My colleague Naomi secured an opportunity for me to contribute a review to B2B Marketing magazine on a newish app of relevance to B2B marketers. Following the tip from Giles I looked at Flipboard and the review was published yesterday.
Check it out only if you have the vaguest interest in the topic :-).
I started this book on Friday and finished it on Sunday, despite a busy weekend, which tells you a little about how accessible, readable, compelling and, well, short, Mr Scalzi’s latest novel is. Like The God Engines, it’s a departure from his militaristic sci-fi mainstay, but again – as with The God Engines – to excellent effect.
A reboot of a sci-fi novel I haven’t read, I was relying on Scalzi’s characteristic style to make the story entertaining and he doesn’t disappoint. Whilst carrying all the hallmarks of a traditional space-opera, the lead protagonist is a lawyer (disbarred, but not for not knowing the law, as he’s anxious to let people know) and as a consequence the whole book runs more like a particularly strong episode of Boston Legal than a sci-fi space saga, complete with morally ambiguous James-Spader-esque courtroom shenanigans.
The story follows the discovery of a rich seam of natural resources on a colony world in tandem with the discovery of a potentially sentient species, and the legal battles and political maneuvering that follows to carry the story through to its inevitable conclusion.
It’s a lot of fun, highly recommended.
I love the way Charlie Stross writes; he uses his books to test a theory, and nowhere is this more true and more evident than in his Halting State / Rule 34 novels.
Whilst superficially the stories follow a pair of criminal investigations, the theses tested include the implications of a world of augmented-reality gaming and digital infrastructure gone mad, and examining the nature of artificial intelligence and the potential evolution of spam-filtration into possibly sentient moral arbitration. It’s absolutely fascinating and terrifyingly possible, and when discussed via the mechanism of a criminal investigation and some very weird people, thoroughly, thoroughly entertaining.
Anyway, have finished Rule 34 now. Highly, highly recommended, and I’m looking forward to the next concept Mr Stross decides to test in his Scottish near-future world.
The experience reminds of when I first ploughed through Asimov’s Foundation series – whilst that ended up a fairly typical space-opera, the series initially was a testing ground for a deterministic philosophy of human society and a theoretical science. At least, that’s how I saw it when it was the subject of my BA philosophy of science thesis…
I’ve always taken disproportionate pleasure in getting a good deal. It’s the one part of my Malaysian heritage I’ve not been in a hurry to reject – my Dad trained me to ask for discounts, and I always get that satisfaction of finding something cheaper elsewhere. In some regards, comparison web-shopping was made for me.
But surpassing the wildest dreams of eBay and comparison shopping sites – which after all have to cope with the burden of P&P – is the joy of the jumble and car boot sale. We stopped by a car boot sale on the way back from the coast a couple of weekends ago and picked up over 20 items of clothing for Emily at the grand total cost of £7.50. Similar purchases in shops would have cost us hundreds, and even occasional eBay purchases, with the aforementioned P&P would probably have stacked up to over £100. Fantastico.
In addition to the ludicrous deals, there’s some enjoyment to be had in seeing other peoples curios on display. I’ve always been comfortably materialistic – in the sense that I enjoy stuff rather than assign all value to it – so find it gives great insight into what other people take pleasure in to wander around these jumble sales.
Sadly this weekend’s car boot expedition was called off on account of rain, but there are a couple of more opportunities before the weather turns properly sour and the season ends…
Huzzah for my alma mater in the global round-up, in which Cambridge pips Harvard to the post for the second year running.
Love the Guardian’s take on it: looks at the list, compares the fee-going universities with those that traditionally don’t and drives a political point home.
Whilst I’m massively in favour of free education I think the practical transition of Universities from loss-making organisations to profitable ones will need to see a significant change in culture, or the recruitment of a whole range of entrepreneurial souls to help them do it.
The vast majority of academics and university staff that I’ve met have absolutely no interest in turning their organisation into a profit-centre – their concerns are academia, education, and the pursuit of knowledge (and some internal political wrangling). Beyond applying for grants, most academics (outside business schools, natch) seem to have virtually none of the inclination or capabilities needed to turn their institutions into functioning businesses.
You’ll have experienced it, if you think back to your University days. Ham-fisted experiments with events, renting out student rooms, etc – to make better use of the facilities. Some limited sponsorship efforts. I’m sure places like Cambridge have proper business development departments, although I suspect most of their efforts are focussed on alumni appeals programmes (those horrible, disingenuous phone calls from your old college asking how you are doing before they ask you for some cash).
A friend of ours is working on helping Universities with their events strategies in particular, but there’s a lot more to it than that and we can only hope that Universities make the investment they need to in the right kinds of people to reverse the decay of Britain’s further education system.
Of course, if you charge to rename the colleges at the world’s number one university, that’s good for a few quid.
I cycled Emily home on Saturday after we’d been out for a family cycle around the village. I usually cycle alongside Amanda and her so can watch a she looks around at the world, gripping onto the handles of the bike seat and wearing her little flowery cycle helmet.
It was unnerving cycling with her behind me. I kept checking with Amanda that she was alright – the sensory input of looking around the place on the back of a bike must be pretty overwhelming as she tends to go from extreme chattiness to quiet, observational introspection when in her bike seat.
I think next time I might have to stick a mirror on Amanda’s bike, if she’ll let me!!
As a kid, I devoured every PG Wodehouse novel I could find and got through the Blandings books in not much time at all. There was something wonderful about both the comedy and the setting – London in a simpler time, and all you needed for drama was a country house and the right mix of people. Even murders weren’t required!
A feature of the Blandings books in particular, and occasionally the other Wodehouse novels, was the country fayre, and/or the village show, in which produce, baked goods and animals were displayed in an attempt to win the much coveted accolade of ‘best big’ or ‘best soft fruits’. Of course, living in Malaysia, such things were far beyond my experience, and even now, after 5 years of living in a big country house (boarding school) and 18 years living in the UK, I haven’t actually been to a village show. OK, one country fayre (in which my mother-in-law’s dog one a rosette at the dog show), but certainly no produce competitions.
And after a summer of growing things, the produce competition was actually quite interesting! Photos follow.
Amanda’s asked if I’m going to put myself forward for it next year. I’m not sure – I’m reasonably confident that we produced more impressive yellow courgettes and more impressive Apples than some that were on display, but — it’s all in the timing for the courgette, and we did only succeed in growing two apples (yet to be tasted) – so unlikely.
The boards were swept by a single master-grower, though, so think things will be stacked against me if I do decide to compete. I think I’ll stay happy growing food for our own consumption…
Nicky and Kate introduced us into one of the most entertaining games I’ve played for a while – Bananagrams – whilst we were down the coast a couple of weekends ago. A sort of free-form scrabble, you form a scrabble grid of words (without a board) with however many letters you are allocated – 21 in a short-handed game (2-4 players). When you complete the grid, you shout ‘peel’ and everyone takes another letter from the face-down pile in the middle and you try to fit it into your grid somewhere, often having to restructure swathes of it. If you can’t place a letter, you can ‘dump’ it in exchange for three new letters from the central pile.
The winner is the first to complete the grid once the central tile repository has been exhausted and shout ‘bananas’. Sub-games include longest word, min/max word length, thematic consistency to all words, sentences, rude word construction and so on.
Addictive in the extreme, and only £8.49 from Amazon! Stocking filler-tastic.
I retract my desire to move to Android just yet. Despite the superlative professional reviews, on looking at the handset longingly on Amazon, I read this review by a former iPhone user. It points to some of the limitations – battery life, non-native music decompression (leading to a hot handset and short battery life), issues with multi-tasking etc. Those are the main killers for me – my iPhone is my principle music devices and I don’t want to have to re-charge in the middle of the day – it’s frustrating (but rare) to have to do that with the iPhone and it would grate to have to do it daily.
For me, that’s a huge validation for consumer reviews and I’m grateful to the Amazon shopper who provided this insight for me. Tom loves his S2 but doesn’t use it as a music device so probably hasn’t suffered the worst of this. If you’re an iPhone user considering an S2 (or any Android device) go read this guy’s review. Very insightful indeed.
There’s something to be said for the benefits of long-term testing these devices! Pre-iPhone, I had at least two phones which I bought on the basis of cool features and good reviews that I grew to really, really dislike (the Ericsson T29 and the Motorola MPX 200)… given the year-long contract on those, it was frustrating indeed to be lumbered with them.
OK, so as many people have sniggered as looked on enviously at me for going to Batman Live at the O2 with Arvind on Friday. An early birthday present – Arvind was due to be in LA for my birthday this year – it was my first trip to the Dome in the 11 years its been open for business and the first time I’ve been to any kind of live show in a while.
It was fantastic.
I really didn’t expect it to be that good, and indeed, elements of it were oddly done. The combat sequences – particularly the wire-fighting ones – were slow and laboured, the accents felt vaguely forced (and Bruce Wayne had a bit of a lisp), and the costumes were accentuated with fake muscles to the point that Batman looked ridiculous on the few occasions he had to run.
But the staging was inventive and immersive, the acrobatics were suitably impressive, the story actually worked – despite a proliferation of rogues endemic to the franchise – the pacing was perfect and the humour appropriate. It was quite child-oriented – and indeed, that lent to its charm – a kid sat around us somewhere provided an amusing commentary on the content: On Batman kissing Catwoman: "Eww, that’s disgusting." On Robin’s entrance: "WOW LOOK AT ROBIN HE’S GOING TO GET THEM!" On the Batsignal: "Mummy mummy it’s the Batsignal!!!"
The Batmobile, btw, is a real highlight. Very, very cool on stage.
Anyway, I think its left London as it continues on its Arena Tour – if you get the opportunity, go and see it! But avoid the Bat-merchandise, it is a massive rip-off!
Here’s a clip: