Tag Archive for 'books'

Lotsa reading and some Wii

Published by
Armand
May 7, 2008 in Books, Gaming and Update. 2 Comments

I’m not even going to apologise, this time, for my latest bout of ignoring this blog. It’s been busy. Let’s leave it at that. Slap me in person, if you like.

I’ve spent my down time doing fun things - reading through the back catalogue of Robert Charles Wilson (following the excellent recommendations of Tom and Simon via Twitter), as well as the new Alistair Reynolds, the Sebastian Darke childrens’ books, the new Iain M Banks, and will soon be starting the Mike Carey (of Lucifer and Constantine fame) novels. I’ve got to this place where self-indulgence involves reading mountains of sci-fi and fantasy and its significantly healthier than pigging out on McDonalds so I’m running with it.

Have also been playing more of the new ‘Fire Emblem’ game on Wii than I’d like. This is a mediocre version of the brilliant GBA game that takes absolutely no advantage of the Wii control scheme and seems to have been scripted by a monkey prone to bouts of hysteria. The plot just keeps extending itself in explicable turns in order to cope with the fact that the game needs more missions to have justified its sticker price.

More excitingly, Wii Fit arrived last Monday and I’ve used it about 6 times, gaining some impressive and some not-so-impressive scores. It’s all part of my motivation to get fit, which has also seen me play squash for the first time in four years (admittedly only for 10 minutes, but, y’know…). Wii Fit also entertained about a dozen friends at the first BBQ of the season this weekend (mmm, chickan).

So, I’m busy, and I’m doing interesting things, and if you’d like to know what I’m up to find me on Twitter and Facebook as that’s where my social media output is going for the moment (book reviews on Visual Bookshelf, movie reviews on Flixster, random observations on life on Twitter).

Share and enjoy, people. Share and enjoy.

The Victorian Internet

Published by
Armand
March 14, 2008 in Books and Internet. 0 Comments

I’ve been reading Tom Standage’s book on the history of the telegraph this week. It is a fascinating read - Standage is totally accessible and every bit as brilliant as he gives the impression of being (he’s business editor at The Economist so I speak to him occasionally as part of my day job). Tom P and Matt made the point when they saw me with the book that it should be very short - simply reading “there wasn’t one” - but the parallels Standage draws to today’s Internet and some of the fantastic quotes he draws from makes it entertaining reading**.

A choice sample, James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald, writing around 1840:

“The telegraph may not affect magazine literature… but the mere newspapers must submit to destiny, and go out of existence.”

A conversation (and a destiny) that is very much going on today.

There’s another quote in there that I can’t find at the moment but talks about how the telegraph made it seem as it you were in the same room as the person you were talking to — which I found particularly amusing given that I spend quite a bit of time talking to journalists about how my client Cisco’s TelePresence achieves the same effect in ever-so-slightly higher definition…

Anyway, it’s an interesting read, and occasionally pops up cheap on Amazon.

** I admit freely that part of this fascination with all this may derive in part from the fact that I studied the History of Science at university and spend a increasingly large proportion of my time talking about the Internet’s impact on communications / news dissemination.

Contact me

Skype: division6
Hotmail.com: davidfly
Yahoo! IM: jard30
GTalk/Em: armand.david
Twitter: division6

Movies




Linklog