A215 – Life Writing – An Early Memory
We're on to life writing, which is a pretty wide field I've realised. I've temporarily paused trying to write TMA4 and prep for the EMA to participate in A215's 4th online tutorial. The task here is to write three short snapshots of memories and then try to link them together with a through-line. We've not to post the original pieces to the tutorial, but rather a consolidated draft. So I thought that this would give me three ready made blog articles, but on reflection I only want to post two of them. Here's the first. An Early Memory It’s sometime in the late 1970s, I’m about six or seven. Sitting on the multi-coloured living room carpet, it has a pattern of squares with swirly bits on the inside of them. Each of the squares has a border wide enough for…
Eligibility for the 2014 Hugos
My novelette Crisis Point is eligible for the Best Novelette category of the 2014 Hugos. Weighing in at about 13k words it is a near future science fiction techno thriller set in the middle of the 21st Century. So if you want to grab a free copy here are the links Crisis Point on Crisis Point on Amazon UK Crisis point widens the world view from that presented in Perfects (due Summer 2014, but you can read extracts from it elsewhere on the blog). It tells the story of a military conspiracy to overthrow the democratically elected US President. This is a future where space travel has got cheaper and major corporations have used the FAI treaty that establishes space as non-national from 100km above the Earth. This gives them a guaranteed tax free haven, and also allows them to establish…
Book Review – Command Decision by Elizabeth Moon
Command Decision by Elizabeth Moon My rating: 4 of 5 stars I read this very quickly. It was a great continuation of the series and managed to have a few twists in it as well as some usual predictable pieces too, which is good because it made it satisfying as a story. I like that there is a wide range of aspects to the series. More than just a series of space battles and shipboard routine. There are legal elements, corporate governance, organised crime and government. On top of all of that there is a good layer of human interaction and emotion from some flawed characters that you can empathise with. So this is a very good space opera that is fun and enjoyable to read. Not up there with Banks, but still well worth a go. View all my…
Book Review – First There Wasn’t, Then There Was by Troy Blackford
First There Wasn't, Then There Was by Troy Blackford My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a very strange tale, and definitely the sort of thing you'd expect to hear from someone who'd lost everything and was living on the streets. The premise is that four young guys, all smokers, see an old man shambling around every day when they are out on their smoke breaks. The old man is always talking, never stops or addresses anyone directly and refuses money or any other attempts to engage. He never stands still long enough for them to hear what he says. One day one of the young smokers has an idea, they pop a digital dictaphone in his pocket and record what he says for a few hours. When they listen back they find an unexpectedly coherent story, told consciously…
3 Step Guide on How to stream Demand 5 on linux (and windows and Mac too)
I like to watch the Mentalist, and my PVR is a bit flaky, which means that I need to fall back on Demand 5 to watch it when I miss it. If you have tried this you'll know that it is a much maligned video on demand service offered by Channel 5 in the UK. There's a reason for this, there's too much going on with their page because it is badly developed. They've certainly not designed with the user need in mind like GDS are getting the UK government to do. So inspired by this post and after reading lots of other posts telling me I needed to install hal and stuff I came up with the following three steps to get Demand 5 working: Install Firefox Flash Block Ad Killer 1. Install Firefox I tried it with both Mozilla Firefox…