I’ve been a less obvious about my browsing today (as we are being watched) and as a result I’ve had to be a bit more choosy about my browsing subjects. This afternoon, as I’m working through the Elric series, I have been reading up on Michael Moorcock. He’s writted a shed load of SF, fantasy and ‘mainstream’ fiction including the Elric and Jerry Cornelius novels.

Ans in my browsing I happened upon this article.

If you’re a fan of fantasy (or just Lord of the Rings) then check it out.

BigAl

In the course of attempting to ‘Get Things Done’ somebody invented the latest craze of the Hipster PDA. It has become, in many ways, the ‘geek’ version of a filofax; far from being technical it is very low-tech - it’s just a bunch of index cards held together with a bulldog clip. I’ve been toying with the idea and had a few thoughts I thought (hah!) I would share with the world.

• In many ways HipsterPDAs are the ultimate open-standard - hence the wide appeal to geeks. Rather than requiring expensive equipment like current PDAs, or the old filofaxes, you can put one together cheaply and easily.
• It has a plugin system - geeks love that. And they have created lots of nice templates and ideas around it.
• It looks geeky - slightly bodged together
• It’s easier to carry around - bendier than a PDA
• With mobile phones holding more and more data, a full PDA is becoming excessive

But…..

• I’m not convinced its more useful than a PDA
• I’m liking the wiki concept more and more - at very least the idea of connecting documents with links is especially intuitive to me
• Not being able to search is a pain - unless you cross reference, which would be worse
• Losing or mixing the cards would be a problem
• Got to carry a pen or pencil around with it all the time
• Does it actually make getting things done any easier?

I would be interested in other peoples thoughts and ideas on this - I know that MrLithic has one…..

mrBen

For a while I’ve been struggling with all aspect of my novel, from outlines to character development to struggling with the scale of it all.

But on friday I made a breakthrough.

Ruth found a wee program called YWriter which is designed to help map the chapters and scenes (and so much more) of a novel. What’s even better is that it helps split up the chapters into the individual scenes so that I can just concentrate on what need to be done.

My word count is not significantly up on before but now I’ve got a firmer chapter plan for the next 6 chapters and some more concrete ideas for the six beyond that.

If anything it’s a definate encouragement and now I believe I might actually finish this!

BigAl

Or David: The Shepards Song, Battle Pope and The Walking Dead. The highlights of the Al’s comic book world for this weekend.

Well, except for JSA #75 which was just so good that it was on a completely different level of excellence.

Saturday saw a brief trip to FP to pick up a few must haves and in the evening Edgy lent me his three Walking Dead graphic novels.

David was a great first issue dealing with the story of David from the Old Testament. The art is cracking and the storytelling shows potential.

Battle Pope is blasphemous in the same way that Dogma is. Or maybe a bit more.
And it’s brilliantly funny.

The Walking Dead is a zombie story in the same vein as Dawn of the Dead. This kind of zombie tale is more about people dealing with survival more than the typical zombie nonsense. But that’s good too.

As usual full reviews will be done sometime in the next few days/months/years…

BigAl

What happened in London yesterday was a truly horrible event perpetrated by evil, evil men. But we should never forget the continuing evil that’s taking place in Iraq as terrorists take the lives of countless innocent men, women and children every week.

What astounds me, and I’ll apologise for harking back to the attack on the World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001, is that after 9/11 the terrorist groups had a perfect opportunity to keep up a sustained attack on the U.S. and drive morale into the ground and create a world-wide atmosphere of terror.

But they didn’t do that.

Instead, once the hysteria died away, they rested on their laurels. (or seemed to.)

Okay, I don’t really believe that’s the case. I’m sure that the various intelligence agencies in the U.S., Britain and the rest of Europe have done an excellent job of keeping the bad guys at bay, but yesterday’s attacks shows that these agencies can’t be all-seeing and all-knowing.

Indeed, I’m surprised that there hasen’t been MORE attacks in allied countries. (and I’m keeping in mind the Madrid bombings as I write this.)

So four possibilities immediately spring to mind.

1. The terrorists are trying their level best and the intelligence agencies are heading them off every time.
2. The terrorists are making a half-assed job of it and very rarely will anything they do succeed.
3. Security is much tighter (or the impression given is that security is much tighter) and the terrorists are wary (or scared?) to fully apply themselves to their cowardly ways.
4. Beyond recent events, the terrorist threat isn’t that great, being mostly generated by the media and the government. Indeed, in comparison to both Iraq and Israel, we don’t have that great a problem with it.

I’m willing to accept there’s aspects of all four in the truth (and many more besides) and in my heart I really hope it’s closer to the third one.

But there’s a reason why these cowards will never win a War of Terror.

I’m not scared.

Now don’t get me wrong, it scares me to think that I might get caught up in something like London, Madrid, 9/11 or any other terrorist event, but that doesn’t scare me off wanting to go back to London someday. It doesn’t stop me wanting to use the train or the bus. It doesn’t stop me wanting to go places which may be future targets of terrorist attack.

And this isn’t some fake bravado driving my words. I’m not scared of living my life. And neither is a lot of the folks I’ve talked to about this.

And the terrorists have lost.

To be a terrorist is to be someone who strikes terror in to the hearts of their enemies through violent deeds. But I’m not scared. So they’ve lost.

And I know that it’s easy to say that “safe” in Glasgow but realistically nowhere is safe from the continuing threat of terrorism. There’s every possiblilty that a bomb may go off tomorrow in the middle of Glasgow while I’m walking past it.

Realistically, it could happen. And I’m not afraid.

Why?

Because I don’t want to live a life of fear. And I don’t want them to win.

And in doing that… they’ve already lost their War of Terror.

BigAl

By now the dust will have settled on the awful events in London yesterday. I don’t want to forget to mention how disgusted I am that such things happen in our world; it is such a marked contrast to the site of 1/4 of a million people marching through Edinburgh to promote fair trade laws and an end to poverty in the world.

However, it was a day that, strangely enough, made me proud to be British. It was such a ‘British’ day - people rallying round in time of crisis, stiff upper lips in place, and generally moaning about the fact that they wouldn’t get home on time. Contrary to the supposed statement from Al-Qaeda that suggest that the whole of Britain (from north to south, east to west no less) would be in fear and panic, it was all relatively calm and collected.

I was equally proud to be a ‘netopia’ or ‘netizen’ yesterday - while traditional methods of communication (esp. phones) were in a bit of chaos, and while the media tried its best to get confirmation of what was happening, the ‘net was a wealth of information. People were blogging from London with eye-witness details; wikinews was running a story; wikipedia had a surprisingly complete and featureful article within a couple of hours, and was updated regularly. One of the #lugradio faithful from the States even popped online to check that we were all OK.

It was a tragic day; but life will continue as it always has in Britain. And for that I am glad.

[edit]A nice tribute from Illiad, cartoonist from UserFriendly can be found here[/edit]

mrBen

…after a few days off sick.

My lovely wife suffered from the flu at the weekend and passed it on to me.

And this afternoon I face the inevitable “Return to Work” meeting. This is where they ask the “were you ill or are you trying to avoid some problem at work?” questions.

Blah.

What makes it worse that the whole time I was off I couldn’t blog or surf idly as we don’t yet have net access at home yet.

Still, there was much in the way of trying to get to grips with Homeworld 2 (a blisteringly good game), and I started and finished MechWarrior 4: Vengeance, which is a really easy game. It’s not as good as 3 or M4: Mercenaries IMHO, and not as long.

I’ll be taking a break from gaming for a while anyway. HW2 is doing my box in and I don’t want to play anything else until it’s finished.

BigAl

Well - season 4 has just finished. A big shout out to SGM for recording it all off Sky One for me to watch.

24 is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best US TV show that I have watched in the past couple of years. If you haven’t seen it, then a) shame on you, and b) get thee to someone/somewhere that has it and watch it. Think of an action film that runs for 18 hours, and you’ve got an idea of what 24 is like. It takes a trip through your emotions and your intellect.

Season 4 is, for me, notable for 2 things (warning - potential season spoiler coming up - not serious, but…..):

• The arrival of Tony Almaeda - I literally cheered out loud when he arrived. It was an almost involuntary action, and a brilliant piece of work.
• The difficult tension between the greater good and the immediate relationships. This really began at the end of Season 3, but it was an underlying theme for Season 4.

I just hope that Season 5 is on it’s way for January next year…..

mrBen

No, I’m not talking about getting the Olympics in London in 2012. I’m talking about the rejection (by 648-14 no less) of the ’software patent’ directive in the European parliament vote. I cannot understate how brilliant, fantastic, awesome, amazing, wonderful, incredible this is.

Software patents are, not to put too fine a point on it, evil. They don’t promote innovation or business (which patents are supposed to) and they make the ‘little guy’ pay to benefit of the faceless corporations.

There is a nice analogy laid out here to explain it all.

mrBen

I’ve just finished listening to Wil Wheaton’s talk from Gnomodex that he plugs in this blog entry. One of the free books I got from LRL was Dancing Barefoot - Wil’s second book. Those of you at church on Sunday would have heard me read a passage from it! Hopefully I will scrape the cash together for Just a Geek soon.

However - it’s definitely worth a listen; Wil speaks well, and speaks honestly. He is self-deprecating and extremely funny with it. And it’s for geeks, not just Star Trek: TNG fans (I was only a passing fan, not a real Trekk[ie|er]).

A sceond plug can go to VistaPrint who will give you 250 business cards for free (you pay for delivery). I’ve ordered some for when we’ve moved house

On the moving house front, we have agreed to buy the new flat, but still do not have any offers for ours. If you’re the praying type, now is the time to pray.

mrBen