Saturday, July 2, 2022
Extra TV op Ziggo aansluiten / de Ziggo Go app installeren op de Nvidia Shield (Pro)
Friday, July 1, 2022
Wallpaper - A Better Tomorrow
Unfortunately, I don't have one of those...
Monday, June 27, 2022
Daryl Gregory - Spoonbenders
With masturbation being a (minor) theme, some drug (ab)use, a dysfunctional family and paranormal gifted people this book won't score well in the bible belt. Nevertheless, it's quite an interesting read, and a very different take on the subject.
Monday, June 20, 2022
Daniel Wilson - The Clockwork Dynasty
A SciFi novel whose main mechanism borders on Fantasy. It's a fair read, in which a historian hunts for automata / automatons / clockwork, and discovers some of those clockworks are a lot like human beings. I'm not entirely sure if I should classify this as SF or Fantasy, but I'll settle for SF as there is some (semi) scientific explanation for all of it.
Sunday, June 19, 2022
Launching troublesome applications from within TouchPortal
Here are some things to try...
Saturday, June 18, 2022
Backup / Migrate OBS and TouchPortal
Monday, June 13, 2022
Christopher Nuttall - Schooled in Magic - Little Witches / The Right Side of History
Two typical Schooled in Magic novels, both relative short, and the plot meanders a bit without going anywhere. I fear Nuttall's a bit done with this universe. Power creep has made the heroine too big to fall.
As for these two books: they should have been one. Perhaps that would have redeemed it a bit.
Monday, June 6, 2022
Saturday, June 4, 2022
Zero Day Protocol Handlers Exploit - MSDT (Follina) and Search
Boomers and Zoomers, the Alphabet Mafia and the Cancel Culture
I'm not a boomer. It's a close call, but a boomer I am not. However I strongly dislike the term. It's not used as a group-name, it's used as an insult. As in, 'Look at that boomer, he's too old to understand.'
Am I? Or is there a somewhat bigger problem? Before you start taking aim and fire away, please understand that this post is not about enforcing my view on the rest of the world, it's actually the opposite. I ask those who ARE enforcing THEIR view to please consider that opinions may differ. So... ready to be insulted? Here we go...
Wednesday, June 1, 2022
Wallpaper - Believe!
(Click to enlarge.)
Monday, May 30, 2022
Kameron Hurley - The Stars are Legion
Scifi with a dash of body horror, and yet another story that is hard to describe. In some far away future humanity is female only, spread over a number of ships (?) where everything is alive and build using the same basic components (variations on human genetics?).
Monday, May 23, 2022
Ed McDonald - The Raven's Mark 1 - Blackwing
Although this is the first book in a series, it's also a perfect standalone. It's a dark fantasy, medieval when it comes to technology, where the main character is a down-on-his-luck, bad-mouthing 'black captain'. Which means he's doing the dirty jobs that nobody else wants to do, like hunting deserters in the no-men's land called 'The Misery'.
Monday, May 16, 2022
Dredd (2012)
The 2012 movie Dredd has no right to be entertaining, and yet it is. Also, it may be one of the few movies that's actually good in 3D. For the record, I pretty much hate anything 3D (can't stand the glasses) and this is one of the few exceptions. I normally pick the regular versions when visiting the cinema, but back then I accidentally picked the 3D version.
To my surprise, it's even entertaining when re-watching it, years later, in 2D. Just don't expect anything to exercise the brain 😅
Saturday, May 14, 2022
To Smart Quote or Not to Smart Quote (also known as 'Curly' quotes)
On a computer, you typically use 'straight quotes', whilst in (real) books you mostly find 'curly quotes'.
In both Google Docs and Word you can let the word processor (is anyone still old enough to recognize that word?) handle it.
Thursday, May 12, 2022
Monday, May 9, 2022
Gerald Brandt - San Angeles 1 - The Courier
16 y.o. girl orphan has dragged herself out of the gutter, and now works as a courier. When she is asked to deliver a package late at night she witnesses a murder, and runs away with the package, chased by one of the mega corporations controlling the world.
Monday, May 2, 2022
Django Wexler - Wells of Sorcery 1 / 2 - Ship of Smoke and Steel / City of Stone and Silence
Street orphan fights her way up to local ward boss, and has managed to hide her magical talents from the rest of the world... until they catch her, and send her to take control over the largest ship in the world, a 500 year old ghost ship that shouldn't exist.
Sunday, May 1, 2022
Wallpaper - Underground Angel
We had some angels last month, so let's add another one...
(Click image to enlarge.)
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
Moving a key element after analyzing Action / Tension ratio
I have absolutely no idea if this post is going to be useful in any way 😊 but I was revising the novel I'm working on, and trying to decide if I should do a change or not... just before completion.
I shouldn't, because it took me long enough to get this far, but I'm in doubt...
Monday, April 25, 2022
Manifest - Season 1 / 2
Discontinued on NBC, continued on Netflix. A bit similar to Lost, but Lost never did it for me. Thus far, the first two seasons of this show are available on NetFlix NL, and those are good. Season 3 isn’t available in NL because some Belgian station is still broadcasting season 3. So I’ll have to wait a bit longer even for season 4. Oh well.
Monday, April 18, 2022
Ernest Cline - Armada
Another take on Ready Player One, another love song to the eighties. Well written, but frankly I find this new take on the same trip down memory lane a little shallow. It's well written, but it's well-written fan fiction. Yet... where some fan fiction dazzles with new ideas and fresh characters I found Armada to be somewhat meh.
Monday, April 11, 2022
Felix R Savage - Earth's Last Gambit 1 - Freefall
Definitely (?) an indie writer, and one who isn't afraid to use real people, like Obama and Musk, as characters in his book. I'm not so sure that is a smart thing to do, because it will date the book rather quickly. Otherwise the book is more a technotriller than plain SF, with plausible technology.
Monday, April 4, 2022
Adam Wright - Harbinger PI 2 - Buried Memory
Mister Harbinger (a blend of Philip Marlowe and Harry Dresden) finds out what actually happened in Paris, discovers his dad blocked certain memories, works together with a vampire to fight a horde of zombies / skeletons, and ends up asleep on his own lawn.
Friday, April 1, 2022
Wallpaper - Angels
Monday, March 28, 2022
A.G. Riddle - Departure
I recently watched the first two seasons of Manifest, and this book starts in a similar vein: an airplane that departs, only to arrive years later.
And that's where the similarity ends 😎
Monday, March 21, 2022
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne - The Salvage Crew
A displaced mind (transplanted from a human body into a spaceship’s central computer) is part of a salvage team, and tries hard to keep its human compagnons / workers / assets alive.
Read by Nathan Fillion, who does a fairly good job, and the story ain’t half bad either. The ending is a little rapid, but otherwise a fine book, and a tad different from all the other stuff out there.
Monday, March 14, 2022
Wen Spencer - A Brother's Price
A ‘reverse world’ novel, where the men are rare, and thus valuable. It isn’t bad, but there’s little new in there except for the reversing of roles. It’s very well written, but halfway I gave up: there’s simply not enough happening.
(From Dapper / TellTales #110.)
Monday, March 7, 2022
Joel Shepherd – Renegade / Drysine Legacy / Kantovan Vault
Space Opera / Military SF, but with one twist: no artificial gravity thus far, which has a lot of impact on the scenes in space. Thus far it follows a predictable pattern (rogue starship flees because it’s captain was betrayed by the space navy’s top brass) but the alien races are interesting, the setting is interesting, and it’s completely without teen angst. (After sampling as many first person present tense works as I could I can only conclude that those are mainly targeted at YA / NA, and include lots of whining.)
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Wallpaper - Dragon Mural
(Click on the image to enlarge.)
Monday, February 28, 2022
Maria V. Snyder - Navigating the Stars / Chasing the Shadows / Defending the Galaxy (YA)
I’ve been searching for more first person present tense material to understand what I’m doing right and wrong myself. This is another YA which isn’t too bad, except for one specific scene, where the (hurt) protagonist (a 17 year old girl) climbs onto the landing gear of a space shuttle, and then literally travels half the world, 16000 kilometres, at 600 kmph.
Monday, February 21, 2022
Alex Hughes - Mindspace 4 - Vacant
The fourth book in the Mindspace series, and again a very good one.
I’ve read two short stories by his (her?) hand that bridge the gaps between the larger titles, and now have started this one. I liked the short stories, but prefer the full sized novels.
As I said when reviewing the earlier installments, the narration is very good, and the somewhat seedy mix of a drug addicted ex-guild telepath, working in a post-tech-war world for the local police office just kind of works, surprisingly.
Brilliant. I want more.
Monday, February 14, 2022
Tarah Benner – Lawless / Ruthless / Dauntless
Semi post-apocalyptic setting with a strong romantic vibe. Falls a little flat because it’s not as post-apocalyptic as suggested at the start.
Why I read it? Well, it's part of my endless quest for first person present tense references... It was mentioned on a list of present tense books, but it was wrongly listed.
Update: finished all four. They're okay, but not exceptional. I think the world would have been a much bigger hell had the famish as described taken place.
(From TellTales 109)
Monday, February 7, 2022
Along with the Gods (2018)
Subtitled The Last 49 Days, it’s the modern day equivalent of A Matter of Life and Death).
This isn't a bad movie either. Nothing earth shattering, but still interesting to see a Korean take on the ‘defend the good / bad guy against gods and their lawyers’.
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
Wallpaper - Grass and Comets
Saturday, January 1, 2022
Wallpaper - Air
(Click to enlarge.)