books and desk

Dates a bit approximate.

Books recently read.
20/8/2009

ByRoyalCommand
author:CharlieHigson
More of Daire's books. Good fun. :) James Bond just getting back from a last adventure (I should maybe have started at the first book!?) to join his friends ski-ing. It's before WWII. Good action story.
http://www.mi6.co.uk/sections/literary/index_higson.php3




1/8/2009

Ilium
author:DanSimmons
Excellent!
Gods and humans acting out the Illiad, while AI space and explorer bots go on a quest and other humans left over on future earth (maybe?) are dependant now on tech they don't understand. I was a bit dubious - the cover quotes and blurb don't help the book I think. But wow! I liked it after a few pages. It was not explained for a long time what the hell was happening (as it was for the characters) but in the end you knew where in time & space you were and how things were working. Nice book :)
http://www.dansimmons.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Simmons



17/8/2009

StarOfTheSea
author:JosephOConnor
Again the excited gushing quotes on cover are off-putting! Excellently told. The history and people and politics and knowledge of the time felt very true. Good characters again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_O%27Connor
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/o/joseph-oconnor/



20/6/2009

TheSeaAndTheSummer
author:GeorgeTurner
mmmh I really like the awkwardness of oldish sci-fi. The future people looking back on how the world was really doesn't work. The main story does though. Global warming and world over-population has kicked in in earnest. It's getting hotter, the sea is rising and food production and resources in general are getting really tight. Society in Australia has been split between swill and sweet. The status-quo (sometimes involving criminality and corruption, but without evil or even badness) is maintained by everyone.
Is what is missing from the characters some evilness. Everyone is actually too well behaved.



My desk in Sun.
21/8/2009


Nearly a christmas tree ornament!
Another flash moment.
Missing 0 from length in a command in manual and blindly cut&pasting. tut.
My suggestion of hot-popping in flash in working board and reprogramming came in as a suggested fix from Intel as well :-) Heh heh! And it worked. whew!