Golden Anvil

There has been some mention around here about a website called Fantastic Fiction, and I wanted to put in my own plug for a book related website. So, I figured I'd post comparison links, using the recently mentioned Salamandastron book so that you could see what each site has to offer. Then I'll provide some running commentary on a comparison of features of the two sites. I will warn you ahead of time though, that I'm likely to prefer LibraryThing, as I'm already biased.

First off, the main pages... LibraryThing and Fantastic Fiction. Now, it may be just me, but I really do prefer the general color scheme and layout of LibraryThing. It's easier on the eyes, and just looks a little more polished.

I was looking around the room for inspiration on what to blog about this evening. Nothing much was coming to mind. To me, that's the sign of a fairly good day. Nothing particularly noteworthy happened, which means I'm feeling pretty laid back.

I did have some things suddenly come together in my current project at work. All of the sudden, some things I've been working on for a while just started getting finished up and I can finally see a bunch of the pieces all in action together. Kind of nice!

It’s interesting that there have been a couple of posts about books today because I got the following in an email from a friend at work and thought you all should know too.  I have made it a habit not to forward emails that I receive that would be considered chain emails.  However, I don’t consider this email a chain email per se and I do think it’s very important that we act before we lose our Liberties.  While this may not something that endangers our Liberties directly, I do believe it starts us as a country down a slippery slope.  When I read this I thought about the scenes of book burnings in a Berlin plaza from the Indiana Jones Last Crusade movie.  Perhaps I am reading too mu

Copying a meme started by Optiker, I poked around a little to see  what was the oldest thing I have still sitting around that wasn't just sitting in a box somewhere.

I think I've got five categories of such things.

1) Games (roleplaying and such mostly): I've got Car Wars stuff here that dates back to early highschool. Now technically, I haven't played it in a while, but I really want to. Doesn't that count for something? I also have some Lost Worlds stuff that dates back to highschool. I've played that more recently, but it's still been a while. I'm sure I've got a couple other games that date back to at least late highschool.

...is that I end up rambling about a variety of topics instead of staying focused. Ah well. Such is life. Want to know what I've been up to lately?

You must, otherwise you wouldn't be reading...

Let's see, my free time this week (you know, the time when I should have been writing nice posts for you guys) was pretty much spent playing Microsoft Flight Simulator. This game (yeah, yeah, the hard core fans would probably shoot me for using that term) has actually been entertaining me even beyond my expectations. I've had fun flying around all sorts of places I'm familiar with. I've enjoyed going through the tutorials and flight instructions, and I'm just now starting into some of the various missions.

Wow, 9 days since my last post! Some of that is excused because I was off on vacation (although I technically had internet access there, even if it was slow). Then I had the excuse of having to catch up with things after getting back from vacation. My only excuse after that can only be that we had a deadline at work on Friday, and we've got another this coming Wednesday. So, I've come home after some long days kind of tired out.

Well, this evening I finished reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. This is a fascinating book that talks about the return of magic to England. It is set approximately during the Napoleon era, and is presented as a semi-historical account (complete which explanatory and referential footnotes). The writing style captures a nice flavor of old English without becoming awkward to read.

All in all, it is amazing that this book was the author's first publishing. Despite having a light plot (most of the first two thirds of the book is somewhat rambling in style), the reader is still very strongly engaged with the story.

I highly recommend this book. Really. If you have any interest in fantasy at all you definitely want to read this book. Even if you're ambivalent about fantasy, this is a well written story with a strong historical (though fantastic) feel.

Yeah, yeah, it's been a while. Mrs. Kheldar suggested that perhaps I should tell you all what I've been up to since last time. Well, I'll give you three guesses...

a) I've been ballooning across Asia.
My computers exploded and I haven't been able to get online.
c) I've been playing Vanguard.

...ok, so perhaps you didn't need three guesses...

I have been enjoying the game though. I've been intending to take some screenshots, but I keep forgetting. I did get one though.

This is Khalder the dwarf warrior (someone already had the name Kheldar). He's on his horse riding out from the main Dwarf city of Bordinar's Cleft.

I finally got down to the used book store to cash in a couple dollar coupon (you get 10% of any purchase larger than a certain amount as a coupon for later use) before it expired. I also took down a half dozen books that I was ready to get rid of. I cam home with seven or eight books that manage to complete three different series that I've been holding off reading until I can finishing getting all the books.

Yikes! That means my stack of books to read has suddenly jumped from just a couple up to a dozen or so. Guess I'd better get cracking!

Oh yeah, and I played a bunch of Vanguard today. There's still a number of bugs that need to get worked out, but I'm still very much enjoying the game.