Techie blues

Or, rather, non-techie blues. I've found out that I'm not as technically inclined as I'd like to think.

I'm trying to install Red Hat 5.2 on my oldish laptop. Well, I have installed it (eventually) but I can't access the X Window System because of something to do with how I've configured my video card or monitor. I keep going through lots of different combinations of options and when I type startx to go to the control panel I come up with alternately:

• black screen (what I started off with)
• black screen with two orange horizontal lines
• grey screen
• being able to see the control panel, but:
  • everything's moved to the right by a third of a screen-width
  • the display is duplicated on top of itself but slightly off (so I can't read any of it)
  • there are lots of horizontal green jittery lines
• being able to see the control panel but it's rather fuzzy and it starts tiling vertically from about 2/3 the way down the screen. Including the mouse cursor.

This is not ideal and I'm trying to get it sorted, with the help of someone cleverer than me. In the meantime I'm feeling depressed for Reasons #43c and #43d: "There's technology around that I'm trying to do things with and it's not behaving like it should," and, "I'm spending a lot of time trying to fix it and not really getting anywhere."

But then again, I Saw Her Standing There by the Beatles has just come onto Winamp. And how can you be depressed while that's playing?

I love the internet

This morning I came downstairs for breakfast and found a package sitting on the table. From Amazon. I couldn't remember anything that I'd ordered from Amazon, but at that time of the morning it's not unusual for me to be unable to remember what month it is, let alone recall some internet transaction that I may have made a week ago or more.

So I opened up the package and was surprised and delighted (not to mention overwhelmed) to find within a copy of Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, which has been sitting on my wishlist to read since I saw the film last year.

This has made my day, if not my week, and I'd really like to personally thank whoever it was who sent it to me - if it was you (yes, YOU!) then please, please tell me (or a note in the comments box is fine).

And thank you!

So tiny...

From the people who brought you the world's smallest website, witness now the world's smallest blog!

There is content there. Honestly. You just have to look closely :)

Furry loveliness

Meet Hattie.

Because, at some time or another, every blog has to have a cat photo.

Edgar Allan Pi

I don't write that much - actually, that's completely untrue. I have hundreds of kilobytes of text files containing wibble from the last two months alone, so it's not that I don't write. And if you're wondering why so little of it gets onto bent back tulips it's that the vast, vast majority of it is unpublishable, even here. Huge, long and rambling, without point, uninteresting or written in shorthand to myself, referencing things that wouldn't have significance for anyone else. And some of it's just bizarre - have I mentioned the thousand-word essay that I wrote when I bought a new notebook, about the notebook (and in the notebook)? Oh, actually I have. I've looked at the piece of writing again, and it's still almost beyond belief.

However, I don't attempt formalised creative writing that often, even though I have a few ideas floating around. When I have played around with it in the past, though, I've found that putting constraints on the writing can produce extremely interesting results, and the end result can potentially be more satisfying than a piece which was written intuitively and freely.

So I'm really very impressed by Poe, E: Near a Raven which is a rewriting (by Mike Keith) of Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven with the constraint that the length of each word reflects a digit in the decimal expansion of pi. Look at the title, for a start! And the rewritten poem manages to tell exactly the same story, it rhymes and keeps a fair semblance of metre as well. He's also written a version making each line of an alt.adjective.noun.verb.verb.verb construction.

This is fantastic. I love reading stuff like this.

100 Things has its own page

Um. That's it.

Choose - an experiment

[And now, for my next gimmick...]

I'm going on holiday on July 4th for two and a half weeks with some friends - my parents are a little bit envious :) Part of my packing - probably a large part of my packing - will consist of books because I read an awful lot on holiday. Last year on holiday I read:

• Gone With The Wind (1024 pages)
• About half of In Search Of Schrödinger's Cat (started before I went on holiday - say 150 pages)
• From Here To Infinity (322 pages)
• QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (176 pages)
• The Rich Are Different (704 pages)
• Sins of the Fathers (720 pages)
• The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (160 pages)
• Northern Lights (416 pages)
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (192 pages)
• Life, the Universe and Everything (162 pages)
• So Long,and Thanks for All the Fish (192 pages)
• The Subtle Knife (352 pages)
• The Amber Spyglass (560 pages)
• Mostly Harmless (240 pages)

Grand total of 5,370 pages in two weeks, which is a lot more than I was expecting when I started this entry. But I digress.

The point is that I get through a lot of books when I'm on holiday (although to be fair, my rate of reading was probably increased by the fact that I'd read most of those books before). And although I have a huge number of books that I'm waiting to read to choose from, I am very indecisive about these things. I'm currently reading The Once And Future King because I asked someone for a random number between 1 and 50ish and then went down my list to find the corresponding book. I rely on recommendations.

And that's where you come in.

For the next four weeks I'm going to put it to all of you to choose my holiday reading material for me. Voting from the list, naturally, with a few additional clauses:

1. I'm taking Gone With The Wind. Ever since I read it five times in one year I've limited myself to reading it only once a year, and this has sort of resolved into me reading it on holiday each year.
2. I'm taking Fight Club as well, because I said I would :)
3. It's fairly certain that no one's going to vote for The Serenth Tree or Blade of Serenthis because they're as yet unpublished. Written by a friend and former English teacher of mine. I have them printed out, though, and I'm going to give them one vote each right now.
4. This probably won't come up (and it's a fairly obvious clause anyway), but I won't take a sequel without the first one. So if Children Of Dune makes it into the final results but Dune Messiah doesn't, I'll take both or neither.
5. Vote for as many books as you like, no restrictions, taking into consideration that I'll want at least 12-15 books overall.
6. Recommendations of books not on the list (and hence not in my room) are warmly welcomed - I'm always looking out for new books - but bear in mind that I probably won't get the chance to buy the book in question before I leave.

I think that covers it... I'll also throw in some books that aren't on my books page because although they're not actively waiting to be read I wouldn't object to reading them again next month. And I'm not including No One Told No One by Danny Kodicek or Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow because I was planning on reading them as downloaded files rather than printing them out (or buying it, in the latter case... I will if I want to reread it, though).

On with the list - oh, and I apologise if you want to check them out on Amazon. Most of them are on my main books page though if you want to look, with links and everything! But it's already taken long enough to put the list together, so in the interest of going to bed this side of midnight, I've decided to leave that little bit of extra legwork to you. Sorry.

*drumroll*

• Spellsinger - Alan Dean Foster
• Foundation - Isaac Asimov
• Look To Windward - Iain M. Banks
• Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
• The Silmarillion - JRR Tolkien
• Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake
• Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
• Titus Alone - Mervyn Peake
• Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey
• Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
• Lost In A Good Book - Jasper Fforde
• The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
• Sleepers - Lorenzo Carcaterra
• The Tombs Of Atuan - Ursula le Guin
• The Farthest Shore - Ursula le Guin
• Tehanu - Ursula le Guin
• The Silence Of The Lambs - Thomas Harris
• Disclosure - Michael Crichton
• L.A. Confidential - James Ellroy
• Primal Fear - William Diehl
• The Godfather - Mario Puzo
• Enigma - Robert Harris
• Animal Farm - George Orwell
• The Serenth Tree - Beverley Hipkin
• Blade Of Serenthis - Beverley Hipkin
• Ghosts - Paul Auster
• The Locked Room - Paul Auster
• Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
• The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury
• The Quantity Theory Of Insanity - Will Self
• Les Aéronautes - Terry Pratchett
• The Deeper Meaning Of Liff - Douglas Adams, John Lloyd
• Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
• McCarthy's Bar - Pete McCarthy
• The Man In The High Castle - Philip K. Dick
• An Equal Music - Vikram Seth
• A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
• 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
• Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
• The Secret History - Donna Tartt
• Einstein's Dreams - Alan P. Lightman
• Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
• Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert
• Children Of Dune - Frank Herbert
• The Player Of Games - Iain M. Banks
• The Tesseract - Alex Garland
• Dreamcatcher - Stephen King
• The Dispossessed - Ursula K. le Guin
• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams
• The Long Dark Teatime Of The Soul - Douglas Adams
• Of Mice And Men - John Steinback
• Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
• The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
• The Light Fantastic - Terry Pratchett
• Equal Rites - Terry Pratchett
• Mort - Terry Pratchett
• Sourcery - Terry Pratchett
• Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett
• Pyramids - Terry Pratchett
• Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett
• Eric - Terry Pratchett
• Moving Pictures - Terry Pratchett
• Reaper Man - Terry Pratchett
• Witches Abroad - Terry Pratchett
• Small Gods - Terry Pratchett
• Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett
• Men at Arms - Terry Pratchett
• Soul Music - Terry Pratchett
• Interesting Times - Terry Pratchett
• Maskerade - Terry Pratchett
• Feet of Clay - Terry Pratchett
• Hogfather - Terry Pratchett
• Jingo - Terry Pratchett
• The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett
• Carpe Jugulum - Terry Pratchett
• The Fifth Elephant - Terry Pratchett
• The Truth - Terry Pratchett
• Thief Of Time - Terry Pratchett
• The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents - Terry Pratchett
• Night Watch - Terry Pratchett
• The Wee Free Men - Terry Pratchett
• The Alchymist's Cat - Robin Jarvis
• The Oaken Throne - Robin Jarvis
• Thomas - Robin Jarvis
• The Brethren - John Grisham
• Good Omens - Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett
• American Gods - Neil Gaiman
• Wild Swans - Jung Chang
• Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
• The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
• The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
• The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams
• Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish - Douglas Adams
• Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams

And remember, I am relying on your votes and suggestions. Given the very large number of books there, I'll need a fairly large number of votes to make it in any way fair. So, this is an appeal: If you comment here regularly or semi-regularly, I want to hear from you. If you read my blog regularly or semi-regularly, I want to hear from you. If you haven't commented here before, make this your first comment! If you've stumbled across my site by accident, cast your vote anyway. You never know, it might be fun to try and influence the life of a complete stranger...

Spread the word, plug it on your own blog, whatever... I'd like as many people as possible to dictate my holiday reading material to me. (Er. That is to say, 'dictating' in the sense of 'issuing orders or commands'. I don't want the whole lot of you standing around and dictating 5,000+ pages of fiction to me.)

It's down to you now!

[Hoping everyone responds... this'll look quite foolish in the archives if I only get two comments!]

Metablogging

Fionnaigh asks why we blog, and why her readers return to Beautiful Monsters. I started blogging after reading two particular weblogs on and off for about six weeks and a year respectively, and bent back tulips started off as a little place to experiment with my very minor HTML skills and to keep some record of what I was doing over the year. Although I've always liked the idea of it, I've never kept a diary or similar and I was curious to see whether I could keep up with the project or whether it would wither and die in a few weeks or months.

Since I started getting linked to and claiming some regular readers my blogging has become more audience-based than some of my earlier entries. I'm more careful with what I blog about because I want to make reasonably sure that it's relatively interesting rather than posting an entry detailing my plans for the weekend or what I bought when I last went shopping.[1] So about ten weeks ago I started keeping a journal as an outlet for even more informal writing and I've found it to be, more than anything, a really useful tool for giving me practice with stream-of-consciousness writing. I think it's certainly loosened up my writing - I've noticed that it's easier to dash off emails now, even long and involved ones. Previously it would take me an age to construct a sentence and the end result would sometimes feel stilted and awkward, a few phrases hacked together, and it didn't really sound like me. But writing so much has allowed me to be more natural in informal writing and I'm pleased with the result. The irony, of course, will be if I get into my General studies exams this week and discover that my skill for formal writing has vanished because of this.

Depending on which blogs you look to as evidence, I think that blogging and having your own website consisting almost entirely of your own thoughts and writing inevitably points to it being about one person. It's a place where you can build up a little profile of yourself, or try to capture what you were like at that point in time, what you were reading about and what you thought was important at the time.

So, is bent back tulips primarily meant for me and there just happen to be other people out there who listen in? Well, it used to be. Back in the Early Days when I hadn't a hope that anyone else read it or found it interesting I wrote for my own amusement and didn't even tell anyone online about it for about six weeks after I began. But now that I've discovered the buzz of feedback I do feel more like I'm writing for other people. And it is a buzz - knowing that other people appreciate your words gives you a sense of pride and satisfaction. It's nice to feel valued, particularly if you've tended to be on the sidelines when it comes to real life. Fionnaigh says, Ok, so other people read my blog, but most of the time the communication is one way - from me to everyone who wants to listen. It's far more self-centred than newsgroups and mailing lists. And it is - whereas on a mailing list your messages can be lost in the crowd of others', with a weblog you eke out your own corner of the internet and everything immediately visible is written solely by you.

A lot of the gratification of feedback via comments or email - at least, in my case - seems to be because of my inherent insecurities and lack of confidence in my writing, and my disbelief that people find bent back tulips worth reading. This is why I always get a warm fuzzy glow whenever I notice anyone blogrolling me, because I'm just really pleased to think that someone else likes it enough to keep coming back. However, in the past I didn't get particularly excited when someone linked to me, because (in the two examples I can think of when people linked to me In the Beginning) I presumed they'd just noticed that they were on my blogroll, and were placing a courtesy return link. It was only six weeks or two months later when they each left a comment that I was excited, and thought, "My God! They actually read my blog!" Getting a positive response about my writing gives me a sense of validation and I'm slowly believing that somewhere, out there, I have Readers. Unless it's all a huge conspiracy and a joke on me...

Answering the second part of Fionnaigh's question in a more general way, I'm wondering why I read blogs. Why they're so addictive ("just one more... one more won't make any difference... it can't hurt, can it?") and why they take up such a lot of my time. A couple of days ago I received a weblog survey to complete as part of a research project for someone doing an Informatics degree at the University of Buffalo. I had to calculate how many weblog entries I read on a typical day, and was pretty shocked to find that it averaged about 35-40 just for my blogroll, let alone those that I encounter when clicking on links from the original 35-40, when browsing Daypop and the like, or just bloghopping. It takes up quite a serious chunk of my time and I wonder why it's so difficult to stop. In time I may even get to the stage where I need my weblog fix before I start work in the morning, and will be writhing at the thought of all those thoughts and conversations going on that I'm not reading at the moment. Of the weblogs that I read daily (ie., all on my blogroll) some I like reading because I just like the chatty nature of their writing, and even when they blog about fairly inconsequential things I appreciate it. Some I read because they talk about issues that I'm interested in or topics that I hope to learn about by osmosis (this generally applies to the tech blogs). Some I read because they can generally be relied on to entertain me, either through their wit or the sheer quality of their writing.

In her article, Fionnaigh quoted someone saying, Online journals also lose peoples' interest when the person?s life itself is no longer very interesting or of any interest to the readership, implying that people read blogs to follow the soap operas of other people's lives. Sorry, not this girl - I have to say that my favourite bloggers could write about almost anything and I'd still read it and enjoy it because it's really their style of writing that attracts me rather than the content. Good content helps, of course, but it's mainly how they write rather than what they write that I'm interested in. I don't know whether other people feel like this or if it's just me, but this applies to things other than weblogs. I think this is why I find it so easy to reread all my books, because I love the experience of reading them rather than just wondering what's going to happen next. I mean, I do love a good plot twist that I didn't see coming, as a few of my favourite films will attest, but if there's not much else there other than suspense building up to the climax, I'd find it impossible to read or watch the book or film again enjoyably.

Sometimes in the blogosphere (by the way, can't someone come up with a new word for that? I really despise that word) it doesn't come easily to associate some bloggers with the idea that they are Real People and it can be a real shock seeing photos of them or hearing their audioblogs because the unreal entity who's been putting all these bits of text on a screen suddenly assumes a persona and is transformed into an unrecognisable real person, who talks and everything! Some people initially just seem like names on a screen, and I don't think that this is due to brevity of exposure to their writings. I think it's due to whether their writing style is believable as being words coming out of their mouths, a style similar to natural speech (without the long pauses and the umming and ahing). In my opinion most, if not all, of the people whose blogs I read have the ability to write in their own voice, which matches pretty closely their speech or thought patterns. When the audblog meme spread at the end of April it wasn't strange hearing the voices of these people whom I'd previously known only through their keyboard output because there was a definite match between the two different media. In one case I was so delighted hearing the audioblog that I laughed out loud because his comic timing and sense of delivery was exactly in accord with his writing style and he was genuinely recognisable. I bet I could have picked him from a vocal lineup without ever having heard him before, as long as he was talking naturally. Strange but true.

Anyway, I seem to have digressed rather a lot from the original point of the post. What originally sparked this mini-essay - other than Fionnaigh's entry - was that tomorrow is the six month anniversary since my first post to bent back tulips. Go me.

Gastronomic experiments

I don't drink tea or coffee. Never have done, never tried as far as I can remember. Until this morning, when out of curiosity I tried making a cup of tea to taste.

Knowing that I don't like very strong tastes, I let the teabag come into contact with the boiling water for about five seconds before removing it and adding a reasonable amount of milk. Knowing also that even shop-bought hot chocolate tends to be rather too hot for me and that attempting to drink any within the first five minutes will result in a burn on my tongue for two or three days, I decided to let my cup of tea cool off a little before trying it. About fifteen minutes later, when the outside of the mug felt a reasonable temperature, I took a mouthful and discovered why people prefer to drink tea when it's actually hot.

What made it worse was the two-stage Tea Taste Sensation - at first you basically have a mouthful of water - all right, water with bits in - which you swallow, and then the aftertaste comes surging forwards to the roof of your mouth. Mm, tannin.

I'm fully prepared to believe that my seldom-used tea-making skills just aren't up to scratch (and after reading the last few paragraphs, I'd be surprised if anyone doesn't think that), but I have to say that as a first-time tea user I am not convinced so far.

However, in my recent food experimentation (first inspired by the heatwave we had ten days ago) I can confirm that a far superior way to serve Mars bars is straight from the freezer. They're much more fun to eat when every bite is a hard-won battle between the Bar and your teeth. Oh, and the caramel's tastier too, since it's more like toffe at that temperature. All in all, you have a much greater sense of achievement when the Mars bar you've just eaten was frozen. Thoroughly recommended.

Note: I wonder if Mars is pleased that a Google for "Mars bars" yields as its number one result a recipe for deep-fried Mars bars? Mars itself, the company website, is #2. Hah.

Film critic reborn

I never thought I would enjoy an exam so much as yesterday's General Studies. It was just so relaxing, which is not a word that I tend to associate with exams. I suppose it did help that there's absolutely no revision required :)

First was modern language reading comprehension which was rather straightforward given that I did French A/S level last year and theoretically you shouldn't have to study the language beyond GCSE to get good marks. Oh, and it was multiple choice, which is always nice :) And then there was a science and spatial reasoning multiple choice paper, which is just fun and very quick to do.

Then came the two essays, during which my hand almost dropped off at the wrist due to all the longhand writing to which I am unaccustomed, but thankfully it remained attached and so I could complete the paper. The short list of science essay questions to choose from all seemed rather dull - "Detail the ways in which a gardener uses science in his garden," or "In the world of computers ever more technical hardware and software is making its way into the home. Discuss some potential applications of this for a family". The latter I avoided because I didn't like the wording of "more technical", and also there's a strong possibility that I would have started veering off the point of "family applications" if I'dtried writing that one. I ended up choosing a question about the validity of the quote There are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies and statistics and how statistics can be used properly or improperly.

The second essay though - culture/arts/social science/humanities - was great. I was very tempted by the question which read: "What social, moral and ethical problems are caused by the increasing availability and use of the internet as a means of communication? Discuss how some of these issues could be resolved," but in the end I went for the following: "Over the years, many films have been acclaimed as the greatest film of all time. Determine the criteria by which you would judge the quality of a great film. Illustrate your answer with reference to at least two films." I had a field day with that one and couldn't stop writing!

The major annoyance was that having bought Citizen Kane last week, we almost watched it at the weekend, and then decided not to at the last minute. It would have made such a good subject, seeing as it's just about always voted the best film ever made, but I couldn't include it since I've never seen it. So I tried to make sure I chose films that the examiner would probably have seen, so Vertigo and The Godfather were my two examples, and 2001: A Space Odyssey was an example of a so-very-nearly-great film - I don't think that you can quite gove a five-star rating to a film that actually requires you to read the complementary book in order to understand the last quarter of it. There's just no way that you could know what was going on by only having seen the film.

I started going into rather too much depth though, such as talking about the symbolism of some of Vertigo's cinematography - for example, there are a large number of shots filming Judy's mirror image, which is apt since she's becoming he reflection of Madeleine, and for the first part of the film Madeleine is nearly always filmed from afar to make her seem ethereal - again, appropriate because in a way she's not really there. Oh look, I'm off again :)

The Godfather part of the essay was rather less objectively critical than it was meant to be - I got carried away and it started turning into a gushing review of what I consider to be a superb film. Ach well, never mind. I got back on track again in time for the rest of the essay.

It was such a nice exam. The only annoying thing is that now I don't have any access to the essay that I wrote, which is a shame because I rather liked it.

The only thing that I didn't enjoy was the sudden appearance of a medium-sized spider on my desk halfway through. And for you Antipodeans, that's going by the UK size system, so I believe this translates as "invisible" for you - it was about 15mm in diameter. I started to jump but had to control myself since it was the middle of the exam, and so had to settle for sweeping it off the desk with a pencil. I didn't give it a second thought until it reappeared at my elbow ten minutes later, prompting the suppression of another jump in mid-air. After its second removal I spent the rest of the exam glancing nervously around at regular intervals in case it decided to grace me with its presence again.

By the way, an update on the tea situation - definitely better with sugar. I will persevere.

Too many books

I went shopping yesterday, which turned out to be arguably a bad move since I ended up spending almost £30 on books, none of which I had intended to buy. Damn WHSmith for their "2 for £10" deal, and damn Ottakars and their "3 for 2" deal! However, I did manage to buy mostly books that were already on my wishlist, so I don't feel too guilty.

Those of you who recommended books to me earlier this week will be pleased to know that I bought Inversions (Iain M. Banks), The Crow Road (Iain Banks), Holes (Louis Sachar) and Artemis Fowl (Eoin Colfer), which I've been meaning to read for ages. I also got Animal Farm, which I was planning to read online, forgot to take off my potential holiday list and was therefore considering printing it out since it's received a lot of votes and so I have to take it on holiday.

After having purchased the above five books, my friend directed me towards the door of Ottakars to prevent me from seeing any others worthy of buying, but, alas, right next to the door was a stand of discounted copies of Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About by Mil Millington. Having been a reader of Mil's web page (entitled "Things my girlfriend and I have argued about") for a good six months now - and if you haven't read it, I urge to you do so now (or, at least, after you've finished reading this) - of course I had to buy it.

The good news is that this left me with no money to buy any discounted videos or DVDs, which seems to be another weakness of mine. But I am approaching a critical point with regards to the rapidly decreasing amount of space in my bedroom, because where once there was a large volume of air there is now a large volume of books. I've filled up my shelves, I have double rows of books on my bookcase, more books piled on top of the books on the shelves, the top bed of my bunkbed has dumped on it all the books I've read since January, and all the books I've bought since December are in a large cardboard box in the corner. This is the pile of books that I've bought over the last eight months or so and not read yet (minus threeish, which I forgot about):

I seem to be buying books at a much faster rate than I can read them. Is the solution (a) buy fewer books, (b) try to increase my reading pace, or (c) just live with it and appreciate the fact that I won't run out of books for months?

I'd say (b), because firstly there's so many of them that I really want to read, and secondly my rate of reading books has slowed down dramatically since February when I passed my driving test and started driving to school rather than taking the coach, hence no reading on the coach, and fifty pages per day fewer than before. It's started to annoy me that, eg., it took me three or four weeks to read Dune and the same so far for The Once And Future King (although I was reading another book at the same time. One for each eye :) ). When I'm commuting to work next year I'll start ploughing through them again :)

And I'll stop posting about books sometime. I promise.

The power of five

I've succumbed to the latest meme in typically late fashion, although I can be excused because it appears to have started off as a LiveJournal meme, and I don't seem to read anyone's LJ.

The meme is thus: Ask me five questions and I reply (Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie... sorry).

[Update: Sorry, should have made that clearer; that's five questions each, like a mini-interview. You have to put some effort into it!]

Fire away. But play nice, please.

Interviews - the first round

From dvd:

1. is there a book you wish you'd written yourself?
You mean apart from the best-selling ever? ;) After some careful thought I'd say His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (it's listed on Amazon as one item; I'm allowed to count it as one book) because it's one of the most wonderful books I've ever read. And if I'd written it I wouldn't have been waiting on that damn cliffhanger at the end of the second book for three years before The Amber Spyglass came out, because I'd know what would happen next. Hah.

Although I have a vague aspiration to write fiction it's certainly not a burning desire as yet, and whenever I've tried the problem that hits me is plot. If someone gives me the outline of a plot I could write a pretty decent story, but otherwise I'll struggle. And I don't think I'm too good at dialogue either - the only time I can recall writing good dialogue that worked and didn't seem too awkward or unnatural was for my one and only piece of fanfic. The dialogue was no problem there because I (and my audience) already knew the characters intimately and how they spoke.

2. favourite tipple?
Well, I don't actually drink that much at all. [Cue gasps of shock at the seventeen-year-old who doesn't drink.] And nowadays whenever I go somewhere where drinking may be involved I tend to drive there anyway, so... Sorry; boring answer.

3. talent you're most proud of possessing?
Ooh, that's a good question. As in, the question I had to spend the longest time thinking about. I ran through various options such as the fact that various people think that I write well, or my skill with maths or computers, and so on but I kept finding that the pride I once felt in those skills had faded a bit over time. As far as I can tell, this is because I've found that lots of other people could do it better in each case. For example, I was always best in the year at maths until I changed schools for my A-levels - to a rather highly-ranked academic school - and found a number of people just as good or better than me at maths, which I found somewhat frustrating. And I've always been the 'person who knows about computers' and the person who's most proficient with them. Then a couple of years ago I found a lot more geeks on the internet who indirectly revealed to me that I actually knew relatively nothing about computers.

I think what's coming out of this is that I'd be proudest of a skill that only I possessed, or that no one else had to the same extent as I did. Based on that, I'm going to say that I'm proudest of my very good memory and my ability to pick things up and learn them quickly.

4. can you replace a blown fuse?
I certainly can! I can also wire plugs, thanks to my GCSE physics. But this is hypothetically; in practice if a fuse blew I wouldn't be able to change it because I don't know where our spares are. If worst came to the worst I could always go and buy a new one though, so overall that's a 'yes'.

5. daddy or chips?
It was Fathers' Day yesterday, so what else can I say but 'Daddy'? And I'm not a huge fan of proper British chips anyway - the ones you always get in pubs, all thick and mushy and look like they've been doing backstroke in a puddle of oil.

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From Clair (whose exams are almost over... envy):

1- Which country you would must like to live in if you had to leave you current abode?
Ah, interesting. My gut reaction was Australia (or at least, somewhere in Australasia), but I'm not so sure that I'd want to live there rather than just go on a really long visit. The heat, mainly, and the rather large, poisonous and plentiful spiders and insects. Oh, but they get those amazingly intense blue skies... and the scenery...

Okay, sod it, I'm sold on Australia or NZ. I'll take suncream and insect repellant. Next?

2- What is your favourite breakfast food?
The combination of my late rising and strange stomach means that a lot of the time I don't eat breakfast because I'm just not hungry if I get up after about 9am. I know that sounds odd but the earlier I get up the hungrier I am, and unless I'm forced I don't get up before about 9:30, so I tend to make do with a hot chocolate. At the moment it's cheese on toast for school mornings, but I'd love to have bacon every morning. Yum.

My best ever breakfast was actually a brunch, eaten at the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel in Alberta, Canada a couple of years ago. My brother and my dad each managed to eat about two or three times the amount that I did, and we were there for about four hours altogether (and there were people in the dining room who arrived before we did and were still sitting there when we left). Imagine, if you will, a room about 30 feet by 70 feet. Down the whole length of the room to the left is a very large buffet, and there are two or three standalone carts fully laden with more foodstuffs. This room, this buffet contains just about everything and anything you could possibly want to eat for breakfast or lunch. I think I had about five or six different rounds of food although I have a famously small appetite. It was just stunning and when we left, waddling from the room and moving slowly, we all agreed that it was the best breakfast we'd had.

3- Do you have a favourite artist, and why?
Um, art? I gave up on art when I was twelve, and it gave up on me a long time before that. So, sorry, no I don't have a favourite artist.

4- What "adventurous" sport (sky diving etc.) would you most/least like to try?
Most: hang-gliding. Peace, quiet, calm exhilaration.
Least: bungee jumping. Hurtling, jolt, terror.

5- What is the unladen flight velocity of an african swallow?
More than that of a laden one.

Oh, okay you want a real answer? Well, its final velocity would depend on how high it was when it was shot.

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From Aquarion:

1) Did you make any resolutions when you started your weblog?
Well it was six months ago, I don't know if my memory stretches back that far... I think more than anything else it was to stick with it, and write something at least every two or three days. And not to post any cat pictures.

2) Did you keep them?
Yes to the first, no to the second (I think there have been a couple of five-day gaps), and no to the third. I gave in to that temptation a couple of weeks ago.

3) Desert Island Books. Limit 5.
Argh! Damn you... five? FIVE? You're going to have to allow trilogies, etc. as one book, else I'm not going.

Large books for preference. Gone With The Wind, because I know I can reread it lots of times without it becoming dull with familiarity. His Dark Materials, even though it feels like I've already read Northern Lights too much. Now every time I start that book ("Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening hall...") I sigh mentally, and think, "Oh. They moved through the darkening hall, did they? Fancy that. Keeping to the side out of sight of the kitchen too, I bet." It's all superbly written, and I can remember it being enthralling the first few times I read it, but the opening just doesn't stand up to rereading as well as the rest of the book. This is always my major obstacle in the way of reading the trilogy (I can't read the second two books without the first one, so don't even think of suggesting it). Um. Lord Of The Rings, because I've only read it twice so far and I want to read it a lot more, and it's certainly large! House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski because it's so fabulously complex that it will need several rereadings. And a desert island would be a very good place to read it because there would only be enough light to read by during daylight, so I wouldn't be reading it at night or in the dark. This is not a book that you want to read in the dark.

For the last book I was going to say something like "Raft Building For Novices" but actually, I'll forgo that to take another book. And think of all the extra reading time in the peace and quiet while I'm waiting for someone to rescue me :)

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett because: (a) I think I have to take a Discworld book, really, and (b) it's the one that I've read the least - due to the pressures of all the other books I haven't reread it since it came out in November, which is surprising because I'll usually read a new DW book three times in the first year that it's out - and also the one that I found to be the most powerfully written, and (c) it's a big hardback and would therefore be useful for subduing the local wildlife. I don't think it's big enough for a raft, though.

4) They're remaking Gone With The Wind. Who would you cast?
Nowadays? Hang on, let me get my fantasy cast out of the way first: I actually think Vivien Leigh did fine as Scarlett, and looked almost exactly right for the part as well. For Rhett Butler... if he could do a realistic accent, a mid-Sixties Sean Connery would have been quite good I think.
Okay. Again, could he but do the accent, Brad Pitt might not do too badly... oy! Stop sniggering, he can act - did you see Twelve Monkeys? Or possibly Jude Law. As for Scarlett, I don't know, but anyone to avoid the otherwise inevitable casting of Julia Roberts. Kate Winslet might be able to pull it off. And someone like Melora Walters would be able to play Melanie (for some reason, I always felt Melanie should be blonde).

I struggled with this question firstly because I'm not very good with casting questions anyway since rating actors' abilities is not really my thing. And secondly because the reason I can't stand the film of Gone With The Wind is that even though it's four hours long, it still leaves out about 80% of the plot alone. Not to mention characters - Scarlett's first two children don't exist in the film (who are fairly instrumental in showing her character), neither does Will Benteen, who ended up looking after Tara when Scarlett returns to Atlanta (not explained at all in the film - is it assumed that Suellen and Carreen did all the farm-work themselves?) And not to mention just about all of the social and historical background, and how drastically the entire society changed. A lot of my favourite scenes either aren't there or are cut very short as well - it's as maddening as trying to listen to abridged Discworld audio books when I know the books so well that I constantly notice good jokes or paragraphs that have been left out.

5) When will you get to an AFP or UKBlog meet?
Ha :) Hopefully one of the very next ones when (a) I'm free from exams (only a week left!), (b) I'm in the country, (c) I'm near enough to the event to get there, and (d) there are likely to be at least two or three people that I know. I would say CCDE 2003 but my parents aren't too keen on my going camping for a weekend with a load of people whom I only know from the internet, so we'll see.

---

Feel free to ask any more questions - I mean, it's not like I should be doing anything else like revision at the moment...

Interviews - the second round

From Richard:

1. How many toes do you have (including your own and any others you might have collected)?
All ten. And ten toenails as well, which is 1½ more than my brother has. Really.

2. What's your favourite type of cheese?
None of the blue cheeses, that's for sure... probably Gouda or Emmenthal. Cheese is best melted and used on other foods, anyway, rather than eaten on its own.

3. If someone offered to make you the perfect sandwich, and you could have any filling you liked, what would you pick?
Is there a food theme going on here? The best sandwich I had was also in Canada (what can I say, they do very good food over there) - one of those enormous Club sandwiches, toasted, chicken, bacon and melted cheese. And hot. It was heaven, so I'll have another one of those.

4. Are there any machines or other devices, used by you on a regular basis, where you have absolutely no idea how they work?
I have a physics synoptic A-level exam this week (covering the entire 2-year course) and I'm planning to study it along with Comp Sci at university, so hopefully not too many... Okay. After ten minutes of sitting here thinking about the issue, I can now tell you that the machine of whose workings I have the least knowledge is probably the car I drive. The engine, more specifically. People have explained it to me on numerous occasions, and I'll almost grasp most of it, and then promptly forget anything that I actually heard once the explainer stops talking. But I don't mind. I find solace in the fact that even Jeremy Clarkson has admitted that he has no clue on how a car works.

5. If modern civilisation were to crumble around our ears due to, say, war or plague or alien invasion, what would you miss most about it?
This is going to be on a par with Arthur Dent not caring at all that the Earth has been bulldozed out of the way but suddenly feeling distraught that there is no longer any such thing as a McDonald's hamburger or a Bogart movie left in the universe. I'd miss paper and pens. Things to write with and things to read.

From Iona:

1. How would you describe your forty year old self?
I don't know, I've never met her. Um. I really have no idea how to answer this. So I won't. Sorry.

2. If you had a magical invitation to a dinner party that no-one would dream of refusing, who would you invite and what would you talk about?
For how many people? It'd probably be different depending on how large the dinner party was, and whether I would be able to talk comfortably to the people or if it would all be mis-heard snatches of conversation, knocking people's elbows and straining to be heard. But I don't have a clue really... so I'll say that I'd invite everyone on my blogroll and my regular commenters, and we'd talk about anything but blogs (if that's possible!)

3. Which is best: happiness, wisdom, wealth, health, mystery, adventure, sensible shoes, immortality?
Not immortality. Or sensible shoes. Eternal mystery could be frustrating if the mystery is never resolved. Eternal adventure would be tiring, I guess, and you'd get blisters if you didn't have the sensible shoes. Health is all very well, but annoying in that you don't tend to appreciate it when you have it. Wisdom is good, but if it's the sage-like kind of wisdom you may irritate other people because you're a know-all smart-alec all the time, and you yourself may get irritated whenever people don't follow your advice, because you know that you know best. Wealth... um, what's the standard bad thing you can say about wealth in order to take pride in poverty? Ah yes, it's the root of all evil. So that can't be good.

I'm left with happiness, which I'd have no complaints about!

4. What superpower would you choose?
Being able to read even faster so I could get through all my books? ;) No, definitely omniscience. Knowing everything on demand would be amazing, and you'd know how to forget about all the things you didn't want to know.

5. Which is scariest: vampires, werewolves, spiders, poverty, illness, loneliness, ignorance?
I'm not actually that scared of the first two, and ignorance is bliss, apparently. Illness is scary because, depending on the illness, you've had no control over it, and it can take over your life. I'm not so scared of poverty because, depending whether you meant UK-defined poverty or real poverty, in the former case at least you can still survive pretty well, and in the latter case I don't find it a likely prospect. Spiders can be scary - hang on for a bit and then I'll tell you the story of the scariest spider I've encountered - but in most cases it's more of a startled, jump-in-the-air and then avoid it like hell type of scary, as opposed to real fear. So it looks like loneliness - and that's real loneliness, as opposed to mere isolation (I can get really pedantic about shades of word meaning) - is what I find scariest from that list.

Okay, the spider story. (And please believe me when I say that I don't exaggerate, and what I am about to describe to you is the literal truth and not built up in any way. Apart from this intriguing introduction which is hopefully increasing the tension.) Everyone had gone to bed and I was just going downstairs to get a glass of water when I paused at the top of the stairs, as I had noticed a shadow at the top of the wall next to the stairs. I switched the light on and recoiled in horror (and leapt about three feet in the air) because, about four feet over and three feet up was the biggest spider I had ever seen, or ever hope to see. Really. Even on television I have never witnessed such a monster as this was, although, granted, I don't actually watch that many terrifying spider documentaries. It was huge. It was black. It had a large body and thick legs. It was about four inches from toe to toe.

I stifled a scream and ran to get my dad, even though he doesn't deal that well with Large spiders. Actually, it was out of the realm of Large spiders and into the realm of Sodding Enormous spiders. He stood with me - well, I made sure I was standing behind him out of the way - regarding said beast. Thank God, it didn't move at all, else I think I would have just screamed and run away. Getting a glass and a piece of card to trap the thing was clearly out of the question, since its legs wouldn't have fitted inside the rim. Eventually we got a vacuum cleaner with a pipe attachment - he pointed it at the spider and then I switched it on. Co-ordinated effort, you see. We left the vacuum cleaner running for a few minutes and then found some brown parcel tape to cover the end of the nozzle, just in case the thing had somehow survived that ordeal with legs intact and was thinking of spending some time crawling up the pipe and pursuing us to exact its revenge.

It was dispensed of in the morning - not by me, I shouldn't need to add - and I'm very grateful that my dad also saw it, else my protestations of, "But it was that big!" would have no doubt been put down to blind panic and hysteria.

Interviews - the third round

From Paul:

1) Can you roll your tongue?
I refer the honourable gentleman to 100 things, #45.

2) If you had to be called something other than Cathy (officially not just some alias), what would you like to be called?
Not a name that people tend to mix up with others (Lucy/Lisa, Sarah/Susan, Catherine/Claire/Charlotte. Teachers were forever calling me Charlotte or Claire. I even once got Claire Young's school report by mistake). Not a name that has lots of variant spellings, because people would forever be asking me how to spell it (Catherine, Catharine, Kathryn, Katherine, Cathrine, Cathryn, Katharine). Something that's relatively unique, but not too pretentious. Um.

I haven't thought about this for long, but I suppose a name like Alyssa, Keira, Isobel (actually, not Isobel because of the whole Isabel/le, Ysabel/le, Isobel thing) or Aelyn. I've never considered alternative names before :)

3) What would be your ideal holiday?
The one that Aquarion proposed sounded pretty good actually - although I'd need more than 5 books :)

Okay, let's start again. Somewhere totally peaceful, relatively quiet and isolated would be ideal.Warm but not too hot, sunny with huge deep blue skies, white clouds and light breezes. (Am I getting a little too specific here?) For the sake of being completely destressed I'll forsake the internet connection - a desert island would be adequate provided I had: 1) some proper food, 2) a comfy bed, 3) diplomatic immunity amongst all local biting insects and other fauna, 4) enough books to keep myself occupied, 5) my music collection in playable format, 6) maybe someone else to talk to occasionally.

That sounds really antisocial - and rightly so because it is - but really, that's what I'd crave: calm and quiet and relaxation amongst idyllic scenery.

4) You are 70 years old. Has your unread books pile grown, or have you caught up?
:) Hopefully in the intervening fifty years I'd have read most of the books that I wanted to, and would by then be just keeping up with new books coming out, and filling in the rest of my reading schedule by rereading my top 100 or so books once a year.

5) What is the book you have reread the most?
Readers of recent days will be unsurprised to learn that - unless you want to count something like Each Peach Pear Plum - the answer is Gone With The Wind. I first read it when I was eleven, and kept rereading it, mounting up the number of readings at an astonishing rate. Pretty soon I noticed that it was becoming over-familiar, and starting to become a little bit tedious to read, so I then limited myself to reading it a maximum of three times a year. (I remember that very distinctly - goodness knows at what rate I had previously been reading it.) At the moment I'm only allowed to read it once per year, which seems to have turned into reading it on holiday each year - when I read it in just over two weeks' time it will be for the sixteenth time.

Blog genealogy

When else would I ever get to see my name in a list along with the likes of Shelley Powers, Mark Pilgrim, Sam Ruby, Simon Willison and Ian Hickson?

It seems I have spawned a blog, by someone else who's doing things with ESF.

I'm so proud.

(And also wondering whether this post has the lowest ratio yet of words to hyperlinks.)

Unnoticed absence

Sorry I've been a bit quiet in the last few days, and apologies in advance for this big emotional dump here; it's not something I do often. On Friday night I had a rare argument with my parents - along the lines of: "You spend far too much time on the computer, you should leave it alone for a bit, and what's so good about communicating with all these people who you don't even know, and no, you don't know them and there's no way that you could ever really know someone from the internet because people aren't always who they say they are," etc. *sigh*

Anyway, this argument resulted in my feeling rather angry and upset, and as a result I couldn't concentrate on anything. Revision. Writing a blog entry. Answering Fionnaigh's five questions (above). Finishing an email that I should really have sent a week ago; a task which was made more difficult by the fact that my mail client apparently swallowed up the draft I was writing during one of the times when the computer really crashed (as opposed to just the normal Windows-induced crashing which happens several times a week).

Calming down involved watching Blade Runner, which I found to be the perfect distraction film for me because I find it very involving even though it's so familiar. I could just take a deep breath, relax and sink into it without thinking about anything else. Everything else was wiped from my mind for two hours, and I emerged feeling much calmer and less stressed. But yesterday I still felt unsettled and unable to write things, and I just got frustrated when I tried and it wasn't coming out right.

On the plus side I did get a lot of reading done and have now finished The Changeover, which took longer to read than it should have done because it's a large print copy and, believe me, it's large. Holding it at arm's length wasn't enough; I had to read at a table with it propped up some way away, and every so often I'd lean forward to turn the page. Iona and Fionnaigh were right, it is a marvellous book, and I am eternally grateful to Fionnaigh for sending it to me!

Depending on your point of view it could be a good thing that I can't write properly when I'm stressed since this means that, by and large, you'll only ever get my fluffy-bunnies moods, which make for much more relaxed reading.

Interviews - the fourth round

From Fionnaigh:

1. If you could spend one day in the mind of any other person (past or present) who would you choose?
Wow, that's tempting. So many possibilities! To make the most of it, it would have to be someone rather intelligent with incredible thoughts whizzing about all over the place. I'm not sure whether to go for a more science- or arts-based person thought - Einstein or Escher? Dirac or Déscartes?

Actually, on the whole I think an arts-based person would be a safer bet on the basis that there'd be a fair chance of my understanding their thoughts. Someone whose imagination runs high. I'm not sure exactly who, but someone like Dave McKean.

2. If you could only do one, writing or reading, which would you choose?
By 'writing or reading' I'm going to assume you meant as pastimes - reading books and similar, and writing expressively or creatively - rather than being unable to read a menu or to scribble down a phone number.

I haven't been writing expressively for that long - only three months or so - and haven't yet moved on to writing creatively. Hopefully it'll happen, although I don't have a burning desire to write like that (even though, I admit, lately it does seem to be more of a compulsion) and I have never really thought of myself as a Writer. However, I have always been a Reader, Devourer of Books, and I really can't imagine not being able to read them. I'd be stuck forever with only my imagination and viewpoint, and no one else's.

So, although I'd miss writing, I'd definitely retain the reading.

3. Which has had the most impact on your life - feminism or the internet?
On the surface the answer is very definitely the internet, which has changed my life in all sorts of little ways as well as a few big ones. If you scratch deeper than that, looking back historically, the answer could well be feminism. But I don't know enogh about its history and its direct impacts on me specifically, so I feel that it's the internet which has had the biggest effect on my life. I'd be at such a loss if my internet access mysteriously disappeared one day!

4. What does winter taste like?
Ah, you're trying to get me to be poetic, aren't you? Gosh, this'll be interesting - also bearing in mind that the NZ definition and idea of winter may differ radically from a UK one, which mainly consists of cold (UK definition; sometimes even below freezing point), rain, grey, gloomy, occasional snow promptly followed by slush.

Can I just say that it tastes cold, wet, grey, gloomy and occasionally slushy?

5. Has doing a meme ever changed the way you see the world/life/yourself?
Memes that I have participated in are, I think, limited to: 1) the limerick/haiku meme, 2) the audioblog meme, 3) the installation art meme, 4) the 100 Things meme, and 5) the five questions meme.

#1 reminded me that I don't like writing limericks because the last line always stumps me, and that I can never remember the proper definition of a haiku (other than 5-7-5).

#2 brought to my attention the fact that I'm bad at public speaking, even when the public in question consists solely of a small microphone plugged into my MP3 recorder. And also what an irritating voice I have. It sounds much cooler in my head, honest.

#3 taught me a bit about installation art and that I am perfectly willing to spend a couple of hours writing and carefully arranging a blog entry merely for a cheap gimmick.

#4 took me a long time to write, and I found it quite illuminating in places. And I just remembered a couple of days ago my exceptionally minor claim to fame that I forgot to include in the list - the building used for Elliot Carver's party near the beginning of Tomorrow Never Dies is the very building in which I did my one week of work experience for IBM two years ago. As minor claims to fame go, I think that one is so minor that you could insert a very good metaphor here to do with instruments playing in the wrong key, if only you had the time and the inclination to think of one.

#5 - this - has been interesting, and I've discovered that in some ways it's easier to answer serious questions than the hypothetical ones. And it's quite time-consuming as well!

But I don't think any of these have fundamentally changed my outlook on life or my view of myself - obviously people weren't asking the right questions...

Things

Yay and w00t! I can now rejoice, for my exams are over!

But now I find myself in a quandry, since for months I have been putting things off because, I told myself, my A-level exams were approaching at high speed and I Should Work. Whatever. It proved to be a good justification for not doing other things that would require a lot of time and/or effort. It started off with large things - one of the tasks to do "over the summer" that I noted down in April is "learn ASP" (for upcoming job) - and as the exam period drew ever nearer, smaller and smaller things have crept onto the list. (Or, rather, The List. My life is now ruled my lists of my own making.) It's almost got to the point where if there's any minor task that I find needs doing it will automatically be added to the list rather than be carried out, which has resulted in my rather laid-back attitude of recent weeks.

Anyway.

The point, which I was just thinking about veering towards at some time, is that now I've finished my exams I actually have to start doing some of the things on the list. And some of the more recent items were merely added mentally, which spells trouble because I tend to rely on external memory in the form of notes (digital or otherwise).

Incidentally, I think it's unlikely that I'll exhaust all the items on my list by the end of the summer - one of them is "Read all the unread books", and another is "Watch all the films that are mounting up" (in true me-fashion - which is not to actually do the thing in question but instead do the equivalent of making a note and putting it aside for later - I now have a huge reserve of films that I've either taped or bought since about Christmas and haven't had the time to see yet (mainly because, since Christmas, I've always had Buffy or Angel seasons to watch in boxset form. Alas, no more, for I have caught up with the rest of the non-Sky portion of the UK in that I'm waiting for Buffy S7 and Angel S4. (These parentheses are turning out to be much longer than I had expected.) Bracket ends). (...films taped since Christmas...) and at the last count the ever-growing pile reached about thirty films. They are - hang on, this bracket's getting ridiculously long. I'll come out of brackets now.)

They are: The Cable Guy, Sleepers (can't watch it until I've read the book), The Big Sleep (as above), High Noon, Das Boot, A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Cider House Rules, The Searchers, The Piano, Bridge Over The River Kwai, Raging Bull, Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, Citizen Kane, Jackie Brown, Taxi Driver, The Shining, Mean Streets, Cube, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Snatch, Midnight Express, Jacob's Ladder, Apocalypse Now Redux, The Wrong Man, Get Carter, The Blue Dahlia, The Deer Hunter, The Green Mile. And that's not counting ones such as Memento which I bought on DVD - I already have it on VHS but it was half-price and I wanted to see the 'hidden feature' whereby you can watch the film in chronological order. Since I've already seen the film it's not included on the list.

Anyway - sorry for the stupidly long tanget, and the frankly messy parenthetical sentence structure back there - there will now follow a short period involving me wandering around and feebly trying to remember what it is I'm supposed to be doing now.

Don't hold your breath.

Although I do know what's happening tomorrow. Tomorrow I will be mostly readin' Harry Potter, because my friend lent it to me today and I have to give it back on Wednesday. My only thoughts so far (I managed to put it down after the first chapter) are much the same as when I read The Goblet Of Fire: that woman is in serious need of an editor. They're too long... (But we love them really.)

Cure for indecision

All this time I've been relying on other people's recommendations to seek out new books (despite the large number of books that I buy, I will only very rarely buy one about which I've heard nothing) when instead I should have gone to whichbook.net. It allows you to define your parameters for the next book you want to read according to mood, style, plot, character and location, and will then present you with a list to choose from, each choice accompanied by a short list of similar books and a short extract. (And I do mean short - I don't think one paragraph is really enough to judge writing style by.) Better yet, it's linked to a database of UK libraries, and will tell you how many copies your nearest library has should you want to borrow it.

I haven't tested it very extensively yet, but I did try picking specific books and trying to get the right result from the search criteria - for Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials I asked for "Extremely Larger than life" and "Extremely Beautiful" ("Larger than life/Down to earth" and "Beautiful/Disgusting" being two of the categories you can pick) and bingo, Northern Lights came up as the top match. Although conversely Wild Swans failed to come up under the search terms of "Character: female, asian; Plot: generations; Location: China", which was slightly worrying.

Anyway, the next time I run out of books to read (probably about 2005), I'll give it a look.

Blogmeet

Aquarion's organising a UK Blog meet in London sometime over the summer, which I'm really, really going to try to get to. If you want to attend, pop over and leave Aquarion a comment so that a suitable date can be worked out.

Message ends.

How's it looking your end?

If you're a less-than-serious web designer, as I am, you may not know how your site renders in other browsers that are inaccessible to you. BrowserCam will take screenshots for you of URLs you specify in a number of browsers, platforms and resolutions.

The catch (yes, there's a small catch) is that you have to pay some money, although it's only $1 per URL or $40 for a month's unlimited use. Or you can sign up for a free trial period of 8 hours, which is what I opted for. My first attempt reminded me to take out the width CSS property for my main content area, and my second set of screenshots showed me that something worrying happens between my site and IE4 (Here's the saved screenshot.) Does anyone know what's wrong? I know my stylesheet isn't exactly the cleanest CSS you've seen - I really should tidy that up, given that I wrote it when I was still very new to CSS.

Anyway, my trial period expires in just under 5 hours (about 00:30BST) so I'm not sure whether my screenshots are all going to vanish then. I suspect they might. Still, it's good while it lasts.