The Unwritable

Snow in the Desert

2012-01-28T20:16:00.000+11:00

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.

Pink Noise: A Posthuman Tale

2012-01-17T21:48:00.002+11:00

Just finished reading this. It was shorter than I had feared halfway through.

Neuromancer

2011-12-27T10:11:00.001+11:00

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

Immortality

2011-11-23T21:33:00.001+11:00

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

Why is Optus so Awful?

2011-11-23T21:10:00.001+11:00

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

iPhone 4S

2011-11-14T19:59:00.001+11:00

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

Out of the Black

2011-11-14T19:43:00.001+11:00

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

2011-07-30T16:01:00.001+10:00

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

2011-07-30T15:48:00.000+10:00

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

The Jennifer Morgue

2011-07-09T16:38:00.002+10:00

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

2011-06-06T20:52:00.000+10:00

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

The Parasite

2011-05-17T20:36:00.000+10:00

I just finished The Parasite by Neal Asher. This was quite meaty for a novella and I really enjoyed it. It is one of Asher's earlier works, and lacks a little bit in the editing compared with the Pan/Tor novels, but that's OK because if it wasn't self re-published on Amazon it wouldn't be available at all. In particular it was a treat to read about some early Polity tech ideas before the Polity

Golf

2011-05-15T19:23:00.001+10:00

I played nine holes of golf with a bunch of mates today. Damn, shame I was just topping most of my shots. Ah, well. Still, really pleasant getting out in the sun with a great bunch of guys, followed by beers. Thanks to Rob, Dave, Olaf and Paul :_)

Surface Detail

2011-05-10T21:30:00.000+10:00

Just finished reading Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks. I love Banks' Culture novels, they're always a lot of fun to read and I wasn't disappointed this time. This one revolves around the existence of virtual afterlives of various species throughout the galaxy. Many intelligent species host massive simulations where individuals can be uploaded to, where they can live forever in an environment of

Sony Media Player

2011-05-07T17:08:00.000+10:00

My MediaGate media player just died, the video out started to play up, so I tossed it out, and bought a WD TV Live. However, that didn't seem to be capable of putting out video on component out to my Sony SD CRT telly. No idea why, and after a couple of support calls to verify I hadn't done anything stupid, I sent it back. Shame. It seemed like a decent unit at a good price. So I went and bought

Giving up Torrents.

2011-04-11T21:22:00.003+10:00

Yes, I've given up the use of Torrents. I'm now using an alternate source of content, I've gone back to using Usenet Newsgroups. First, why have I given up the use of Torrents? The Torrent protocol is awesome in its efficiency and for many files, availability of content. I've often achieved 8Mbps via torrenting files from peers. The one downside is that your IP address is necessarily publicly

Review of "The Australian" iPad App

2011-03-28T20:22:00.009+11:00

I've been using the iPad app "The Australian" since it was released. There is a lot to like about the app, but there are also some significant issues which need to be addressed, and some issues which clearly News Digital Media are struggling with, most obviously the advertising vs usability tradeoff. First of all, there are many excellent features in this app. It is cheaper and much more

The Technician

2011-03-27T11:28:00.000+11:00

Just finished reading The Technician by Neal Asher. Damn, Asher just tells a fine story. You're not quite sure where it is going at the beginning, but The Technician has a good pace that keeps you reading, and dribbles out key information along the way so that you never feel that the novel is over before you get there. By the middle of the book I was wondering how this wouldn't be over in the

Mech

2011-02-28T20:09:00.000+11:00

Just finished reading Mech by B.V. Larson. I don't remember having read a book with so much bloodshed and gore! I was cringing at a couple of places as there was no pulling back from evisceration, even of women and children. Even Neal Asher doesn't usually detail a gore fest of innocents. So the basic story is that of a planet colonised in the last few hundred years, and then the original owners

Containment

2011-02-21T21:16:00.000+11:00

Just finished reading Containment by Christian Cantrell. This was one of those cheap books you pick up for three dollars, and read on the off chance that it could be any good. Frankly, the cover art did it for me, and for three dollars was willing to judge a book by its cover. With a little known author like this, I might be willing to just give it up partway through if it really sucks, and

Samba in Ubuntu 10.10 very very slow

2011-02-21T21:09:00.001+11:00

After upgrading my Ubuntu server to 10.10, I found that transferring files to it was horribly slow. As in 200kB/s slow, over a 1Gb network. There were no errors, it was just horribly horribly slow. After some searching on the topic, I found that the socket options line that was recommended in the smb.conf file in previous versions: socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY \

NASA STEREO Super Sun Day.

2011-02-06T17:15:00.001+11:00

Today, NASA's STEREO spacecrafts, A, and B, will be on exactly opposite sides of the sun, and will be taking pictures of its entire surface at the same time. These spacecraft have been travelling round Earth's orbit in opposite directions since October 2006, providing stereo vision of the Sun. Super Sun Day! More at the main site. Update: and here it is. Cool.

Empire of Light

2011-01-20T21:48:00.000+11:00

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

2011-01-09T19:46:00.000+11:00

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

2011-01-06T21:53:00.000+11:00

C++ Lands Nicely done.