Atomic Playboy

Woohoo, another meme to spread. And this one I really like, book and scifi junkie that I am. Stolen from Michael Hanscom:

The Guardian UK ran a survey voting for the top 20 geek novels written since 1932. The books I’ve read are marked in bold, the ones I also own are marked in italics.

1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell
3. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip K Dick
5. Neuromancer — William Gibson
6. Dune — Frank Herbert
7. I, Robot — Isaac Asimov
8. Foundation — Isaac Asimov
9. The Colour of Magic — Terry Pratchett
10. Microserfs — Douglas Coupland
11. Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson
12. Watchmen — Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
13. Cryptonomicon — Neal Stephenson
14. Consider Phlebas — Iain M Banks
15. Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert Heinlein
16. The Man in the High Castle — Philip K Dick
17. American Gods — Neil Gaiman
18. The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy — Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
20. Trouble with Lichen — John Wyndham

Of the ones I haven’t read, I have read something else by the same author in most of the cases. And the rest are in my reading list. I need to return some books to the library on Monday anyway, so I’ll keep my eyes open.

The Escapist is a new e-zine featuring a ton of names that are well-known amongst the gaming intelligentsia — the first issue has an article by Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade, where I am a moderator on their forums.

You can read the stuff on the site, via feeds or as a downloadable PDF, and even have the PDF mailed to you when there’s a new issue.

The site looks good, though I would probably have a stroke if I started thinking about accessibility issues. Also, it’s very annoying that the site hijacks your arrow keys and PgUp/PgDn keys for site navigation.

Also, the site has lots of signs that tell me it’s powered by Ruby on Rails.

(Via Pixel Kill)

Today, August the 6th, it was 58 years since Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima. In the words of Plastic: Those who forget the blast are doomed to repeat it.

Let’s hope that the anniversary of the bomb will survive long enough to see its 60th anniversary before another atomic device is detonated. Though my hopes are not high.

Today is towel day. Don’t leave home without a towel. I have mine around my shoulders. (That I just got out of the bath is a pure coincidence.)

A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value — you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine soredly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a brush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Douglas Adams, 1952-2001

Haujobb, Decoded Feedback, Beborn Beton and a bunch of other bands I’ve never heard of before (Synapscape, This Morn’ Omina, Empusae) will be playing at Tinitus at Universitetet in May. I’ll be there.

Empusae sounds interesting: “Mixing equally between Rhythm n’ Noise, dark ambient, suggestive horror film soundtracks and EBM, the music of Empusae forces itself into the listener’s mind and refuses to be forgotten. Empusae is the one-man project of belgian Nicolas Van Meirhaeghe who also appears as a live member in Ah Cama-Sotz and Implant to mention a few.”

Right. I’m off to hunt some MP3s of the bands I haven’t heard before.

(Later) Looks like there’s a pre-party as well. Dupont and Run Level Zero will be playing, as well as a bunch of DJs from Tech Noir and other places.

I hereby declare that Dupont sucks. This because their site won’t let me enter because they say I use “Netscape.” That’s Mr. Mozilla to you, punk!

Most interesting. Today I stumbled across two old aquaintances: Henrik Torstensson and Tommy K Johansson, who wrote a comment on Mymarkup.net and Jogin.com, respectively.

Here’s the interesting part: they have both been my chief editors at one time. How big are the odds of me finding them both on the net on the same day?

Tommy used to run a Swedish site called “PC Online Magazine” (domain since stolen by squatters) with various news items about computer related stuff. I wrote a bunch of blurbs and a few articles.

I first got into contact with Henrik via Fidonet (long since dead, though the rigor mortis has yet to set in), where he asked me if I wanted to write for a small newsletter called Spelnytt (approx. “Game News”), which I did. And later, Henrik became the chief editor for Missil, a Swedish game magazine (which I reviewed games for) that began as an online magazine and eventually existed in paper form as well. Also dead and buried, as far as I know.

By tomorrow I’m expecting to stumble across two or three editors from Codex.

I’ll drop Tommy and Henrik a mail later in the week and say that I’m still alive.