the-shrike.net

Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, who co-wrote the epic film “2001: A Space Odyssey” and raised the idea of communications satellites in the 1940s, died Wednesday at age 90, an associate confirmed. Clarke died early Wednesday at a hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since the 1950s, said Scott Chase, the secretary of the nonprofit Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.

(source: http://www.arthurcclarke.net/)

One minute of silence for one of the greatest genius of science-fiction and a marvellous visionary.
Today is a sad day :(

While an awulf lot of things are changing all around me, and in my life (most of them in a nice way, indeed) a lot of the good old habits are just as true and real as they used to be.

Having moved to London, all I have with me right now is the strictly necessary to survive, so even if in my mind the equation wasn’t exactly like that, at the time I packed my bags apparently the final decision was to give priority to clothes against books ad DVDs. Of course, that doesn’t mean at all my reader (or watcher) side is sleeping or dead, quite the contrary. Understanding the inevitable fact that a monthly rent is a fixed expense that can definitely be quite heavy on someone’s bank account, doesn’t mean that you’ll stop yourself buying books&DVDs neither, especially when you have new empty shelves in your room ;)

This to say, buy me books!
Anyway, being 5:40 in the night I quite lost myself, but all the point of this was to introduce a useful customization for all you Opera users out there.
Adding something like this:

[Search Engine 47]
Name=Amazon.co.uk ISBN
Verbtext=0
URL=http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/%s
Query=
Key=ai
Is post=0
Has endseparator=0
Encoding=iso-8859-1
Search Type=0
Position=-1
Nameid=0
Deleted=0

to your search.ini (for me located in /home/curson/.opera/search.ini) or by editing directly the new search from your Tools > Preference > Search Opera menu, you’ll be able to search for a book on Amazon.co.uk (I’m quite sure it works in a pretty similar way for any other International Amazon website) using it’s ISBN number. Quite useful if you want to be sure you’re looking at a particular edition, or if you don’t want to end up buying something with a similar name but completly different from what you’re looking for.
A very similar search can be created to just look for a title or author (or just about everything…) by using http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/&keywords=%s&index=blended this code as the URL/address field. Note that there %s is the search variable you’re going to type in Opera address bar after the relative Search Key (for the ISBN example above, that Search Key was ai, but you can decide whatever you like as long as unique among your other customized searches).

That’s it, I’m still sleepless, but with a more efficient Opera browser at my disposal to spend my sleepless nights looking for effective way to spend my money :)

A quick consideration before leaving to take a flight (off-duty) to Mombasa to be repositioned in order to operate the inbound flight from there to Milan on Wednesday. Actually: my first time on a long-haul intercontinental route as a passenger. And the first time on a B767 too! I’m excited.

Back to the consideration. Indeed, there are actually two of them.
Last 10 days I’ve been in Maldives for work, on a long shift, and like it’s my common habit there, I literally devoured 3 books (from start to finish).
Two of them are definitely worth a quick note each.

[Putin’s Russia by Anna Politkovskaya]
I loved it. Well, not in the common sense of the term. It’s a sad book, especially for someone like me that is so fond and so fascinated by the fate of Russia.
Very revealing and reading it while following on SKYNews TV the poisoning spy-game that was going on in the UK (and in Italy too) has been a little strange adding more and more thoughts on the “whole” status of the Russian life/system now.
I am usually not very “fond” of the all against books or movies, always a little suspicion about they telling the actual truth, but even taking in mind a little “dramatization” due to hate towards the person (President Putin in this case, take President Bush for Moore and it’s the same…), the stories narrated there are more than just scary, are definitely tremedously scaring!
Looking forward to read also A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya as soon as possible, I suggest Putin’s Russia as a must read to anyone who would like to take a look in the present of Russia.
It’s probably not the whole story, but a lot of it for sure, and well written too.

[The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond]
Shame on me! Shame on me!
Still, up until 10 days ago, I haven’t read what could be considered one of the many pages of a possible bible of the Open Source community. In my defence I can say I had in the past already read the on-line version of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, so what I was really missing was the other essayes published with it by O’Reilly.
I know have filled that missing in my Open Source history culture, and I’m feeling better :p
Right now quite outdated in its examples (due to publishing date) but a must read for everyone interested in the subject!

…what I could have never thought was that this blog would have seen so much almost-book-reviews like it’s doing. Oh well, maybe it’s just because I love reading.
Now I go back to pack things, to play with my new Samsung SGH-Z560 and to get ready to leave.

It’s a strange period here. Well, when exactly is not?
Lately I’m finding myself enjoying some addictions, more than I usually do and more specific to precise and focused things.
Curious.
At least.

While my body let me (painfully) know that it’s still dealing with what I ate in Mombasa 3 days ago (and thus I’m addicted to some minor quantities of pills :p) and I prepare him for Monday 3-days trip to Dominican Republic, I distract myself with some activities that are really sucking occupying my last days. Fully.

• books: monthly payment has arrived, and so another order from amazon.co.uk has been done. I really don’t know where I am going to put them (my room is out of space…) but I’ll deal with that when they’ll arrive. For the moment, I’m avidly reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Quite nice by now…
• music: I am listening to Animal I have become by Three Days Grace & Call me when you are sober by Evanescence at least 16 times a day. Each. Probably my sister will kill me soon.
• games: gTetrinet wasn’t enough. I needed more fire power. Well, not exactly following that statement, I emerged OpenTTD. Don’t know how the original closed-source games was, but believe me, this open-source one rocks. Really a fantastic simulation transportation game. I AM RICH :D

Everything is going fine, expect a “books” review soon. I’m reading pretty interesting things here while I’m abroad (when Discovery Channel, ESPN or HBO don’t tune fine), and if I’ll like them, I’ll let you know.

When you start to read a book that won a Hugo Award, you are pretty sure that at least a little part of you will enjoy the ride and won’t be disappointed but the book.
But when you read a book that has won a Hugo Award (in 2002) and that is incidentally also written by Neil Gaiman, the more than just famous author of Stardust, Neverwhere and creator of The Sandman, you clearly know you’re going to enjoy every single word of the book and that in the end you would have wanted it to last for another five houndreds pages.
At minimum.

Let’s say Neil is not someone who will betray you neither this time!

American Gods is definitely brilliant, it’s one of those books who will keep you sit down on your sofa (or laying on your bed… whatever) just repeating to yourself: “one more page and I’ll close it for tonight…“.
It’s a mind capturing, fantasy stimulating and heart beating experience, and following Shadow (the main character) through all the story is something you won’t forget easily. Gaiman is really a superb writer, with a huge gift for fantastic imagination: it happears he can easily look into all these other worlds we’re only able to fantasize about: breath-taking.

Never the less to say, my Amazon wishlist is full of his works (I need to read again Neverwhere and Stardust in english… I am definitely starting to hate reading things that are translated in italian), included the brand new Fragile Things: so much to buy and so few moneys!

Anyway: I pretty suck at review (in general), but trust me, you want to take a look at Gaiman’s works!
They’re all worth it ;)

Stepping out of the shower, dripping wet, to answer the phone that’s ringing with the custom sound you set for Livingston Crew Control Department is not a good way to spend you afternoon. That’s something that must be a firm-point in the life of a well trained flight attendant :)

Anyway, they called me to cancel my tomorrow trip to Mombasa. I had it planned to last until Saturday and in its place I now have 3 boring stand-by days (a 07 to 17 shift). That’s not too bad after all, I’ve flown a lot this month and I’m going to earn enough money, but still I’m already missing being on a plane since I stepped out of it 2 days and half ago.
I suppose I’ll take this as a good sign of the fact I like this job a lot, and that’s all I need to know!

But you know, when you’re sitting in front of your computer with an outside temperature of +35°C (I bet near my laptop is at least some degrees higher) in a boring Wednesday afternoon, we all know what’s going to happen…

Dispatch estimate for these items: 8 Aug 2006 - 13 Aug 2006
Delivery estimate: 10 Aug 2006 - 18 Aug 2006

1 “The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials S.)”
Philip Pullman; Paperback; £5.09
(approx. EUR 7,45)

1 “Olympos (Gollancz SF S.)”
Dan Simmons; Paperback; £7.54
(approx. EUR 11,04)

1 “Ilium (Gollancz S.F.)”
Dan Simmons; Paperback; £6.65
(approx. EUR 9,74)

1 “The Subtle Knife”
Philip Pullman; Paperback; £5.09
(approx. EUR 7,45)

…my credit card is going to suffer!
Last time I bought a book was too far away in time, and that was causing me pain, a pain Amazon.co.uk helped me to get rid off. I love internet shopping. My bank doesn’t agree too much on that, but who cares ;)

I’ll read them around the world next month.
*yuk yuk*