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Book Review – Divergent by Veronica Roth
Divergent by Veronica Roth My rating: 4 of 5 stars Unusually I broke my general rule of not reading books that I've seen the movie of first. I saw Divergent on DVD over the Christmas break, and while I sort of enjoyed it I also picked some holes in it. The person that had brought the DVD told me that the book was better, and when I saw it advertised cheaper in paperback than on kindle I thought I'd give it a try. I wasn't disappointed. Almost all of the things that had jarred with the movie were addressed properly in the book. The world built for the story makes more sense in the book than it does in the movie, largely because the movie needs to edit out some of the parts. That said there are still holes, like…
Author Interview – Samantha Bryant
This week's interview is with Samantha Bryant. Her new novel, Going Through the Change, is available on pre-order and will be released on 23rd April. It's a superhero novel with a twist. How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I’ve always written, starting with little stories and poems as a child. It probably grew from a general love of words and stories. I just get this feeling, I describe as “itchy fingers” and I have to create something out of words. I get darn grumpy when I want to write and can’t. I’ve been taking it seriously for about two years now. When I was getting ready to turn 42, I had a little talk with myself and we agreed that it was time to try this in earnest or just let it go. That’s when…
Warning! Politics and Elections Ahead
A ballot paper used in the 2005 UK General Election. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) If you are in the UK it won't have escaped your notice that we have a General Election in a few weeks (on Thursday 7th May). Campaigning hasn't moved into high gear yet, but it will next week when Parliament is prorogued. (Maybe that word implies a lot about our politicians, pro rogues!) don't care about politics? Voting isn't mandatory in the UK. However, t if you don't vote don't expect anyone to listen to you complain about the government or anything affected by what it does. That includes the economy, housing, immigration, defence, policing, traffic, trains, prices of things, the NHS, public services, or just about everything else. In fact you can probably only talk about the weather, reality TV and football. I personally don't want…
Verify on Gov.UK – a user experience
Verify postcard (image: GDS / Crown Copyright) I had occasion to become a beta user for the Government Digital Service sponsored Verify service (previously known as IDA - Identity Assurance). I'd come across Verify before at work, I spent the first six months of 2014 as the product owner for a digital service that was looking at integrating Verify at a later stage. Right now there are only two accredited providers for Verify, although there are several others building their services for later stages. You have the choice of either Digidentity or Experian. Both of these have been through an accreditation process with GDS. I initially chose Digidentity because I'm in favour of competition and it was less recognisable to most people than Experian is. Digidentity I really liked the way that Digidentity looked, and they had a clear process…
Megagame – Watch the Skies 2: Global Conspiracy
This is a copy of an article from my game blog On Saturday I was the lead control for the East Asia region in Megagame Makers largest game so far, Watch the Skies: Global Conspiracy. You can read rather a lot about it on twitter, facebook, reddit and a number of blogs because there were over 300 people involved in this megagame. Look for #WTS2 to find some of it. So my role started some time ago, the first Watch the Skies megagame, with a mere 50 players, was filmed by the chaps at Shut Up & Sit Down and megagames became insanely popular. I missed WTS because of family commitments (it was my daughter's birthday weekend). WTS2, and just about every other megagame, got booked up overnight and I couldn't get a space on it. Jim Wallman had a plan…