I've discovered several interesting things over the last eight days. Firstly, that I can still hang with and relate to kids aged between the ages of 11 and 16. Secondly, that having a pulling* crew catch an oar between a jetty pontoon and a rowlock then lose grip just as you are stood behind them is very painful as the momentum of the boat causes the oar to side swipe you into the bottom of the boat. Thirdly, that I am a pool Goddess when playing against 15 year olds. And finally, that kidney stones are excrutiatingly painful.
*Pulling is the Navy's version of rowing.
Sunday 30 August 2009
Wednesday 19 August 2009
Hal Clement: 'Mission of gravity'
I'm continuing on my quest to read through all of the sci-fi Masterworks I have from Gollancz on my bookshelves. Hal Clement's 'Mission of gravity' is the most recent one I've been reading.
There are great ideas here well executed. Given the book's age this could so easily have fallen into the usual 1950s/1960s sci-fi trap of being a cheesy cross between the Jetsons and Lost in Space. But it isn't. Thankfully the author has managed to do something truly timeless by ensuring that enough is left to the reader's imagination with the world and its technology that nothing seems dated, even reading it now.
The execution of the science is particularly well done and still very believable, and I found myself drawn easily in and not distracted in any way by bad science that often plagues other books of this vintage. Overal I would say that this is a great read and has stood the test of time exceptionally well. I'd give it a good 7 out of 10. A book well worth reading.
There are great ideas here well executed. Given the book's age this could so easily have fallen into the usual 1950s/1960s sci-fi trap of being a cheesy cross between the Jetsons and Lost in Space. But it isn't. Thankfully the author has managed to do something truly timeless by ensuring that enough is left to the reader's imagination with the world and its technology that nothing seems dated, even reading it now.
The execution of the science is particularly well done and still very believable, and I found myself drawn easily in and not distracted in any way by bad science that often plagues other books of this vintage. Overal I would say that this is a great read and has stood the test of time exceptionally well. I'd give it a good 7 out of 10. A book well worth reading.
Tuesday 18 August 2009
Into the Labrynth.
After about a week of feeling really under the weather with mystery headaches, nausia and fatigue, I have today been diagnosed with Viral Labrynthitis.
Does this mean I have to endure three to four weeks of David Bowie dancing and singing in my head with Goblins?
Does this mean I have to endure three to four weeks of David Bowie dancing and singing in my head with Goblins?
Monday 10 August 2009
Malware programmers deserve to die in freak yachting accidents.
I've had a not-happy day chasing some piece-of-shit trojan that somehow managed to turn up on my computer. AVG kept finding and claiming to nuke it, only for it to turn up all over again. Running a full system scan found nothing, though the intermittant detections continued. Spybot S&D found nothing,and adaware2008 mysteriously began to hang on loading. I tried an online Virus checker, but strangely the site returned unknown faults preventing the scan from completing.
Doing a search for the file (Trojan Horse generic14) revealed that I wasn't alone with this irritance. It seems to be a rootkit thingy, hiding itself from most antivirus programmes. In the end I downloaded several Rottkit scanners using a second computer, burning them to a CD-RW to port them across (by this point I had unplugged the ethernet cable as a precaution on the infected machine).
The first three found nothing, although AVG continued to report threats detected. In the end it was the fifth rootkit scanner that spotted a suspicious registry key activated on boot that seemed to be doing something weird. The scanning programme's report of what files were involved tallied with some of the information I could get out of AVG.
At last it *seems* to have cured the problem. I've been able to run this computer from boot without any warnings arising - that's far better than before. I've even been able to connect to the internet without a flood of extra warnings from AVG. Fingers crossed, because this was the most irritating piece of malware I've ever come across - even downloading the most up to date detection binaries from AVG and porting them across on a CD-RW (the Trojan was preventing any update of anti-malware programmes via the internet) didn't help, so there is a big hole in protection that people may think they have from using AVG.
I'm certainly no novice user, but this malware has taxed my knowledge of computing to the limit to get rid of it. I was so close to formatting this box and going through the thankless task of a complete reinstall.
Doing a search for the file (Trojan Horse generic14) revealed that I wasn't alone with this irritance. It seems to be a rootkit thingy, hiding itself from most antivirus programmes. In the end I downloaded several Rottkit scanners using a second computer, burning them to a CD-RW to port them across (by this point I had unplugged the ethernet cable as a precaution on the infected machine).
The first three found nothing, although AVG continued to report threats detected. In the end it was the fifth rootkit scanner that spotted a suspicious registry key activated on boot that seemed to be doing something weird. The scanning programme's report of what files were involved tallied with some of the information I could get out of AVG.
At last it *seems* to have cured the problem. I've been able to run this computer from boot without any warnings arising - that's far better than before. I've even been able to connect to the internet without a flood of extra warnings from AVG. Fingers crossed, because this was the most irritating piece of malware I've ever come across - even downloading the most up to date detection binaries from AVG and porting them across on a CD-RW (the Trojan was preventing any update of anti-malware programmes via the internet) didn't help, so there is a big hole in protection that people may think they have from using AVG.
I'm certainly no novice user, but this malware has taxed my knowledge of computing to the limit to get rid of it. I was so close to formatting this box and going through the thankless task of a complete reinstall.
Thursday 6 August 2009
Alfred Bester - 'The stars my destination'
I thought I'd end todays splurge of postings with a quick review of one of the SF Masterworks that really did stand out to me. I read it a couple of years ago now, but Alfred Bester's 'The stars my destination' is one of the most awe-inspiring sci-fi books of the series. There is geekery terms, but they do not overpower the book and are just right for the context. The charectors are strong, and the work paints one of the most vivid mental landscapes of the world it is set in. Smooth prose was easy to read, and it is a book that I would not hesitate to recomend. Off the back of reading this, I got the other Alfred Bester book in the series.
Overal I would rate it at a resounding 9½ out of 10. An excellent book and well worth the read.Just a reminder: the reviews I post are deliberately vague so as not to blow the plot.
Overal I would rate it at a resounding 9½ out of 10. An excellent book and well worth the read.Just a reminder: the reviews I post are deliberately vague so as not to blow the plot.
She rides! (almost)
Yesterday I spent a mammoth 10 hour stint on my pet project - the old sailing boat. I'm really proud of her (as you can probably tell) because unlike the other three boats I've been working on, she is the result of all my labours and no-one else's. When I started, she was abandoned under a derelict tent structure that leaked badly, with bilges full of muck, water and even plants. For a number of years there had even been the slow dumping of rubbish into her as other people saw it little more than an abandoned boat hull useful only as a convenient skip.
Progress has been slow up until now, mostly because the more I do the more I find that needs doing. But last week I reached the bare hull inside and finally there was nothing else left that could possibly need work doing except to shovel out a heck of a lot of silt, dead leaves, flakes of rotten wood and flaking paint and start the grand task of reconstruction proper. After ten hours yesterday, the hull now is painted insi9de and out and the internal ribs have been refurbished and refitted. I manufactured new bottomboards to replace the rotted ones, and rebuilt the rest with boards that could be salvaged. I'm sick of painting, but at least now most of the painting is now done. I even repainted the boat's number on the bows and the transom (necesary because she is painted to match a sister boat which was one of the more modest rebuilds carried out earlier this year) - number 3 is looking like she could almost rejoin the fleet for the first time in years up at the lake!
There's still the achilles heel of the rotten bouyancy tank covers, but they have become a minor task compared to everything I've already done. Of course there is then also the massive task of finding all the sails, the boom and the mast and renovating them where necessary. As far as I can tell, the boat was last rigged to sail some time between 1990 and 1994, so there's a little work to do here. I did get the sailing horse found, fitted and varnished though, so that's the first sign that this hull really is a sailing boat and not just a glorified ship's boat.
I'm throughly enjoying taking the time out to rebuild these boats on a shoestring budget, even if id did leave me aching all over and lamenting the hot and humid weather we've been having.
Progress has been slow up until now, mostly because the more I do the more I find that needs doing. But last week I reached the bare hull inside and finally there was nothing else left that could possibly need work doing except to shovel out a heck of a lot of silt, dead leaves, flakes of rotten wood and flaking paint and start the grand task of reconstruction proper. After ten hours yesterday, the hull now is painted insi9de and out and the internal ribs have been refurbished and refitted. I manufactured new bottomboards to replace the rotted ones, and rebuilt the rest with boards that could be salvaged. I'm sick of painting, but at least now most of the painting is now done. I even repainted the boat's number on the bows and the transom (necesary because she is painted to match a sister boat which was one of the more modest rebuilds carried out earlier this year) - number 3 is looking like she could almost rejoin the fleet for the first time in years up at the lake!
There's still the achilles heel of the rotten bouyancy tank covers, but they have become a minor task compared to everything I've already done. Of course there is then also the massive task of finding all the sails, the boom and the mast and renovating them where necessary. As far as I can tell, the boat was last rigged to sail some time between 1990 and 1994, so there's a little work to do here. I did get the sailing horse found, fitted and varnished though, so that's the first sign that this hull really is a sailing boat and not just a glorified ship's boat.
I'm throughly enjoying taking the time out to rebuild these boats on a shoestring budget, even if id did leave me aching all over and lamenting the hot and humid weather we've been having.
John Brunner: Stand on Zanzibar
I've continued trying to get through some of the classic sci-fi I've bought but not quite got around to reading yet. You know the books? Looks good on the shelf, but there's always something else you find yourself reading first.
Yesterday I waded into 'Stand on Zanzibar' as it's languished on my bookshelves for about a year, untouched. A friend raved about it, so it became next up on the reading list.
First impression was not good. An immediate wall of nerdy self-indulgant geekery terms, made up for the book. Not to be intimidated I soldiered on; maybe this was just getting the technodump out of the way early? Wrong, apparently. And you can't blame me for trying - I did eventually reach page 68 before the wave of boredom left me flicking back trying to work out what was actually going on. Far too much waffle, and made up technical gobbledygook. There were some nice ahead of their time ideas, but I'm sorry to say that if I labour on to page 68 waiting for the hook to arrive, then don't expect me to read further if it hasn't.
Overall a thumbs down. I'd give it a generous 3 out of 10, purely for the nice idea with the computer.
Yesterday I waded into 'Stand on Zanzibar' as it's languished on my bookshelves for about a year, untouched. A friend raved about it, so it became next up on the reading list.
First impression was not good. An immediate wall of nerdy self-indulgant geekery terms, made up for the book. Not to be intimidated I soldiered on; maybe this was just getting the technodump out of the way early? Wrong, apparently. And you can't blame me for trying - I did eventually reach page 68 before the wave of boredom left me flicking back trying to work out what was actually going on. Far too much waffle, and made up technical gobbledygook. There were some nice ahead of their time ideas, but I'm sorry to say that if I labour on to page 68 waiting for the hook to arrive, then don't expect me to read further if it hasn't.
Overall a thumbs down. I'd give it a generous 3 out of 10, purely for the nice idea with the computer.
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