Permutation City Blog

A French documentary about the man who walked on a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center. Prior to this he'd walked from Notre Dame and the Sidney Harbour Bridge. Each of these was organised in secret and resulted in him being arrested when he came down. Interesting film about an enthusiastic guy.

If you think of a modern version of MicroSerfs then you'll have the right idea. Just don't expect it to enjoy it as much. I was warned that Douglas Coupland appears in this book as a character. The character himself was annoying but I think the self-referential nature made it extra annoying, I'm not sure why. There were a lot of characters I didn't like and payoff for me at the end to make it worth while. Thank goodness the book only cost a couple of quid.

Having not read the bible myself it was interesting to see an analysis of it's details. Here you can find out about the horrors it describes and the inconsistancies it's full of. Strangely, despite his disagreements with the bible he still believes in God.

While a lot of my friends have really enjoyed it I've gotten stuck on how long it seemed. Half way through I'd gotten tired by the impressive special effects. I wanted to reach a conclusion and stop dancing around. It also, unfortunately, follows the superhero movie trend of having two bad guys in the second movie. Can we expect to have three bad guys in the third movie? I'd have far prefered a shorter film that created a second bad guy but left dealing with him to the next movie.

This is an unexpectedly clever Hollywood film. A corporation has greated a virtual world which we can visit. It's full of virtual people living virtual lives. What happens when one of those people realises that everything around them is a lie? I managed to guess where this film was going but still enjoyed it. Maybe I'd seen it before back in the dim and distant past or maybe I've read some books dealing with similar ideas.

Dick writes a book in which he appears as several people representing different personalities. He talks about the world being an illusion and about the reality of god. I didn't enjoy this one.

The story of one small tribe running for their lives after stranges drive them from their land. They go beyond the world they knew and suffer through disasters. It is intercut with the origin myth of the tribe. I found this an involving story that was hard to put down.

The latest Pixar creation continues their tradition of fine animated features. It's a sweet story and looks amazing. Wall-E himself is great fun and not having a voice makes the animators work all the harder.

So you want to know the details of how the BeOs file system work? Well probably not but I still found it an interesting read. There is no such thing as a perfect file system and this doesn't claim to be one. However they do look in detail at specifically what they wanted to achieve and how they could do that. That's a good way to look at any problem. If you want to read this then grab the PDF.

An interesting world where humans built robots then died out. Life itself was wiped off Earth. The robots that were left in the solar system had many forms and functions. They have created a new society but it is warped by the instincts and instructions left behind by the old masters. The story follows a robot cortisan who was built to look and feel like the real thing but is very different underneath. A surprising amount of sex goes on considering that these are all robots. It's definitely an interesting world that Stross has developed but does have some uncomfortable moments when you find out how they develop a robot cortisan.