Month: January 2011

Peter F. Hamilton, China Mieville, and other readings: book update time

sarikan

It appears I just can’t give up on Sci-Fi. Here is a list of the recent readings, with very brief notes.Peter F. Hamilton: The Night’s Dawn Trilogy. I think this trilogy exceeds 3000 pages, or something like that. I’ve managed to read it all, and if you want a really long sci-fi book, give your strength a challenge with this one. It is called space opera for a reason!

Hamilton likes to go into every potential outcome of a quite interesting event in this book, and to be honest, you can not easily guess the main story until it begins in an unexpected way. I am not happy about the ending though, so be warned, it won’t give you a very creative ending.

China Mieville: Perdido Street Station: Well, this one is the first book in a couple of years that I could not finish. I’m sorry, but there is way, way to much description in this book, so much that I got bored. Also, certain characters in the book are presented with attributes which later does not match with  their actions in the story.

Frederik Pohl: Heeche Rendevous: The final book of the Heeche saga. I’m not sure if I’ve written about this one, but I’m too lazy to open a new tab and search my own blog, so I’ll just say that this one is not as good as the previous two. Actually, the style of the books change significantly after the first book, but if you want to know more about the Heeche, you’d like to read this.

Ursula K. Le Guin: Left Hand of Darkness: I should have read this ages ago, but I’m glad I finally did it. It is good, but Le Guin does not write too much about technology even when she is writing sci-fi, so if you’re looking for a light weight sci-fi book, this is not what you want.

Terry Pratchett: Guards, guards! : Simply brilliant. Probably one of the best books I’ve read from Pratchett, and I’ll definitely read the other ones about the city watch.

Bill Bryson: Notes from a small Island: If you are an alien in UK like me, you have to read this! I’m still reading this one, but it is one of the funniest books I’ve read, and Bryson’s observations about UK is absolutely fantastic. He is likely to become a favourite author for me.

Dear Google, I am not my mother!

sarikan

Yes, I know that you people at Google want to make sure that even my mom can easily use your products, and for your search engine, that is definitely a possibility. However, when it comes to browsers, Google Chrome is way, way too simplified for anyone who’d like to use it for daily work.I am  a developer, a PhD student and many other things, and most of my hats require me to use the web all day. I use tabs, I love tabs, I can’t understand how we used the web browsers without tabs (thanks to Opera, who did this first), but tabs have also evolved in time.For any slightly experienced user, the configuration of tab behaviour matters a lot. For some reason, Google people are not letting plugin developers (called extensions for Chrome by the way) to tap into that functionality.Just so you know, this hurts. This is the only thing that makes me remember that I am  more productive with Firefox. Please, for whatever reason you’re doing this, reconsider your approach.  Apple also makes things very simple for users, but one way or another, they manage to provide power along with simplicity, and when it comes to managing features, you can learn a thing or two from them.