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Showing posts from August, 2008

tasty grub

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tasty grub Originally uploaded by No Middle Name This is a child's sweet here in Australia. mmm... sugary wichetty grub treat, complete with smiley face.

arabesk

Jon Courtenay Grimwood's "Arabesk" trilogy, "Pashazade", "Effendi" and "Felaheen", is a flawed gem. It is brilliant, funny, exciting, an exhilirating combination of white knuckle ride, crime thriller and travel guide. Set in an alternative and future North Africa, it dazzles and beguiles, drawing you into the dusty, hot, world. Like the Islamic notion that perfection only belongs to God, these books are not perfect. It confused me, I was never entirely sure what was going on. This may have been intentional, since Ashraf Bey, the hero, spent almost all of the story convinced he was insane. It was still one hell of a ride, though. Executive summary: arabs, German techno-assassins, female circumcision, arse-kickery. Read it.

scary plantpots

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scary plantpots Originally uploaded by No Middle Name Take a close look. Those plant pots are studded with what I hope are only plaster replicas of children's heads. These are in someone's front garden - I guess it must keep the trick-or-treaters away.

Selected Stories of H.G. Wells

Let me recount to you a tale I was told by a Mr. Jones of the Antipodes. I have verified as much of it as I could, corresponding extensively with the eminent Dr Whately of Crouch End, the expert in the field. I digress, my apologies, I will proceed directly with this shocking tale. Mr. Jones claimed to have picked up a collection of absurd tales from his local library, "Selected Stories of H.G. Wells" . This much I can vouch for: the library exists, and does indeed contain a volume under that name. The librarian would not tell me if Mr. Jones had indeed borrowed it, and rightly so. Down that road lies anarchy. Jones told me that the volume consisted of about two dozen short stories. The majority are recounted in a journalistic style: a tale told by an otherwise sensible person, to a writer, who supplies background checks to provide an element of verisimilitude to an otherwise fantastical story. That these stories were a little dry, repetitive, but showing occasional flashes o

Little Brother

Another freebook, but not from Tor , this time straight from the horse's mouth. Cory Doctorow has a long history of giving away his stuff for free , and has championed the Creative Commons licensing system to help others give stuff away without missing out on the chance to make money. As he has done for most (if not all) of his novels, he allows anyone to download " Little Brother " from his site, and remix it into different formats and media - as long as you're not trying to make any money from it. The idea is that this kind of thing boosts publicity, aids in getting word-of-mouth out, and boosts sales of the dead tree version. It all goes to combat obscurity, an artist's main problem (paraphrasing Tim O'Reilly, I think). The book is typical Doctorow standard - packed with great ideas, a neat plot and well-drawn characters. It details a city's slide into paranoia and fear after a terrorist attack, and the ways a small group of teenagers try to keep hol