Murderbots
Am I completely enamoured by casting a giant manly man as the androgynous-ish Murderbot? No.
Am I excited for Murderbot? Yes.
I just need to finish reading all the books before it comes out.
Blogs are back, baby!
In many ways they never left. But often they were ignored, left to collect cyber-dust and possibly go horribly out of date, needing many updates as they are revived. But they’re coming back. The Great Centralisation that started in the early 2000s with the advent of Facebook seems to be coming to an end. At least in my circles. Old blogs are being revived. New blogs are popping up. People are talking about RSS feeds again. Platforms. Favourite way of doing formatting.
It’s really magnificent.
But then – how do you keep track of everyone’s blogs? How do you know what to pay attention to, if there isn’t an algorithm that manages it all for you?
There are ways. And here are mine.
Some blogs let you subscribe to a newsletter that sends when the blogger posts a new posting. I do this with a few of my blogs. Not this one, though. It’s a nice way of doing it if you don’t hate emails. I don’t actually get many good personal emails any more – it’s mostly notifications – so getting an email full of delightful content from people I like is really refreshing.
RSS. Really Simple Syndication. A standard that’s been around for 26 years (yikes!) and not changed in the last 16. It’s a standardised XML file of the content on a website. There are many ways you can subscribe to an RSS feed. Your browser can (or should be able to) create what looks like a bookmark folder that updates with all the latest postings from a website. You can get a special feed-reader app on your phone. Or a feel-collecting page on a website. Or in an email client in a similar way to the bookmark folder in a browser.
Or my favourite way: RSS-to-email. You can run scripts in Git Hub that will gather all the updates from a collection of RSS feeds, format them neatly into an email and send it to you however often you like. I’ve got my email set up to be delivered around 6am, so it’s there to skim as I’m waking up. It’s a bit of a fiddle to configure initially but having updates delivered daily, without me needing to open Yet Another App. I’m checking emails anyway.
I’m trying to collect a nice blogroll here, too. It’s a work in progress, obviously.
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Bookwyrm.
I don’t read a lot. I think it’s because I read slowly. I have occasionally posted reading-log (and one reading-slog) entries here. But I’ve moved that over to Futzle’s Bookwyrm instance.
So. If you’re curious about what I’m reading: https://outside.ofa.dog/user/KO
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Reading Log: All Systems Red
This book came highly recommended by a good friend whose opinions on stuff I generally trust. I mentioned to them that I needed some books for travelling, and they announced that they loved the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. With a lot of planned transit and transfer time in my life, I grabbed all of the available Murderbot books and loaded them on my Kindle, ready to read.
I didn’t do a whole lot of reading on the flights over. It wasn’t until I was on the train, trying to conserve roaming data, from Rome to Pompei that I finished No Way. I started, and finished, All Systems Red on the flights from Catania to Venice. I know it’s a novella – but reading a book in a single sitting is nearly unheard of for me. I think even Matthew Reilly’s Cobalt Blue took me a couple of sessions.
That I managed/could read it in a single sitting says a lot about the novel. It was punchy, interesting, and pure/hard enough Sci-Fi that I was captivated the whole time. I found it very interesting that I assigned a gender to Murderbot before I started reading the book. I wonder if that had something to do with the person who recommended it to me.
I’m moving on to Artificial Condition (the second Murderbot Diaries novel) next.
Quite a few stars out of a few more stars.
Reading Log: No Way
Frank’s back. I guess in many ways he never left. This is the continuation of One Way by Simon Morden.
It’s going to be hard to talk about this book with out spoiling things about One Way. So if you’ve not read One Way, and plan to, you might want to turn away now. Come back once you’ve read it and let me know if you agree with me.
Spoilers below.
You’ve been warned.
I was surprised when Frank was left on Mars in the last book. But I probably shouldn’t have been – it was ripe for a sequel (or more) with the imminent arrival of the NASA crew and all the excitement around that.
The detailed writing style of this novel makes you feel like you’re on Mars with Frank. The fear. The focus. The relief.
I don’t think any of the twists or shocks in No Way surprised me – not like in One Way. It was quite predictable. That said, it was a very enjoyable read.
The final chapter was a doozy for me. Hit me right in the feels.
Let me know what you thought of it.
Reading Log: One Way
Not what I was expecting.
It took me a couple of gos to get stuck in to this. I’m not a voracious reader, and it often takes time for me to get into a book, let alone start one properly. I think maybe I was trying to read it while I was too tired.
Once I got over the hurdle of the first few steps, though, I was hooked and i managed to read this surprisingly quickly.
The book follows Frank as he travels to Mars to establish the first structures there in preparation for the first fleet of the ‘real’ settlers. Things, of course, don’t go according to plan. There weren’t any really surprising plot-twists or turns, and I could have handled some Neal Stephenson-esque deep dives into some of the science around the space suits or habs or something, but it doesn’t happen. There are hints of it, and they were enjoyable, but I would have liked more.
Actually. There was a surprising plot-twist, right at the end. It turns out there’s a sequel. I’m on to that next.