Permutation City Blog

Each week Escape Pod presents a science fiction story read by the presenter or a guest reader. In the 170 episodes since it began it's grown and changed. It's something I look forward to each week. The stories are varied but some have been absolutely excellent. I'd particularly recommend: Impossible Dreams, Barnaby in Exile, and In the Late December but that's just small selection of the good stuff. I enjoy Steve Ely's presentation giving an insight into the world of science fiction, podcasting, or real life. I'm less happy that the show now has a sponser each week which can feel intrusive or repetative. However you shouldn't let that put you off, it's still definitely worth it.

Learning to create web services in a RESTful, or object-oriented, way. I found this an attractive method but haven't used it in practice yet. Read more about this in a summary of RESTful.

I listened to an unabridged reading of this on the radio. I don't think I've read this before although I'm sure I've seen the TV adaptation. I though both the reading and the story were excellent. I was very easy to listen to several episodes in a row. I noticed myself being frustrated when Bill's progress was blocked. In the end I wish it could have continued.

I've got Explosions in the Sky playing at the moment. It's sounds great. Despite the occasionally loud volume and fast pace it always sounds gentle on the inside. I hope I can get some more of this soon.

This book follows a number of different software "people" when they decide to look outside their closed world and explore the universe instead. This follows of of Egan's traditional ideas mathematics, physics, and conciousness. I particularly like the first chapter which follows the genesis of one of the main characters inside his computer womb.

This is a initially slow black & white film that is well worth watching for it's gripping second half where two trucks filled with unstable nitro-glycerin have to be driven through miles of tortuous terrain.

Rather than concentrate on big main courses the menu offers you a wide selection of smaller dishes costing about £4 each. Poppadoms to start and couple of these with rice or bread made for a lovely dinner. Go with a group of people and you get to try even more dishes. The butter chicken was wonderfully rich, the chicken saag was lovely and spicy, the lamb was beautifully cooked, lentil dishes were very tasty. I was definitely impressed by this restaurant, my only quibble is that they don't serve naan. (There were at least some vegetarian choices but I wasn't paying enough attention to rate it.)

A single man survives alone in a world populated by vampires. During the day he hunts them and during the night they hunt him. Actually there is much more to the book than this and it is well worth reading. Most interesting are the vampires themselves. Haven't read it for a while and I really should.

A lovely book for children and adults. It is a typical tale of peril and heroics to overcome adversity, admittedly in canine form. Characters are wonderful both the human pets and their doggy owners. The way all the dogs work together to help hide and feeds the dogs as they travel is nice as it all goes on out of site of the human world (except for little Tommy.)

This was a wonderful story in my childhood and it's still a wonderful story now. A mother mouse fighting to protect her sick child and dealing with the mysterious rats of NIMH. There are a lot of nice characters: the mother, her friend the crow, the wise owl, and the rats themselves. It has some good child-friendly tension balanced with small victories along the way.