Sleepypete's Pillow

I’ve been reading stuff again.

Not so much actual paper books, although I am a little way through Ben Bova’s Exiles trilogy at the moment. No, I’ve been reading alternate timelines written by a fella who goes by the forum name : Whatisinaname. That’s a link to him on an Alternate History board. To get to most of his stuff, you’ll need a login on there.

So what’s it about ? I first got to reading his Star Trek non-Federation Timeline. He’ll take scifi and then introduce something different … For example, his Non Federation Timeline is set in the same Star Trek universe we know from the various TV series but the POD (Point Of Divergence) is that the Brits went ahead with the HOTOL project.

HOTOL was a Space Shuttle competitor that would have seen a single stage to orbit space craft that landed and took off mostly like a conventional aircraft. If it had survived, I bet we’d have seen a lot more space development than we have from a rather sluggish NASA. There’s actually a Son Of HOTOL in development at the moment called Skylon. (Link to Reg report) Crossing fingers that this gets off the ground. So to speak.

I’m digressing again – the Non Fed timeline takes the events of Star Trek but instead of a unified earth, we have 2 major powers. There’s the Royal Space Corps led by the Brits and the Commonwealth, with the UESPA taking the place of the Star Trek Federation. It’s well worth a read if you’ve got an age to read through it all.

Gotta say, his English could use a bit of work but his ability to keep the narrative interesting is much better than some established authors I could name. I’ve just finished reading his British Stargate thread and am eagerly waiting for more.

What’s that about magic ?

There’s a very famous quote : “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

The very best sci fi authors don’t attempt to explain how their stuff works, it just does. To the reader, descending into technobabble tends to take the gloss off the magic. It feels like padding to flesh out the episode to the 42 minutes demanded by the TV execs. Better stories establish their rules early on and then play with narrative within those rules. Or they’ll just ignore rules and make it up as they go along a la Doctor Who.

But even there, Doctor Who has certain rules it will follow. And a fez.

The Jack Campbell Lost Fleet books are a great example of keeping the scifi magic, as are the David Weber books up to a point. In the Lost Fleet, the equipment rules are established early :
Ships run on fuel cells, giving them limited range – cue needing to stop off along the way to resupply
Weapons are grapeshot, missiles, lasers and null fields
Can’t cheat light speed

And a few other rules. They’re established early, being integrated into the narrative instead of being allowed to dominate. The same holds true for David Weber Honorverse books, although lately the narrative in those has been allowed to submerge underneath irrelevance.

That’s the good, how about the bad.

I’ve been having mixed feelings about Iain M Banks books lately … His early Culture books are about a society managed by Minds (highly advanced computers), some of which will run ships with others running space stations. There’s also the Drones (less advanced mobile computers) and their companion people.

It’s magic. When he’s talking Culture specifically, it’s a magical universe where anything is possible. The explanation for why things happen is handled without descent into technobabble. But you still need that magic to make the books Interesting. That’s where Matter fell down, I wasn’t particularly interested in reading about the industrial age society that dominates this book, I wanted Space Ships.

Heinlein does particularly well with keeping the Magic intact, as does Larry Niven. It’s not so much about the science, it’s how to write great fiction in a scientifically advanced world. R.A. Salvatore is good at this too, although his specialty is magic in a fantasy world.

I suspect finding that magic is one reason I may be a little off gaming at the moment. The games I have are ageing and not particularly fresh. (Plus there’s game breaking bugs like those introduced in Mass Effect 2 Arrival). I have my hopes up for Mass Effect 3, although that’ll be waiting until next year. I’m also hoping for a bit of magic in Iain M Banks’ Surface Detail, which is due at the end of this month.

Right – my hair is still damp after shower, time to look for a little magic before bed time 🙂 (a few chapters of Exiles I think)

New cricket season has started 🙂

Which means instead of my evenings mostly being taken up by keeping up with recorded stuff, gaming or keeping up neighbours with loud music, occasional evenings are spent being the Comic Relief on the cricket field.

I approached this game with trepidation cos I’ve done literally no training this year. I’m one of those obnoxious people who has natural fitness. I may have a spare lorry tyre around my waist but I can still run quick and throw myself around. Which is rather useful if you have no technique to back you up. Cricket’s a game that rewards practice, as the practice lets you hone all the complicated technical things the game involves. Everything needs to come together in those fractions of seconds after the bowler sends the ball down. People with no practice behind them tend to be all arms & legs & unintentionally fielding while upside down.

We had awkward conditions tonight. There’s been no rain in Bristol for what must be a month now, so the pitch was a bit hard underneath. However, because we play in the evenings, that’s when the dew starts coming up making the ground a bit greasy. When I ran my first single I was wishing I was wearing my spikes as my feet nearly kept going with the intention of putting my (ample) bum on the floor. Lots of cloud cover (and light drizzle for a while) made for swinging conditions that were making me wish I could still bowl.

Bowling woulda been fun out there 🙂

What are spikes ? Trainers are fine for indoor sports (mostly) or artificial surfaces but for playing on grass you really need something more grippy. Footballers and rugby players have their studs, athletes and cricket players use Spiky Shoes. Mine are a bit old and encase the foot in leather (who said “is the leather a bad thing?”) so I’m acquire a set from Globe Sports “soon”. Make mine a pair of the Original Pro boots.

Why do you need them ? Simply put, it’s dangerous not to. Cricket calls for fast acceleration and lots of leg power being used to turn. If you attempt to field in flat soles, you’ll tear muscles due to compensating for slipping. Spikes let you field better and keep your legs intact.

I’m rabbitin’ again aren’t I ? How was the game ?

Early season affairs can be quite comical as those who have practiced try to put what they’ve learned indoors to good use. And then there’s the numpties (me!) who didn’t practice at all. That said, we had a decent game tonight. I definitely enjoyed it although I have a few things to relearn and a few things that need to improve a lot.

Relearn – with the batting, I can be very still. You need to move your feet very quickly while batting to get into position to play your shot. If you aren’t in the right place, you’ll miss or hit very weakly. Either way, you don’t achieve very much. I have a couple of things that I try to see if I can trigger myself into moving when I need to. Need to remember to use those …

Score – I got 10 runs tonight, bit laboured again (missed stuff I shoulda smashed) but I achieved a couple of targets : Don’t get lowest score, Don’t get out first.

Fielding was pretty comical at times. I make up for missing practice by running like a headless chicken and throwing myself around. I missed one fairly easy catch but made for it by taking a smart running catch late on. It was too dark to see it which is probably why I caught it. I’m weird like that.

What I need to do is wire my brain into doing baseball slides (long leg barrier to stop ball going past) as well as making sure I’m in the right body position to pick up and throw. I missed another catch which may just have been in range because I was a) on the wrong foot to launch and b) didn’t commit to a dive.

Must do better. Will do better 🙂

Close game – they needed 10 off the last over to win, with that going to 6 off 2 balls. Very close. We finished off strong though with 3 catches in that last over. I held one, after being inspired by a catch by the bowler that he nearly wore because it was getting rather dark.

That was a theme for tonight. One of the catches our side held was going straight towards someone’s mouth. He could have opened wide and had it for dinner 🙂

Did I get away without breaking anything ? Almost. I have a finger that is trying to be bigger than my thumb (dropped catches hurt more). My replacement knee pads are a waste of time because I skinned a knee through them. And I appear to have a bruise on my (rather too large) belly where I edged the ball into it. But apart from that, no groin strains, didn’t need to throw Big and my legs appear to have survived. Should be no problems coming out next week.

Right – wall of text alert went off half a post ago, so I’ll sign off and look forward to making some sensitive souls run away tomorrow when I show the unsuspecting people a PLAGUE FINGER ! (it’s gone purple – lol)

PS Tonight saw a first … I’m usually in a Floppy Hat but due to the light tonight, I wore a cap for the first time in probably 20 years on the cricket field.

When it works, it works extremely well – but there are those niggles increasingly coming in now. Cupertino must be a bit unhappy at their quality levels going down …

(Hopefully they are, don't want to see Apple go the way that HP did!)

Volvo = fat & slow. Even when the stats say my dad's C30 should do 0 to 60 in <10secs, it just feels Slow. Always worth checking things out though in case the actual product is different to what you expected it to be 🙂

Sleepy

I've never had a problem with any of my Apple kit 🙂

I don't think I could bring myself to drive a Volvo no matter how nice they are. It's just not 'me'. I think it's important to be happy with the car you have, not just in terms of price and reliability etc, but in how it fits you 🙂

I ended up in the doghouse for a couple of days … It’s birthday season at the moment and I hadn’t sent a card to either my mum or my nan.

Doh !

Fixed that by heading up there this weekend just gone. Decent weekend, we headed off to my sister’s place to check out one of the pubs down there. My techie knowledge expanded a bit too.

Windows Vista – is an obscenity (knew that already, remembered it this weekend). My sister’s Vista laptop got rebuilt a couple of months ago (hard disc failure) and she’s looking to get her iTunes library back on it. iTunes has a very nifty feature called Home Share, which lets you sync libraries between different machines. I use it to progressively back up my library, taking advantage of the “show me what isn’t in my library already” feature.

Works well if Vista allows it. Which it wasn’t. (iTunes application, reckon Vista was blocking it). Vista was also not allowing our other Windows 7 laptops to see it.

In the end, not so much of an issue, because there is a workaround that dates back to before Home Share became available. Awkward to use but it does the important thing – it Works.

Apple reliability – Apple used to have a rock solid reputation for quality. Dunno why but they’ve been allowing that to slip in recent years. Maybe it’s because the workers in their Foxconn factories aren’t happy bunnies. My original iPod was 100% reliable, plus my LittleWhiteBox Airport Express worked 100% before I allowed a firmware update. I refuse to allow iTunes to update now due to issues.

iPod – my 4th Gen 16GB has let me down a couple of times. There’s the can’t sync error which is solved by emptying it and refilling it. I was about to head off home yesterday, only to find “Shuffle – 0 songs” on an iPod which was full. Cue factory reset to fix that. Shouldn’t happen if the software was up to the job.

Airport Express – This either works standalone, setting up its own wifi network or it can join in on a wifi network that is already there. It switches to standalone just fine but you have to put passwords in when you’re making it join another network again. Those settings should be remembered, those software flaws are making it forget.

iTunes – the last 3 times I’ve allowed it to update itself, I’ve had to uninstall/reinstall to have it talk to the Airport Express over Airplay.

We expect better from a premium brand like Apple, it’s disappointing when these silly software flaws spoil the experience. It definitely means that I will not consider changing my computing to Apple machines.

What else ? Volvo cars.

Yes. My dad retired and bought a Volvo. Don’t tell anyone.

To be honest, it’s not a bad car. It’s plush, solid, well put together and has a decent amount of toys. It should also last well. What is it ? It’s a C30 2.4 litre with an automatic box.

I found driving that to be quite a useful experience as it allowed me to give a Long Cruise test of an automatic gearbox car with cruise control :

Auto box – Gotta be honest, looking at the specs of the C30 the autobox cripples the performance it gives. It goes from 7.5 secs to 60 up to 8.5. That’s a huge drop in performance and it shows behind the wheel. A 2.4 litre engine car shouldn’t feel laboured, although that could be my reluctance to ever use 100% throttle. I.e. There’s a mismatch between what I want the car to do on a lean throttle and what the car thinks I want it to do. The 100 mile trip told me I could happily live with an automatic, you can’t really do 100 mile test drives as the garage starts up the search party.

I’m getting on with the Focus much better there, since the service it’s been feeling very Perky indeed. Almost like it’s giving its full power instead of something like just half that. The Focus has become far more responsive and that’s going to delay my jump into another car for a couple of months at least. (I’m enjoying it while it lasts)

The Volvo isn’t a terrible car, I could definitely get used to having Cruise Control (as long as there’s a place to rest my right foot, which the Volvo doesn’t really have) and I could live with the auto box, as it would help out a left leg that likes to tense itself up (dunno why). The only time I’ve really driven an automatic was a Jeep in the USA, which I had as a hire car for a fortnight.

Would I get a Volvo ? No. What they currently offer doesn’t fit what I’m looking for. They’re all too big and heavy.

Anyway – decent weekend and I learned stuff that I’ll put towards my next car. That’s still likely to be a Prius T Spirit but with what’s happened in Japan where they’re built, they need a bit of time to get themselves right again. Plus more time before buying gives :
More Payment Holiday
Enjoyment of a Frisky Focus
Time for something better to appear …

Will add something in when I (eventually) decide to jump for a new car.

It's easier for me to count Heinlein books I haven't read instead of Heinlein books I have read 🙂

I haven't bothered counting but I am a big Heinlein fan 🙂

34…. [grin]

They’re at it again 🙂

The Reg have turned their earlier Best Films Never Made (that’s my link to it) story into a poll now. Here’s a link to the story with the poll : Reg Link.

Different list this time around, I definitely recognise a lot more on it :

The Algebraist – Iain M Banks ****
Altered Carbon – Richard K Morgan
The Atrocity Archives – Charles Stross
The Baroque Cycle – Neal Stephenson
A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M Miller, Jr.
Childhood’s End – Arthur C Clarke
The Chronicles of Amber – Roger Zelazny
Cities in Flight – James Blish
The City and the Stars – Arthur C Clarke
Consider Phlebas – Iain M Banks ****
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
Deathworld – Harry Harrison
The Demolished Man – Alfred Bester
Dorsai – Gordon R Dickson
Downbelow Station – CJ Cherryh
Dragonriders of Pern – Anne McCaffrey ****
Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
Eon – Greg Bear
Excession – Iain M Banks ****
A Fire Upon the Deep – Vernor Vinge
Footfall – Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle ****
The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
The Forge of God – Greg Bear
Foundation – Isaac Asimov ****
The Gap Cycle – Stephen R Donaldson
Gateway – Frederick Pohl
Hyperion – Dan Simmons
The Legacy of Heorot – Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Steven Barnes ****
Lensmen – E.E. “Doc” Smith
Lord of Light – Roger Zelazny
Lucifer’s Hammer – Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle ****
The Man in the High Castle – Philip K Dick
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A Heinlein ****
The Mote In God’s Eye – Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle ****
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Night’s Dawn – Peter F Hamilton
Old Man’s War – John Scalzi
On Basilisk Station – David Weber ****
The Player of Games – Iain M Banks ****
Protector – Larry Niven (have it, not read it yet)
Rendezvous With Rama – Arthur C Clarke
Ringworld – Larry Niven ****
Skylark – EE “Doc” Smith
Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
The Stainless Steel Rat – Harry Harrison
The Stars My Destination (aka Tiger! Tiger!) – Alfred Bester
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert A Heinlein (gave up on it)
The Technicolor Time Machine – Harry Harrison
Titan – John Varley
Use of Weapons – Iain M Banks ****

Same as before – the ones in Italic with ****’s are the ones I’ve read. 14 this time.

Started reading again 🙂

I have cycles where I’ll devour several books very quickly, interspersed with periods where it takes me ages to get through one. The latest is Inversions by Iain M. Banks.

He’s a decent author but his books tend to be somewhat inconsistent. I think it’s the aim behind the book. Is the book relating to galaxy shaping events or is there something more philosophical going on. I tend to deal more in absolutes and have trouble getting my head around philosophical stuff. Page turners for me tend to be more about will that starship make it through, which of the crew have the Sword of Damocles hanging over them. I like things to happen.

Maybe that’s why I like watching rugby and cricket but find football tedious. Lots of narrative in football but very little in the way of game changing events (goals & sending offs).

Anyway – Inversions is a tale set in two countries in a far off planet. It’s not earth but a similar analogue. The narrative alternates between a Doctor and her apprentice in one country and the bodyguard of the Protector (King) of the other. You have intrigue inside the court and intrigue between the countries. There’s lots here that should make it interesting but to be honest, most of that is telegraphed long before the actual action happens.

Yep – it’s more a philosophy message book than Armies Invade Spacefleets Clash. Must read Consider Phlebas or The Algebraist again soon as they keep the reader guessing much more in a “how the hell can the characters get out of this mess ????” kind of way.

Not a bad book, just not as many surprises here as in his other books. Not much “science” fiction here too. There’s touches of sci-fi in there but it’s very light.

What’s next ? That’ll be the Exiles Trilogy by Ben Bova. It’s a trilogy two thirds written before I was born. I’m 100 pages out of 450 in so far and it’s escaping the obsolence trap that a lot of older sci-fi books fall into. The tech is what you would expect from extrapolating from what we see today, in that it thinks we’ll have Better versions of what we have now. Progress through evolution instead of revolution. Computer tech is a bit behind though. We have advanced in hardware (if not AI) far more than what anyone in the Apollo years would have expected.

Ben Bova’s books can be a bit “Writing By Numbers” (the way David Weber has gone) but they usually keep the reader guessing along the way. And that’s what counts, we don’t want to know the outcome before we read it.