Anomaly

I recently finished reading Anomaly.
Although quite short, and more like a long short story, this had some great concepts and is well worth the read. Not your typical alien first contact storyline, I found this engrossing and somehow plausible. Oh, except for the bit where the U.N. invades the U.S., that was jsut silly, but nevermind.
OK, I don't want to spoil any of the actual interesting content, so just go read it. Short, cheap, interesting.

Rebellion

I just finished reading Rebellion.
Quite good fun, light reading, not particularly well written, but still very readable.
In this episode of the series, the machines keep pushing the human marines to fight for them, but Rigg's Pigs fight back, having had enough, it being pretty clear the Macros are just going to make them keep fighting until they are all dead.
There were some good concepts and sequences, involving a race of centaur-like people that have been forced off their homeworlds to live in giant space habitats. They did seem a little fragile though, not sure how they haven't all been killed off looong ago. There was also an introduction of a new race of group intelligent bio goop, a new Nano intelligence and some more information regarding the Blues.
So a nice easy holiday read, maybe a bit sexist and simple, like the protagonist, but there is still interest for me to keep reading the series.

REAMDE

I just finished reading REAMDE by Neal Stephenson.
Designed as a play on README, the commonly found computer file, REAMDE is a virus written by one of the characters in the novel, aimed at making money from a massive online role playing game called T'Rain.
This covers about ten percent of what REAMDE is about though, as the story is by far outweighed by a story of survival, fighting terrorists, Russian mobsters, and just plain bad luck. There is one really massive coincidence that drives the plot from about 30% of the way through, but I figure you can always forgive one plot device, it's what the novel is all about after all.
This is a really long book at over 1000 pages. Stephenson seems to be in the waxing lyrical mode, or failing that, the just plain too-much-detail mode. A couple of times I was thinking, "just get on with it!".
But generally, it is very well written, and paced, so this isn't a big deal.
Lots of violence, shootings, beatings and so on, crashes, money, more guns, heriocs.
Good stuff.

Review of DigitalCentre

I recently tried to buy a receiver from DigitalCentre (digitalcentre.com.au). (Not linked, don't bother)
On the surface, it appears this site sells equipment at very good prices, but I'm here to tell you, you'll pay in all sorts of other ways if you use this site. The only hint that you may have problems is in the FAQ where they specify that purchases may take "up to 12 business days but this can vary".
In my experience, I waited the 12 business days, then received an automated email saying it was on back order. I rang up to cancel the order as I wasn't willing to wait any further for them to get stock. I don't think this is entirely unreasonable, in fact, I've had other online sites call me proactively shortly after purchase to tell me when there would be a delay and give me options on other products, a refund or waiting. The manager stronly wanted me to wait for another week, when he guaranteed I would have the product delivered by Friday.
By the Wednesday, I was calling them to see how it was going, and by Thursday afternoon I had finally managed to get the manager to call me back to tell me that in fact, no, it would be delayed for another two weeks. Uh-huh. I just cancelled on the spot, and sent the required email to request refund. At this point its already been three weeks into them taking my payment, and I asked when my refund would happen. This started out as being, "sure, by next Wednesday", and for the next three weeks, every time I managed to get someone to tell me when it would be refunded, it was always either tomorrow, or "by Friday". I eventually received a refund. I should note that the FAQ specifies that you can lose 20% for cancelling an order. Seriously!! Happily, that didn't happen to me.
Generally, I am very unhappy with the customer service and the experience. Rarely did anyone call me back, let alone respond to email. Promises of time periods were not once accurate.
I think though, that I didn't have as bad an experience as some others.
This person posting on whirlpool was told after a long delay that they would have to pay extra because the price had gone up. That's outrageous!
This person had a horrible tech support experience.

Just don't use this site. The customer service is just horrible. Don't expect to get equipment within a month, and don't expect any happy support if you do.

Snow in the Desert

I just finished reading Snow in the Desert by Neal Asher.
This is a Short Read (novelette) set in the Polity universe from Asher's Cormac novels.
You have sex, violence and plenty of action packed into this punchy little short story. It adds a new bio/tech anomoly to the Polity setting which was interesting, and ties in various aspects from the Polity that we already know and love.
Good stuff.


[updated for typos]

Pink Noise: A Posthuman Tale

Just finished reading this.

It was shorter than I had feared halfway through.

Neuromancer

I just finished reading Neuromancer by William Gibson.
I hadn't read this for years and yes, it's still awesome. It's hard to believe it was written in 1984. The descriptions of the Matrix, the shared virtual space, with the bright lights of the mega corporations and AIs with their defensive firewalls and ice still feel futuristic and possible. There's a whole range of really cool tech on display, like nerve splicing, physical appearance and performance upgrades, derm patches for drug delivery, obviously the Matrix and AI, an uploaded mind, a rotating space habitat and being able to ride on the back of anothers sensory input via the Matrix.
It's not just all the really cool tech either, the language used is mind blowing in many parts. I love the descriptions of the recreational drugs kicking in for the protagonist, Case, and also the virtual runs against the defensive ice of an AI, where his mouth was "filled with an aching taste of blue" for example.
You really should read this if you haven't already.

Immortality

I just finished reading Immortality.
I really enjoyed this, particularly the concept, which I thought was brilliant. Seemingly randomly, hundreds of people in a single location all within a tight radius just die within a minute or so. It starts happening again and again, in larger and larger scale, and there is a race to discover just what is causing it and how to fix it. There is clearly a bacterium involved, but it just doesn't make sense.
The pacing is quite good given the novel is around 500 pages and the information about what is really happening is fed constantly so there are few boring patches. I liked the way a chapter would be devoted showing the lives of some characters only to have them die in a kill zone shortly afterwards. It was a little USA focused but hey, you get that.
Excellent.
99c.

Why is Optus so Awful?

Why is Optus so awful. I'm probably unfairly picking out Optus in this rant, when it really applies to all telecommunication providers generally. They are all horrible.
In particular, here are the things I have found horrible about Optus as a mobile comms provider:

• The coverage and availability of 3G data is pretty horrible. This might be slightly better with Telstra. Yes, I'm aware it is a difficult problem to solve and needs to be balanced with having 3G towers everywhere, but I never realised the situation was this bad.
• Pricing. Seriously? They charge at least ten times more than is reasonable for calls and data, and then give you ten times as much credit for any given plan. Really? Obviously this is so they can charge massive amounts when you go over your quota. It's just ridiculous.
• Website. The Website is horrible. To check your current mobile usage is slow, convoluted, and when you get there plain confusing and inadequate. See previous point about making vast amounts of money off people blowing their limit.
• I had bad experience actually getting a phone in the local Optus store. The expected guilt trip over not buying insurance was amusing. The selling of phone covers boring. The pushing of premium SMS and voice mail etc tedious. And after saying 'no' to everything, I was still charged for some premium SMS thing on my first bill. Oh, and then it took them three days to get my number switched from my old phone when it was supposed to take a maximum of four hours. FFS people.

You may be inclined to feel a little sorry for them though. They are pushing a seriously aging business model against the flow of technology. It won't be long before all we need from these people is a pure data connection, and the phone and software does the rest. Already we see Apple killing SMS with iMessage, and obviously there are a bunch of VOIP providers. All we need now is for them to fix mobile data access on their networks so all these things work all the time. Maybe that is why they aren't overly concerned about 3G not working half the time. It keeps them in the business of selling telephone calls and SMS. They've already lost the fixed line home phone business.

iPhone 4S

I finally gave up my aging Nokia E61i and got myself an Apple iPhone 4S.
Loving it. Siri is fun, but not awesome, although I have used it a couple of times to send a text (or iMessage) while walking, which is really useful.
The benefits of a 4S are all well known so I don't need to go into much detail, suffice to say that as my first phone device to do 3G data properly without worrying about cost too much, it's awesome. I never really used the Nokia 3G data as the cost didn't justify the value, but with the iPhone, it certainly does now.

Out of the Black

I recently read Out of the Black.
I haven't posted for a while, but I thought this was worth noting as I really enjoyed it. It was a little bit different, mixing in demon magic, zombie hords, mysticism, ninja pirates and nanotech. Good pacing, great concepts, lots of fun.

Firefox pausing, freezing

I've been annoyed for a while now about Firefox constantly freezing up for a couple of seconds at a time. And today I've fixed it. To do the same, go into the options, and find the Plugins section, and disable Shockwave Flash. In fact, disable any Adobe product.
Flash is evil and should be banned.

Earth Trojan Asteroid

This Earth trojan asteroid has been recently discovered. Trojan objects typically orbit one of the stable Lagrange points, L4 and L5, and to a lesser degree L1, L2, L3. I posted a cool animation showing this for Jupiter previously. What's interesting about this find is that it seems this asteroid is in a weird oscillating orbit moving between L3 and L4. I've never heard of anything doing that before, but orbital mechanics gets very chaotic in actual space with lots of other planets and the moon around. The simple theory of the Lagrange points is all well and good, but this looks just weird.

The Jennifer Morgue

I just finished reading The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross.
This might not be Science Fiction, but it is firmly in the fantasy/horror/tech/comedy genre and what's not to love about that? This book is a lot of fun to read. I particularly enjoyed the main character's hacking attempts using his occult apps on his Palm Treo. The spyware eyeliner was pretty cool too.

Swarm

I just finished reading Swarm by B. V. Larson.

I recently read Larson's Mech, and was expecting a similar ride. Happily, I had exactly that. This is another well paced easy read with a lot of action and large scale destruction. I kept thinking how similar it felt to War of the Worlds in the early parts, as alien ships arrive and start plucking people out of their houses. It quickly turns out they are testing them and trying to get the best possible commanders as possible. For what though, I won't spoil here.
I like where this series is headed. Swarm finishes with a minor win for the protagonist, but the larger picture is quite a bit more than knee deep in shit for humanity.
Excellent.