Journal Entries
My 'putrers died
Posted Aug 6, 2003
My 'puter died that last thing it ran was scandisk, which out of 4 million or so sectors it found 890,000 of them were bad... and then could nether shutdown or startup. I still have access at work happily, and at times I'll be able to use one of the other 'puters in the house, but I'll be about a bit less for a while at least... not that y'all miss me, I trust y'all arwe better shots than that (and I do make a nice big target 
)
Math
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Latest reply: Aug 6, 2003
Nothing Mutch, as if there ever is..
Posted Jul 25, 2003
Nothing mutch happening, as if there ever is in this existance I call a life, read a good book the other day, Prey by Michael Crichton, though in some aspects it reminded me of the green brain and something else I can't recall the name of also featuring insects heavily, not that prey has much connection to insects, but it does have a whole load of tech, nano tech to be specific, and it behaves similarly to insects. Anyway good book, even if I recognise some of the ideas from elsewhere, that could be me and my cynical view that nothing is ever entirly new, always based on some previous idea, an expansion on a previous thought, or correction of something previously thought flawed, whatever I'm cynical, some of the time... most of it I guess.
Also read The Business, Whit and Complicity, all three by Iain Banks, all very good. I recomend those three to anyone who enjoys reading. Every so oftyen I think I should do an extra page to my space, a library of sorts, with a list of books I've got, or read not sure which would be better, anyway to continue, the idea being to give my view on each, might also be useful for me to have a catalogue. However, I'm pretty lazy and I doubt anyone would take the time to read it, and even if it was read would anyone take any notice of my recomendations ?
I'm sure I read these somewhere recently but they are worth repeating just incase anyone here hasn't hear/rtead them, I'll carry on regardless; there are a number of things peopel that make no sense but that are still said, anyone know where they come from ?
This country's going down the tubes.
- Darn big tubes to fit a whole country, or is it lots of litte ones and the country is being broken down or something, and where do these tubes lead to, what sort of waist disposal sistem can cope with an entire nation ?
Whats up ?
- Usually ceiling or sky, depending on if I'm indoors or not, isn't it a dumb question...
I know there are more, I just can't think of them at the moment, I'll probably thing of a few just after I hit the post button, but there's nothing new in that now is there...
"Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all
The needle returns to the start of the song
And we all sing along like before.."
-Del Amitri
I think I'm running out of things to type, why I'm doing this I haven't yet figured out, but I guess I like to imagine that the pointlessness of existance is reduced by sharing it... nah more like I want to drag the world down to my level of boredom. Back to an earlier point I'm not sure I have ever had a truly original idea, I can usually with a bit of thought find what I based the idea upon (sometimes I can't, but someone else will). Has anyone reading this had a truly original idea, something that as far as can be determined hasn't been thought of before ?
I guess I'd better stop before I scare you all off...
Math
Discuss this Journal entry [6]
Latest reply: Jul 25, 2003
I'll think of a subject later... or not
Posted Jul 16, 2003
Firstly is anyone other than me reading this ? Just out of curiosity, also might have some bearing on wether or not I write anymore stuff in this journal. Not that I'll ever be a prolific writer.
About the only thing of interest that ever seems to happen in my life is the books I read, sometimes good sometimes not so good. So I guess I can put up review type things of books, obviously I have no ability to write myself so one might ask on what basis I can critic someone else's work. Simple really I judge by what I like, try to determin why I like or dislike it.
The book I finished most recently was Prelude To Dune Vol.1: House Atreides' By Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson.
Before I comment upon it, I'll say I am a fan of Frank Herbert, not that I think he writes well, the action and story of his books (at least those I have read; ie all of the dune series he wrote, The Eyes of Heisenburg, The Dosadi Experiment, The Saratoga Barrier, The Jesus Incident (With Bill Ransom), and one or two other I cannot recall the titles to without access to my bookshelves which I don't have here in work.) could have been written better. However, I have encountered no other writer who has as many ideas on polotics and philosophy, and few who write the backdrop to their stories with as much colour and vibrancy. The snippets from fictional texts within his own universe included are a wonderful device in achieving this.
Back to Prelude to Dune: House Atreides, If I were able to take this as a book alone with no connection to the great works of Frank Herbert, it would be acceptable adventure sci-fi, nothing special to be sure, but I wouldn't condemn it either. However, thats not the case, as the title clearly states it's ment to be part of the dune works, and yet it fails to fit in with the original works at all. To my mind they foul up in almost every possible way, the biggest is trying to write a prelude at all, remember of course the two most major characters in the Dune series, Paul Atreides and his son the God Emporer, both have access to all the memories (upto the time of Paul's birth) of the original Duke Leto Atreides, who is one of the major characters of this prelude. So any major life changing incedent, or world changing event, such as the take over of Ix by the Tleilaxu while Leto was on Ix would likely have been mentioned. So before we get down to details the major plot was a bad plan, I think I could go through the book dissecting it and pointing out all the inconsistancies of events and descriptions, but I don't have the book to hand nor do I have the original series to properly refernce it, so I'll not bother, except to say the faults in my opinion outweigh the portions of text which can reasonably be argued not to contain them.
Stylisticaly the book has almost nothing in common with the original series, it uses the device I mentioned of usingsnippets from fictional texts within thier own universe, but not all these are original this time, repeating things Frank Herbert had written in the original, and those that aren't repeates lack the depth and provocative ideas of those in the original books.
In conclusion then neither content nor style is in tune with the orignal works of Frank Herbert. I do not recomend this to anyone who enjoyed the originals.
Math
PS Apologies for spelling and grammar... while I care enough to apologise, I don't care enough to learn how to fix it properly.
Discuss this Journal entry [21]
Latest reply: Jul 16, 2003
Rant
Posted Jul 5, 2003
I've not written much recently, and I need to get rid of some frustration, apologies if you're reading this, its more ment for me than anyone else... anyway here goes...
Something wrong with the world today...
Damn straight there is, we have one superpower who thinks it has the right to dictate to other countries, and then if as a soverign nation they ignore such dictations it starts a war with them, how arogant, and trying to get "democracies" the world over, how stupid, especially when most it seems to be unable to prove that its elected head of state was actually elected by a majority.
All the world is full of stupid people...
I got asked yesterday if PM ment morning or afternoon, had this been a child asking, or perhaps a forigner I would have understood, however this was just another idiot, right up there with the people who have asked me "whats the number for 999, and quickly, its an emergancy" (and yes thats people, three times, though not all exactly those words).
that helped... I think I shall rant again later
have fun folks
Math
Discuss this Journal entry [2]
Latest reply: Jul 5, 2003
The winter meet
Posted Jan 27, 2003
I know I'm posting thise a little late, but thats just me. Hello again to every one I met there, and turn up next time to those didn't make it 
well worth it, lots of fun, plenty of 
and people to talk to.
Travel there was well planned and happened with only one hiccup, I forgot my printout of map and directions, happily I found a cybercafe close to paddington and that was resolved, travel back was a little more chaotic, but thats to be expected after an afternoon of drinking, doesn't help that I got the time of the last train home wrong, by just over an hour, fortunatly I got it wrong in the sense that I arrived an hour early, frustrating, but not as bad as waiting till the first train in the morning.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jan 27, 2003
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