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Normally I’m quite a fan of David Weber;  I loved his Honor Harrington series, and the new series that started with off Armageddon Reef was a blast, but Hell’s Gate (Multiverse I) spectacularly failed to engage me.

The style of writing is as you’d expect, but even at 50+ pages in, the reader is still being subjected to intense character build up rather than any engaging action.  Only one plot “event” seems to have happened so far, with the rest just being build build build.

Perhaps that’s a symptom of the fact that this is a “new” novel, or the first in an intended series (called “Multiverse”) rather than one being set in an established environment.  There is a sequel called Hell Hath No Fury (Multiverse II).

Now as is becoming my habit, I part wrote this review during the time I was reading the book, so It will be interesting to see how my impressions change as I continue to read.  Sadly so far the book has failed to pull me in, and I’m finding it something of a chore to continue reading.

// EDIT // – So much so in fact that I ended up abandoning the title before I got even 1/4 of the way through.  It just wasn’t getting any better.

I wonder how it’s worked in co-authored novels like this one.  How much input did the two respective authors have, and was it in Storyline and Character development?  Actual writing?  Brainstorming?

All in all, I’d say this one was a useless 0/5

Yes, I’m happy that the amazing series The Tudors has been renewed for a FOURTH season by Showtime!   We’ve not yet been fortunate enough to see Season 3 in the UK.  It seems that Season 3 started in the US on 5th April, so I live in hope of an early Autumn slot for Season 3 on this side of the water.

Seasons 1 & 2 are of course available on DVD and Blu-Ray, and I’d thoroughly recommend the Blu-ray versions if you have the equipment to play it back.  It really brings to life the level of detail in the sets etc.

If only History had been this interesting or exciting when I was at School!!

Season 3 seems to feature a fairly significant cast change, as Henry has done a good job of disposing of most of the Season 1 & 2 characters.

Some interesting casting in Season 3 though, with Max Von Sydow as Cardinal Von Waldburg, and Joss Stone as Anne of Cleves.   I still can’t get MVS out of my head in his amazing role as Ming the Merciless.  I know he’s been in lots of works since, including one of my all time favourites “Dune”, but I still struggle to imagine him in any other role.

Max Von Sydow as Cardinal Von Waldburg

I think it’s fair to say that just about every Blu-ray disc I’ve bought since Christmas has been a distinct dissapointment.

Not because of the picture quality, which has fo the most part been excellent, but the actual content of the films themselves.

Some of my recent purchases are linked above, and without exception I’ve found them more than a little lacklustre.   I’m not sure if I’ve just been unlucky, or the quality of the productions has been suffering, maybe even relating to the Writers Strike in the US?

Here’s hoping that things pick up soon!

Okay, so I’ve not a huge amount to say other than to bore you all silly with the books I’ve been reading!

Having finished The Dreaming Void (Void Trilogy) by Peter F Hamilton, I ploughed straight in to it’s sequel, The Temporal Void.

I have to say I’m thoroughly enjoying Peter F Hamilton’s work.  Pandora’s Star (Commonwealth Saga) and Judas Unchained (Commonwealth Saga) were both pretty heavyweight Scifi of the finest kind, but the latest two manage to encompass a distinct Fantasy section within them with the key but discretely separate second thread plot device featuring Edeard the Waterwalker.    I would love to see PFH write an exclusively Fantasy based work, as I think it’d work very well indeed.

A nice big picture of the cover art here, as I think the covers for PFH’s works are fantastic!

And on a related note I’ve discovered something quite interesting on Amazon.   The company called photoshock are selling some intriguing works of art that rather pique my fancy!

Here’s an example; called ANDROMEDA: Battle Of Samsusa XL Gallery Framed Canvas Art Ready To Hang NEW sci fi, they seem to take high quality prints from TV and Film and turn them in to what looks to be extremely nice wall mountable (or even mounted) works.

I’ve added a couple that I rather like to my Amazon Wishlist!  Shame that it just missed my Birthday eh?

It’s been a while since I wrote a book review;  So what have I been reading I hear you ask?  (Well ok not really, but I can dream, can’t I?)

I eventually abandoned Hell’s Gate (Multiverse) but instead have read two other titles.

The Real Deal: My Story from Brick Lane to the Dragons’ Den by James Caan, and The Dreaming Void (Void Trilogy) by Peter F Hamilton.

The James Caan book was quite interesting, if a departure from my normal reading faire.  I do tend to like biographies like this from time to time.   Perhaps not as interesting as Richard Branson’s, but it gave a very interesting insight in to how focussed and single minded Caan is, and that is evidently the root of his success.  A certain amount of self adulation for his Philanthropic activities creeps in towards the end, but it’s still an interesting insight in to what makes the man tick.

The Dreaming Void is set in the same universe as Pandora’s Star (Commonwealth Saga) and Judas Unchained (Commonwealth Saga).  I think I’d have benefited from re-reading the other titles first, as The Dreaming Void seems to rely on the reader being cognizant of the events in those titles.  Some of it is fairly easy to remember, but others less so, maybe that’s just me however!

Right!  If this is visible from http://www.cathles.com it means that the Domain Transfer has completed successfully!  HURRAH!

I used to use easily.co.uk for my hosting services, but maintaining several websites each with their own hosting account, having to pay the {expletive deleted} incessant data transfer topup fees started to exceed £500 per year all told, although some websites drew more traffic than others, it was clearly time for me to take drastic action.

Instead I’ve signed up for a Platinum hosting package with EUKHOST, which allows me to create as many websites as I like within my account, all hosted within a 10Gb space allocation and a 100Gb per month data transfer allowance.  Methinks that unless Easily sort themselves out they’ll loose most of their more savvy customers soon!

So I can now basically create as many websites as I like for little or no cost;  in most cases if I want a new domain for the purpose it’s £6 for two years, and I can bind that to the existing account with no problem.   Now if only I could come up with some content that people really liked and wanted to read…..

Oh and for all the Russian people trying to sell me their grannies, or link to their less than legitimate websites by commenting here, I have only one thing to say…. AKISMET!

Here’s hoping this vision becomes a reality, but I think there’s actually a fair chance on this one!

I found this article today about a Wearable Flexible OLED screen that has been developed by an American company.

Now my imagination combined that with the functionality and power of the fantastic Apple iPhone 3G which I’ve been a very happy user of for a month or so now.

Imagine the sheer power of a fairly thin and flexible band around your wrist that encompassed the functionality of your Watch, your Phone, your PDA, and gave you Mobile Internet etc too?    It sounds very Scifi, but looks like it might just be entering the realms of possiblity now!

What more can I say, apart from “I WANT ONE?”!

This is the Sixth Book in the Kris Longknife series that I’ve read, and overall I found this one somewhat harder to follow than the others.

The characters seem less well defined in this installment, perhaps that’s because the Author is settled in to his stride with these individuals now, and doesn’t feel the need to describe them as well as in previous installments, but the ultimate effect is that you need to read this volume more or less directly after one or more of it’s predecessors in order to keep up with the action which starts pretty much straight away.

Shepherd doesn’t seem to have quite the same flair for Military style Scifi as Elizabeth Moon or David Webber, but he does a passable job describing the combat, strategy and tactics.  On occasion the writing would have benefited from a more descriptive style, at least enough to give your imagination something to fire on.  He does also degenerate in to acronyms all too easily, and only occasionally remembers to explain himself a few pages or paragraphs further on.

It takes until the last quarter of the book for Shepherd to develop the overall point of the novel in the series, (which I won’t give away here), but this kind of distances this volume from it’s predecessors.  I rather suspect that he wrapped up most of his planned threads in the fifth volume of this series, and this is very much a bridge in to some new ideas which will give the overall storyline great boost in to the next novel in the series.

Overall an average attempt by Mr Shepherd, so I give Kris Longknife: Intrepid (Kris Longknife) a rating of

For reference, the prequels were:

Anyone who’s visited before may notice that things look a little different around here!

I’ve found another theme that I rather like, and have applied it so that I can start afresh this year with an all new look!

Hope you likes it My Precioussssss!

Oh, and you might notice the extra sections (now at the bottom) listing My Books, and My DVD’s, I’ve been busy during the Christmas Break cataloguing them all, using LibraryThing for the books and another programme for the DVD’s!

What else is new?

Well, you can find me on Twitter here… do pop up and say hello!  I’m set to “private” at the moment, so to view my tweets you’ll have to follow me!  I’ll be trying to tweet fairly regularly now that I have an iPhone!  Please NAG ME if I don’t!

New Year, New Sections

I’m hoping to try and do some more Book Reviews this year.  If all goes according to plan I’ll summarise the reviews in another section at the bottom of the screen.

First Post coming soon as I’ve nearly finished the first book of the year! 

Good old Ivan Pepelnjak has collated an MPLS Cheet Sheet over on the IOS Hints & Tricks Blog, which may well come in very handy!

Or go straight for the PDF Download here: http://wiki.nil.com/wk/images/b/b1/MPLS_VPN_cheatsheet.pdf

I could think of one or two engineers at a certain large Telco that might find that quite handy…