Line War

Just finished reading Line War by Neal Asher.
This is the fifth Ian Cormac novel, and really felt like a series conclusion. Its scope is massive, galaxy affecting, and its repercussions fleshed out without remorse. It's no secret than in this novel, millions and millions of people and sentient AI die, and many die gruesomely, graphically depicted. It's a great read, well written and well paced with plenty of large scale events throughout the novel. I particularly enjoyed the creation and deployment of the largest, most destructive weapon ever devised, outside of intentionally caused supernovae. It builds on the work in Prador Moon in this respect, another Asher novel I really, really enjoyed.
I also thought the development of Cormac in this novel was really cool. He was a lot more cynical and paranoid, and seemed quite pissed off much of the time. Of course, he has been through a lot in the series, so his character changes make perfect sense. Again, repercussions of this, relentlessly pushed to the end.
The end is completely satisfying. Many novels attempting such large scale really peter out at the end, but not this one. Asher spends a lot of time going over the events in glorious detail, from large explosions to the tiny communications between entities. Most of the hanging threads from the series are well tied up with explanations detailed. In particular, the Dragon character is really opened up.
Excellent.

Fusion steps forward

Dr Glenzer of the National Ignition Facility (Nif) in the US thinks they can get a fusion ignition happening this year. They are using 192 lasers to heat a fusion ready pellet of fuel to the point of fusion. They've just passed an important step and got the supplied energy up to 669 kiloJoules, and he suggests all they need is 1200  kiloJoules.
More here.

Apple iPad

Damn, I'm excited about the iPad.
A while ago, my son said to me that he wanted to live in the future, and I told him I always thought that as well, and then I told him that for me, 2010 was always the future when I was growing up. He was kind of awe-struck by that, because he figured I was living my dream. Well, ok, we know it doesn't work like that, but then, this morning seeing the iPad, I kind of feel a bit like that. This is an amazing device.
I really enjoy my Nokia E61i. It can do a lot of the things an iPhone can, but just not as well, and without a touch interface. It's a pre-iPhone device, and hence is practically irrelevant. The iPhone really started the touch computing revolution, and showed us how much better interfaces can be.
The iPad goes further. It's not just that it's bigger, because really, that's all it is; it's big enough to enable a much wider, richer experience through a more capable interface. Suddenly it's possible to type reasonably, see entire web pages, get decent video, comfortably read a book, as well as all the amazing accelerometer features, like games and interface enhancements.
See some photos here, and here.
Here's a really interesting article about how it will change things.
I'd hate to be selling an eBook reader that cost more than $200, when you can buy this for $500. I think the iPad will really bring out eBooks and cement the ePub format for a long time. eBooks are going to be the big change this year outside of this awesome piece of mobile computing.
I'll be lining up for the Wi-Fi only version because I really wouldn't use a 3G connection much, and I don't want to wait the extra time for it. Start the 60 day counter now.

Dragon Coast: Book VI

My D&D campaign adventure is coming along. I've been filling the geography with nasties from Pathfinder Bestiary, Monster Manuals I-IV, and other tomes like Fiend Folio and Libris Mortis. It is set in the Forgotten Realms, specifically Cormyr as far as the characters know, but of course can lead them anywhere. I've just set up a campaign page at Obsidian Portal, so when the adventure starts, it can be tracked there.
Hopefully I can keep the players' disbelief suspended during the game, enough anyway to enjoy some hack, slash, burn, loot, and pillage action. The adventure is all newly created, so it's been a big challenge so far, and will continue to be until the PCs either finish, or die trying.
Andrew is still running us through Horror on the Orient Express, and we probably have 4 or more sessions left, sounds like. Last session was particularly gruesome. I can't even tell you. Nightmares.

Still waiting for the iSlate

The comics are getting on to it now. Here. Here.
5 days.
And this. Ha!
More rumours.

Dollhouse S2E6: Not Lame

That was a really cool episode. It features a new character, Bennet (who was also in the previous episode, also good) played by Summer Glau. Summer plays her usual style character, psychologically unstable, plain weird and a geek. Brilliant. The play between the two alpha geeks, Tophur and Bennet is really good. Also brilliant is that the doll Victor is imprinted with Topher, and he interacts with the real Topher all through the episode. Hilarious!

V: The Series: Lame

*sigh*
I really wanted it to be as good as I remembered the original V: The Series. But it isn't. It's just lame. It's all really very pretty, nice effects, and everyone is gorgeous, but it's shallow, and unimaginative. It's just boring.
I had a good feeling about it too, after BSG was such a great series, doing things differently from it's original series, yet keeping its flavour. But they're completely different, obviously.
*sigh*

The Earth is plunging toward the Sun!

At least this theory suggests it might be.
In short, the Sun is collecting dark matter on its journey through space, increasing its apparent mass, thus slowly shrinking Earth's orbit. Apparently, this should cause the semi-major axis of Earth's orbit to increase, which we can measure, and is only out by a factor of 2 or so from the observed.
Hmmm.

Apple iSlate

12 days to go. Can you feel it?
News.
Recent.
Wrong.
Feel the buzz.

It's good to be a software engineer

It's officially good to be a software engineer. Low physical activity and stress levels. Mostly, I personally think it's interesting because everything keeps changing. Boredom is the worst.

Matter

I just finished reading Matter. No reading-matter jokes please.
There was quite a large fantasy element to this, as much of the plot revolves around a civilisation barely into gunpowder and steam engine technology, and then only because they've been fed it by a more advanced race. I don't mind that, fantasy-in-SF was used to great effect in Implied Spaces, but I felt it made much of this novel a little on the slow side. On the upside, this also forced the fleshing out of the different levels of Involved civilisations in the Culture universe, in fact showcasing one of each of four distinct levels of races of sentients, each one a mentor for the race below, with the Culture obviously on top.
This book introduced the shell-world concept, which is essentially a constructed planet formed of many concentric shells, although existing in more spacial dimensions than normal space. Each shell level can hold a whole different race and environment tailored for them. A very cool and brilliantly detailed technology.
The ending was a little rushed, I felt. I think it would have been good to have focussed more on events in the second half of the novel than the low-tech political shenanigans in the first half.
Still, a good read. Iain M. Banks rarely disappoints.