Again I was more drawn to the tales of Edeard set inside the void as he dealt with corruption and abuse in the city of Makkathran, where his unusually strong mental powers and skills enable him to deal with the ruthless ruling families desperate to hang on to power. Possibly this is because he manages many victories over well-drawn adversaries, whereas outside the void it is mainly the ongoing run of political manoeuvring with little point scoring.

One of my criticisms of Hamilton’s books, as much as I love them, is his tendency to get caught up in hugely detailed exposition that is typically unnecessary. This isn’t so much of that in this novel and as such it zips along at a much better pace. It’s still a big and complicated book, with a lot of characters, which sometimes gets confusing as I’d forgotten who some of them were, but you pick it up as you go along. I did find myself absorbed and couldn’t put it down at times, so well worth a read, though probably too big to take away on holiday with you.

As a society we became more successful when we let people specialise, but if a journalist doesn’t get paid for their work how can they dedicate themselves to it?

That’s not to say that some content may not become freely distributed, there are other revenue streams, such as advertising, be it overt or not, but do you really want to read something where a little voice in the back of you mind is questioning if they really think the new car/gadget/cosmetic is great or if they’re just saying that because they got a nice hand-out?

Long live the TV licence so we get a professional, unbiased news and entertainment service.

The retired businessman dismisses Darwin’s theory as “not even a low grade hypothesis” and said it had “no substantial science” in it.

Sorry, Darwin’s theory of evolution has no substantial science in it? Well at least it’s backed up by some scientific evidence, and has survived every attempt to dispel it for 150 years. Sounds fairly robust to me compared to some words written in a book over the last 2000 years by persons unknown and translated nobody knows how many times (thereby opening yet more opportunity to misinterpretation).

I should probably point out I’m reading The God Delusion at the moment. I don’t have a problem with people being taught both versions, but don’t ban evolution.

I also find it interesting that the people quoted seem to think they’re the unheard minority in the US, when they’re the loud majority who have been trying to ban students even being taught about evolution.

One of Andora’s players plays in Spain’s fourth division, another in Italy’s second, most aren’t full-time footballers. We don’t let teams that low start playing against premier league teams in the FA Cup, why should we do it at international level?

To give you an idea. There are 207 teams in the world ranking, Andora rank 196, so there are only 11 teams in the world below them. The other teams in England’s World Cup qualifying group are:

• Kazakhstan, ranked 132
• Ukraine, ranked 19
• Croatia, ranked 8
• Belarus, ranked 81

England are ranked 6th. So, my thinking is, why are we playing Andora, Kazakhstan and Belarus? Let them have a pre-tournament and earn the right to play teams in the top 50. Otherwise we risk turning internationals into a pointless exercise.

I’m a little surprised by the HTPC results. Jeff Atwood has a build quite similar which idles at 46w.

Making some assumptions, I would calculate that the HTPC costs about £48.48 per year (£4.04 per month) to run. That’s based on:

• 6 hours a day full usage, total 180 hours a month
• 100w usage for all of those hours
• 4w per hour for the rest
• 720 total hours a month
• 20p per kWh
• Using the handy electricity calculator

Not least are the contextual spell checker and the translation tool for communicating with colleagues whose primary language is not English. It does look like an exciting step forward in communication.