internet
Peek in wifi networking setup, think wotdat ?
Create “Ad-hoc wifi network”
And share the phone connection across to the wifi network
Voila – several laptops seeing the internet through my phone.

There are limits to the Easytether Lite software, in that the free version doesn’t support https or a few other things. So no logging into MSN Messenger or sites that need a certain level of authentication. For everything else, it worked perfectly. It’s so useful that I’m seriously considering paying the £6 to upgrade my Lite copy to a bought copy. The massive advantage of this software is that it works without breaking into the phone to activate “Root” access. Translation – no warranty worries. I highly recommend Easytether.

I did find other wibblies (Windows issues) going with the sharing though, I may well add these to the Techie blog (linked in blogger profile*) at a later date because I’ll be using GeekSpeak for it.
*(it was in the links list but I removed it because I’d not added anything to it for almost a year)

I could do with another holiday now to recover from the last.