GoogleDocs getting slow (lagging when typing and searching)? Blame Grammarly!

I noticed that, sometimes, GoogleDocs suddenly slowed down. It looks like the culprit is Grammarly. The fix is easy, though a little illogical.

Read on if you installed Grammarly...

Corey J White - Voidwitch series - Killing Gravity / ...

Review.

A little trilogy about a paranormally gifted (created?) telekinetic in a far away future. At roughly 220 pages per book these are not very large, but they are easy and entertaining reads.

Verdict: enjoy 'm!

Adam Wright - Harbinger PI - Lost Soul

Review.

Another supernatural PI series. How many are there by now? Never enough 😁

Harbinger PI and The Dresden Files have a lot in common though, so much that I sometimes wondered in which universe I was wandering around. Nevertheless, both are quite readable, and original enough to be called original... Euh... Sort of.

Broken links!

Due to a variety of reasons (most of those boiling down to me being stupid) I had (and still have!) to re-create a number of posts. I'm updating bit by bit all the broken links, but that's taking some intensive manual labor, so several links might still be broken for the upcoming weeks 😕

My apologies.

(I'll keep moving this post around until most of the links have been repaired. Getting closer...)

Jiu Jitsu / Earth Fall (2020)

I'm trying my utter best to like this movie, but that's because I like Nicolas Cage. In this B - direct for TV - movie he plays an utter lunatic, and that's a role that, frankly, suits him well. Will we ever see him again in a larger, better scripted movie? Perhaps some day...

WallX v1.93 - multi-monitor wallpaper changer

WallX has seen another update. Changes: some internal fixes for better image series handling, better wallx.lst support, Windows 10 support, better support for weird combinations.

Who needs this?

Do you use wallpapers? Then you need this 😏

Multi-monitor setup - combining different screen sizes

I've been a big fan of multiple monitor setups, ever since NVidia put two or more video outputs on their cards. In fact, I did have a multi monitor setup before that using two video cards (which wasn't great, to be honest).

This post shows different sizes and combinations, to make it easier to find your path to multi-monitor minerva 😄

Wallpaper - Welcome to the Neighbourhood

There's nothing like a decent bawl, by the un-imitable Meat Loaf. 

Perhaps his voice falters in his later works, but man, did Jim Steinman come up with some good songs, and did Meat Loaf pour his heart into them like nobody else could.

But... this is about wallpapers 😁 Now and again I like a shot of 'detective noir' and the cover of one of Meat Loaf's albums fits that mood nicely. 

Alien Warfare (2019)

 Review.

Should I spend even time on describing this? I actually like the cast, but the aliens are plastic / rubber-suits, and the movie brings absolutely nothing new.

Synopsis: team of four is send into a base where everybody has been blown to dust by an alien weapon (that turns out not to be a weapon). Sigh. Why is anyone spending money on making this, or wasting time watching 'm?

Skip it.

Keith Laumer - Worlds of the Imperium

Review.

I got this one bundled together with Marion Zimmer Bradley's Seven from the Stars in an Ace double. I did read this one before (in Dutch), but didn't realize that at first. Either version might have been a rewrite, or my memory simply failed me.

Not that it mattered much, as I like to re-read enjoyable books.

It's the first of Keith Laumer's alternate reality stories, featuring 'Blitho P3' , ehm, sorry, 'Blight Insular III'. (I wonder if Ron Hubbard used that name on purpose.)

Tom Gauld

Tom Gauld knows it all.

Links

- His homepage

- Cartoons on The Guardian

Read more...

Moon (2009)

Review.

This is one of those movies that I know I should enjoy, and still I found myself fast forwarding the latter half. That's... sad.

If you enjoy good Scifi movies, then give this one a chance. I fear than my, ah, 'lust for sensation' wasn't satisfied by this one, but I think that's entirely to blame on me...

James Gunn - This Fortress World (1955)

Review.

Starts like a pulp action story. Stays that way most of the time. Ends a bit too easily. In general I would call it 'Keith Laumer' style.

Short plot summary: the almighty church controls the world(s), using forgotten technology from eras past. A young monk gets tempted by an offering, and ends up running away / fighting the church.

It's all a bit 'coincidental' but that's the kind of story it is.

Note: I read this one in Dutch, but I doubt reading this in English would have changed my opinion that much 😎

Review.

I know he does it for the money, but Bruce, please... You can do better.

So, what do we have here? A simple Scifi / Horror cross-over, heavily inspired by Aliens, with a little infusion of Event Horizon.

I'm not impressed. Go see both Aliens and Event Horizon, that's a way better way to spend your precious time. Note: this movie is also known as Anti-Life.

Wallpaper - Censorship

 

I have nothing to add...

(Click on the image to enlarge.)

Marion Zimmer Bradley - Seven from the Stars (1961)

Review.

More old stuff dating back to the golden era, this is the second part of an Ace 'Double', a pocket containing two novels in one book.

The aliens, so different from humanity at the beginning of the book, blend in a little too easy. The whatever-the-name-enemy from another dimension is not convincing. And the story didn't age very well.

A C Hadfield - Carson Mach

 Review.

I love my cheap, macho military / action / adventure SF. And because dumb books are easy to digest whilst doing something else I'm more than happy to look the other way.

But... there are limits. Especially when the same mistakes are made over and over again.

Sebastien de Castell - Traitor's Blade / Knight's Shadow

Review.

Let's start with the verdict... Though it's a four book series, the first two are a very decent two-book set. And a very good read! Swashbuckling, light on magic, great on adventure. I'm a sucker for good swashbuckling, so yeah, I love it...

Lindsay Buroker - Dragon Blood Omnibus

Review.

There's a whole subset of romance novels in fantasy settings, which all seem to follow a certain pattern. This is one of those.

Sometimes they stand out (Rachel Aaron's DFZ series, for example) and sometimes they are 'pulpish' (like this one). Great if it's your thing, but Lindsay Buroker can do better, as she proved with her Dark Currents series.

Wallpaper - Roadkill Bar & Grill

I edited one of the images I found on https://www.collectedcurios.com/ and modified it a bit to make it a better wallpaper.

Lunch, anyone?

More wallpapers (every month a new one), click and scroll down.

(Click on the images themselves to enlarge.)

Helen Harper - Slouch With / Star Witch / Spirit Witch

Review.

If you like romance and fantasy, Helen Harper must be somewhere on your bookshelf. Nevertheless, she does write light, bubbly, funny tales, and this is one of those.

Contemporary witch who is way more powerful than she lets on, is lazy as hell, has a love / hate relation with a good looking male 'official', and a very rude cat (seriously).

Tim C. Taylor - Marine Cadet / Indigo Squad / Renegade Legion

Review.

An interesting premise (five million kids were sold into slavery to protect earth) takes an interesting route (let's gene engineer our cannon fodder and make them think they matter) then ends up as yet another 'soldier becomes sergeant becomes general'.

The story wanders around a bit, rambles and wanders now and again, and I still haven't figured out if the main character is a little naive... or if it's the writer.

Nathan Hystad - Confrontation

 Review.

Military SF is a guilty pleasure of mine. Let's read another two.

Today, that's Confrontation by Nathan Hystad. Oh dear... (read on)

Hyperpolice (1997)

Review.

Yeah, I know. Lot's of old anime lately.

Hyperpolice. Starts of as a comedy, but does introduce some more moral points of discussion during the series. Only 25 episodes, and not very well known... in the west.

Wallpaper - Destination (Calvin & Hobbes)

 

It's summer, and life and work are changing yet again. The future is... unclear.

It's a good thing I'm not the only one who doesn't know where he'll end up.

The truth is, most of us only discover where we are heading when we arrive...

Jack McDevitt - The engines of God (1994) / Deepsix

Review.

Strange... I'm pretty sure I've read some of his work, but I cannot recall a single title. Oh well... I had totally different expectations of these two books. I was expecting large, grand space opera, and though it features explorers, fighting for their lives, spaceships, aliens and what not... 

Sanctuary (2008)

Review.

Amanda Tapping takes care of abnormals. Innocent young man ends up protecting supernatural beings. Some evil machinations try to take the sanctuary for aforementioned supernatural beings down. Troubles ensue. I think that's pretty much it 😁

Chapter Size and Reading Speed

Writing.

(This is a follow up to Book And Chapter Sizes)

Do you need chapters, and is chapter size related to reading speed? I think it is! Read on...

Babylon 5 (1993)

Review.

I never saw all episodes of B5 thus far, so I'm watching them now. (But I realise that I saw quite a few, to be honest.) I watched this late at night, on a Hong Kong television channel whilst I was working in China, back in... 1994? Time flies...

The Retro-Plotter part 2 - No job is done until the paperwork is finished

Writing.

Why and how I keep track of events in my own stories... no matter how bad they are 😁

This is a sequel to The Retro Plotter part 1, and before I dive in, keep in mind that everyone has their own system. This is just an example of how I do things. Your approach might be far superior to mine!