Permutation City Blog

The broach allows travel between parallel worlds. In this case ones that split near the writing of the constitution of the USA. Most of the story occurs in a world in which government has been minimised and the free economy rules. Everything works better than ever though.

This is a technical look at what you should do to design an interface. I don't think there's anything new here but it's well presented. If you don't know about the subject and you want to learn you could certainly start here.

Joel Spolsky runs a blog about software engineering. This book is made of items from the blog. He's got a lot of good ideas although a couple of them annoyed me (he might still be right though.)

2nd in a fantasy trilogy. There's a lot more interesting stuff going on here. A few ideas I want to steal. It's set one generation after the previous book and deals with a new set of characters and a new enemy. Well worth reading.

Start of a teenager's fantasy trilogy. This is a really interesting, well thought out world. There's a new twist on magic and a way of looking at death that I've never seen before. The main character is a female teenage necromancer... but a nice one. Check it out.

This is historical fiction. Not my normal read but I found myself really enjoying it. A tale of Jane Eyre, the good and bad in her life as she grows up. I should try some more of these period pieces.

I'd heard of this often enough but never read it. On the island animals are turned into an approximation of man, it doesn't seem like a good idea and it's not. It was all right as a story.

A story of two people and how their love succeeds and fails over time. Not normally one for historical tales I wasn't expecting to enjoy this but got draw in.

Explosions, special effects, err... what can I say? It didn't cost me anything and I still wonder if I should have bothered. To make up for it I stayed to see Grow Your Own which was much better.

A description of a type of permaculture from Japan. It describes ways of achieving high farming yields without resorting to modern farming methods. Interesting but a bit repetitive.