It's that time of year again, my hair has all gone!

OK - so I've just been reading the Gaurdian Article on Terry Deary saying that Libraries are outdated and should be got rid of. I entirely disagree with him, I spent a fair amount of my youth borrowing books from my local library, when I had no income, and so the only alternative to borrowing from the library would have been saving up for second hand books... which he wouldn't have seen a penny from. These days I buy Quite A Few books (OK - so, mostly on the kindle these days, but still), if it hadn't have been for libraries when I was younger and couldn't afford to purchase books, I may never have properly picked up the reading habit.

His claim that they're killing bookshops is also, in my opinion, entirely wrong. Bookshops are closing more because of the ease of ordering books online and getting them delivered to your door, with a huge collection of books available from large warehouses rather than the stock that a book store can sell easily. We've got a vast collection of literature available to us now, and it's only ever going upwards, no book shop or single library is going to be able to cater for the entirely different needs of their customers. Libraries do inter library lending, which means that the collection of rarer, less popular books are still available (potentially with a bit of a wait), and every time the book is lent the author gets some funds. If he seriously thinks that if libraries closed the number of people reading his material would stay the same I think he's mistaken. He also doesn't seem to take in to account at all the second hand book market.

All I have to say is NYARGH.

OK - so you go to any place that has a social gathering, pub, club, bbq, anything - why is it that what invariably happens is that everyone manages to gather in the places that are most inconvienient?! E.g. in a pub, how is it that everyone gathers around the point that makes getting to the toilet difficult? Or outside? Why is it that at house type parties/bbqs everyone manages to end up in the kitchen?! (OK - I know that I'll probably be guilty of the kitchen thing, but meh!) - There must be something built in to us to end up gathering in the places that everyone is going to need to go sooner or later, are we really that social? Or is this just a need to be recognised? I don't really know... just that it's very annoying trying to get from the bar stool in the pub (where reading a book) to the toilet was a lot harder than it should have been!

I've really got to get a better method down of watching for books than my current periodic searching and checking and hoping, but...

Hoorah - Countdown release date has been done - and it's only just over a week away - YAY!

Hmm, so, at the end of Deadline, there appears to be the first chunk of the novella Countdown - and a notice "If you enjoyed Blackout look out for Countdown, an ebook only Newflesh novella also by Mira Grant" - it then seems to have the first chunk of that in print, I'm reasonably certain that it's not the full novella (it doesn't end cleanly enough for that). Now, last year (way back when Countdown was originally announced I commented asking when the UK release was going to happen for it (there's a US release, after all) - that was August 2nd 2011 - 10 months later, we've still not got any news on the UK release, and now we've even got a teaser at the end of Blackout. There's also notes that there's going to be some more novella for the series soon - which will be fantastic, if we ever get them in the UK :/

Ah well, hopefully we'll get it soon!

So, on Thursday the final part of the Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant came out, I'd only been waiting on it for a year. The series is fantastic, and the last book answers the over hanging questions from the second nicely - there's some twists along the way, and it's a Damned Good read. I didn't pick up Blackout (the last book) until Saturday night, as I was re-reading Feed and Deadline first - I'd finished Feed on Wednesday but didn't finish Deadline until Saturday. I picked up Blackout Saturday night at ~ 2200 and didn't go to sleep until ~ 0200 - then, waking up on Sunday, other than doing a few bits of work from 1100 till about 2100 I read the rest of Blackout, it's kinda addictive. It ends a bit abruptly, but well.

If you've not read this series - pick up Feed - if you like it, you'll love the series... also, if you don't cry at at least 2 points in Feed, you're obviously a heartless bastard!

OK - so I read, a couple years back, the first book in the Newsflesh Trilogy by Mira Grant, before getting my Kindle - it was fantastic, and I wanted more, ... so, diligently I waited and then after getting my Kindle, I spotted that the second in the series was available for pre-order (yay!), so noting when it was due out, I made sure that a couple of days before the release of Deadline, I could read Feed again - having already owned it in paperback, I also diligently bought it a second time for the Kindle (knowing that I would be reading something else just before starting the voyage through Feed and then Deadline, and travelling with lots of paperbacks in my bag was just getting annoying...).

In a few months time, the final part of the Newsflesh Trilogy comes out - and I await it with baited breath. I also note, that, currently it is only available for pre-orders in paperback - NOOOOOO! So, with that in mind, can everyone please go to the Amazon page for the paperback and click on the magic link that says you want to read it on the Kindle!

Also, if someone can work out why the novellas are only available in audiobook format, and somehow makes them available in a nice printed format (well, kindle), that would be great!

(One day I'll get round to re-enabling comments on here... one day... yes, one day!)

ARGH! Have just finished "The Wise Man's Fear" - fantastic book, but still the middle of a trilogy, without the last book in sight... If you've not read "The Name of the Wind" and "The Wise Man's Fear" by Patrick Rothfuss, I seriously suggest going and picking them up (at least if you read some fantasy, even if you don't they're worth a read I reckon).

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned... or at least, not blogged for a looooong time. I've been reasonably busy, stopped working for Runtime Collective and started contracting for a small company in Portsmouth, it's been somewhat hectic, and the commute isn't brilliant, but it has given me a lot of time for reading...

Really, mostly a lot of my time during the week is commuting, working, reading and sleeping, haven't had much time for anything else, and have mostly been knackered... I'm getting in to the habit now, though, so am getting a bit more time for getting on with other things. I have, however, gained a lot more fiction books in the last few months, and am averaging 2 or 3 books a week at the moment. Most enjoyed the first 2 books of the Demon Trilogy by Peter V Brett - have to wait till 2012 to get the last book, though - which is a loooong time! Actually, I seem to have made a habit of ending up starting trilogys recently where not all of the books are published, in the case of Feed by Mira Grant I managed to really screw up - not even the second book is due out until next year - but the first is really quite good. I've also got the first book of Mark C Newton's Legend of the Red Sun books, really enjoyed that, but am waiting for the second in paperback, as they're much easier to carry around and use on the tube.

Have read the Millennium trilogy, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The first film, although a reasonable adaptation of the book, misses some good parts of the book, and doesn't leave you feeling as if you know the characters as much.

Am also planning on working through all the Laundry books by Charles Stross, I picked up The Fuller Memorandum on a whim (OK, it was on a 2 for 1 in Waterstones...) and really enjoyed it, so am going to get the rest (when I start getting low on books again - I've currently got another 5 queued up, so it might not be for a couple of weeks).

So, other than that, what have I been up to? Well, played the last bits of DLC for Assassins Creed 2 on the PS3, and thoroughly looking forward to the release of AC3, played most of the way through Lego Harry Potter, wandered about and saw people... you know, the usual things!

Oh, and of course, August bank holiday weekend (28-30) were spent with good peoples at the ever fantastic Debian UK BBQ where much Nero was imbibed, many people spoken to, and some gpg signing done - as always many thanks to Steve McIntyre for a fantastic weekend, to Collabora and Mythic Beasts for the beer, and to antibodyMX and Coding Craft Ltd for the food (Oi, Pashley , stop being crap and sort out your company website...).

So, I just went to register for a SeeSaw invite, I entered my usual e-mail address, which is iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk, and got told it was not a valid e-mail address... erm, yes it is, I use it rather a lot, dammit! So, I changed the localpart from iDunno to one of my less used aliases, and that it accepted... this means that they're checking the localpart and rejecting things with a localpart of idunno, I don't know what other localparts they're rejecting, but that seemed a little harsh...

Ah well, now I'll wait for the invite then I can test :)

Update: Apparently if you put the e-mail address in all lowercase it accepts it fine. sigh.

So, I've (only just) got round to watching most of Tru Calling, I'm nearly at the end of season one, and then I looked at the number of DVDs left and went "erm, err, what happened with season two, then?"... This appears to happen rather often with anything shown by Fox... The other show that I really liked but didn't see till a long time after they'd cancelled it was Firefly. Why do Fox do this?! Annoying gits! Of course, the other show that I'm waiting for on DVD/Blu-Ray is Dollhouse Season 2, after which we get no more of that either (go Fox!) - I've also just finished The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2... which I believe has also been cancelled...

Mutter - it just all mostly sucks. With that and the stupid schedule that Disney PIXAR are releasing things, I'm sure that the entertainment industry is just out to piss me off, there's no way that they needed so many months between the US premier of Up and it coming to the UK (OK, so when it did come out here, I didn't go and see it in the cinema, but that's mostly cos I was still pissed off with the release scheduling, and that I'll have it on DVD/Blu-ray as soon as it's released here on that... I own the rest of the Disney PIXAR movies, so meh).

So, I mostly missed Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles when it was shown on TV, so I bought the first season on blu-ray to watch... I'm about half way through now, and I'm really quite enjoying it. Might have to see if I can find season 2... Appears that the series has had the usual Fox treatment though... "Oh, people like it, we'll ditch it!" sigh.

So, this blog entry is purely about my life experience and my gut feelings... but, basically, here's the rub - pro-choice are all about being able to kill a child up to 24 weeks old, my nephew wasn't far past that, and he's a fucking fantastic child, he's now 8 - and absolutely fucking brilliant - so yeah - pro-choice - I'm not going to fuck up my life, but I'm going to mince a child that might or might not have feelings because I can... argh - for fuck sake - given that most abortions are through consensual sex - for fuck sake - either take the choice that you're going to be pregnant and live with that or don't have sex - it's not a hard choice - and that is what I see as pro-choice - you have the choice to have sex, or not. If it wasn't a consensual agreement, take the damn after morning pill, not a hell of a lot is going to survive that, and you're within a week, barely noticeable.

What pisses me off is the "pro-choice" vs "pro-life" battle - you're both wrong, anything after 2 weeks and I'm with the pro-lifers, any thing before that, yeah - the pro-choicers are fine...

Another thing that pisses me off is people deciding that they know best about how the government should go - what they haven't yet realised is that the entire government is there to tax us so that the pro-life and pro-choicers can have their bitter dispute, no matter who is in power. Shortly followed by screwing over either students or workers, depending on who's in power. It doesn't really matter - whoever is in power, some one is going to get screwed.

So, was supposed to end up in Hector's House playing pool with various people that I know, but all of 'em were out last night (erm, half of 'em with me) and didn't quite manage to make it... So after an hour of waiting for people to turn up I gave up and considered going back to my "local" (the hop poles) to have a swift beer or three... instead, it being a wednesday, and knowing that Band Aids was on at the Pav Tav, I wandered there... managed to get there before the first band played - they were Vier and were absolutely bloody fantastic. Stayed and watched/danced to the other 3 bands and all was well with the world.

Now it's time for the sleep and the getting everything else ready for the big move on Friday (yay for working Good Friday... or something!)

It's been a long long time since I last posted anything at all, so this is a post to warn of impending doom. I've switched from a static html website (well, it was statically generated when I edited source files I then ran a bash script that fired off a perl script several times...) to a fully dynamic, django 1.0 backed website - this might mean that I manage to update things more often!

I've also taken the opportunity to convert the previous content in to ReST, so it's actually easier to edit too. There's still work to do - but it's now "good enough" to be used, and I'll split the code out in to better chunks later on.

So, anyways - that's what I've done with my day - so I expect all the aggregators to now break on the new feeds...

Been watching the snooker - Selby was playing really quite well yesterday, and started the early session this morning looking promising, he seems to have lost it this evening though, which is a shame - and at 12 to 4 down starting tomorrow, he's got a hell of a lot to make up tomorrow.

Higgins isn't playing to his best, but he's being more consistent than Selby, it'll be a hell of a final if they both dig in tomorrow.

That is all.

Happy birthday David, you old git you ;)

We're at 5 minutes to midnight, and it appears that Joost is the new TV - it appears to be getting some reaonable coverage at the moment, but looks far too much like another closed app using proprietary protocols - the world has gone DRM crazy - someone stop it, I want to get off. DRM is a myth, if you can play it, you can copy it (not neccessarily easily, but it's still possible). The NewScientist article is quite interesting in the claim of "piracy-proof"... if you can play the video, you can capture it, if you can listen to music you can record it, when is the media industry going to realise that DRM is a very dumb idea that shouldn't have been allowed to get this far - pirates can (and always will) find a way, how about going back to trusting your users rather than tarring them all with the "you're a pirate" brush. The Register's article appears to have a typo in it... well, unless you really do need a 500mbps line in order to use Joost - seems unlikely, I think they meant 500kbps. Anyways - nice idea, not sure that it's better than anything else though, I'll continue buying DVDs that let me play back when I have no interweb connection.

Back to being at 5 minutes to midnight, eeep! We're all going to die! Maybe it's the introduction of DRM that's led to so much terrorism, or maybe just that the media industry appears to be out to shaft everyone. Bah.

Only one other article has caught my attention this morning, it's another look at the Apple iPhone, it appears that no one is actually getting a reasonable amount of time to play and review this device, and it brings up a number of my issues with the iPhone.

So, yes, that's the morning covered - maybe more this evening.

Just finally got round to watching cars (bought it earlier in the week, just watched it, damned glad I bought it). I'm a pixar film fan, so when cars was announced as the last film last year before moving to another distributor I was a little pessamistic as to what the quality of the film was going to be, I must say, I'm still very happy with pixar - now, let's see what happens now that they're owned by the evil giant that is Disney - hopefully they'll still leave the pixar team as is and we'll get lots more quality films with lots of imagination behind them. (Yes, OK - I'm a big kid, and I also like most of the stuff that comes out of dreamworks studios, though they tend to have less story line - shrek is rather good though).

So, yeah - just thought I'd post to say... If you haven't seen Cars, go get a copy, watch it, it's fun :)

In case I totally avoid mentioning it tomorrow (quite likely), Merry Christmas peeps. Have a good one, don't drink too much :)

Fantastic beginning to the weekend - was in Norwich from Thursday, saw the Dave and the Becca on thursday night - many many thanks to them for floor space thurs and fri and for generally just being fantastic people (with tea and coffee, no less - and a silly beepy tivo box for even more fun - and for introducing me to the american chopper type show thingummy - and for letting me watch the a-team!)

Then, serious amounts of thanks to Noodles and Kathy (who I appear to not be able to find a link for :( ) for inviting me to the wedding and the reception - was fantastic - you're both such absolutely lovely people! Pictures so far appear to be available from Dave and Becca's Gallery, Burly's Gallery and Steve McIntyre's Gallery - hopefully more soon... specially from Dave Noble (can't find him bah he needs more google juice the damned slacker ;) which should be cool! Saturday was absolutely brilliant - including talking about atmosperic physics, failing a-levels, and random universities doing questions (hey, I can't entirely remembere - someone bought a half barrel of nero and some port, and lots of red wine... I wasn't entirely sober ;).

Saturday morning was a bit of a blur - I remember watching the A-Team and then food in the Glass House with Dave and Becca (thanks guys, you rock!) then I wandered to the Fat Cat and met with Eli and Dave Noble, a while later Rob and James and Kaz arrived and we played Munchkin, which was a very very silly game but quite fun (thanks James and Kaz - you're both mildly insane - but it's always fun when you come to the pub!).

Went home with Eli, tried to escape because of the annoying giggly evil students from hell, started wandering back towards the train station and a random bench to sleep on, then got emotional black mail and ended up back at Eli's - ho hum.

Went to catch train at around 10am Sunday morning - discovered trains from Norwich weren't running - replacement bus service from Norwich to Diss left Norwich at around 10:25am, got to Diss, had a 10 to 15 minute wait there (mmmmm, bacon roll and a coffee!) then straight to Liverpool Street, wandered straight off to the underground and got the circle line to Victoria, got to Victoria around 13:40 ish, wandered to look at the boards and saw a 14:17 from Victoria round half the planet to Brighton - thought to myself "not in any rush" and wandered off and found food and then wandered round the WHSmith in Victoria station.... got out of there, glanced at the board again, Victoria to Brighton train had been cancelled - wondered what to do - announcement over the tannoy that to get to Brighton the best idea was to travel to East Croyden and the train would meet us there. So, grabbed that train, got to East Croyden, jumped on the train (first 8 carriages Brighton, back four Plymouth... so, jumped on somewhere around the 7th carriage from what I thought was the front - turned out to be the back - wasn't entirely sure what was going on so when it stopped at Gatwick wandered further to the front of the train a lot, found an empty pair of seats and sat down. Got to Three Bridges and there was a delay, it was announced on the train as "We're waiting for the conductor, he's missed a train and is currently in a taxi, there's at least a 10 minute delay before he gets here", so a load of us bundled out of the train on the basis that that was very much long enough for a cigarette break - just as we were finishing the conductor turned up, so we all got back on the train for the "scenic" route to Brighton (yay for going round the coast), finally got in to Brighton at 17:05, so wasn't too bad, only about 6 and a half hours for a 3 and a half or 4 hour train journey ;). Grabbed chinese on the way home, watched some Morse - all was well with the world.

Lots of beeping this morning around 8.30am, ignored it, finally re-woke up at about 10:30am (ish) - watched some more Morse, grabbed some lunch and then watched more Morse until going to the pub quiz tonight.

Charly, Julius and Pieter turned up for a quick drink and then all left me to fend for my self at the quiz - I came in my usual place - very last (by over 20 points, no less ;) - but had fun, so who cares :)

Anyways - it's now tuesday morning, so probably time for some good ol' fashioned sleep type stuff... might put on the next episode of Morse for the hell of it (might even manage to stay awake through it!).

Tomorrow is probably more Morse, some work on the django packages (just got the first bug report in for those) and possibly applying some of the patches to the scrobbler packages to close some of those bug reports too. It appears that upstream for xmms-scrobbler has disappeared a bit, so might have to look at that a lot closer over the next few months - have some time off work soon - last day this year being the 15th (also happens to be when work are planning the "christmas do").

Wow - that was a ridiculously longer post than I though it was going to be! Night all!