Parallel Worlds.

Here is a other novel that I am currently reading. While I dont focus on it, I do pick it up from time to time.

Basically, in short, and I am barely covering the material covered in this book, is the creation of the universe. And the possiblity of other universes/dimensions co-existing next to ours. What will happen when everything stops, and what was here before the big bang. And, was is it the big bang? Or several million big bangs?

So many thoughts/theories/ideas dazzle in this book. I discovered him while reading Illium by Dan Simmons, and watching a Discovery Chanel special called "Alien Planet". Susprisingly, Michio writing style is very easy to follow, espically if you dont have a Astro-Physic degree. ;) 

Next Book!

I finished the "Curse of Chalion", and here are a few thoughts on it.

- Good book, lots of theology of the world. Also, was nice to see that it focuses mostly on just one character as opposed to many.

- Found it a little 'quieter' than most books I read. Meaning, not alot of action. Mostly tense moment, with the odd spattering of action.

- Over all, quite good. It was nominated for a Hugo, which susprises me. Outta 10, maybe a 7.5

Now, I've stared the book to the side here. Canadian Author, this is the type of book you read for 15 minutes, and set it down. You gotta think. Not very far into the novel, but, enjoying it immensely! 

Indigo Top 100 Reader's Choice.

Just found out Chapters/Indigo's top 100 books voted by readers. Here are the top 3, and then the rest are where Fantasy/Scifi books fit in.

1 - The Da Vinci Code
2 - Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
3 - To Kill a MockingBird - Harper Lee

Now, for the scifi/fantasy stuff and where it ranked. :)

5-7 - Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
11- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling
13 - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - JK Rowling
16 - Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone - JK Rowling
18 - The Stand - Stephen King
19 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - JK Rowling
21 - The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
26 - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
28 - The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
31 - Dune - Frank Hebert
35 - Mists of Avalan - Marian Zimmer Bradlye
53 - Ender's Games - Orson Scott Card
57 - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - JK Rowling
76 - Summer Tree - Guy Gavriel Kay
84 - Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind

Lots of scifi/fantasy seem to dominant the list. Only one that susprises me is "Wizards First Rule".. Read that, ugh, horrid book.

Feast for Crows

November 8, 2005. That's when the George R. R. Martin "Feast for Crows" will be released.

This series, "A Song of Fire and Ice" started way back in 97, and the previous novel was released in 2000. So, 3 books later, and 5 years, we finally get to see the next installment in the series.

And they changed the god dam covers! Yah, the image to the left is what it should have been. They have now replaced the covers with generic type looking covers. Click >HERE<.

The claim is that the other cover caused the series to quadruple in sales. Whatever. Anyways, I thought it'd be nice to let folks know what the cover was suppose to be. Amazon.ca still shows this as the cover for the next book, but, I doubt it. Still, it'll be awesome to read the next one. Page count is 784 pages, which seems huge, but, I wish it was more!! 

Comic Book of the Week!

I am trying to keep the blog up to date, or at least, a update every few days. So, I figued that once a week, I'd recommend a comic. Be it old or new. I'll try to recommend titles that I think that everyone would enjoy, and not some fanboy title. Eg "Uncanny X-Men #456 is a must read to see the return of the Apocalypse, etc", but, stories that are accessible to everyone.

So, here we go with the first one. The System by Peter Kuper. It's published by DC comics/Vertigo. What makes this series enjoyable was that it's all art. No words. It uses Stencil art by Kuper, which is simply amazing. The story follows several individuals, and how each of their lives crosses. It follows a corrupt policeman, stripper, serial killer, and a few others. It's definitely a more serious title, and it shows a wide variety of characters from different social classes. It's a older series, so, it's been collected in a tpb. Follow the >LINK< to see more on it, plus, some examples of the interior art. 

Songs of Naga Teout.

In my travels over at SFFworld, I found a series (Songs of Naga Teout) by a author named Heather Gladney. It sucks, but, the series is now out of print. So, in my obssession, I am trying to find this book(s). No luck, expect online, and that the dilemna.

I can easily find the first book of the series cheap. Couple of buck, plus shipping and handling. It's the second book. I cant find it for under 20 bucks! American! And it's a paperback. That just sucks, I know it's the whole supply vs demand etc, but, man, do I pay it?? Probably, but, still..

Annoys me a little that it's so expensive. Doesn't seem fair. But, it's definitely nice to own a couple of books that are next to impossible to find.

Books Books Books

So, I was talking to Jon, and I kinda realize that one of the problems with my blog is that it has no real direction. I just post stuff. Yah, great, but, it's tough.

I have a obvious love of books. I'm always looking for some book, reading a book, find what out of print, learning about authors, help out at a massive book site (Sffworld).

Might as well start a blog on books. This may even lead me to actually up date this blog more often, while not as interesting for some folks, life sucks. :)

So, yah.. Books. Love em. The current book I am reading is Curse of Chalion. Written by Bujold, she became really well known for her Vorkosigan series. I never really wanted to read that series, or any of hers. They just seem, boring..dull.. But, I figured I tried her Fantasy series. Lo and Behold, I am rivetted to this book. Hard to explain why, their isnt any action, battle, or even wide use of magic. It's the Characters. The main character, Cazaril, seems so real. And flawed. Which is great. I mean, in most series, the characters have flaws, but, they seem superficial. These flaws seem to actually affect the characters actually actions, some for the worse. Great book, and part of a series. But, each book is a individual. When I am done it, I'll leave some quick thoughts on it. :)

What I did today..

So, it's Saturday, and I woke up a little early..

Fed my Dog Nemo, watched someone TV, and heading out with Jon later in the day.

Yesterday was alright, I went to this trade show for work. It was good. Trish said something snarky at me, so, I'm not going to dance with her anymore.

Lookie, Mike being all artsy like.

More Proof that summer is over. Man, I really do enjoy this Hello thing. No more flickr. 

Summer's Over, and I'm trying Hello.

The summer is over. It's fall. Get over it. Enjoy the the red leafs while they are still on the trees. Our falls are so short.

Secondly, I am trying Hello. Hello is a blogging tool that works with Picasa 2. On my previous system, I couldnt get it to wo rk. Always got a "embedded error" message. Why? I never could figure it out. But, it seems ok now.

Will that mean more frequent posts? Probably not. :) 

Yah Yah..

Everyone's (About 3 people actually) have complained I haven't updated my blog.

So, I figured I should. If those 3 people get together, I could have a riot on my hands.

Follow this >LINK<

This dude has a sh!tload of toys. Warning, lots of pictures...

Ha! Something to report..

So. I've been spammed. No, not my e-mail. My Blog! Yah. Go take a look at my entry in regards to racism in the media. Second comment. It's a spam message!

Just happened today. Below is the actual comment. Fu(k. Can you believe that?? I'm a little annoyed by this. We'll see what happens when I allow the comments on this thread.


"Family takes circuitous route to Delray
DELRAY BEACH After a seven-day, 600-mile odyssey, Pam Jones and her family are just happy to be alive.
Good blog. You’ve put lots of thought in here. If you are interested, go see my ipod mp3 player related site. It’s still growing but you may still find something of interest."

Oi!

Been a long time since I updated this Blog. And, I dont have anything to thrilling to post either at the moment.

So, what do I do? Well, I am going to remind everyone to check out Oddtodd.com out. It gets updated more often than here. ;)

Well, it's a lame entry. :) But, it's a entry.

Racism in the Press..

loot1
Originally uploaded by Paedur.

Found this over at Puck's blog. Figured I should post it as well.

A dream??

vader21
Originally uploaded by Paedur.

Take a look at this. >LINK<

I dare to dream. ;)

IE 7 Beta 1

It's out.

The new Internet Explorer.

I ran it for a little bit, and it seemed nice. Though, it already had problems displaying the MSN site, which isnt a good sign. ;)

Though, I do like the interface so far, but, I've only been using it for a short while. Here is the LINK to find it.

Alot of folks will probably think of all the flaws found in the IE, espically security ones. Well, in my long search for a good browser, I havent found one. Every browser has flaws, security ones as well. Even Firefox, every month I get PC World, and they report a flaw in that and every other browser. Go with what fits I say. We'll see how IE 7 goes, but, they have tabbed browsing. :)

PS. You need to be running a legit copy of XP.

Update - It appears that IE 7 doesnt support 128 bit Encryption. Odd, you think it would, IE does normally.

Update 2 - Holy! It sucks. I mean, it's a Beta, what can you expect? It's slooooow, doesnt load up right, some pages do not display at all. I'd stay away from this one. If you do d/l, it does write over your existing IE..

Tech TV.

I use to love Tech TV. I never really got to see much of it, but, I did like it. It then merged with G4 (Which is a Gaming station), and I didnt mind it..but, I only play PC Games, and it had alot of info on console gaming.

As time went by, shows like The Screensavers (Tech news, info, etc) slowly got re-working into a more 'media/gaming' show.. The hosts of the screensavers (Kevin Rose & Alex Albretch) left, and it just wasnt the same.

I was sad.

But, behold..the internet, and pod casting.. There is now a few 'video' pod casts that are basically on just tech news. One is hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albretch, a other by a bunch of former Screensavers guys (Kevin Rose being one), and I just recently found a other hosted by Amber from Call for Help. Below are the links. :)

Diggnation

NCommand

Systm

A friend of mine, Jon, also runs a Podcast on Linux.

Basically, new computer..

Finally. Well, I have it back. And it's faster. This is what I had. P4 2.4 GHZ, 533 MHZ FSB, & 1.5 GB 2100 Ram. I am now using a AMD 64BIT 3200+, New Asus Motherboard, Socket 939 FSB 800MHZ, & 2 GB 3200 Ram. Both systems use the ATI X800XL video card, and I kept both my hard drives of 160 (Master now) and the 60 GB (Slave.)

Dam fast now. I could also be the my entire Hard Drive(s) were wiped clean and re-installed. That I am sure has helped alot.

I had it built at Infinet Computers.

It's nice to have a clean O/S (Shaddap Jon!), but, I've discovered a few programs that I am no longer going to use. One, software firewalls. Just go out and buy a router for that. You can use it later to set up a second computer on the 'Net, and it wont hog resources that a software firewall does. Plus, the last few that I have tried (Zonealarm, Sygate, Norton's) all were very annoying. On my old system, Norton's actually prevented certain programs (email!) from working at all, and Zonealarm refused to uninstalled. As to the virus scanner, well, I went with AVG for now. Since Norton's sucked (See previous post), I figured stick with a free one and see how it works. So far so good.

Now the only thing left to do is settle with other software, stuff like p2p software, Adware scanners, etc. I think I am going to try Firefox for my browser now as I wasn't happy with Opera, and IE is just to buggy. Firefox is still slow on my system, but, I've found that they are no browsers out there that are any good.

Alex.. freak...

Alex
Originally uploaded by Paedur.

For about 7 years, I had the distinct..umm, experience of working with a gentleman named Alex.

Recently, he quit. Onto bigger and better things for that guy..

And, over the years, Alex has irratated the hell out of me, and oddly enough, I'll still miss him. He was unique. And, he did make me laugh, despite my "Grumpish" attitude. He was also the first person to make me feel welcomed at Costco. I was standing there, waiting for the interview when he approached me, and said "Hi. You going for the majors job." So, here I leave a few memories of Alex.

1 - His Sailor Moon Dance. Don't ask more, but, man, it'd made me laugh so hard.

2 - Shirts. Again, they made me laugh. I remember the first time he wore his cocaine cowboy shirt. I could barely look at him without laughing.

3 - Our mutual love of all Pop Bands UK. Espically S-Club 7, and Steps. Hannah.. MmmmM.. Rachel.. MMmmmMmmm..

4 - "Hey, what's this plastic stuff around the switch, Mike?" "I dunno.." ZAP! "Umm.. it was like that when they gave it to us."

5 - 'Non' and 'Oui'. This mean, No and Yes in French, Alex. Never ever hit Oui on a Digital Camera again!

6 - Blogging a entry from work (See top right picture) with our crazy boss Melynda nearby, and some manager.

7 - Chain Saw comment from him and Lisa. Shudder.

8 - "Alex, you look tired." "I played QUAKE all night, Mike. I am sooooo tired."

9 - "I told Gary I had math class on Tues night, but, it was to watch Buffy instead." Me: "What!?!?!?!!?!?"

10 - Checking out the ladies..

And finally, the one that will live forever..

"Well, Mike, a AMR slot is this new type...." Yeah, right.. ;)

Alot of other memories...but... enough.. :)


G'luck Alex!!

Just Chipped my tooth!

I just chipped my tooth! Eating a slice of Pizza. What the fu(k?!?! Never going to eat Pizza unless it's turned into a soup!

The day of my holidays!

Before a wedding (not mine.)

ARGH!

Leave symapthy comments below.