Edmund Lester

This last few weeks have been crazy. They've seen me working days often longer than 12 hours and weekends. And by this I mean the day . The result of this is that I have written almost nothing. To compound my gloom most of the pieces I had sent out in the weeks before the MADNESS started were coming back during this period with rejections, or in one or two cases kind passes (book reviews where the book was not considered what they wanted to cover, although they did say the review itself was fine on both occasions). Add to this spending great deals of time emptying the house so it looks more appealing to anyone coming to view it - we are hoping to sell it and move a little further north - somewhere up near the Peak District would be nice. time consuming work but also depressing. My books are no longer on shelves, but all boxed up and in a storage unit about 12 miles away. I'd guess only about a tenth of them are still here and most of those will be going too. And in the middle o...

One of the authors that first attracted me to science fiction died today. Together with Isaac Asimov, Michael Moorcock and Robert Heinlein, Clarke's books grabbed me and filled me with a passion that has never left me. These men were responsible in a large part for the man I became. I don't think that's an exaggeration. I read sf from the age of nine. It encouraged me towards science and my degree choice. It set me up for the life I've lived - in computing. And more dear to me than just about anything these men began my love affair with books, something I pray will never end. Thank you Sir Arthur. Rest In Peace

I'd established a rhythm with this blog. Writing an entry or two nearly every day - all seemed well. Then the last two weeks happened. Crazy time. Too much work to be done (day job wise) and downtime became recovery time. The little time I had with sufficient energy to write I decided to concentrate on writing things that might make me some money. So sorry about that - for anyone who is reading this blog. But I am hoping that things may return to normal somewhat, and that I can keep writing these entries. Anyway, the last two weeks! Well I have done more than just right code. Visual Basic and SQL hasn't been my entire life. Watched some good TV - Moonlight is a bit of a favourite, Dexter is seriously good and there have been the old favourites - Ashes to Ashes, Torchwood, Stargate , ER and the CSIs. and of course Time Team for my archaeology fix. All have been good, the return of Carson Beckett in Stargate Atlantis being surprisingly good - I was expenting a contrived little st...

The team were back in the west country, down near Bath investigating the site of Francis Popham's mansion at Hunstrete. Once more it looked like a quick and easy dig, after all they had pictures and inventories of the mansion. But once again the truth ended up being more than was portrayed, the team uncovering a nice piece of Georgian deception with regards the house... After more than a decade of watching this show I am still totally hooked.

End of last week we received free DVDs for a couple of horror movies (reviewing has its perks). These were Furnace and The Ferryman. Well the first of these has been watched and it was a little disappointing. Good start but it just didn't really deliver. It's also quite out of time in some ways. Since the Scream Trilogy came out with tongue-in-cheek discussions of the "rules" of horror movies, horror has changed format. The old style "it's behind you" style is gone for the most part, as are the "shapes seen in shadows" style scares of old. This film, however, has them both in spades... Book wise the last week has been the new Stephen King book Duma Key. King has lost none of his ability to write characters, but this didn't have the edge of his earlier work. The scares are not there, although he still knows how to write great characters.

I've watched three rugby matches in three weeks (of teams I support) - and each one has been terrible. England in two of them were atrocious, and now Leicester Tigers have played far far below the level they are capable of, and lost to London Irish. Irish didn't play all that well themselves, it's just that Leicester made mistake after mistake after mistake. Frustrating.

More nights, more TV. I know it's hardly the most inspiring thing to blog about but I don't go out every night so, okay for that matter any night really - I'm not a social animal (I may have mentioned that before). But please don't think I sit in front of the TV all the time I'm not working. I don't. To be honest outside the shows mentioned in my blog and the occasional watching of an episode of the Book Show on Sky Arts and the odd documentary I don't tend to watch much TV. But that's digression. The TV shows - Torchwood is still great. The episode in question was fairly unoriginal in concept, a new team member has appeared out of nowhere, and everyone knows who he is and seems to believe he's been there for a few years. So obviously this new guy's not going to be good news. This has been done before repeatedly and this could have been a pretty poor episode. But to be honest the plot here was incidental to playing with the backstories of the cha...