September 2006

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
          1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

The Written Word

  • Kerry Greenwood: Murder in the Dark

    Kerry Greenwood: Murder in the Dark
    The latest in the Phryne Fisher series. I just adore Kerry's writing - it restores me to cheerfulness when the world just gets too much. Phryne is just wonderful. This isn't her best writing - others are better - but it's still wonderful. Hangin' out for the latest Corrina series too :)

  • Jasper Fforde: The Fourth Bear

    Jasper Fforde: The Fourth Bear
    Fforde's new Nursery Crime series has great potential. The first one, The Big Over-Easy, took a while to get into things, but by the end the ol' Fforde touch was there. This one starts right off and is much more snappily-paced, sharper and wittier all round; right up there with the best of the Thursday Next series (and apparently the next of those is due next year! Woohoo!). I re-read straight after the first read. Excellent stuff.

  • Eric Garcia: Hot and sweaty rex

    Eric Garcia: Hot and sweaty rex
    Fancy hard-boiled, Dalziel Hammet-style detective stories that have dinosaurs as central characters? Well, then, read this series. Casual Rex was number one; this is number three. Plays the whole scene completely straight, which makes it only the more fascinating. Love it.

  • Jasper Fforde: Something Rotten

    Jasper Fforde: Something Rotten
    The fourth instalment in the adventures of Thursday Next, literary detective and Jurisfiction agent. She's still trying to un-eradicate her husband, save the world, and this time add trying to look after a two-year-old to the list ... Tania will empathise :) Fforde still made me snort coffee out my nose when I read this, and playing hunt-the-literary-reference is still the prime-time sport. I've managed to re-read it twice before having to send it off for Australian perusal.

  • Matthew Thomas: TERROR FIRMA

    Matthew Thomas: TERROR FIRMA
    Here, have a conspiracy. In fact, have several. Finally finished it - bit TOO busy and took too waaaayyy long to get started, but the last half was pretty fun.

Aural

  • Cat Empire - The Wine Song

    The Wine Song
    Cat Empire: Cat Empire
    Jazz/hip-hop/latin/pop. The most danceable band on the planet. In the extremely unlikely event of my getting married, "The Wine Song" would be the wedding waltz.

  • Gil Evans: New Bottle Old Wine
    There's a story here ... the record came out in 1959, and the CD in 1989. My father has the record but, with no record player, wanted the CD. Research proved that it had never been re-released and is classed as "pretty damn rare". I finally managed to get his battered old record re-mastered onto CD by a friend associated with Move Records in Melbourne, and the results were astonishing. My father is ecstatic and so am I as a result. Thanks Simon.
  • Iva Davies -

    Iva Davies: Ghost of Time
    The orchestral extension of the Icehouse track "Great Southern Land", written by Iva for the 1999/2000 Sydney "Millenium" celebrations. For some reason I find it completely addictive and keep coming back to listen. OK, so there is that small factor of my being an obsessive Iva Davies fan :). In all honesty, though, he's actually a very good film music composer - he was lately responsible, with Richard Tognetti from the Australian Chamber Orchestra, for the soundtrack to "Master and Commander".

  • The Waterboys - The Stolen Child

    The Stolen Child
    The Waterboys: Fisherman's Blues
    The Waterboys blend folk and rock with SUCH lovely accents and then fling in a bog-standard celtic story about children being taken away by the wee folk. Love it.

I know ...

« Random thoughts on access and responsibilities | Main | Well, that worked ... »

Testing and toys

Completely nothing to do with libraries; a bit to do with blogs. This is a test of software called MarsEdit, which offers a way of editing one's blogs from outside of the web-based systems. I've always been a fan of non-web-based interactive systems, as my personal belief is that the http protocol is too slow for anything except display and reading. This translates into a decided preference for stand-alone applications for any TCP/IP services - Eudora for email, Interarchy for ftp, and I'd have separate newsreading software if I read them more often. Hence, NetNewsWire for RSS feeds and, now, potentially MarsEdit (by the same people who do NetNewsWire, which is how I found it) for blog editing. Mind you, the central nature of the web can't be beat, which is why I _also_ use Gmail, Bloglines, Google Groups, and Typepad's own editing services for the blogs when I'm not on my home computer. So ... here goes nothing ...

July 23, 2005 |