Author name: Ian Robinson

The Kraken Wakes – John Wyndham

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I’ve been on a bit of a John Wyndham binge lately. Sparked off by rereading The Chrysalids. Fuelled by The Midwich Cuckoos. Just finished The Kraken Wakes. It was really good. If anything it was too short as the end seemed a bit rushed and maybe has a bit of a deus ex machina quality to it. The story itself was nothing like I thought it was going to be. I did expect sea monsters à la those encountered by Captain Nemo 🙂

It’s not like that at all. The story is told as a retrospective account of events by a pair of journalists who are husband and wife. Due to their position they have access to important characters and events. I like the way it’s done, apart from the rushed ending. Like in The Chrysalids I want to know what happened next! The character interactions towards the end of the book reminded me a lot of Adam Roberts’ The Snow. Wyndham’s book was first though I’m sure many others have used similar themes. I’m starting to think of Wyndham in the same terms as H.G. Wells. I’ve got The Day of the Triffids sitting here and three other books of his on order. I think I’ll take a break though and read Oxygen by Nick Lane as I’ve been wanting to get into that for a while.

Thekrakenwakes

XR 250 Enduro

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Someone took this picture of me in 1983 on my Honda XR250 coming over a jump on a track we used to use for off road motorcycling. It’s a bit blurry but I like it. You can see the “R-Plate” on the front fork as it was less than a year after I did my motorcycle test. They track we had was very good. We dug out berms at the corners, had both right hand and left hand turns, smooth straights, hairpins, 2 jumps and the straight up to the jump in the picture was very bumpy. This made the jump safer as you couldn’t hit it too fast. In the end the track was so good it attracted bikers from far and wide and the council closed it down after complaints about the noise 🙁

Still, it was fun for that summer in 1983.

Under The Crooked Moon – The Hot Puppies

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The Hot Puppies are good. You can listen to some tracks and watch some videos at their website. The live Shoot Em in the Head video is good. Their debut album is on iTMS as well, although it’s not officially out until later in July. They have an excellent crisp sound. You can hear the vocals really well as they are not drowned out by the instruments. Good stuff. Early Queen recordings made a point of making sure the vocal mix was “crystal”. It’s something all bands should try to do. Well assuming they can actually sing, of course.

Herman Miller Mirra chair

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I needed a new chair to use at my desk. After much research I settled for a Herman Miller Mirra. It’s good. Still tweaking the various settings but so far it’s very comfortable and should help prevent back issues due to spending a lot of time at the desk writing, typing and computing in general. Click picture for larger view.

Hot Space – Queen

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Another blast from the past. The Hot Space album from Queen. I love this album (except for Under Pressure which will surprise most people). I’ve loved it since it came out and has been my favourite Queen album since 1982. Most people hated it at the time. Even my Queen loving friends. Funnily enough most, if not all of them now love it as well. The 3 tracks at the start of Side A – Staying Power, Dancer and Back Chat are brilliant when played together like a single long track.

This album has provided me with many hours of pleasure since it was released 24 years ago. Including another hour earlier today.

I was at the Milton Keynes Bowl concert in 1982 that was part of the tour that promoted this album. This was recorded for The Tube on Channel 4 television and has since been released as Queen on Fire – Live at the Bowl. I was right at the front on the right hand side of the stage.

The height of laziness

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Vacuuming is a pain right? To quote Homer Simpson, “Can’t somebody else do it?”. Well failing that how about a robot? Enter the iRobot Roomba. Set it down in a room. Press clean button. Close the door. Come back later and it’s done 🙂

Of course it doesn’t do behind furniture (unless you move it out of the way first), doesn’t do stairs and can’t get right into corners, so you still need to do real vacuuming periodically. But for sheer geek value it’s pretty cool. Plus it does a really good job in the areas it does reach. I still have to get into the extras like timed cleaning, automatic return to power station etc. For my other vacuuming needs I have a Dyson DC15 All Floors with the The Ball. That’s pretty cool as well. Can’t believe I’m posting about vacuum cleaners. What’s the world coming to?

Good Omens – Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

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I first read this book when it came out years ago. I lost my copy a few years ago when I lent it to a mate and never got it back (Brian – you own me a pint!). I bought a new copy from Amazon UK recently as the release of the remake of the Omen film gave me the urge to read it again. It’s brilliant. It tells the story of the antichrist growing up on Earth after there is a mix up at the maternity clinic. Rather than being raised as the son of an American diplomat, he ends up in Lower Tadfield in middle England. He therefore doesn’t get the required demonic education…

There are several strands to the book that are expertly tied together at the end. Good stuff. It also contains a very interesting insight in the music of Queen and car stereos!

Ireland vs. England Cricket

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I was at the inaugural one day cricket international last week between Ireland and England. It was held at Stormont which is about 5 minutes walk from my house 🙂 I’ve posted about Stormont before here.The atmosphere was excellent. There where about 7000 people there, including a contingent of the English Barmy Army. When I was playing cricket it was Stormont that I played at. I’ll be back to play again, if not this year then certainly next year.

Steve Harmison can bowl a bit. Very quick! Here are some pictures taken on the day.

YAPT update

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It’s been a while since I posted about YAPT. I said I was going to release early and often. Not much has happened on the often front…

I’ve decided to develop this using Cocoa rather than REALbasic. This means that there will not be a Windows or a Linux version. I’m doing this for fun and recreation, and as such I want to use the Xcode and Cocoa so I learn how to use them.

MacBook – First Impressions

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Got the MacBook today. Some first impressions:

• It’s black. Really black. The references to Hotblack Desiato’s ship are fully justified. The case seems to absorb all light. I like it 🙂

• The magnetic screen closure. Good strong magnet.

• Screen angle. I can push the screen pack as far as I need. It certainly goes back as far as I ever used the PBG4 display.

• Screen covering. Glossy. Like a mirror when the backlight is off. Seems fine so far in use but all I’ve done is run the initial set-up and allowed it to download all the latest updates.

• Screen size. Nice and wide. It looks a bit to small in height though. 1280 x 800 in size. Be interesting to see if the 800 is limiting.

• Screen image. Very crisp. Very nice colours.

• Keyboard feel. Typed a few paragraphs to test it. Good feel in that test. Again time will tell. I’m not writing this message on it.

• Keys. It looks like the characters on the keys are offset to the right. In reality they are in the centre of the keys. This is a bit distracting. Probably get used to it.

• Keyboard position. The keyboard is sunken into the case. Hopefully it won’t touch the screen with the lid closed. Can’t close it to check as the software update is in progress.

• Heat. It’s been on for about an hour. The palm rests are room at temperature. There is a warm (not hot yet) bit on the left hand side near the power input and about 2 inches in radius. Goes over to the 2-W-S-Z-alt keys. Not hot. Just warmer than the rest. The right had side of the case feels cool to touch. Bottom is warm in the same area as described above on the left. Middle and right side is cool. Hopefully it’ll stay that way in real use.

• Weight. About the same as my PBG4.

• Fit and finish. Excellent. It’s really well made. Too me it’s like the offspring of a Titanium PowerBook and a Pismo G3. I really like it.

So far: Very nice indeed.

Wasted – Def Leppard

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The Def Leppard song Wasted, from their debut album On Through The Night, has always been one of my favourite rock songs. Probably due to the the context of my life when it was released. Lots of good stuff happening like parties etc. 😉 I bought the album on tape originally. I think it’s still lying in a box somewhere. I’ve been checking the iTMS periodically waiting for it to appear there so I could download it. I know I could have went a got the CD – but I didn’t. Anyway, I noticed tonight that it was available on iTMS UK. Happy days. Listening to it as I type this. An excellent album. Wasted is the best track though. I never liked any of their stuff after this. Went a bit “American rock” for my tastes. Still, they did release a damn fine album as a debut.

The Chrysalids – John Wyndham

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I took the urge to reread John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids a few days ago. Don’t know what made it pop into my head. I’d dumped my old paperback copy, that I’d had since secondary school, in a book bin at the local recycling centre a few months ago. So I ordered a copy from Amazon UK along with a copy of The Midwich Cuckoos.

I read a bit of The Chrysalids over a few nights but last night I was up to 03:30 finishing it. It really is an excellent read. I won’t outline the plot or anything about it as that’d be a spoiler for anyone who hasn’t read it. I’d highly recommend it. It’s a pity that there was never a sequel. Not that the the story is left needing one, but I’d like to know what happened to the characters in the years after the end of the book. On to The Midwich Cuckoos. I’ve never read this but it was the filmed as as Village of the Damned and dramatised on BBC Radio 4 about 3 years ago. I’ve got the BBC one on my iPod. It’s excellent.

WordPress upgrade

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I’ve just upgraded the version of WordPress that is used to deliver this site from version 1.5.2 to version 2.0.2. I think every thing is working okay but if anything breaks use the email link in the sidebar to let me know. Or comment on this entry.

The reason for the upgrade, bearing in mind I’m a fan of the if it ain’t broke broke, don’t fix it maxim, was a result of installing the Akismet anti-spam module. I wanted to make sure I was using the latest version of both to ensure they worked okay. In the last week there has been about 50 or so attempted SPAM comments to various entries here. All have been blocked as I have to approve all comments. I’ve never got any attempted comment SPAM before about a week ago. The start of it is probably related to an influx of twats in uk.comp.sys.mac Usenet group I read and post to. Recently we’ve had an influx of not very intelligent script kiddies who think posting offensive comments and thousands of SPAM posts is smart. Apparently they are not smart enough to know that people just get their software to automatically delete and/or ignore their posts.

New MacBook

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I’ve ordered a new black MacBook (or BlackBook as they are increasingly being referred to). I’m glad I returned my MacBook Pro now. The new BlackBook has everything I need in a portable and from what I’ve read so far the case on these doesn’t get as hot on the top as the MacBook Pro does. This is to be expected as the polycarbonate case is not as good a conductor or heat as the aluminium in the MacBook Pro case. I expect the fans to have to work a bit harder to pump the heat out of the case. I can live with this. The BlackBook is more or less the same size and has the same screen resolution as the titanium PowerBook I use at present. Except the BlackBook will be about 5 times faster. The only concern I have is the glossy screen. We’ll see how that performs. I like the black case with the white glowing Apple logo. I had a PowerBook G3 Pismo before the titanium PowerBook and really like the way it looked.

According to the TNT parcel tracking page my BlackBook left Suzhou in China about an hour ago 🙂

Down the line – BBC Radio 4

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The new BBC Radio 4 comedy Down the Line is well worth a listen. It’s a spoof and parody of talk radio. The 2nd episode takes on religion and how to name a new primary colour. It’s priceless. You can listen online. The 2nd episode will be replaced online by episode 3 on Wednesday 17th May.

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