In Uncategorized on November 18, 2002
if you’re awake at 0403 gmt tonight (tomorrow morning i guess, what’s
the correct way to say that?) then the earth is passing through the trail
shed by the comet tempel tuttle in 1767 and there should be a spectacular meteor shower.
then at 1046 gmt tomorrow we pass through the trail shed by the same comet
in 1866 but by then it will be what passes for daylight in november here.
There should be increasing numbers after 0200 GMT, reaching
a peak about two hours later. However, there is always the chance of a surprise
outburst.
my body clock decided that 0230 gmt was “morning” today so having found
something constructive to do at that hour tomorrow i expect i’m doomed to
sleep through it.
In books read on November 18, 2002
[I read this for a mailing list discussion so comments may be out of context and will probably contain spoilers]
[on diamond, cliches]
I surprised myself by liking Diamond. At first I thought I wasn't going
to hit it off with him and his anti-technology stance was going to bug
the hell out of me. After a while though I felt that he wasn't totally
against new ways of doing policework just sceptical of the way some of
his co-workers thought of them as a *replacement* for old-fashioned
policework rather than as a *supplement* to the old methods. And I
think that's a viewpoint that's justifiable and isn't comparable to the
Luddites. Unless I'm forgetting something I don't remember Diamond
stopping his colleagues from using new fangled computers he just wasn't
convinced of their time and labour saving merits himself.
I don't think Diamond is "the last detective" but I can see why it looks
that way to him. I too was surprised that he was only 41, I hadn't
picked up on that in the book. I'd noticed the book was written a
decade ago but I'd pegged him as in his 50s and with an attitude
slightly older than his age even then.
On the whole I didn't find him a cliche, I think he could very easily
have become one and there were a lot of elements of the stereotypical
curmudgeounly policeman: he feels out of place with the younger lads
coming up the ranks towards him, he has an enquiry hanging over his
head, he quits his job but still carries on with the case, and so on,
but on the whole I think Lovesey made Diamond realistic.
I'm surprised that this is the first book in the series as it seemed to
have a lot of back story fleshing it out. I thought the enquiry was a
hangover from a previous book and I thought the story of how he met his
wife would have been dealt with before too. In fact they were both
elements that were well done and didn't leave me wishing I'd read that
book first, obviously, I see now, because there isn't a previous book.
Purchased on 15th October 2002.
In Uncategorized on November 18, 2002
i love this long exposure photo showing the trails of stars in the sky above the equator. there are a load more panaroma shots from the same photographer on his own website. the northern lights are high on my list of must see things.
In Uncategorized on November 18, 2002
i think a 60 foot lava lamp
sounds like tremendous fun and i’d certainly check it out if i was in the
area. although i’m not convinced that the concept will scale that well: my gut feeling
is that the lumps of lava would stay in much the same sizes as they do in
the table top lamps, i expect my guts are thoroughly wrong. the diagram of how it compares in size to the eiffel tower
and the space needle is no use though. i needed to look up the height of
the angel of the north (65 feet) to get a handle on the scale.
[found via a site for sore eyes]
In Uncategorized on November 18, 2002
the past couple of months of playing amateur genealogist have been fun and i’m well aware that half the fun is in the research. i just like crawling through microfiche and microfilm and dusty volumes in the library and it’s good to have a reason to do so. i’ve been enjoying putting darren’s family tree together too, it’s good to find the right pieces to slot together even if the people aren’t your own relations. so i can understand finding someone else’s family fun to research but these trees take the biscuit for the bizarrest thing i’ve seen in genealogy so far.
adam
- BORN: 1 AM, Garden of Eden
- DIED: 931 AM,
- BURIED: aft 931 AM, Cave of Treasures
MARY THE VIRGIN
- MARRIED: ELOHIM, ,
- CHILDREN:
- 1. Jesus the CHRIST “Nazarene”
- MARRIED: JOSEPH
- CHILDREN:
though i haven’t yet discovered where the links between them are supposed to be this tree also contains most of the english monarchy and it’s author appears to sincerely believe that her “genealogy goes back to adam“.
whilst i know that there are an awful lot of people related to the monarchy in one distant way or another and that the monarchs of england have a habit of believing themselves chosen by god (but not as far as i’m aware descended from god) mostly i’m just lost for words.
[found via jessamyn]
In Uncategorized on November 18, 2002
just in case it’s ever useful to anyone else: if you use blogger to write an xml weblog then anything like “<![CDATA[$stuff$]]>” will mysteriously change to “[CDATA[$stuff$]]” when you try to edit the template. it may take you a very long time to figure out what the hell happened.
the reason i was messing with my xml template at all was because i was test driving various pieces of weblog/cms software to find something that suits my needs better than blogger (which is mostly simple but effective but then screws your life up by not understanding the concept that an edit command ought to bring back exactly what the save command saved no matter what it thinks of it). i hate them all. back to plan b.
In books read on November 17, 2002
I enjoyed this far more than the first book in the series probably because I knew what to expect this time. These books are certainly crime novels but I don't think they are great mysteries. Most of the facts in the case are clear to the reader long before they are clear to the characters in the book and the reader's fun is in sitting back and watching how things will play out.
I notice that when I read Poet in the Gutter (the first in the series) I thought that Sam Turner was my closest fictional detective. I've since found detectives closer to Newcastle but I've also moved to Yorkshire. But Yorkshire is brimming with fictional detectives and I can name several closer than Sam.
This book was just what I needed to read at the moment, clever and quite dark, at least dusky, without sacrificing humour and full of great characters.
Purchased on 15th November 2002.
In books read on November 13, 2002
[These comments are taken from a mailing list discussion and as such are out of context (and may not make sense) and also contain spoilers.]
[on characters, setting]
I haven't finished the book and I'm not sure I'm going to so I'll wade
in on the questions.
I think the characters in this book have the potential to be interesting
but they just aren't seeming interesting to me. I liked the look of
Mike and Dan Smith when we met them, and the despatcher Sally too but
the characters seem to fade in and out and don't come to life. I'd read
several chapters when I realised I didn't even know the main character's
name and had to look at the back cover to find out he was called Carl.
I think I'd noticed the name Carl but thought it was being applied to
someone else. (It's not that I think knowing the main characters name
is essential {eg Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca is better for leaving it
out} but here I felt it was symbolic of the fact that I wasn't getting
the hang of these people at all.)
The setting isn't coming to life for me much either. Without going and
looking at the book I couldn't tell you where it was set other than
somewhere in America. It's a smallish town surrounded by isolated farms
and there's a big city some way away but I haven't remembered where
that is and I've got no idea what sort of countryside is around about
either.
[on scenes, pacing]
I've skipped the plot question because I didn't finish the book and it
seems unfair to comment. Plus this question gets more to the heart of
what I found to be my problem with this book.
I thought the opening scenes of this book were really good and I was
very much sucked into the book and wanted to find out was happening. I
thought the minute by minute style of following the police around worked
really well... for a while. Everytime I picked the book up it felt
like getting back on a roller coaster and for a bit I enjoyed it a lot
but it started to get tedious and make me sick after a while
(analogically I mean though the crime was pretty sickening anyway). I
would have liked the pace to have slowed a little every now and again.
I think the author tried to do this by having Carl injured for a few
days but I didn't really feel any let up in the pace of the book.
I think less haste would have made more speed for me. One of the
problems I had was that the book was full of a lot of the kind of
nitty-gritty detail about police investigations that I enjoy, but I was
careering past it at breakneck speed and not really comprehending it.
I think this is probably a case of the book just not fitting my mood at
the time I was reading it. Another time I think I'd have liked the book
just fine and I'm interested to see how I get on with the next book in
the series.
Purchased on 4th August 2002.
In Uncategorized on November 10, 2002
the uk is topping europe’s literary spending league:
Demand for books is also strong in the UK, with about 60% of British respondents to a Mintel poll saying they have bought a book in the last year compared with just 40% in Spain and Germany.
About 21% of UK and French respondents said they bought 10 books a year, while the rest of Europe lagged behind with just 13%.
my contribution:
mysql> select count(*) from books where
-> bought and bought_on >= '2001-11-08';
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
| 121 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.02 sec)
and that’s just the ones i’ve not begged, borrowed or stolen and bothered typing into my database…
i do think the “nation of bookworms” title would make more sense if they polled people on how many books they’ve read rather than just bought though. here’s my contribution to that and i’m surprised myself that it shows me reading faster than i buy!
mysql> select count(*) from books where
-> readit AND date_read >= '2001-11-08';
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
| 126 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.04 sec)
In books read on November 8, 2002
Unsurprisingly I thought this was another enjoyable book from Ann Granger. This series is getting long but it's not getting boring or predictable. Though Granger does tend to stay with much the same kind of format for the stories they are all individual enough to make them interesting reads.
In this book Alan and Meredith are house hunting in the dead end village of Lower Stovey when Meredith comes across a dead body (I've got to the point with this series where I no longer worry about realism at the point where Meredith comes across a dead body, it has to happen and I don't think the unlikelihood of it impacts the realism of the rest of the books) and Alan comes across a connection to a case he worked on twenty odd years back when he was a young and newly promoted inspector. What follows has nothing outstandingly unusual to recommend it except for excellent writing, great characters, a decent setting and a good plot.
In short it would be easy to write these books off as gentle country whodunnits but I think that they are thoroughly good books and I find them a lot finer reads than many others that try to bring the English village mystery into the twenty first century. I hope the series, which is already fifteen books long, keeps going for some while yet. There's a lot of life left in both Meredith Mitchell and Alan Markby.
Purchased on 2nd November 2002.
nocto