Empire of Light

Just finished reading this by Gary Gibson.
This follows on from Nova War, and after reading that said I would reserve judgement.
Meh. It was OK. No big surprises. Could have had more about the Swarm - that was cool.
Next!

Holiday Retro: Tintin

A couple of years ago, I spent a lot of holiday time at Christmas playing Faery Tale. This year, in a similar bout of looking backedness, I read a whole bunch of Tintin on the iPad.
Read through about eight adventures and enjoyed it very muchly. Of course, it's pretty silly stuff, but makes for a great break.
Black Island, Black Gold and Flight 714 my favorites. Ok, the two moon ones also fun.

C++ Landscape

C++ Lands

Nicely done.

2010: Odyssey Two

This is a classic, and I figured it was a good year to read it. I also read 2001: A Space Odyssey in 2001. This book has been out for nearly 30 years, so I don't feel bad about the spoilers below.
I really enjoyed this, and I wasn't expecting to. I think it is actually some of his better work. It starts off with a bit of politics, of course US vs Russians which is obviously wrong for the set year, but hey, who knew? However, the Chinese are involved and showing both the other superpowers how to get things done. And that is right on the money. The politics doesn't drag it down though (unlike the film) and in fact it is pretty positive in that respect.
Early on in the mission, they discover aliens living in the seas of Europa. That is cool. They are more dumb creatures than stereotypical intelligent humanoids, and the encounter is strangely compelling and well done.
Then the Russian ship with the Americans finally makes it to Jupiter orbit to recover Discovery (from 2001) and investigate the monolith. They are disappointed with not finding anything useful. Then the real fun begins. Bowman returns and appears to Floyd to tell the crew to get go home early as something wonderful is about to happen. And then the monolith goes all exponential on them, converts Jupiter's atmosphere into a more dense material, and causes it to ignite in fusion producing a second star in the solar system. That is cool.
And then there is a pleasing epilogue where the aliens of Europa have evolved and are sentient, and are protected from the nasty humans by monolith death rays. Or something. Cool!
All good fun.

Renaming blog tags

How to rename a blog tag across a bunch of posts, all at once.
Tops.

Eclipse Phase

Rich ran a game of Eclipse Phase for us the other night, and it was excellent. It really was a breath of frsh role playing. We weren't too concerned about the rules, and they seemed pretty mechanics light anyway, which was fine with us.
I played a swarmanoid, which is a collection of very small robotic components driven by my uploaded intelligence. I specialised in hacking, and enjoyed hacking the ship we were on to open and close airlocks to let my friends in and out of a ship under attack by a nano-cloud-virus-thing. Cool!

Nova War

I just finished reading Nova War by Gary Gibson.
This continues the story of Dakota from Stealing Light. In that book I was pleased at the strong ending, noting that the end of Against Gravity sucked a little. Unfortunately, the end of this book was also very flat, but it is clearly a lead in to the third in the series, which I have high hopes for. When Gibson is writing well, it's really really good, and chunks of this book go there. I get the feeling though that this book and the next should really be just one novel. Sometimes writers get screwed by the publishers like that.
Anyway, there was plenty of big action, but I'm going to hold off on a final decision until I've read Empire of Light.

This is Not a Game

I recently finished reading This is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams.
This was a really good read, blending a few of my favourite subjects. Dagmar is an alternate reality game designer, and this book follows her story as she builds up the game and garners more and more participants to the action. Obviously with this sort of story, the line between what is real and a game becomes blurred, but the story is so much more than that. There's some really cool software involved!
This isn't set too far in the future, in fact, could be set within a few years, which makes it just a little scary. The action is well paced and the characters are really interesting.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Freeman Dyson on Global Warming

I've just found a very interesting lecture by the legendary physicist Freeman Dyson.
There is a video here, and some of the text here.
My favourite contribution from Dyson is of course the Dyson Sphere.
Anyway, in this lecture from 2005, he is reminding us that heretics in science are important and that we shouldn't always blindly believe the common popular view. He goes on to try to put the problems of global warming into some perspective to try to pull us away from the current popular hysteria in the media. It really is worth a read.
(thanks to Neal Asher who linked this recently)

Help!

Ubuntu won't boot after I upgraded it to 10.10.
If you know anything about this and can help me, here's the support link.
Arrrrgh!

Transition

I just finished reading Transition, but Iain Banks.
It's a little bit different this one, not his usual SF style, and probably why the M is missing from his name. Transition is a lot more fantasy, set in a Multiverse where it is possible for individuals, who are Aware and have access to the drug Septum, to flit between parallel universes. Each parallel universe can be anything up to very slightly different to radically, but plausibly different, but still restricted to the Earth, or whatever it's called locally, and however the continents and nations happen to have formed.
The story is quite complex and involves many different characters, each developing in separate chapters and at least in the beginning seemingly independent. It was challenging trying to work out how they would relate, and who you should identify with, but in the end all pans out satisfactorily.
Lots of murder, assassination, torture, and sex, so that was fun.
Interesting.

Flash Fiction: The Handshake

I'm pleased to announce I've had a work of flash fiction published at AntipodeanSF, The Handshake.
I hope you like it, I put it together and submitted it on a whim. Even though it is very short (max 500 words) I enjoyed writing it and the process of submitting it was interesting in itself, there was even some editing involved. A new experience!

[update: updated the link to point to the archive]

PaizoConOz Day 4

Day 4 started well. Had breakfast, stored bags, went to the Con. Then we spent the next 9 hours playing a two part Pathfinder session run by Seb, and thoroughly enjoyed it. During this time it became apparent that the Virgin Blue Fiasco was firmly in place, and trips home were looking unlikely.
We decided to turn up to the airport anyway, as we couldn't find out on phone or internet what the situation was, so hired a large taxi for the nine of us, and off we went. Well, it should have been that easy, but first we had to get the motel to get our bags, the taxi driver went the wrong way and then we got stuck going round the one way system, but finally made it to the motel to get the bags, however it would have been quicker to walk.
We piled all the bags into the taxi, and after some negotiation with the driver on the best way to go, eventually turned up to chaos of Brisbane Domestic. Bit of a nightmare, but it seemed our flight was going out on time. Could we be that lucky? Not entirely. Before we find outo about the flights, we realise we have an extra bag with us from the motel that no one will lay claim to. Oh Bugger. I had a brief conversation with manager that didn't go so well, and told him we'd call back after we checked in with a plan.
As Rich turns up to the counter to represent the group, he's told there are only four seats left. "You have got to be shitting me" was my response. Not cancelled, not delayed, no all or nothing, but a cutoff right down the middle of the group.
As gamers say "Never split the party."
We split the party. There was very kind agreement that those with work tomorrow (surprisingly few) should take the seats. And I have to thank those again that stayed behind. Rich, Al, Phil, and more - thanks very much.
As you may imagine, the stray bag was returned with those staying an extra night.
And now we can confirm the existence of the PaizoConOz Exit Curse, given last years trip to the airport was also a complete nightmare. Worryingly, the power of the curse seems to be getting exponentially worse every year, this year affecting thousands of people.

PaizoConOz Day 3

Gah. 15 hours D&D straight. So very tired. Good day though.
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PaizoConOz Day 2

Two sessions today, both with my 5th level Inquisitor. Awesome, though
both tough. Hoping to use a new wand of web tomorrow. 3 sessions, 14
hours tomorrow. Cruisy night tonight, curry and wine, whisky now.
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