I went swimming this morning with Jamie, Steve and Megan. We went later in the day than last time and the pool was much more crowded. Still the girls had a good time. Ronnie Mac’s for lunch afterwards.
Later we had a few games on the miniature pool table I bought on Thursday. It’s a pretty good table for the price, quite well made, and loads of fun!
Monthly Archives: May 2003
The Vanished Man
I finished The Vanished Man by Jeffrey Deaver today. It’s another classic Lincoln Rhyme novel, suspense, plot twists, double bluffs (or in this case misdirection), lot’s of detail in the evidence gathering and analysis, and so on. It even features a Poirot-like gathering to reveal the motives and the killer. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
But… I wonder whether he is getting a little too formula; For example, about two thirds of the way through the book the killer gets arrested. He’s taken down to the police cells, cuffed and shackled. But he’s a magician, an illusionist, an escapologist! (I’m not giving anything away here) Obviously he’s going to escape! There’re lots more pages to go. And the almost final plot twist, the double (or is it triple) misdirection, it doesn’t make sense! There is no valid reason for the killer to have… listen, I can’t go into detail without spoiling the story for you, but go read the book. It is a good book, you will enjoy it. But after you have finished it, stop and think back about the double/triple misdirection, it didn’t make sense to me.
Still I have to say: Recommended!
Counter
My page counter rolled over 300,000 last night.
Merging On The Edge
Blech! More merging action at work today. Probably at least another two days for this one. More old code, half finished, and shelved for six months while the main code streams moved further and further away. And just to make it interesting, it is now off the shelf and development is proceeding before I’ve finished the merge!
Books, Books, Books (Memory Of Whiteness, Rewired, Barry Trotter, and The Vanishing Man)
I’ve gotten behind with reviewing the books I read again:
I finished Memory of Whiteness by Kim Stanley Robinson a week ago now. I have to say I was not impressed. I really struggled to finish the book. It wasn’t that it was particularly bad, or at least the plot wasn’t too bad. It just seemed to be told in a very lack lustre way. The Characters too, had little going for them. Not recommended!
After that I moved on to Rewired: An Opinionated Net Historyby David Hudson. This was OK, showing it’s age (it was written in 1997) in some of the predictions, and anticipated trends. There were some completely wrong ‘facts’ too, I know it is written from a non-technical viewpoint for non-technical readers, but still completely wrong is still wrong. I’ve not finished that one yet, but I got distracted by one of my birthday books: Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody by Michael Gerber. Very, very funny. Juvenile in places, good puns, witty plays on words, not for kids! Recommended.
Finally I’m on to The Vanished Man by Jeffrey Deaver. I’ve just started that tonight.
RIAA’s Statistics Don’t Add Up to Piracy
As promised in my piece the other day. I went searching around the ‘net for that info on the 12,000 fewer new CD titles released by the recording industry. I found this article over at MacWizards Music. It’s not the one I read before, but does have some interesting figures pulled from the RIAA own reports and other sources.
“So the record industry cut their inventory (and artist investment) by 25 percent and sales only dropped 4.1 percent, even though the economy is at rock bottom. There were almost 12,000 fewer new releases for the consumer to choose from in 2001 than 1999. The record companies are making more money per release than ever.”
My Birthday
It was my birthday today. Happy birthday to me! The last couple of years it has fallen on a weekend, this year I had to work. 🙁
I took lots of cakes and pastries in the office to share. The normal thing to do is go for a drink at lunch time or after work. But as a teetotaller I decided to buy the cakes instead.
I got some nice cards and presents including a bonsai tree, some books, a cd and lots of book tokens.
Jan and Jamie, Kim and Megan, Paula and Pete, and Steve, made it an enjoyable evening.
Still, it was a lot different from last year when it was my 40th.
Sunday
An odd day today, I’ve not really been able to concentrate on anything for any length of time, as my cold is in full throttle. It kept me awake (actually, stopped me going to bed) until past 3 am this morning.
I went to see my Mum this morning and to fix up some hanging baskets for her. Jamie came with me which was a nice change.
Steve and Megan came round in the afternoon. Megan brought her new game “Disney’s Sorry”, which she and Jamie seemed to enjoy.
Michelle, Chris, and Chloe came round later too. It’s been a while since they’ve been round so it was nice to see them.
