dave.org.uk

Books I Read in April 2008

A lot of books this month. But you might think that there was a bit of cheating going on.

The Bible: The Biography - Karen Armstrong
This is a book I've wanted to read ever since I saw it published in hardback last year. Actually, it wasn't quite what I expected. I was expecting a lot more about the writing of the bible, but that was all covered in the first couple of chapters. Most of the book was about the history of the interpretation of the bible. It was all very interesting stuff. I recommend it.

The Children of Men - P.D. James
Something else that I had wanted to read for some time. In this case, my interest was piqued by seeing the film adaptation last year. This was one of the best films I saw last year so I really wanted to read the book. This is the first PD James book that I have read and I was very pleasantly surprised. The plot has major differences to the film, but it's a great story and well worth reading. I understand that it's not typical of James's work though so I'm not usre that I'll be rushing to read any more of her books.

Linux Networking Cookbook - Carla Schroder
Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two - William Hagen, Brian Jones
The first little bit of cheating. Neither of these books are really meant to be read from cover to cover, but I skimmed over them both over the course of a few days. Both of them do exactly what it says on the tin and if you're interested in Linux systems administration then you'll find one or both of these books to be useful.

The Fifth Child - Doris Lessing
This is this months book club book. I've read a couple of her books in the past and this has left me wanting to read more. I'll probably start by tracking down a copy of the sequel - Ben in the World .

Lyra's Oxford - Philip Pullman
More cheating here. This book is about twenty pages long. And the pages are tiny. I read it because I'm a big fan of the His Dark Materials books. But this is a pretty pointless extension to that series. I bit of a waste of time to be honest. But not much time.

A Spot of Bother (Mark Haddon)
Like pretty much everyone I know, I read and loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime a couple of years ago. That was always going to be a really difficult book to follow. This isn't in the same league at all. But that's not saying it's a bad book at all. Far from it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone. It's just a shame that its predecessor gives everyone such high expectations which, realistically, were highly unlikely to be met.

Slam - Nick Hornby
A new Nick Hornby book is always a cause for celebration. This is apparently aimed at young adults, but you barely notice that. The protagonist is younger than you'll find in Hornby's others books, but other than that we're on familiar territory amongst the middle class of Islington. There were a couple of chapters that didn't really work for me. I can't go into too much detail without giving spoilers, so I'll just say that Hornby doesn't seem particularly comfortable writing supernatural events.

Update: Removed one book which I realised I'd read in May, not April.

Blogging Nonsense

One of the joys of MPs having blogs is that you often get to see what they are really like without their utterances going through the filter of the party spin machine. And it's amazing how often so many of them make complete fools of themselves.

Today's example is Nadine Dorries. Of course as a Tory she's very happy about the results of yesterday's council elections. I can't really blame her for that. But does she channel that happiness into a well-researched and interesting article about why people voted the way they did? Did she write something about how the Tory party can build on this success in order to maximise their chances in the next general election?

I think you can guess the answer to those questions.

No, she wrote some childish nonsense[1] comparing Gordon Brown to Andy Pandy.

Oh dear boys and girls, Gordon's not looking very well today.

Lets put him back in the desk shall we and see if he can face coming out tomorrow.

There's obviously a very good reason why she isn't making large sums of money as a comedy writer.

Voters of Mid Bedfordshire, is this really what you want from your MP? She is making you a laughing stock. Please use your vote more wisely next time.

[1] It's possible that this link might not go to exactly where it needs to. Dorries "blog" (it's not really a blog at all) has a ridiculous URL scheme which means it's impossible to link directly to individual items.

Understatement

From a geek mailing list where they are currently retreading the endless arguments about why there aren't more women in Open Source.

Now arguably, "chick" is a bit derogatory.

It's not even ironic British understatement - the writer isn't British. But it's a good indication of just how far we still have to go.

Pub Quiz

For a number of years now we've taken part in a weekly quiz in a local pub. We do pretty well and occasionally win. The chap that runs this quiz runs a number of other quizzes and a few times he's held a Champions' League night where top teams from all of his pubs come together to compete. We do well enough to be invited to these nights.

So we weren't too surprised to be invited to one a couple of months ago. The difference with this one was that it was being filmed by Channel 4. According to  the quizmaster, they had been in touch with him as they wanted to make a documentary about the rise in pub quizzes in London. They had asked him to put on a night that they could film. He got together about thirty of his best teams and Channel 4 added in another couple of teams - one of which was one man one his own.

We turned up and were given a release to sign. My wife pointed out that it was a bit more comprehensive than we had expected. It basically said that we agreed not to tell anyone anything about anything that happened that night. She said something about how she could understand why people like Derren Brown might need a form like that, but that it seemed a bit over the top for a documentary about pub quizzes.

But anyway we signed it and for that reason I'm not going to tell you anything about what the Channel 4 people did that night. I'll just say that it was a standard Champions' League pub quiz and we really didn't do very well.

Our friend the quizmaster got in touch on Friday and said he'd heard that the programme was going to be transmitted this coming Friday (May 2nd). I had a quick look at the Channel 4 listings for that night and couldn't see anything that looked like a documentary about pub quizzes, so I asked if he knew what the title of the programme was.

He replied that it was the new series of Derren Brown's "Trick or Treat".

So I shall be watching on Friday with great excitement.

Update: The Telegraph has an article explaining what is going on.

Updated update: No idea why the Telegraph have taken that story down. They've replaced it with this similar one.

Perl Mongers Census 2008

We're organising another Perl Mongers census this year. The last one was in 2005 so it's about time. In the next few weeks all Perl Mongers group leaders will receive an email asking them to fill in a census return for their group.

The email will be sent to the group leaders using the email address we have in the PM group directory. And that's why I'm giving this advance notice. If you're in a Perl Monger group then please check that the contact details we have for your group are correct. If anything needs to be amended then please ask your group leader to get in touch with us to fix it.