Shopaholic
I bought too much stuff today. Can't resist a bargain!
1GB USB Key, DVDs - Antz, Prince of Egypt, Chicken Run @ $10 each, CDs - Butterfingers, Vassy, Book - Serenity Comic.
Well... once I write it down, it doesn't seem very much. Oh well. Tempted to get the Farscape DVDs at $40 per season, but decided against it... Nice to find the Serenity Comic too! $20 at Dymocks, although pricemarked slightly higher!
Actually, glad I found Vassy's CD, I stumbled across it by accident, didn't know she'd finished and released an album. I would have thought JJJ would have featured it already, considering they're the station that 'Unearthed' her a few years ago. But it seems JJJ hasn't played very much Vassy at all for a while... only the original Unearthed song and two others have ever made airplay... I'm looking forward to hearing the rest!
Also, finally finished reading Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" this morning, it's taken me at least 3 weeks because it's a monster of a book, almost 1000 large pages.
But it's bloody excellent.
Short review... contains spoilers
I'd heard of this book a while back, but never got around to reading until now, thanks to borrowing MarchHare's copy. I fully expected something cyberpunkish (which apparently Snow Crash is, that's another to eventually read) but it's nothing like it. Nothing at all.
We follow two... ok, really at least four, threads of story. One storyline is in the modern day (around 1999/2000) and follows Randy Waterhouse as he and his friends/business associates try to set up firstly data cabling around the Phillipines and then a Data Haven on a fictional pacific island.
The other storylines take place during World War II, following Lawrence Waterhouse (Randy's grandfather) - a mathematician drawn into cryptanalysis and working on the very first digital computers, Bobby Shaftoe, a marine who moves from Shanghai to the Phillipines to Europe to being captured by a U-boat, to Sweden, etc etc. He goes everywhere. Finally there is also a tale (later in the novel) of Goto Dengo, a Nipponese army man who goes through his own various adventures.
Of course all the stories tie in together, and it takes a while, but there's never a dull moment.
My only real complaint was that each chapter starts with a different character's perspective... and sometimes it's quite hard to remember what happened to the character in the last chapter about him! Flipping back isn't so easy when it could have been 20, 40, or even 100 pages when he was last mentioned... keeping track of all the threads is difficult when you only read a chapter or two each night!
It's really fascinating to read, to learn about the history of cryptanalysis and the birth of the digital age, as well as seeing how much WW2 had an effect on the modern world, even 50 or 60 years later. The text makes use of some real people (like Alan Turing) and events as well as fictional characters and events and weaves a wonderful tale where you don't
know exactly where it's going to go next... despite the fact that some things in the 'modern day' storyline should indicate what's going to happen in the 'past', and vice versa.
There were a few plot points unresolved at the end, in my mind, but I do think the book managed to reach its point and tell it and the main mysteries were resolved. However, the various initial plot drivers - I guess they could be MacGuffins, in a way - somehow are left without any sort of epilogue, which does pull a little away from my satisfaction with the book.
In summary - damn good, very well written, possibly a bit too long, but certainly I probably only think that because I can't read as much each night as I'd like to!
1GB USB Key, DVDs - Antz, Prince of Egypt, Chicken Run @ $10 each, CDs - Butterfingers, Vassy, Book - Serenity Comic.
Well... once I write it down, it doesn't seem very much. Oh well. Tempted to get the Farscape DVDs at $40 per season, but decided against it... Nice to find the Serenity Comic too! $20 at Dymocks, although pricemarked slightly higher!
Actually, glad I found Vassy's CD, I stumbled across it by accident, didn't know she'd finished and released an album. I would have thought JJJ would have featured it already, considering they're the station that 'Unearthed' her a few years ago. But it seems JJJ hasn't played very much Vassy at all for a while... only the original Unearthed song and two others have ever made airplay... I'm looking forward to hearing the rest!
Also, finally finished reading Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" this morning, it's taken me at least 3 weeks because it's a monster of a book, almost 1000 large pages.
But it's bloody excellent.
Short review... contains spoilers
I'd heard of this book a while back, but never got around to reading until now, thanks to borrowing MarchHare's copy. I fully expected something cyberpunkish (which apparently Snow Crash is, that's another to eventually read) but it's nothing like it. Nothing at all.
We follow two... ok, really at least four, threads of story. One storyline is in the modern day (around 1999/2000) and follows Randy Waterhouse as he and his friends/business associates try to set up firstly data cabling around the Phillipines and then a Data Haven on a fictional pacific island.
The other storylines take place during World War II, following Lawrence Waterhouse (Randy's grandfather) - a mathematician drawn into cryptanalysis and working on the very first digital computers, Bobby Shaftoe, a marine who moves from Shanghai to the Phillipines to Europe to being captured by a U-boat, to Sweden, etc etc. He goes everywhere. Finally there is also a tale (later in the novel) of Goto Dengo, a Nipponese army man who goes through his own various adventures.
Of course all the stories tie in together, and it takes a while, but there's never a dull moment.
My only real complaint was that each chapter starts with a different character's perspective... and sometimes it's quite hard to remember what happened to the character in the last chapter about him! Flipping back isn't so easy when it could have been 20, 40, or even 100 pages when he was last mentioned... keeping track of all the threads is difficult when you only read a chapter or two each night!
It's really fascinating to read, to learn about the history of cryptanalysis and the birth of the digital age, as well as seeing how much WW2 had an effect on the modern world, even 50 or 60 years later. The text makes use of some real people (like Alan Turing) and events as well as fictional characters and events and weaves a wonderful tale where you don't
know exactly where it's going to go next... despite the fact that some things in the 'modern day' storyline should indicate what's going to happen in the 'past', and vice versa.
There were a few plot points unresolved at the end, in my mind, but I do think the book managed to reach its point and tell it and the main mysteries were resolved. However, the various initial plot drivers - I guess they could be MacGuffins, in a way - somehow are left without any sort of epilogue, which does pull a little away from my satisfaction with the book.
In summary - damn good, very well written, possibly a bit too long, but certainly I probably only think that because I can't read as much each night as I'd like to!