stories

Wow. I'm writing at least 3 every week now. I try to hit 1000 words for the longer ones and try to write at least oe or two of those once a week. I have plenty of ideas. I just need to put them onto screen now.

Hitit Gunesi

I've done the DNS changes and it's all live.
Now I need to write more. I've written a fair amount of stories in the last two months and a bunch of scifaikus but since last week it's been torturous. It's not like I don't have time, I have plenty but I've been feeling like crap and have done absolutely nothing.

Now I'm going to Belgium for a day again, maybe two, I haven't decided yet. This means that not much writing this weekend either, nor tomorrow evening. It's already Thursday and I've been doing nothing all of these evenings. Bummer.. Really.. This sucks.

I'm still alive

heh... barely...

Garfield Minus Garfield book!?

This is totally cool!

When I was a kid I liked Garfield. When I grew a bit, I started to dislike the Cat and the Dog in the series. Garfield Minus Garfield was an eye opener, incredibly funny but sad antics of a loner... A bit like me - heheh - and it looks like I'm not alone.

I'd love to have the book, I hope it becomes available in UK with a reasonable price. Sometimes ordering something from Amazon US is viable but usually I wait for weeks and weeks for the stuff to arrive.

Why Orson Scott Card sucks

Initially I really liked Orson Scott Card's books. Ender's Game was a brilliant concept, well written and conceived. As I read more, I found more books I was fond of. Slowly I realised that he had a serious agenda lurking in the background, mainly his Mormon values. Finally one day I left one of his books in the middle of it, being sick of his values. I can stomach poligamy and "Honour your Father (or elders, authority) without question" only to a degree. It seriously sucked.

John Scalzi posted a nice article about same sex marriage and points to OSC's disgusting rant.

Orson Scott Card's political ideas stink. Unfortunately his books reek of these as well. That's it. I shall never read an other OSC book apart from the good old Ender's Game (and I have to admit, every time I reread that book I find an other one of these gems in it - like the government is so bad because Ender's parents are not allowed to breed like rabbits!).

Scalzi Old Man's war

Damn.. What a Heinlein rip-off... And what a brilliant book! Heheh, that was a joke.

I enjoyed every page and finished with glee and pleasure. Brilliant book, seriously, can't give it enough praise. It is a wonderful homage to Heinlein and his Starship Troopers but without the fascism and more sex. Lovely.

Off to Amazon to order the rest... Heheh.. Can't wait for Zoe's War being available in UK.

The man knows how to tape a bacon to a cat... And how to write.

Dress sense

WTF! Shorts, t-shirt and huge cowboy boots?? woman, that's just plain stupid!

I don't get fashion, it's stupid. T-shirts + jeans, that's me. Boring but comfortable...

20080705 Oxford

I can't believe it is July and I'm into 1/6th of it already.

I'm sitting in starbucks in Oxford again, listening to American Astronaut soundtrack and reading Scalzi's Old Man's War.

The weather wasn't very nice when I rode here but right now it is glorious sunshine and white puffy clouds - filling me with an incredible good mood.

American Astronaut - this movie needs rewatching again, at a high volume. The songs are so good...

I love cumulus clouds...

All these days I've been planning to write something about the American Astronaut and record it but I've been lazy. I need to get my act together and do some more recordings.

Also I have a massive recording I need to clean and edit and put out ASAP. Also getting the guys to contribute more is challenging, maybe I should arrange some more Skype recording sessions soon.

65 seconds

That's all it takes...

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

Stonehenge...

I'm here.
Strange thing.
They are impressive. There is nothing around (apart from two noisy roads) and it's quite interesting. I wonder what did the Gods tell people to convince them to build this.

It was an interesting trip. The GPS lost the way again and tried to make me go into the middle of nowhere. On the other hand now I am much more comfortable with the curves and everything so it was a successful road trip. I did 85 miles in 2.5h, damn, the traffic was rubbish but because I said shortest route and no motorways, it put me through some beautiful countryside.

It's not a very nice day, complete cloud cover so I don't think the pictures will be any good but still, it's an excuse.

It's quite crowded here, loads of tourists (and me) and A303 loud and clear only a couple of hundreds of meters away so it's not really peaceful but I can still hear a lot of birds chirping which is very nice.

I wonder... Priests, Shamans, Medicine men and XXX... They hold too much power over people, these stones are a clear demonstration. After 3-4 thousands of years, they are still here standing whereas the idiots who commandeered this thing are all dead, turned to earth and dust. Good ridden.

I haven't eaten anything since yesterday and it's almost 2pm now. I think I'll take some more pics and head back home.

Snow...

It is snowing, heavily. WTF!
And I got my new bike yesterday and I really wanted to go around a bit.
It's not very deep yet but if this goes on... Wow... First time in years I see proper snow. Cambridgeshire didn't get a lot of snow, it only got very cold sometimes. It also rained less. Unfortunately this bit of England gets much more rain and snow.

old SF stories

It's interesting that most of the fifties SF stories are based on invasion.
The Soviets must have scared them witless....

On the train again

It is Friday.

On the train already. I hope it won't be very very crowded but we shall see.

It is rainy and humid and much warmer than last couple of days.

I am gong to turn my mp3 player off and try to read some Asimov's instead. We'll see how successful I will be.

I am already hungry and sleepy, one small mug of coffee this morning wasn't enough.

China

Listening to Global Business on the player, Peter Day talking about China, it's quite interesting. What a culture shock it must be for the Chinese, new factories and everything. Although there are quite bad aspects of the global trade, I believe overall Chinese are now richer and have a better quaoity of life. Slowly they will learn to act against the Communist party - it's quite harrowing to listen to memories of China after the Cutural Revolution - how much of Chinese lifestyle was destroyed, I wonder. You would have thought that it would be the towns really got affected, not the countryside since it is harder to control widely distribured villages and farmers - on the other hand, forced relocation, moving towards towns and cities might have destroyed that.

I believe still sections of China are owned and ruled by Warlords and Chieftains, things don't change that quickly.

Blogs

The mailed ones are all coming out of order, oh well....

test

hello?

mphff

I'm mildly bored...

on the train again

Compilation failed at the last hour so it's all more and more work for tonight. The train is too crowded for me to fire up the work lapto and check the logs and the errors. I'll do that at home. Got a sandwich on the go, these trips are costing me an arm and a leg but I was hungry. It's going to ruin the diet. Tomorrow morning I'll have something and that's it.

I couldn't write anything nor read today but I'm listening o some IOT. King Lear, much fun.

200803011058

In Oxford, Starbucks on the high street again.
Ate a nice mushroom and cheese pannini and drowned a large cup of coffee. I feel much better now.

I have the A590 on the table, it's a beautiful piece of kit, I love the LCD and it has all of the defaults and the manual control and the manual control is quite usable.

A nice indian chick is sitting across me with a huge HP laptop, I wonder what is she working on. I brought some C nd Java books with the Eee so I hope to look at a couple of chapters of the stuff, I hope I can.

Recently I find writing quite hard work, the things don't come easy. The plots are not going anywhere and I seem to be stuck with lots of ideas about mil-SF with disastrous endings. I can't find anything that's cheerful. I normally hate mil-SF but a lot of my imaginations are about it which is a strange thing, I really dislike reading apart from a couple of very good books like Starship Troopers and Sheakley's Armour (I hope I remembered his name OK, I can't get a WiFi connecton so I can't check for it at the moment grrr - there is a wifi cloud but I can't get any DHCP addresses.

It must be colder than I thought, people are wearing quite heavy clothings. Since the laptop didn't connect to the network, I couldn't check it and only have a T-Shirt and a fleece, it will be OK. I hope.

I need to work.

On the train rantings

On the train again, to London.
I woke up too early and got out too early, caught the bus earlier, got onto the train w/o any breakfast too early.

Now I'll head off to London, grab something over there and meet the people at 10, then work work work we will see when I will be able to come back.
I am listening to Geologic Podcast right now, as usual, much fun.

I will try to write something on the train today, at least try to have a new start on the blog and etc.

London - Pret

I'm early so I shall wait a bit and find a phone to call my colleauge. Then it will be work work work. I don't know how long it will take. Since I had time, I got an espresso and a sandwich from a close Pret shop. Finding this place was a bit tricky, apparently I found the Jewellerys' street in London - there were loads of these shops and not a single coffee shop in sight. Anyway...

I ate too much today already - this is very bad but I should be able to survive the rest of the day fine. Now I need to find the phone number...

meh...

Didn't care for this story...

On the way back...

I am owner of a signed copy of Stross' Accelerando. Yay!

On the way back, I detoured to Oxford Street and wandered around a bit as a discovery for next month, found the Borders in Oxford Street, Forbidden Planet and China Town, looked around in Soho but didn't search for Wagamama and left that for later (I've had already eaten therefore didn't want to eat even more.

Anyway, then I headed back to the train station and caught the train just fine,. Now I'm on the way back home but by the time I get home there won't be any regular buses so I might as well hang around a bit, I don't know, maybe I should take a taxi or something. We'll see - the shoes I'm wearing are useless and my feet are already hurting.

If only I had the blackberry with me, grrr, it'd be much easier, I'd have much fun now. Anyway, enough is enough.

I am listening to Escape Pod after a long time, One reasonable and one good story so far, I'm not really liking this one but I'll listen to it, Sturgeon's law apply but these are usually better than the average.

It appears that during the chaos of the move, I've forgot to buy some magasines and I have missed a coupe of magazines one of them is for March already! I should have doublechecked what I have and what I should have.

I am thistry, I haven't had something to drink for the last couple of hours and I've had some junk instead, no wonder - also the underground was quite hot and humid, as usual.

London was crowded - Oxford Street was doubly crowded, I don't think I can stand it for longg so it's nice to live far away. I am not excited to see crowds, shops nor buildings, give me some nice scenery and I'll exchange the whole thing.

I sometimes miss Cambridge's smallness, cuteness and beauty - the colleges and everything made it very very pretty. Oxford is nice but it feels much bigger and industrialized. It's an impression so it's probably not true.

I don't know much about London after all these years, I don't even know the touristic places which is a shame. At least this place is closer and I can cycle to the station and back, it's 15 min max, and can visit London during the weekends. Today I had dressed for work therefore I couldn't risk cycling and getting muddy. It was quite cold in the morning in any case and I am too lazy to cycle when it is that cold.

typo...

I made a lot of typos in the last couple of posts - I blame the Eee's small keyboard and Thunderbird not allowing me to edit "unsent" messages. Grrr...

XV-7r

I love it. Tiny little thing. I got off ebay with loads of gadgets the guy had and it's a lovely thing. I haven't had a QSO with it yet, maybe today in London I'll be lucky - I have it with me. I want to look after this little baby, I hope it will last.

It has airband, FM broadcast band, AM, SW, everything. I'm still playing with it and don't koow half the functionality - if only it had CW and SSB, it'd be so nice and beautiful! I don't know why they're not throwing a sideband board in it - it can't be hard nor that expensiive damn it, it's all about marketing. All-mode radios are much more expensive and the electronics shouldn't be significantly different, even simpler since AM/SSB is simpler to build, CW is a no-brainer.

Pain

I'm listening to a BBC World Documentart (They're really good, go and subscribe to othem) bout pain.

I have a mixed treshold to pain, some pains I can't even feel, some of them really kill me but probably I haven't really felt pain as these people do.

One of my knees started to hurt and I'm not even 35 yet, I think I need to exercise more often and stick to the diet more agressively to ease the weight on them.

On the way to Londojn

First time to take this road to London - I'm on the Chiltern line train to marleybone. It's not even 8 yet, I sdtarted too early today. I forgot my mobiles at home so that's a bummer but I'll manage to meet with my colleauge eventually, I have the map and the contact information.

The train is hotter than I expected, I should have chosen a lighter set of clothes today but you never now. Anyway, I have 2 hours to get there and I've been on the train for more than 10 mins so far, it takes approx 35 min to get to the London end of the line.

This is quite good actuallym the train is getting more crowded but when I got on it it was almost empty therefore I have a nice window-side seat.

It's a bleak day with high cover, everything is in shades of gray which is not nice. I'd prefer to see some green shiing at me but it won't happen.

Anyway, Wel'll see soon how today goes. I hope to be able to leave somewhat early and then goof aroun London a while but it doesn't matter, I might do the same tomorrow or on Sunday - it's quite close to London and the train ticket is reasoably priced - peak time travelcard costs only £25 which is very reasonable.

I also liked going to Oxford and back and I am torn between London or Oxford decision. Oxford travel takes less, cossts less but London might have more opportunities as I learn what's where and what's available - even after all this time in England, I don't know London at all.

Walks and cycling

After going to bed quite late, I managed to wake up reasonably early and did a bit of recycling. The weather was nice so after that, I came back home and prepared for a short walk. I went up to the mausoleum which was hard work - I am really unfit. Then I realised that I left the CF card for the camera at home. Then a slight disorientiation - the map doesn't match the real world that easily - found my way back to West wycombe. Then I took an other detour and climbed an other hill and did the walk I was thinking it'd be easy - the damn hill is steep! On the other hand, it was very nice but sections were seriously muddy. I found the way to the river but there are not many diversions - that bit was really muddy, I got bogged down a couple of times. After that I came back home, took a bike out, went upstairs and got some new clothes and went to High Wycombe center for a noodle + sushi, it was OK. I cycled back, a total of 25 mins of cycling. This is quite good, if the drivers honour cyclists - they've been good apart from one asshole today, it looks like I won't be using the car for shopping again unless the weather is really lousy.
As a result I feel quite tired - the noodle's carbohydrates are putting me to sleep. Next week I should cook at home but less than £10 for two diet cokes, soup, main course and sushi is very cheap, at least in my books!
I am sticking to veggie sushi, I gave way a couple of weeks ago when I was eating with Michele and had some real stuff but I don't mind the veggie stuff they serve there, it's quite good actually but more choice would be good.

American poli-ticks

I hope Democrats win - the world can't take an other one or two term neo-republicans.

What gets me is two of the most unelectable people are getting the best votes in the primary.

One is a woman.

The other one is black.

Both are red signs in American politics.

I'd love to have them a black AND female president but I'll settle for either option but I hope it will be Obama. The guy is very charismatic, down to earth and does make sense, was against the war from day one and he'll do good.

Unfortunately the mess GWB is leaving them is very very large and I don't think either of the candidates will have the time to undo all of the harm GWB has inflicted all over the world.

Some people ask me why are you so interested in American Politics and the real answer is they affect me more than what a New Labour or Tory government can do. That's the problem, these people are very powerful, inflict damage on billions on other countries and go around starting wars - a power that's used for good will be beneficial to all.

Because of GWB policies, I can't take water into a plane, I have to take my shoes off in Stansted, wait in long loong queues in Heathrow. Because of their plans, I will be asked to give my fingerprint before I can even apply for a visa to go and see my sister and brother-in law. Because of their plans UK government is wasting billions of pounds in fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and the UK Astronomy research is being shut down because of a measly £80M short.

GWB and his cronies are the worst thing to come since Adolf Hitler and his mob invading here and there (Hi Godwin!) but they need to be removed and replaced with something way better and I really hope Obama will fit the mold.

There you go, my first political blog-rant.

200802091106 Oxford

Woke up quite early even though I went to bed rather late.
Then I dragged myself out of the house to a glorious cold winter morning with no clouds and frost all around me. After defrosting and scraping the thin layer of frost from the windows and a quick refill at the Stokenchurch filling station, I headed Oxford following the A40. It wasn't very interesting, I should have chosen the Mway but it didn't make a big difference. I left the car in Park&Ride and for a reasonable fare of £2.20, headed to cetral Oxford.

It was a deserted place, just before 9am, now I am sitting upstairs in a Starbucks,watching the street down below and it's getting more and more crowded. I don't have much of a plan for today, the main target is out of the way (getting the address changed in one of my banks). I can afford to be lazy.

Things not to do are:
-Buy more books
-Eeat sweets an pastries.

I had a nice panini and a skimmed cappucino, next time I'll get an espresso instead of these. Skimmed or not, there is still a lot of milk but this has been the first reasonable amount of milk I've had in a week.

I am thining of finding where the tourist info is and getting a map of Oxford. Maybe... I know where the high street is and that's good enough for shopping purposes. On the other hand, I want to do a bit of sightseeing as well - I have the camera and the eee with me which means I can shoot some pics and write some flash fiction.

I seriously want to be able to write more often an better. Haikus are OK but they don't give me the time to describe what I'm feeling.

The story I've started to write is not going anywhere, I have a couple of other ideas, I'll start writing one of those. On the other hand, I realise that most of the plotlines I'm thinking are quite dark - it must be something I've been supressing somehow. I can't think of a single cheerful plotline - the one in my mind is about a person trying to survive a space-wreck and he'll die in the end, feeling lonely and deperate.

One thing about this Starbucks, the girls here are gorgeous! I should come here more often damnit. :-)

Winter morning depression

It works.. Really works.

I tend to have a mild depression in the winter days, it's quite
common, you hardly see the sun, when you wake up it's dark, when you
get to the office, it's dark, when you get out of the office, it's
dark. It takes its toll.

My solution? Get a halogen light, stick it into a timer and set it to
turn on between 6:30 and 7:30 at full blast.

It does make a difference. Now at 7 I don't want to stay in bed
forever, I don't spend an hour in that sweet spot between awakeness
and sleep. I wake up, not even make a cup of coffee, shave, dress and
get out of the house. Also I tend to be more cheerful, which is nice.

Get a halogen lamp and a timer. It works.

exercise

Tomorrow everything starts again.
A bit of a light exercise with 1/2h of walk to start with.
Then every day, a bit more, following The Hacker's Diet.
It'll work.

High Wycombe Costa on the high street

Here I am - I did a quick walk to the city center, takes about 30 min max which is quite reasonable. It is sunny with occassional cloud and it's quite crisp. I am drowning a huge mug of badly made capucinno here sitting outside Costa. Now I am feeling colder. I didn't have anything to do here, I just wanted to get out of the house and explore the surrounding a bit.

High Wycombe is not very beautiful or anything, it is quite dirty compared to Cambridge or St. Ives which is a bit annoying int he short run.

Apparently I forgot my SD card on the PDA - no work documents to go through, which was one of my aims today - alas I have a reason to be lazy heheh.

Slowly I need to investigate where everything are - I'm going to figure out where the train station is, go around once more and try to remember where some of the shops are - I need some bookcases but the Argos here (an endless supply of cheap and badly made furniture) has run out of my favourite tall bookcase - HAH!

Annoying - I am thinking of driving to Slough tomorrow to get some, I might go to Windsor for a short walk around, it's only a couple of miles from there.The
There are plenty of nice places near but this is not particularly beautiful - I can live with that for now - at least this place has all of the basics.

The other thing I need to look into is an astronomy club, and maybe the amateur radio cub but I started to think that I really don't fall into the generic radio enthusiast in this country either - which is a bit shame but we shall see.

I see much more near and far asian faces here and some funny looking goths and chavs, quite a difference after Cambridge, cos a bit like Huntingdon but this place is much more cosmopolitan compared to Hunts - there you would only get the chavs and inbreds!

Flat

It is getting better and better - the study is still full of boxes, the garage is still full of boxes, the living room is still missing its bookcases, the work desk is still not there but I'm getting there...

Tired

Went to Oxford today, very very pretty, much like Cambridge but in some ways grander, some ways more basic. I only wandered around for an hour or so and looked around the high street and didn't wander around the Colleges but it was a recce mission more than anything else, to figure out how to get there, what is where and all those are now figured out, I'll be spending more time next time. One lesson: Use the park&ride. As opposed to Cambridge, Oxford's inner roads are completely unusuable. Getting to the multi-story car park in the middle was such a pain, I should have never attempted. Also breaking a jar of pickles right in the middle didn't increase my annoyance.

It is way better than Wycombe center but a bit further away but still, 30 min drive is not that bad, I am used to the likes of it, I just have to make sure about the park&ride costs and latest bus times. I will probably like it over here, I should try London next weekend.

PS: OK, I am annoyed with the Blogger now since it bounced my email blog submission back and I have to redo this over the web interface. If you don't have a service that works, don't offer it asshats!

tired...

I'm done with the St. Ives flat, I went around for the last time today and cleaned the flat and left. I'm really tired, I couldn't even be bothered to empty the car - will look into it tomorrow morning. After that, maybe a trip to Oxford. Why not?

eee

I love my eee...
I still need to get used to the keyboard, I get lot of typoes but even X11 over ssh over WiFi is incredibly fast.

Podiobooks

I'm back to Podiobooks to see what they have in offer and I am catching up with the books now.

Podiobooks is one of the best things hit the earth - ever. Escape Pod has the short SF story in audio covered, Podiobooks does a great job with the longer products - some of the SF novels are seriously, seriously good but Sturgeon's law apply here too - I think that's expected. In Escape Pod, overall quality percentage is higher but Escape Pod is a reprinter's market, where only the better gets attention as opposed to first print. SF story collection books always tend to have better average quality compared to the magazines.

Viru

Found this strange octagonal pyramid bottle during shopping today and I had to get one.

The taste is not particularly interesting and being only 330ml, it's not much of a thirst quencher and per pint, it is expensive - it is not bottled in UK but imported as is, which is nice. On the other hand, it is 5% alcohol and refreshing. And the bottle is brilliantly cool! Because of its shape, it easily slips off your hand, be careful.

I am seriously going into self-brewing, it might be interesting - something I should look into after the move is all done and over.

Yorkshire pudding

I am addicted... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorkshire_pudding)

It goes well with cheese and jam. Yam yam yam!

Happy new years

bah humbug....

PDA

Blogging from Zaurus is quite fun but I have to watch the battery usage. I can almost touchtype which means I should be fine with ASUS 701. want one!


Its keyboard can't be more cramped compared to this but then I am using two thumbs here, and would like to use the whole keyb. over there. That reminds me, off to hunt an other zaurus on ebay!!