commafruit.co.uk. welcome.

Maybe I’m a couple of years late, but I’d still like to add my voice to those hordes asking: why was Firefly^w cancelled?
One of the best sci-fi TV shows in years, with a rich background universe, an exciting and understandable continuing plot (rebels undermine the evil and all-controlling alliance), and characters who inject a dose of humanity into everything. Then it gets scrapped after one series, what a disgrace.

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Been reading a lot lately, perhaps more than I should have been considering I have four exams this month, but this is how it goes.

Firstly, two sides of Iain (M.) Banks, with The Wasp Factory having been released under the name Iain Banks, and Use Of Weapons under the name Iain M. Banks. Friends have described Banks as pretentious for making a subtle distinction between the two writing styles he employs (broadly, “M. Banks” writes science fiction, plain old “Banks” does not), but I like the idea that he employs two personae for his books, yet through the similarities in the names used he is open that they are the same person.

Anyway, two fabulous books: firstly The Wasp Factory is widely (and rightly) regarded a modern classic. It’s tense, and mysterious in an understated way – it’s not really a thriller in the sense that the author is holding back information on purpose, more that the style of narration means that new information is portioned out slowly, allowing the plot to benefit from the reader’s ignorance. I was gripped until the last with this.

Use of Weapons also takes advantage of the authors ability to define the level of reader knowledge. Not a good book for one unused to Culture stories to start with, but a real treat for loyal readers. Though dealing with one continuous story, the novel is split into two halves, quickly alternating between chapters. In an clever twist however, one of the series of chapters are actually in reverse chronological order, meaning that the reader learns more and more about the sordid past of one of the characters as they go, thus gaining more insight for the rest of the story. Ingenious stuff, and another enjoyable read, but as I’ve said, perhaps not a good place to start one’s journey into the Culture.

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Second year exams (for me) started today, so there’s a good excuse to not post for a couple of weeks. Maybe once these exams are finished I can start writing some proper content again rather than falling into the trap of “so I read this book…”

I like this blog/resource for self improvement a lot, and would like to share this article about getting up when your alarm goes off. This morning, I slept through two alarms at ten-minute intervals, including one of which being on “snooze” mode so it would’ve gone off about three times before I got out of bed. It’s no big deal (I don’t think - you may disagree), but what struck me was that I had been coherent enough to walk across the room and reset my phone alarm, then use the snooze function on my clock three times, and yet I didn’t remember any of it 20 minutes later. Steve Pavlina describes a similar situation, and suggests methods for conditioning oneself to be able to wake when the alarm goes off. I think it’s worth looking into.

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For years I scorned Apple users, thinking they were somehow inferior to PC users. Since OSX I guess a lot of people have, like me, been having second thoughts. But this new range just looks amazing. Of course, I’m quite happy with Linux for now, but you never know.

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So, just over two weeks ago, I had my parents send up some papers, to my house in Manchester: having arrived today, they took over two weeks to get here, dispite having all the correct stamps etc. An Amazon parcel took from the 23^rd of April to today. What happened Royal Mail?

I probably wouldn’t have posted if it weren’t for the quality of Amazon customer service. I emailed them on Wednesday to say that my stuff hadn’t arrived, and they emailed back (I don’t know if this was auto-generated) to ask whether I’d like a refund, or to use the same address, or a different address etc. Then the replacement arrived today as well. Amazon FTW!

P.S. Yeah I’m gonna email and tell them, I only opened one of the packages ‘cos I know they’ll be the same…

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I’m a keen but not obsessive gamer (I left my TV and PS2 at my parents house due to needing to work this term), but there’s been a lot of news lately (mostly due to E³), about the upcoming battle between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo for dominance of the console market. While I’ve all but decided to buy a Nintendo Wii (previously Revolution), this somewhat muddled comment on Slashdot made me think:

Seems to me instead of arguing which is better[,] we should be revelling in the fact these billion dollar companies are competing fo fiercly to create a product we’ll buy. Dance, monkeys!

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Apart from the old Katie Melua album (Call Off The Search)*, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks listening to Waterloo to Anywhere by ex-Libertines frontman Carl Barát’s new band, Dirty Pretty Things.
I’m not going to say that the album is the best thing ever, but it’s highly competent indie-rock, and it’s been worth my attention over the last couple of weeks.

Beyond a certain point however, the quality isn’t that important, I’m just glad the album is as (nearly) as good as the Libertines were, because it means that Pete Doherty wasn’t really the only creative talent in that band. (It’s hard to deny Doherty’s new band, “Babyshambles”, aren’t great.) If you’re not sure who these people are or why I (and others) support Barát, you could do worse than read this wikipedia section. Picking up a copy of the Libertines’ first album, Up The Bracket is highly recommended as well.

* Wow what a stunning voice. A recent single, Nine Million Bicycles is similarly incredible, so it may be that I end up buying the new album…

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Found this article on stromcode about making money from running a website (naturally, the bulk of the text focuses on advertising). While that’s not something I had in mind when I set up this site (or in any web-based venture I’ve started), it made me think about the possibilities. As the article says however, making money on the web is hard, so maybe it’s good that this isn’t my primary aim.

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Seems like everyone on the planet has read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code^w, except me. This is on purpose; having got the gist of the plot, and had six hundred and twelve* people inform me that the book is teh best evar [sic], I became resolved not to read it.

Now that there’s a film coming out featuring Audrey Tautou, I may have to think again however. The trouble, I’ve realised, is that it’s part two of a three part series, and while I could follow the masses and just read it straight off, I’d rather read the books in order. As if I don’t have enough to read… (Though admittedly some of those have already been taken off the list.)

* estimated.

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