My uncle works in a children’s bookshop in London, and has a fantastic flat full of books of all types. He often recommends titles to me, and as he and I have similar tastes I try to read as many as possible. He mentioned The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud, a few weeks back, and I picked it up from Books Etc. a few days later. It was in the ‘young adults’ section, an area which seems entirely arbitrary to me - most books could easily be found in the ‘adult’ section of the shop in terms of their content. Anyway, I thought The Amulet of Samarkand was great. In a world ruled by magicians, a young apprentice summons Bartimaeus, the world’s most sarcastic djinni (pronounced genie), and commands him to perform various tasks, more detail of which would spoil the plot. Despite the two main characters not being particularly likable initially, I really enjoyed the story and found the book very difficult to put down. The plot continually turned in unexpected directions, and Bartimaeus’ chapters were perpetually smile-inducing due to the presence of ‘explanatory’ footnotes from the djinni himself. I found the entire book delightful, and agree with my uncle’s comment of ’something interesting in every paragraph’.

So. Yes. The Amulet of Samarkand = Recommended by me. It’s the first in the Bartimaeus Trilogy, and the sequel, Golem’s Eye, is now available in hardback. I couldn’t resist the temptation, so headed into Solihull yesterday to pick it up. I eventually found it in the 9-12 section of Waterstones (sorry Tony), but by then it was too late for me. The 3 for 2 table (also known as The Epitome of All Evil) contained the newly-released paperback of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which I’ve been wanting for ages, as well as Noughts and Crosses, which Jo recommended a while back. Naturally, Golem’s Eye wasn’t in the 3 for 2 offer. So, instead of being a good little homeowner and frugally fighting temptation, I found a third novel and bought all four. Sigh. I just can’t help myself when it comes to books!

Lifehacker just linked to a very interesting article on writing in a conversational style:

Unless the book is a reference book, where precision matters over understanding, and the writing is meant to be referred to not read and learned from, there are almost NO good reasons for a tech book to be written in a formal (i.e. non-conversational) style. Much of the time, it’s an indication that the author is thinking way too much about himself, and how he will be perceived.

I agree The article has a very interesting comparison in which two paragraphs of identical content are written ‘formally’ and ‘conversationally’, and the difference is quite remarkable.

After a fair bit of work moving data around, the computer problems are hopefully sorted. I was getting strange lockups on loading Windows, and sometimes just before the IDE devices initialized on the initial bios screen. Also the Event Viewer was reporting paging errors on a non-existent drive (still don’t understand that, to be honest). Ben discovered various other people with similar problems, and the common denominator was the SATA Maxtor 250gb drive. I’ve copied my data to another hard drive, reinstalled Windows, and am waiting to see whether the problems recur. I’m hoping not - they’re *really* annoying Now that I have a working computer again I can catch up with emails (sorry to people who’re waiting.)

House-wise, things are going well. I received the survey results earlier this week. The only problem nearby is an area of ‘extreme flooding risk’ within 250m. I’m on the first floor, so even if the Avon bursts its banks in a big way I should be ok. If all else fails Ben can bring his dinghy and rescue me! We’re hoping to receive the mortgage offer within the next couple of working days, after which there’s very little remaining to sort out. The estate agent said that he’d expect my moving-in date to be around the 24th September, which is only two weeks away! Once we get final mortgage confirmation I’ll start looking for beds, sofas, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, desks…

My new monitor arrived this morning. I’m used to two CRTs, but there’s definitely not enough space for them in the new flat. I couldn’t afford two LCDs so picked up a slightly cheaper widescreen LCD, and I’m very happy with it. There’s one dead pixel, but I can certainly cope with that The 1680 x 1050 resolution is slightly odd, but no big deal. My desk has far more space, and I imagine the office will be somewhat cooler now.

My computer is in a complete state of funk atm, so I’m reinstalling windows repeatedly whilst swapping hardware in and out to try and fix the problems. In the meantime, here’s a jolly ditty:

I once knew a farmer who lived in a tree,
Though closer to nature, he suffered cold knees.
The red tasty berries were just out of reach,
But that’s what you get when you sleep in a beech

Wordsworthian, I think you’ll agree.

Sometimes, a news story changes completely after you start reading. The headline:

Firefighter cleared by his thong

I defy anybody not to click on that headline. Then:

A fireman who faced the sack after being accused of streaking at work has kept his job after it was revealed he was wearing a thong.

Hmmm, sounds like a jape gone wrong. Was he on-duty at the time, so it would have taken longer to respond to an alarm? Or was it less pleasant, and related to sexual harassment - did somebody take offense at his actions? Let’s read on further and find out…

He told the hearing he was going to collect some shower gel from a car.

Right. Not so much with the streaking, then.

“Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service treats matters regarding the professional conduct of its staff very seriously and is extremely disappointed that such an incident has occurred.”

Riiiight. Why the disappointment, exactly? I’d like to know more of the background to this story - from what’s been reported I can’t see how anybody could be offended by such behaviour and not concede their own muppetry. Was he acting in a lewd manner, or something? More info needed, I think.

I used Ed’s natural (split) keyboard a couple of weeks ago, and found it extremely comfortable. I was on the verge of ordering one yesterday, but this afternoon I’ve spotted this:

Engadget reports that, aside from the swish new look, it has a zoom slider (?) and programmable keys. It also has ‘insert’ and ‘home’ in the correct place. Stunning. It’s not actually out yet, but I’m definitely going to order one once they arrive.

Just spotted this in my website stats:

It baffles me in so many ways.

I was just wondering…There were tens of thousands of people in the New Orleans convention centre and stadium, right? Somebody there must have had a digital camera / camcorder. Now that all the people are out, surely it’s just a matter of time before they get to an Internet connection and the images hit flickr…Unless the shots are already out there and I just haven’t heard about it yet? I’m not desperate to see these pictures - the descriptions were unpleasant enough - but surely they must exist?

I’ve figured out a budget for moving into the flat, and it’s pretty tight. I’m having to cut back on a few things, including my regular comic order. I’ve been receiving the Superman / JLA comics each month for a few years now, but it’s one of those luxuries that has to go (at least until I can start earning some decent money .) I just wanted to recommend my suppliers: Kathies Comics in Bristol. They’ve been friendly in emails, and have delivered everything just like you’d want. If there’s ever a supply problem at their end they always emailed to explain, as well as making sure to post the late items as soon as possible. I like them
As always in the comic world, this is a bad time to be dropping out. DC are building up to a massive revamp currently, although to follow it properly you need to subscribe to many more comics than I did. But, there’s always something to wait for. I’ll catch up when the trade paperbacks come out.

I like the Foxtrot comic. It’s consistently funny, and clever with it. To my shame, I didn’t see today’s punchline coming a mile away.

If you picked up the slide.com bar I mentioned the other day, I recommend you don’t create any high-traffic channels. I subscribed to the Flickr Central RSS feed on Wednesday, and spent the last two days wondering why my connection was so slow. Turned out Slide was permanently downloading. I like the idea of the bar, but it gets boring if you don’t have a good supply of new images - a bandwidth limiting option would be a good addition, I think. I’ve emailed the suggestion to them, and will let you know if I get anything back.

• Foamy: Hurricane Special - The squirrel says it best.

I just spotted that Adam Curry responded to the concerns about the Podsafe Music Network:

As announced on yesterday’s Daily Source Code, we’ve changed the podcaster terms on the PodSafe Music Network. This is a great example of how the web works; it started with a post on Boing Boing and was followed by a host of pile-jumpers. Although a personal email would have been preferred, it certainly got my attention.

After reviewing the terms and feedback we decided to change the terms to more suitable language. Everyone seems happy with them, and we’re always open to suggestions.

I haven’t listened to the Source Code where he talks about it, yet.

Serenity is to be released in the UK on October 7th!!!

[dances in excitement]

The official site for the movie has been launched, but the flash version is nigh-on unusable. I recommend the HTML version instead.

Yesterday’s Rocketboom had Amanda Congdon playing a victim of hurricane Katrina. Amanda wasn’t really there, but was acting the part of one of the thousands of people affected by the tragedy. It’s provoked some very strong reactions in the comments. People have accused it of being callous, in poor taste, and exploitative. I admit it seemed a little off at first, but then I realised their intention.

The people of New Orleans (and the surrounding area) need help. Law and order has broken down, the stadium is a hellhole, and the rescue workers are being forced out due to safety concerns. But despite all this, life goes on for the rest of us. We all have to find ways to deal with horrible situations in the world, and often this involves switching off the television. I do this frequently - Midlands Today is such a tide of misery most days that I sometimes find it best not to watch. But while there’s nothing wrong with this kind of self-preservation, the people in New Orleans still need us.

It was painful to watch Amanda’s performance on Rocketboom. I know her from the show as happy, bubbly and full of life, and it was horrific to imagine that her home, husband and livelihood had been lost. That it was an act is irrelevant - thousands of people are in this very position. I think the intention was for viewers to gain an understanding of what it would be like to know somebody in this situation. We’re familiar with Amanda purely through the Rocketboom videoblog, and it was awful enough. If it was a friend, or family member? We gain an understanding of the situation - and we know we’d do everything in our power to help out. The video clip showed the Red Cross URL for a long time. I’m on the other side of the world, but I can help. From what I’ve read and heard, the Red Cross are the best equipped to manage the money:

The American Red Cross.

There are people dying, and they need help. If you can spare any cash, it couldn’t go to a better cause today. I’ve donated - please do too, if you can.