Sleepypete's Pillow

Currently watching Return of the Jedi again, which has got me thinking about books 🙂

The book I’m reading at the moment is Striking the Balance by Harry Turtledove. It’s the third in a series of 8 that has at its theme an alien invasion of Earth, commencing a couple of years into World War Two. I want to read these mainly cos I have all 8 🙂 but also because I want to know what happens in them. Trouble is, the author’s style makes it very hard work.

Curious …

The books I’ve read most recently are the Orion series by Ben Bova (see blog post a few down from this one !) and David Weber’s Ashes of Empire series. The Ashes of Empire series is a trilogy that I devoured within a couple of weeks, both the first time I read it and the last time. I picked up Larry Niven’s Ringworld yesterday and almost read the whole thing. Yet I’ve been struggling for weeks with Striking The Balance.

All three series are science fiction and some of the personalities at work in Ashes of Empire can only be described as disturbed and disturbing. The violence level is very high, mainly due to the weapons technology at work. Yet that hyperviolence is diluted by the sense of “fun” running through the books, such that it nevers crosses the boundary into “sickening”.

It’s similar for Larry Niven’s Ringworld series, which has a highly interesting character called Louis Wu as its central protagonist. There’s a huge sense of adventure running through the 4 books in this series, as Louis Wu jumps out of one frying pan into another fire. After reading snippets out of Ringworld, it’s quite possible I’ll dive through these 4 books (Ringworld, … Engineers, … Throne, … Children) when I’m done with Striking the Balance.

If you’ve not read anything by Larry Niven, he’s well worth checking out. Recommended books are Footfall, Ringworld and Lucifer’s Hammer. An unforgettable passage in Lucifer’s Hammer has a group of surfers trying to outrun a Mega-Tsunami by attempting to ride the wave.

Hey ! Where’s the Star Wars link ?

The Star Wars films have spawned a huge number of books, that mostly take on after the films. They’re a mix between outstanding and very poor. The X-Wing books written by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allstom are amazing, for their intelligent writing and the no holds barred aspect of the story. However, the books I’ll probably be reading next are the ones by Timothy Zahn. They take place about 5 years after Return of the Jedi and take the reader through a campaign masterminded by the brilliant Grand Admiral Thrawn. It’s intelligent scifi written by a gifted author.

Which is a lot more than I can say for some of the Star Wars books, I groaned (and growled) when I heard that some of the Dune sequels would be co-authored by Kevin J Anderson. He was responsible for some of the more painful Star Wars books I won’t be reading again. I mentioned something about intelligent scifi above, can’t say that about anything I’ve read from Kevin J Anderson. A pity …

There’s also the New Jedi Order series – I devoured most Star Wars books as soon as they came out but this later series killed my enthusiasm for the genre. Our main heroes are up against some real nasty pieces of work in the Yuuzhan Vong, aliens from outside the galaxy. Some books good, some books bad.

But I’ll be looking forward to reading the Timothy Zahn books again 🙂

Back to the film ! The Ewoks are now kicking Stormtrooper butt and I have a sneaky feeling that my next books to read will be the Timothy Zahn Heirs to the Empire series 🙂

Heh heh heh – that's what my big sis said 🙂 I of course plead innocence.

Yep – lots more habitable today, although I think I may have overdone the cool-me-down shower last night – my back has been complaining today !

I know what you mean. It's been too hot and sticky to even move lately! It's a little cooler today though 🙂

Couple of weather piccys today 🙂 Inspired by the temperatures we’re having here and by seeing that a certain Spaghetti Western movie is on Five at the moment.

(I’m not watching it, I have NCIS on 🙂

The Good :

Ice cubes good ! Although the heat means they’re melting even before I get to drink the coke I have with them.

The Bad :

Hmm – 37 degrees C. And that’s from a fridge magnet in a house that’s been unoccupied all day at about half 9pm. With all the electronics (exc fridge) in the house turned off too. I usually keep my desktop PC turned on, running a couple of bits of research for the Rosetta@home and Climateprediction projects in BOINC, so it helps out with the heating in the winter. That will be coming to a close though as when the current Climate model it’s running is complete, I’ll be doing lots of Reinstally type things to my main PC :-).

PC off during the day at the moment cos the heat has been making it complain loudly (literally – with klaxons!)

Doh – sidetracked …

The Ugly :

Erm – that’d be the person behind the ZombieDwagon, so I’ll spare people that one so their monitors survive uncracked.

boob muscles eh?

I too don't know much about cricket but it's cool that the women are gaining fans

Thanks for the visit 🙂 Glad I had a decent post for you, cos the two below were a bit angsty …

Cricket's a great game to watch, for the tension that can build up. In a close game, something result-changing is likely to happen every ball, only rugby really comes that close.

It's an acquired taste though – a new cricket watcher tends to need an interpreter to help them keep up with the arcane and archaic ritual that is cricket 🙂

PS Very curious about that Special Gift 🙂

I know nothing about Cricket except what I've seen in movies…But it sounds quite exciting, and expecially because I didn't realize that women play Cricket, too….Enjoy, Enjoy!

Thanks for your visit abd your Birthday Wishes…It is much appreciated, my dear.

Watching the girls from the late-nite telly again 🙂

Hey ! Not those ones, the England Ladies Cricket girls. Ok, the games are in England at the moment so it’s not so late-nite telly. I’ve been enjoying watching them lately and not just cos they’re a good looking bunch 🙂 The England men cricketers can be highly frustrating to watch, because they’re very inconsistent. Some games, they’re devastating and not many sides can match them. However in others they can only be described as “directionless amateurs” as their lack of focus and preparation has them badly letting down their fans.

Not so with the England women.

The game vs Australia on Friday was very close, close enough to make it an exciting finish. Not so with the game on Sunday, our girls must have been in a mood to dominate everything they saw in front of them. It was a scary display of how a well drilled side of class players can blast away what was also a class side. Going to mention a few players (might put Cricinfo links in later!)

Katherine Brunt set up the win on Sunday with some outstanding seam bowling. I’ve done the lot in cricket, keeping batting and seam/swing bowling so I can usually spot class when I see it. Although she hasn’t got the 80mph+ pace of the men (she’s 23! bowlers peak at 26-30), she has the ball on a string. Great command of length and line, combined with the ability to get the ball to move sideways through the air. As an ex opening batsman, if I knew a Katherine Brunt was in the opposition, I’d be preparing for some trench warfare as I attempted to keep my wicket intact, let alone score runs …

Laura Marsh is another of our outstanding bowlers. Spinner this time, so she bowls a lot slower. When she’s bowling well, she’ll put the ball right on target, every single ball. And that’s with subtle changes of pace and flight too. On her day, I’d struggle to score with Laura Marsh too. (cough – I mean get runs)

She’s helped out by an excellent keeper too in Sarah Taylor (aka Squirt!). There was some very efficient work done on Sunday although not so many opportunities today. She bats well too, making a very good account for herself even though she’s still just 20.

Last mention goes to Claire Taylor, probably the classiest cricketer England have at the moment. And I’m including the men in that too. She deservedly got an entry in Wisden for being one of their Cricketers of the Year for batting and fielding. It’s little details like having short hair instead of the ponytails most of the girls go for. That strikes me as a statement to say “I’m going for the short hair look cos I’ll be batting all day.” Long hair doesn’t really work with a cricket helmet … Oh – she won the semi-final for England and confirmed the win in the final 🙂

So I’m currently enjoying the England girls play the Aussies with a bit of delayed coverage from earlier today. Maybe noticed a lack of me saying how these girls look. You’d think that might be what the attraction of the women’s game was … and you’d be about 10% right. The novelty is that the game is being played by some highly attractive and fit young ladies. The reality is that the standard of play is very high and it leads to some compelling cricket.

They’re earning a lot of fans and it’s through quality of play. The commentators didn’t seem quite sure why they were there in the first matches but by the later ones, you get the feeling they’ll take some keeping away next time. If you want titillation in your ladies sport, there’s beach volleyball. Ladies cricket scores as a grown up game played by intelligent people who mean business.

Next to the women, our cricketing men can sometimes appear to be Dumb Blondes and more than a little clueless.

PS I think my sister is jealous of one or two of them. When I sent a few Cricinfo links over, the phrase “bowling must give you big boob muscles” came back 🙂

Been seeing a few things lately that’s been making me wonder if it’s worth continuing to blog …

The reason I’ve kept this blog going is that I find myself with thoughts that are bursting to get out. I need to express them but either have difficulty saying it out loud (confidence issue) or it’s a case of not actually knowing who to talk to them about. So I work ’em out here so that they don’t keep me up all night. They do that, the subject I’ll be thinking about will rattle around in my head until I sort out what it actually is and scribbling it here allows me to settle the chaotic thoughts into some kind of order.

Trouble is though … and this is where the Pitchforks come in, is the breach of anonymity that could quite easily happen due to the attitudes of the people who actually run this country. I’m not talking about the government there, although you’d expect them to be in charge. They’re not though – it’s the media that runs this country. Yep, even less elected than our PM (and his adoption of the top job didn’t involve a vote …)

As they showed in the case of the Copper Blogger who they exposed, the argument “in the public interest” can be used to unmask anyone, even someone who is writing from a declared position of anonymity. What’s that mean for whistleblowers ? The policeman blogger’s position is rather different to mine though as I understand that he often commented on politics and cases he was involved in. Which is the opposite to how I work, I obliquely mention work reasonably often but I’m far more interested in talking (and saying nice things) about the people I work with than I am in talking politics.

Politics tends to be highly depressing, although I get the feeling that not all of what the media says about our politicians is actually true. The media can happily get away with half-truths and blatant inaccuracy with any comeback from public figures being limited to a halfhearted apology on a small fraction of page 10.

I work on a fairly high profile project (1 well hidden blog post here mentions it) and there’s usually a mix of emotions that come out when a news story about us does the rounds. On one hand, we’re usually pretty chuffed to see nice things written about us and our project’s one of the better ones so nice things tends to be what we see. However, that’s tempered by all the inaccuracies, falsehoods, blatant lies and utter incompetence that riddles media reporting. Even when there’s a definitive statement produced where it would be unbelievable for it to be twisted, the media often find a way of corrupting it to suit the angle they’re looking for.

I have a very dim view of incompetence, I don’t like to make life any easier for those who I view as Idiots and Morons. However, the ability for a newspaper to use the “In The Public Interest” argument to strip away a person’s anonymity is disturbing, especially when they’re the ones defining what the “Public Interest” is. Is it something the public genuinely need to know or is it the media hunting for a new Victim.

Either way, highly disturbing. Makes you wonder whether you really want to put something on a website that can be twisted and corrupted by some highly questionable people.

If you’ll excuse me, I’ll put my Torch and Pitchfork away and get back to watching the England Girls in the cricket. They’re fighting hard but are looking incredibly nervous … Very strange, a side that was so clinical in the longer game is struggling with poor errors. Hope they bat better so they can beat Aussie, cos that means I’ll be watching the England Girls again on Sunday morning 🙂

PS In case there’s any misunderstandings, I’ll repeat what I usually put about work. It hasn’t changed 🙂 I work with some amazing people and although some can be pretty hard work (very sharp people can be tough to keep up with) the project is great to work on. And that’s shown by the length of time people tend to stay on board, people hang around on our project. Also, even though big projects have their bad times as well as the good, we’re really delivering stuff now. We have an awesome product that should do its job for many years to come. And it can’t be a bad thing when after a decade or so, you see again what you worked on and feel a sense of pride when thinking “I helped with that”, which is what everyone on my project will have in the future.