Interview with the Vampire
November 20, 2005
I’ve been intending to read some of Anne Rice’s books for some time, but I’m sad to say I’m fairly disappointed with this one. It is a surprisingly boring book about a fascinating subject. As I read, I kept thinking “Surely something will happen soon?”, but unfortunately it never did.
We’re a fly on the wall in an interview with the vampire Louis. He is made a vampire by Lestat, who (presumably) in an effort to control Louis tells him very little about their origin and claims they are alone in the world. Though I disliked Lestat from start to finish, Louis seemed OK at first. After a while it turns out he’s the worse of the two though. He’s a pompous and depressing sentimental coward whose moping around and whining about his cursed existence soon gets on your nerves.
The Last Continent
November 13, 2005
The Librarian is critically ill and keeps turning into a hairy deck-chair, Ponder Stibbons becomes the right hand of a God and Rincewind drinks a lot of Australian beer. No worries.
New mobile phone
November 9, 2005
Nadia has bought me a new mobile phone. Up till now I’ve been with O2, but this is on Orange. This means my mobile number will change in the nearby future, but my old phone will be lying around turned on for a transition period.
I’ve been wanting to change phones for a number of reasons, chief among them being:
- The keylock on my current Siemens phone (a c65, I think) is shockingly bad; in effect, it has no keylock. The result is that my phonebook is chock-full of garbage such as “##*#”, “###” and variations of that theme, and my bag has a habit of calling people on its own.
- I’m really fed up with being on pay-as-you-go. Every time I really need to call I’m out of credit, and O2’s credit top-up procedure blows goats. Unfortunately with my usage (5-10 ppm) switching to a contract phone is going to be at least twice as expensive as pay-as-you-go.
- I want bluetooth synching to my Mac’s addressbook. I abhor typing on phones, and trying to manually keep two sets of address books in synch is rather horrible.
- I have a terrible sense of direction so I’d like the ability to check google maps, streetmap or multimap when I’m trying to find the place I’ve agreed to meet with friends.
Thoughts about the new phone: since this is a Nokia clam phone, the keylock is not going to be an issue now. I’m still going to be on pay-as-you-go, but Orange offer direct debit so maybe this will not be so bad. Still no bluetooth synching; since getting a contract phone is out of the question, bluetooth phones are way out of my price range. However, Nadia transferred the numbers from my old phone for me, so I didn’t have to do that part, at least. As for maps, this thing does GPRS but I’m not sure if I can use any of the mapping services with that yet.
Update: After advice from a friend I’ve now gone through the steps required for keeping my old phone number. You can stop panicking now.
Jingo
November 8, 2005
Jingo is the 21st Discworld novel. I finished reading it last weekend, but never got around to saying anything about it. I generally don’t, as there are so many of them. I thought I’d mention this one though, because it is ludicrously political. Though many of the previous books in the series deal with speciesism, this is the first one that deal with racism, and makes for a pretty darn good satirical critique of it.
Battenberg cakes
November 8, 2005
I was reading The Lost Continent (A Discworld Novel) on the tube home. In particular, I was reading the bit where the wizards were marooned in time and space, hinting to the 3-foot god threatening to “visit them with boils” that a bottle of wine, or a cake, would be more appreciated. The Senior Wrangler were saying “I’d prefer that, what is it, you know, the cake with the pink and yellow squares, and the sugary marzipan on the outside” and I just had to stop at Sainsbury’s on the way back. Apparently they’re called Battenbergs, and pretty good they are too. The best bit is that Nadia and her sister don’t like them, so there’s more for me. :)
SVK Comitter
November 8, 2005
Fireworks
November 4, 2005
I hate fireworks. Ok, so I don’t mind slick choreographed displays, but the incessant bangs at all times of day (and night) that is currently going on is driving me up the wall. The last week or so have again highlighted how lucky people are in Norway. Over there, selling fireworks is illegal except for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Sending up fireworks is only legal on New Year’s Eve, as far as I can remember.
Dinner & dessert
November 2, 2005
Today Nadia drummed up a pasta and cheese-sauce bake with chicken, mushroom and onion for dinner. This was followed by bread-and-butter pudding with accompanying meringue for dessert, all home-made of course. The only downside was that I had to whisk the egg whites for the meringue. We don’t have a mechanical whisk, so I had to do it by hand. Puh!
If Michelangelo wrote books…
November 1, 2005
…would his approach be to start with the Bible and remove all characters not looking like they’re part of a best-selling novel?
