(no subject)
What follows is a selection of thoughts on books, cars, games, food, all sorts of things in fact.
The Cartoon History of the Universe volumes 1 to 3, Cartoon History of the Modern World parts 1 and 2 by Larry Gonick
I may have mentioned these before. Best history textbooks* I've ever read. Pretty comprehensive. The bits that cover 'my periods' (see I can pretend I did a history degree) seem accurate so I have no reason to doubt the other bits. Very much a world-centric view of history, so even if your European history knowledge is top notch, you'll learn stuff about China or Arabia. The final volume ('From the Bastille to Baghdad') only came out recently, and I received two copies of it for Christmas. If anyone is interested and is likely to see me at some point in future (or be prepared to wait for me to get to a post office), the spare one is yours.
* Well, they aren't exactly textbooks, and I can see some teachers having issues with using cartoons as textbooks, but they should be. They'd be great as GCSE-level texts, and would be useful for A-level, degree-level and in fact anyone wishing to fill in gaps in their own knowledge. Since modern history teaching seems to be topic based, also very good for putting things in context with what else was going on at that time in other parts of the world.
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Never read this before. Bit disappointed to be honest. Great premise. Although film versions have typically been horror films, it's not a horror book. At least it's not really written as one. If you want to put it in a genre (and why not), put it in science fiction. On the other hand, it is an interesting story written in a dull manner. It's just not an exciting book to read. Partly this is because so much of the book is the hero just feeling sorry for himself. Partly it's because it is (by modern standards at least) badly written. Bad writing part one: why have two or three clauses in a sentence when you can have eight or nine? Actually I counted ten clauses in one sentence once. Yes, the story is being told by one character to another and so maybe he just spoke like this, but if he did, he needed the other character to slap him. Bad writing part two: You are suddenly confronted by a horrible monster of your own creation that looks like it is determined to kill you and everyone you love. Would you really say "Begone, foul insect!"?
Herbert West - Reanimator, H.P. Lovecraft
This was a short story that Lovecraft wrote in the early 20s as a sort of parody of Frankenstein (parody in the literary, not comic sense). As a short story, it suffers from having being written as a weekly serial (a problem which, let's be honest, Terrance Dicks never overcame as a novelist). And Lovecraft himself wasn't hugely happy with it. Nevertheless, it's better than Frankenstein. It's better told and it's just scarier. It's also shorter but packs in more story.
So, don't read the Mary Shelley version, read the Lovecraft one.
Kodak w820 Digital Picture Frame
Another christmas present. 8" digital picture frame. In theory capable of doing all sorts of clever things over a wireless network, including working with various web services, flickr, facebook etc. Truly horrible user interface, unreliable in terms of setting up and repeatedly hung when trying to access photos on my hard disk. In the end I gave up the idea of having it take photos off my PC and instead just shoved a 4gb flash memory stick in the back. This works fine, and the picture quality is excellent. It sits on my desk and shows a constant slideshow of 'game images' (pictures from computer games and RPG art). So the screen itself is nice, but not worth paying for the wi-fi capabilities.
Cup cakes / fairy cakes
Bunn made a big selection of cup / fairy cakes yesterday. Yum.
Honda S2000
It's the best car I've ever owned. But at 125 miles short of 100,000 on the clock, it's time to move on. Rear wheel drive, 240bhp and no traction control. A proper hairy chested sports car. Nothing else (at least nothing else for similar money) has the same thrill of a second kick when you pass 6,000rpm and the variable valve timing on the VTEC engine kicks you higher up the power band. I'm glad I took it to Scotland and got to fly around some of the best driving roads in the world. And I'm even glad that I almost missed that ferry from Skye to Harris. If it wasn't for that, I'd never have had the bestest, fastest two hour drive of my life.
Also, in 66,000 miles and five years of ownership, very little has ever gone wrong. Namely:
* The plastic rear window broke in sub-zero temperatures. My fault entirely for putting the roof down.
* The headlight washers failed, then strangely started working again a couple of months later.
* The bonnet release catch stopped working.
* After a week of ice-enforced inactivity, the battery needed topping up before starting, which brings me onto...
Halfords Battery Charger
Simple device for charging car batteries from the mains. Dead easy to use, so much so that it didn't come with any instructions. Luckily enough, the Halfords website had a little mini-FAQ which explained everything. Managed to recharge my seemingly dead battery within 30 minutes, despite the website suggesting it would take up to five hours.
Pyman Pates www.pymanpates.co.uk
Stonkingly good pates available from Tavistock Farmers' Market (most of the time) and online. Supermarket pates never seem to taste as nice as the stuff you get in decent restaurants. Pyman's stuff is as good as the stuff you get in decent restaurants - in fact I suspect that many of our local decent restaurants get their pates from Pyman's.
Country Cheeses http://www.countrycheeses.co.uk/
Worth another plug. Best cheese shop I know, and almost all of their cheeses are local (i.e. Cornwall, Devon and Somerset). I'm so glad we live close to Tavistock.
Dragon Age: Origins
Kargicq has mentioned this. Published reviews have generally been very positive, saying that Dragon Age is a modern take on the Baldur's Gate games (by the same people). Party-based computer fantasy RPG. Edge Magazine was rather luke-warm about it though and criticised the bland, generic fantasy setting and dodgy dialogue. The setting is pretty generic fantasyland (with added shoulder armour - really, the plate armour is somewhere between John Boorman's Excalibur and Linda Evans in Dynasty) and the dialogue is no better or worse than most computer games. On the other hand, this is a triple A, big budget title and it's a shame that this wasn't seen as important enough to do properly, especially as there is so much of it.
I've been having a lot of fun with it though. Like BG, you create your character and then recruit others to your cause. My PC is a Dalish* Elf warrior who favours a two weapon fighting style.
* Sort of pikey elves, wandering outcasts, looked down upon by everyone else.
Forza Motorsport 3
An XBox 360 driving game, and a brilliant one at that. I have been playing it to death recently. Lots of tracks (some real*, some fictional) and a huge range of cars (all real). You can start off with small hatchbacks (my first car was a Toyota Yaris) and gradually move up towards proper racing cars. As you compete and win races, you get experience points and every few races, you'll get enough XP to go up a level. At that point, you get given another car to race. You also win money, which you can use to buy cars. This gives you a nice mix of cars that you perhaps wouldn't have tried (for example I actually had some fun in a god-awful 1970s Plymouth Barracuda (hideous American muscle coupe) and getting cars that you really wanted (I went and bought my last two real-life cars to race - in the same colours I had them). Each car handles differently (and the two that I've owned in real life accelerate and handle just like I'd expect them too) and even the dashboards are accurately modelled. So if you drive an S2000, the speedometer and rev counter looks just like it looks in my userpic.
Usually in racing games, the thrills come from overtaking other cars. That is there in Forza too, but the handling model is so good that there are thrills from just knowing you've got the right line through a tricky corner. I honestly don't remember ever having so much fun with a driving game, and I've played a hell of a lot of them over the last quarter of a century.
* Including Le Mans and the Nurburgring. The latter is really challenging.
The Cartoon History of the Universe volumes 1 to 3, Cartoon History of the Modern World parts 1 and 2 by Larry Gonick
I may have mentioned these before. Best history textbooks* I've ever read. Pretty comprehensive. The bits that cover 'my periods' (see I can pretend I did a history degree) seem accurate so I have no reason to doubt the other bits. Very much a world-centric view of history, so even if your European history knowledge is top notch, you'll learn stuff about China or Arabia. The final volume ('From the Bastille to Baghdad') only came out recently, and I received two copies of it for Christmas. If anyone is interested and is likely to see me at some point in future (or be prepared to wait for me to get to a post office), the spare one is yours.
* Well, they aren't exactly textbooks, and I can see some teachers having issues with using cartoons as textbooks, but they should be. They'd be great as GCSE-level texts, and would be useful for A-level, degree-level and in fact anyone wishing to fill in gaps in their own knowledge. Since modern history teaching seems to be topic based, also very good for putting things in context with what else was going on at that time in other parts of the world.
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Never read this before. Bit disappointed to be honest. Great premise. Although film versions have typically been horror films, it's not a horror book. At least it's not really written as one. If you want to put it in a genre (and why not), put it in science fiction. On the other hand, it is an interesting story written in a dull manner. It's just not an exciting book to read. Partly this is because so much of the book is the hero just feeling sorry for himself. Partly it's because it is (by modern standards at least) badly written. Bad writing part one: why have two or three clauses in a sentence when you can have eight or nine? Actually I counted ten clauses in one sentence once. Yes, the story is being told by one character to another and so maybe he just spoke like this, but if he did, he needed the other character to slap him. Bad writing part two: You are suddenly confronted by a horrible monster of your own creation that looks like it is determined to kill you and everyone you love. Would you really say "Begone, foul insect!"?
Herbert West - Reanimator, H.P. Lovecraft
This was a short story that Lovecraft wrote in the early 20s as a sort of parody of Frankenstein (parody in the literary, not comic sense). As a short story, it suffers from having being written as a weekly serial (a problem which, let's be honest, Terrance Dicks never overcame as a novelist). And Lovecraft himself wasn't hugely happy with it. Nevertheless, it's better than Frankenstein. It's better told and it's just scarier. It's also shorter but packs in more story.
So, don't read the Mary Shelley version, read the Lovecraft one.
Kodak w820 Digital Picture Frame
Another christmas present. 8" digital picture frame. In theory capable of doing all sorts of clever things over a wireless network, including working with various web services, flickr, facebook etc. Truly horrible user interface, unreliable in terms of setting up and repeatedly hung when trying to access photos on my hard disk. In the end I gave up the idea of having it take photos off my PC and instead just shoved a 4gb flash memory stick in the back. This works fine, and the picture quality is excellent. It sits on my desk and shows a constant slideshow of 'game images' (pictures from computer games and RPG art). So the screen itself is nice, but not worth paying for the wi-fi capabilities.
Cup cakes / fairy cakes
Bunn made a big selection of cup / fairy cakes yesterday. Yum.
Honda S2000
It's the best car I've ever owned. But at 125 miles short of 100,000 on the clock, it's time to move on. Rear wheel drive, 240bhp and no traction control. A proper hairy chested sports car. Nothing else (at least nothing else for similar money) has the same thrill of a second kick when you pass 6,000rpm and the variable valve timing on the VTEC engine kicks you higher up the power band. I'm glad I took it to Scotland and got to fly around some of the best driving roads in the world. And I'm even glad that I almost missed that ferry from Skye to Harris. If it wasn't for that, I'd never have had the bestest, fastest two hour drive of my life.
Also, in 66,000 miles and five years of ownership, very little has ever gone wrong. Namely:
* The plastic rear window broke in sub-zero temperatures. My fault entirely for putting the roof down.
* The headlight washers failed, then strangely started working again a couple of months later.
* The bonnet release catch stopped working.
* After a week of ice-enforced inactivity, the battery needed topping up before starting, which brings me onto...
Halfords Battery Charger
Simple device for charging car batteries from the mains. Dead easy to use, so much so that it didn't come with any instructions. Luckily enough, the Halfords website had a little mini-FAQ which explained everything. Managed to recharge my seemingly dead battery within 30 minutes, despite the website suggesting it would take up to five hours.
Pyman Pates www.pymanpates.co.uk
Stonkingly good pates available from Tavistock Farmers' Market (most of the time) and online. Supermarket pates never seem to taste as nice as the stuff you get in decent restaurants. Pyman's stuff is as good as the stuff you get in decent restaurants - in fact I suspect that many of our local decent restaurants get their pates from Pyman's.
Country Cheeses http://www.countrycheeses.co.uk/
Worth another plug. Best cheese shop I know, and almost all of their cheeses are local (i.e. Cornwall, Devon and Somerset). I'm so glad we live close to Tavistock.
Dragon Age: Origins
Kargicq has mentioned this. Published reviews have generally been very positive, saying that Dragon Age is a modern take on the Baldur's Gate games (by the same people). Party-based computer fantasy RPG. Edge Magazine was rather luke-warm about it though and criticised the bland, generic fantasy setting and dodgy dialogue. The setting is pretty generic fantasyland (with added shoulder armour - really, the plate armour is somewhere between John Boorman's Excalibur and Linda Evans in Dynasty) and the dialogue is no better or worse than most computer games. On the other hand, this is a triple A, big budget title and it's a shame that this wasn't seen as important enough to do properly, especially as there is so much of it.
I've been having a lot of fun with it though. Like BG, you create your character and then recruit others to your cause. My PC is a Dalish* Elf warrior who favours a two weapon fighting style.
* Sort of pikey elves, wandering outcasts, looked down upon by everyone else.
Forza Motorsport 3
An XBox 360 driving game, and a brilliant one at that. I have been playing it to death recently. Lots of tracks (some real*, some fictional) and a huge range of cars (all real). You can start off with small hatchbacks (my first car was a Toyota Yaris) and gradually move up towards proper racing cars. As you compete and win races, you get experience points and every few races, you'll get enough XP to go up a level. At that point, you get given another car to race. You also win money, which you can use to buy cars. This gives you a nice mix of cars that you perhaps wouldn't have tried (for example I actually had some fun in a god-awful 1970s Plymouth Barracuda (hideous American muscle coupe) and getting cars that you really wanted (I went and bought my last two real-life cars to race - in the same colours I had them). Each car handles differently (and the two that I've owned in real life accelerate and handle just like I'd expect them too) and even the dashboards are accurately modelled. So if you drive an S2000, the speedometer and rev counter looks just like it looks in my userpic.
Usually in racing games, the thrills come from overtaking other cars. That is there in Forza too, but the handling model is so good that there are thrills from just knowing you've got the right line through a tricky corner. I honestly don't remember ever having so much fun with a driving game, and I've played a hell of a lot of them over the last quarter of a century.
* Including Le Mans and the Nurburgring. The latter is really challenging.