The Stainless Steel Rat

I'll keep this post short and sweet, like the book which took me three hours to read. This is the first Stainless Steel Rat book, and I think the best that I have read so far. Love it.

Tags for this post: book() Harry_Harrison()

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Syndicated 2008-07-23 23:10:00 from stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley (no blather posts)

Pebble in the Sky

This is Asimov's first book, and not his best. Its set on an Earth which is radioactive (possibly because of a global nuclear war as supposed in the book, or perhaps because of events described in Robots and Empire). There is a galactic empire at this point, and overall humans have forgotten that they originated on Earth.

(I find that a little hard to believe by the way. Whilst it is true that we have lost historical records from thousands of years ago, we do have some and archeology has constructed at least a partial history for humanity. Additionally, we now have pretty solid record keeping as a society, and it is left unexplained where all those records might have gone. Finally, there is no mention of techniques like carbon dating, which presumably could have been used to prove that Earth is indeed the original planet.)

I did like the general gist of the book, although the conclusion was unsatisfying as well. Overall, not Asimov's best work.

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Syndicated 2008-07-23 16:07:00 from stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley (no blather posts)

Bunyip is dead

I suspect that the Bunyip super computer at ANU has been dead for a while, and I simply didn't get the memo. However, I was walking into DCS late this morning (we can discuss the fact that it was cold enough here to freeze my hot water pipes overnight later), and the technical support group was demolishing the hardware.

I think its kind of sad really -- there doesn't seem to be anything to replace it, and clusters of inexpensive Linux machines are clearly where its at.

Oh well.

Some links for those interested in Bunyip:

• ANU's page on the machine
• The ACS on the coat tails of the Gordon Bell back-for-the-buck award announcement

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Syndicated 2008-07-23 11:51:00 from stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley (no blather posts)

The Currents of Space

"The Currents of Space is a 1952 novel by the American science fiction author Isaac Asimov. It is the second of three books labelled the Galactic Empire series. Each occurs after humans have settled many worlds in the galaxy after the second wave of colonisation that went beyond the Spacer worlds and before the era of decline that was the setting for the original Foundation series. Each of the three is only loosely connected to other works, being separated by a fairly large gulf of centuries."

That's the description from Wikipedia. This book is completely separate from The Stars Like Dust, in that while it might use the same universe the characters are entirely different and there quite a distance between the books in the time line of the series. Really, they're separate novels entirely.

I found it quite hard to get into this book, and I don't think it is as well written as The Stars Like Dust. The problem might have been that I found it pretty hard to care about Rik, and the Florina / Sark division was a bit shallowly constructed. Its hard to imagine a segregation system which is as completely effective as the one described. How did it ever occur? Why didn't people fight back? Did people never randomly fall in love with the "wrong" set of have affairs?

I persevered however, and the second half of the book is much better that the first, including some twists I didn't expect. Overall an ok book, but not fantastic.

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Syndicated 2008-07-20 21:44:00 from stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley (no blather posts)

Solar rebate grumble

I was all keen about installing either solar assisted hot water or perhaps even solar power which feeds back to the grid at our rental house (the house we intend to move back into when we return to Australia). However, it turns out that there is now a means test for the rebate, which means I wont install anything.

It seems pretty odd to me that the government expects me to front up the $14,000 for solar power, and wont provide me any support for doing so. At our usage levels it would take a very long time to pay off a large infrastructure cost like that. Oh well.

Tags for this post: solar()

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Syndicated 2008-07-17 17:52:00 from stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley (no blather posts)