Content here is by Michael Still, mikal@stillhq.com.
This is the fourth book in the Robot City series, which is based in Asimov’s Foundation universe. This one follows Odyssey, Suspicion and Cyborg. This book has quite a different style, the robot characters using quite convoluted sentences, which I found annoying. It is a little jarring in this series that each book is by…
This is the third book in the Robot City series, which is based in Asimov’s Foundation universe. This one follows Odyssey and Suspicion, and is a pretty good book. Its also a very fast read. The robot-wandering-the-city subplot is very reminiscent of Caliban, which is yet another Asimov spinoff. The plot lines are different enough…
This is the final continuation of the Belgariad and the Malloreon series, following on from the Belgarath the Sorcerer continuation. The two continuation books are really just the same stories told from other perspectives, yet Belgarath the Sorcerer managed to be a really interesting read. It probably helped that Belgarath’s story predates the Belgariad by…
I figured it was time to give MythBuntu a try, so I set up a MythBuntu 8.10 instance in VirtualBox today. That was a mistake. I’m not 100% sure I understand how it happened, but MythBuntu somehow managed to delete my entire mythconverg MySQL database instance. Not pleased. I’ve restored it from last night’s backup,…
This is the second book in the Deverry series, and I liked it. Its a direct continuation of Daggerspell, and deals with Rodrhys and Jill’s life on the road. [isbn: 0553568884;0586200797]
The DVD drive in one of my MythTV machines has given up the ghost. I have to go to Fry’s tomorrow to replace a dead hard disk, so I’ll pick up a new drive while I am at it. I am surprised to discover that Blu Ray drives are now just $90. I wonder what…
A post apocalyptic struggle between the three groups of North American survivors — a military society called “The Amtrak Federation”, the mutes (the survivors of American poor neighborhoods), and Ne Issan (former Japanese who sailed from Japan when their islands were flooded). 1983: Cloud Warrior 1985: First Family 1987: Iron Master 1988: Blood River 1989:…
This is the last book of the Amtrak Wars series. I’m much less comfortable with Steven’s character in this book — he’s always been a bit mixed up, and I don’t blame him for that given his background, but in this book he’s actively disloyal to those he loves, which is something new. That made…
It seems that there is no way of killing a blocking thread in python? The standard way of implementing thread death seems to be to implement an exit() method on the class which is the thread, and then call that when you want the thread to die. However, if the run() method of the thread…
I feel sorry for Jake Olsen. It must be hard having the ensign-in-the-red-shirt role. This book is as good as the rest of the series, and the First Family truly are bastards. I really liked this one. [isbn: 0747400016]