Somehow I have managed to read the tenth and final book in Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series: The Crippled God. Almost a year ago I was saying "I doubt the tenth book will be able to satisfyingly end the story." and I have to agree with myself :)

The book continues where Dust of Dreams ended, but introduces even more characters, all amassing towards a grand finale. But is it grand? And is it, or should it be, a finale? I dare say no, but first a little bit about the content of the book.

The adjunct Tavore does for the entire book things that not even the characters understand. More than that, they follow her, all the time acknowledging that they don't know why. While this may work for short periods of time, it gets annoying and breaks one of the tenets of book writing: allow the reader to sympathize with the characters. How can you, if you don't understand what they are doing? Combine that with Erikson's style of beginning chapters without disclosing who the characters are and having to wait for a few paragraphs before using any names, and you get a book that is hard to enjoy without giving it all your attention. And when you do, people start sobbing and having "raw feelings" and understanding a world of pain from a single word and what not.

To summarize, I believe Erikson finally succumbed to the writer curse of trying to force the reader to think like him. In the end, the pleasure of understanding the situation explain by the author and filling in the blanks with your own imagination is replaced with a vast blank instead.

Then there are the tactical situations. After a rather interesting campaign in Letheras in Dust of Dreams we get a long pointless march that makes no sense whatsoever, problems created for no reason and bad solutions for them. The enemy, the Forkrul Assail, are nothing more than glorified Nazis, running around and spreading their own brand of justice, but having small and clichéd thoughts and not much in the way of actual power. They draw extra power from the heart of the Crippled God in order to boost their grand Akhrast Korvalain magic, but when it is time to unleash it, it pretty much duds, making the reader wonder what the hell happened. Also the military strategy makes no sense whatsoever, down to the individual battles. That could have slipped if Erikson wouldn't have slipped of how Tavore is the greatest strategist of all time. I won't bore you with the details, let's just say that there is much more sobbing than thinking in this book.

And now to return to the grand finale. Not only did I not understand much of it (maybe I am too dumb, who knows?) but it fizzled in comparison to most of the previous books. The battle was not that grandiose, the scheming something only a god would understand, the characters rather bland, the sobbing (did I mention it?), even the Malazan marine was boring in this book. I did enjoy it, but it all felt rushed and soulless. A lot less than I have imagined the ending of this great series to be.

The last qualm I have is with another writer trap: the desire to finish up in a clean way. It has to end with Apsalar in her village and the two meddling Shadow gods like the first book began. It had to end a lot of the pieces of stories sprinkled throughout the books. It had to save people that suffered and have couples reunited. This could have worked for a romantic comedy with werewolves, for example, but not for a series of books that never wasted time on finding boring beginnings and useless endings for its many threads.

The ending of the book betrayed the eight preceding books and some of Ian Cameron's. Perhaps the many voices of the characters always whispering in Steven Erikson's ears for twenty years have finally driven him mad. Or maybe he just got bored.

Ok, time for a summary of TV shows I have wasted my time with since I've written the last post. As usual, my opinion is king and everybody else's sucks... or so I think the usual disclaimer should have sounded. So, here it the dough:

• Doctor Who, Torchwood and even The Sarah Jane Adventures - these British shows are a bit ridiculous, but they are meant to be. I continue to watch them. Torchwood is the only one that goes towards the classic team of professionals battling the forces of evil or whatever, so it was bought by the American Starz channel. The other two are goofy and non violent, which is what I actually like about the Who concept.
• Eureka - nothing has changed, really. There were some stirrings in the storyline, where time travel has changed the future and only some of the people involved are aware of it. I think it's a courageous thing to do in a story, but also a pretty lame cop-out for previous script errors. It's all in the motivation, really.
• House MD - wife watches it, I mainly just fall asleep at it. It has become almost completely non medical and totally confusing. Did you catch the one minute romantic relationship between Cuddy and House? OMFG, OMFG!.. not
• Criminal Minds and Criminal Minds - Suspect Behavior - I like Thomas Gibson and I have always felt like he was the one "making" the Criminal Minds show. What better way to test that theory than make a Criminal Minds spin-off, while taking him almost off the original series episodes? The result is a slightly more boring Criminal Minds and a horrible, horrible Suspect Behavior. And the thing is, I like Forest Whitaker and Janeane Garofalo, so I can't for the life of me understand how a spin-off of a show I like starring these two can fail so miserably!
• Dexter - the show went in a rather boring direction for a while. I mean, you start with a serial killer and you make him a father of three that has a family, all the while trying to make it exciting. Yes, he was almost caught a thousand times and each time the solution was more and more outrageous. Towards the end of season 5 it seemed as Dexter was back on track killing people, but who knows that they will do to him in the sixth season? The latest Dexter book is about cannibals. Yumm!
• Big Love - this show started as interesting, mostly because it was about a culture I know nothing about: polygamist Mormons, and because it starred Bill Paxton. Towards the end, though, it became so repetitive, with all kinds of moronic twists to keep the viewer interested, that I never got the will to watch it end. The episodes of season 5, last of the series, are waiting for me to watch them.
• Fringe - Peter and Fauxlivia are having a baby! Yay! Once I stopped bitching about how lame the show is, how ridiculous the science and how bad the scripts are, I actually enjoyed it. The best show to end a hard day or to start a morning when nothing seems to work. It requires no brain power to watch. Actually, having brain power available makes it unwatchable.
• True Blood - I still enjoy the series, mostly because people are making an effort to act well and keep the script interesting. Also because I started liking it for the vampire/werewolf Louisiana atmosphere mixing the supernatural with the superstupid and the superredneckness and they are still going strong. (yeah, I make up words as I go along)
• Californication - the original smartness of the character spiced with a little sex turned into a lot of gratuitous sex and not too much smartness, but then it turned both sex and smartness up. (What a turn on!) I can't say if that is good or bad, but I've watched season 5 and I am looking forward to the sixth
• Secret Diary of a Call Girl - the show ended, but left avenues open for a continuation. Billie Piper playing a prostitute was a guilty pleasure in itself, but the show was actually very enjoyable. The last season was not nearly as good as the ones preceding so I guess it is a good thing the series ended when they did.
• Entourage - can one keep a show consistent for eight seasons? A lot of people have tried, not many actually succeeded. I enjoy Entourage still, but I feel that the original spunk and friendly youthful energy of the show has dwindled to nothing. Let's see what happens in the eighth and last season.
• Stargate Universe - used to the other two Stargate shows, I was expecting that the last episodes of Universe be ridiculous, self referential, "screw you, we are done" style, below average quality episodes. But no! They are actually going strong and some of the mid season script and acting is making me angry for the show's cancellation. Whoever heard of great episodes in mid season AND when the show is cancelled? Blasphemy!
• V - the second season (and probably last) ended up in a Mortal Kombat way: Shao Khan wins, muhahahahaha! It was a no brainer, really, and I won't feel bad whether it continues or not. The things that I found funny was to use some of the actors in the original series. (yes, indeed, there was another V series in 1983. And yes, I was old enough to watch it then and I did watch it and I don't really care if you don't watch anything created before 1990 :-P )
• Men Of A Certain Age - the show is still smart, funny and tasteful. I keep wondering why is it still on. I can't wait for the second half of the second season
• Weeds - I have to agree with the wife here: enough is enough. The show isn't even about marijuana anymore! And it gets more and more ridiculous by the episode.
• The Good Wife - another great Tony and Ridley Scott work, pun not really intended. Characters are consistent, complex, while the story keeps me interested. Just enough human relationships to make it real, but not too much to make it soapy.
• The Walking Dead - I was expecting a bit more from a zombie series. Apparently it is based on a comic book strip and someone told me it pretty much follows the story there. Well, it doesn't have to! [hint! hint!]
• Haven - the first season of this supernatural "loosely" based on a Stephen King short story ended in an unexpected twist (which was to be expected). Am I waiting impatiently for the second season? Not really.
• Rubicon - show was cancelled. I can't remember anything remotely interesting about it.
• Royal Pains - doctors. That about says it all. This particular brand still has three unwatched episodes waiting for when both me and the wife want to watch it. It doesn't seem likely to happen soon.
• Lost Girl - waiting for the second season. Does not require brain. Still sexy. Canadian.
• Nikita - inertia. That's the only reason I keep watching. I have big mass, you see.
• A Game of Thrones - oh yes! Finally something I want to talk about. Hasn't started yet, but I've read the books and they are great. A feudal fantasy world that is focused on the political machinations in the Seven Kingdoms, with a little magic thrown in to spice things up, but kept nicely in the background. I can hardly wait! It is set to start on the 17th of April
• No Ordinary Family - about a superhero family, I have not really followed the show and meanwhile it was cancelled. bye bye!
• Better with You - it started as a funny show to watch with the girls. It seemed as a humorous comparison of the different stages of marriage. But it became the usual background laughter at people's blatant stupidity thing and I am not enjoying it anymore.
• Shattered - interesting concept, bad execution. Cancelled.
• Falling Skies - a replacement for V? Aliens attack again and a resistance is formed. Set to start in June.
• The Cape - Batman's poor little brother is trying his luck in a city that looks more like Robocop's Detroit than Gotham. Show was lame and has been cancelled, too.
• Outcasts - oh, the humanity! A show with so much promise and so little in the way of proper execution. The premise is that humans fucked up the Earth and in a last ditch effort sent a few colony ships towards a distant planet they named Carpathia. I expected something akin to Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri (yes, old enough to have played that, too!), but in the end it became the quasi mystical "planetary alien entity" thing, mixed with really bad acting and inconsistent scripting. So it got cancelled. It was British, it was cheap, it has potential. They still screwed it up.
• Endgame - I am yet to find the time to watch the pilot of this show. Apparently, it is a Canadian show about a chess player that uses his skills to... you guessed it, solve crimes! If it is anything like Numb3rs, I'll watch the hell out of it. Something tells me it won't be quite like that, though.
• Southpark - still funny as hell and I continue watching it

There are the usual anime shows, too, but I won't list them. The blog entry has gotten long enough.

A while ago I was reporting the release of theStart's latest album, Ciao Baby, and the disappointing direction of their singing. I've revisited them and noticed that Aimee Echo, Jamie Miller and Chelsea Davis started a new band called Normandie which sounds very much like the old theStart, at least from the songs they've published on their MySpace site. Here is a clip from YouTube as well:

I said to myself "I'll just read a few passages of the book, just to relax a little, as I have a lot to do". Yeah right! I've started reading and I didn't stop until it was done. Stonewielder is a classic Malazan Empire book, but also bearing Esslemont's personal touch. There is the catastrophic magic battling immense godly power, while the ordinary soldier (the book focuses on heavies) carries on lead by the tragic commander, there are the weird twists from a perspective to another, the switches from a storyline to another, typical of a Malazan book, but also a bit less epicness and a lot more human failing, more characteristic to Esslemont than to Steven Erikson.

I have to say that I find the title to be a little off. The part of Greymane is quite insignificant until close to the end. A great book, nevertheless, and a nice prelude to The Crippled God, the tenth book (and laaast! :( ) in Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series, that I intend to read as soon as possible.

Don't you hate haters? Never mind that. This kind of question is similar in logic to the CrashIE site that I've just visited (and of the malignant piece of code there - do not open the site with Internet Explorer). Basically, CrashIE is a hater site for Internet Explorer that crashes said browser or at least makes it enter a heavy CPU load cycle. The "solution", they say, is to use better browsers, and you get a nice selection of Opera and Safari and, just to be politically correct, a FireFox icon at the bottom of the page, in between the two other sites that the guy did.

Haters always lose in the end, and this Stanley Shilov will be no exception. No wonder that on his blog he is discussing using Java and Firefox on Ubuntu systems. His extensive experience with Internet Explorer is the thing that probably made him find the hidden bug that a browser will crash if you put it in an infinite loop.

How much of an asshole can you be in order to make a site that will crash some random's guy browser in order to advertise your stupid spellchecker site? BTW, I am writing this in Google Chrome, making said site useless, since it spell checks automatically in any textarea element. Is that the reason what there is no Google Chrome icon on CrashIE?

Bottom line is that you suck ass, Stanley! When I was happy using IE3.0 you weren't even born. I hate you! ;) And, BTW, this is NOT the kind of site that the CodeProject newsletter should have linked to. I am very disappointed in you, guys!

You have to excuse me, I've found this blog that I like, Ars Technica, and I can't seem to stop linking to stories there. This one is just funny: UbiSoft released their newest Assassin Creed game and, in a deluxe version, they included a bunch of extras, including the complete soundtrack for the game. However, when looking closer to the ID3 tags for the songs, it was discovered they were pirated versions, distributed on torrents after being taken from the collector's edition of the game.


There is a "theory" that piracy is enhanced by the fact that it is so easy to use pirated content and so damn annoying using the official, paid, version. So easy, it appears, that UbiSoft people found it more efficient to download the pirated version than to go through inner channels to get the songs. They essentially pirated themselves! If that doesn't make you smile a little, you must not be a geek :)

Just a month ago, overwhelmed by a number unbelievable claims from companies and lawyers at that time, I wrote the blog entry titled Ridiculous self importance, relaying what I thought of those claims. And yet now I am forced to write another one. See what happens when people don't read my blog? :)

Let's start with the already blogged move by Red-Gate to unilaterally rescind a promise they took to keep Reflector free. Just follow the link to the story for details, but keep in mind the general idea: a software company makes a promise that is completely ignored later on.

Moving on to EA Games. Like any commercial company that reaches a certain critical size, they become assholes. I am talking about the game Dragon Age II, a game that EA Games promised in the forums it would not feature SecuROM, but it does (read article here)! The company also completely fails to notify the game buyers that the feature is there. Another article then tells us the story of a player that bad mouthed the company and got banned from the company forums for 72 hours. But during that time, the Dragon Age II game he bought could not be played, either. That really sounds a bit 1984, doesn't it? The screen device watches what you say and then punishes you. Welcome to the future!

The last article (one can only hope) in the asshole saga is about Twitter. This service that I could never find a use for has grown exponentially because of two factors: the social paradigm and the API that allowed people to make their own software on top of Twitter. Having reached the critical size, Twitter now publicly announced that it doesn't need third party applications anymore. "Thank you, guys, but we will be making the money from now on. Thanks again!". This is one of the reasons why I distrust the cloud idea. I give enough control to Google deciding what is relevant for my queries (and hosting this blog :) ) to give it or other cloud providers the physical ownership of my business.

I believe these stories are related to the recent efforts to regulate the Internet and not only that, but also how you will be permitted to use your own computer or mobile device. Just like weird events before World Wars, they are only the predictors of an era in which the web will be increasingly controlled and will become just another commercial platform for companies. These events that look morally and logically absurd are attempts to shift the regulatory framework in a direction or the other, while we remain blissfully ignorant of the battle over our heads.

Hmm, mentioning 1984 and predicting World Wars... am I becoming paranoid? Well, I hope so, because the alternative is that I am right.

Don't worry, it's ok now, my years old computer that I can't get myself to replace. The experience has been very educational and I want to share it with you. Here is what happened: the computer that I keep always on started making strange clanking sounds; they came from the HDD. I got a little concerned, but I didn't have the time to address the problem right then. The computer seemed to work fine so I continued (btw, don't you do that in the same situation :) ) to work on it. Finally the computer reset itself and it wouldn't boot. Or, better said, it would boot for a second and restart. I checked the hard drive cables, I removed and cleaned the processor cooler, I vacuumed the power source. Nothing worked. I took the IDE drive from an older Duron computer and tried to boot with that one. It didn't work either, but then again, I had no guarantee that the old drive was functional.

I was really upset. I had an exam to take, all my data was lost, I had a full schedule for days and, being the end of the month, not enough cash to buy a computer right away. And I needed bank loan formalities like I needed an anal probe. But, I thought, maybe I can take the hard drive at work and copy the data, or at least part of it. And it worked. In fact, the drive worked so well at work that I began to doubt that the HDD had any problems. What could it be? I did have a feeling that it might be from the processor cooler that I had removed to clean. After years of use, the thermoconducting gel that transferred heat from the CPU to the metal radiator was only a dusty crust. I decided to buy a cooler or at least some gel.

Of course, any computer shop that was near my work did not have coolers for my old Athlon processor, so I bought gel and then (to be sure) also a cooler for a more recent processor type. I went home, saw that the radiator was way too large for the processor so I removed the fan from the new cooler and placed it (using ingeniously twisted wires) on the old radiator, then applied it with new gel on the processor. And the computer began to work with no drives attached to it. However, attaching the drive would make it reset itself again.

The culprit was, I assumed, either the motherboard (oh no!) or the power source. I removed the old power source from the Duron computer and replaced it on the Athlon computer. And it worked! With wires and thermoconducting gel I brought my baby back to life. I was better than MacGyver! However, the new source would make a really high pitch sound when I turned the computer off and a loud fan noise when I turned it on. I had no intention of buying a new power source for an old computer, I just wanted to make it work.

So I went to my office and borrowed three power sources that had been replaced with newer models. Went back home... none of them worked. As computer parts go, the power source is both the most solicited and the less standard item. There are unlimited ways a power source can fail and the effects on the computer are always surprising. All three displayed some (different) sort of partial functionality. I was considering opening them up and making a Frankensteinian source from them. I know nothing of electronics, but how hard can it be (vision: me burned to a crisp by an electrical fire after having my heart stop due to electric shock). However, I did remember that the source in the Athlon computer was not the original source. I had replaced it with a newer model a while ago and I had kept the old one. I rummaged through my stuff and found the old power source. It worked, it had a somewhat loud fan, but not that loud and it didn't make any electrical high pitched noises. Saved!

I was congratulating myself on repairing the computer using only the things in my house (all but the new cooler) when I remembered that I had an old 500Gb external drive that wouldn't work unless you applied power from the computer power source to the internal drive in the box. And so I did that (using wires again, because the adapter from the old power port to the new got lost somewhere) and backed up all the data from the drive that I thought died. Now I have a backup!

And if I am here, why not borrow a voltmeter and try to figure out how to wire up this external drive so I can use it without all the wires sticking out of it? So the story continues, as this is what I intend to do. I am a guy, tinkering is in my DNA, and it is so satisfying. Also, it helps seeing the uncomprehending look on my wife's face and the horror in her eyes when she sees more wires. It's fun! :)

I am the kind of guy that uses a piece of software until he has a really good reason to change it. I don't try new stuff if I am satisfied with what I've got and I am all for second chances when mistakes are made. After all, I am not immune to the occasional error. However, from this day on I am fully switching from Internet Explorer to Chrome.

Wipe that smirk off your face, I happen to think that IE is a reasonable browser and, given the hypothetical situation where Google would have made their browser compatible with Internet Explorer rather than the standards, you would all curse at FireFox right now. Besides, this is not about the standards at all. Firefox is still not on my list of available choices. It is sluggish, pretentious and buggy.

The thing is that parameters have changed. I now use the browser to quickly get answers to questions or to open RSS feed blog articles. Before I was using it to make ASP.Net applications and web applications and I still think Internet Explorer 8 developer tools are nicer and easier to use than Firebug, not to mention the horrible confusing developer tools on Chrome. Now I am free (partially) of web development and I can rejoice. Also, sites were more compatible with IE than any "standard" browser and it is not the case any more.

The downloading window from Internet Explorer always made more sense to me: have an option of Open, Save and Cancel and do it in another process so you can close the windows that spawned the download. Then it opens or you just go to the file and use it, you know where you saved it. I think this is the only thing I will miss from Internet Explorer, though.

Let's summarise:

• Chrome opens instantly, letting you write something in the address bar immediately and having autocomplete for search term as well as web addresses. Internet Explorer blocks the CPU for a second or two and, even if it lets you write something in the address bar, it hickups just so that what you wrote is truncated. Firefox is so keen to update every fucking extension that it takes forever to start. Yeah, I know, FF4 is way better. Not compared to Chrome it isn't.
• Internet Explorer is supposed to support the new Silverlight wonder technology. Unfortunately, every single SL video I open is sluggish, blocks my mouse, doesn't respond to simple commands like Space to pause and arrows to skip and every Silverlight app is alower than their Flash counterpart. I've just wasted one hour today to uninstall with a special tool the older Silverlight version as the installer for the new one brutally stopped with a "generic error message". Well, screw that! I would rather download the videos and run them in a "generic" video player
• Javascript: it works 8 times faster on Chrome that on Internet Explorer 8. I know they've just released Internet Explorer 9, but it won't work on Windows XP. I have an old computer, it works fine, I want a browser for it without buying a trillion dollar Windows 7 license. You can't provide it for me, Microsoft!
• HTML5: it is supported in Chrome. If I ever want to start web dev again, I would go with that
• Extensions: I am not a big fan of extensions as they slow the browser down. I do prioritize speed. However, I have AdBlock Plus installed on Chrome and I couldn't install it (even if I have tried emulating it) on Internet Explorer. Having no flashing nonsense on a page when I am reading the text on it is wonderful. Try it!

I could find even more reasons if I think about it longer. Like a long relationship going bad, you start noticing all the things you hated only after you break up, but break it up I do. So there it is, found me a new girlfriend and she is chrome shiny.

I am not one for jokes, really. Actually, I am quite a neurotic person always fixating on the negative. But this story really made me laugh. It is a bit geeky, but not too much and I think that anyone who ever went to a job interview can relate.

Here it is: What would Feynman do?

From early ages we learn to listen to the people around us, but only at a later time we get to understand that what those people are saying may not be true or in our advantage. I believe this sets us up for the rest of life to partially believe even the most ridiculous claims for the sole reason that someone has uttered them. And who better to take advantage of this than politicians and lawyers.

Check out these stupid ideas:

• Ad blocking may not be entirely legal - In other words, if someone were to help you personally to avoid all the annoying flashing and blinking and popping ads on a site, they would infringe some law of revenue. While this may sound preposterous, try googling for AdBlockPlus and you will see a myriad pages accusing successful ad-blockers of diminishing web site revenues. And if you think this is just the lament of sore losers happy to distribute their content at almost no cost on the Internet, but wanting to take money from you unencumbered, or if you think that being your browser, your computer and your money paying for the connection you should have some sort of rights, check this out: CoralQQ author arrested in 2007.
• Free Internet porn is unfair competition to pay sites! - I may soon be accused of distributing free content on my blog as unfair competition to the ad ridden ones, if that is the case. I sure wouldn't want to hurt those, no sir. I find it terribly funny that the case against free porn was dismissed as an action designed to censor free speech (in legal terms a SLAPP).
• Making software that allows one to make better use of software or a device, be it a computer, XBox, PlayStation or IPhone, is illegal! - As you can see from the Wikipedia link someone wrote in the first paragraph "The distribution and use of cracked copies is illegal in almost every developed country". Major arrested development! You may have heard that recently the unhackable PlayStation3 has been hacked. The funny thing is that with each new version, Sony seems to remove functionality, making PlayStation one of the few devices that are better old than new. When they found out about the hack Sony started a major law action against sites that post the hack solution for their crappy console. Apparently, their perspective is that you never owned the console, but you "rented it", while spending time to make software that allows you, the user, to do what you want with the thing you paid good money for, but is still not yours, it's illegal. They phrase it in a very funny way, too, saying that the hacking actions "are circumventing effective protection methods". Well, they aren't very effective, now, are they?
• Major sites that distribute large content like video should pay extra; people watching should pay extra, too; ISPs should pay a lot; the Internet should be split into low rent and high rent areas. One might argue that since one does pay for the Internet connection at both ends, it should not be an issue what they are doing with it. That may be too late for Canadians, who always seemed very decent to me, as they got a new law voted on the 25th of January allowing Usage Based Billing for ISPs. People are now outraged and are protesting rather than swallow it, but already the coolness of Canada has been forever sullied in my eyes.
• Using encryption of your own data on your own device is illegal! - The Indian government demanded that Blackberry find a way to allow authorities to read the encrypted data on their devices or at least disable the option for Indian devices, else face a national ban. Of course, they "reasoned" it is all for the sake of the people and against terrorist acts. It now seems unlikely they will proceed with the ban, but still, the whole thing begs the question: how come they didn't ask this of other device manufacturers? Also, it may be of some interest to the reader that all major instant messaging tools like Yahoo, MSN (now Windows Messenger) or GTalk do not feature encryption. Skype does, but guess what? They also provide some eavesdropping tools.

The list could go on and on and on, but these were both startlingly ridiculous and pretty recent. Apparently, the DRM bug, the one that made people sell you things and then consider it's still their property, is still alive and thriving. Most such beliefs come from the power we give other by not reacting. It is easier for us to do nothing than do something, so it is easy to take advantage by positioning the average human so that he has to do something to thwart your plans.

Kanon Wakeshima has a cool cello and voice song, taken from the soundtrack of an anime, of course, but still, a pretty cool song: Kanon Wakeshima - Suna No Oshiro




Emilie Autumn
has some really nice instrumental songs, like the one I put here, and some nice voice songs. Unfortunately I don't like the instrumentation of the voice songs. I am still looking for a perfect crazy electric violin and voice song, but it may be that singing and playing the violin is impossible or at least too difficult. So here is Emilie Autumn - Manic Depression:

It appears that a British project, secretly conducted by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, has produced a method of encapsulating hydrogen into microparticles of porous material. The result is something that acts like a liquid, burns like hydrogen and can be used inside normal cars without any engine modification. The price they propose is 1.5$ per gallon, which is 0.396$ per liter or 0.2915 euros. What is cool about it is that they don't need to extract any resource in order to produce this miracle fuel.

Could THIS be the end of oil? Frankly I am amazed that this news reached me and not the one about Stephen Bennington found dead in a ditch somewhere. I can only hope that the secrecy of the project paid off and that the guys at Cella Energy have really managed to find the solution while under the radar of Big Oil. Or maybe it is simply the time in which the dependency on oil has become a bigger threat to national security than the lack of funding coming from oil companies.

Link to the original news: Breakthrough promises $1.50 per galon synthetic gasoline with no carbon emissions

Update: I may have spoken too soon. A NewScientist article explains the process in a slightly different light. The beads do store hydrogen, but they must be heated in order to release that hydrogen, then the hydrogen would be used in fuel cells. That is at odds with the idea that you can use it as gasoline in a petrol tank car. Oh, well, I hope they get it right someday.

Another interesting List of Wikipedia is the list of religious texts. It's a medium sized list, although I suspect it is not nearly complete and that some of the works there are pretty big.

I am not much on religion, but I wonder what one would come to think of if presented with all the texts in the list, exposed to them without any cultural bias. Would some sort of distilation of the concept of religion emerge from it, or would everybody just choose a religion they feel more comfortable with? Or maybe they would write their own religious texts.

When I think about it, I can't help but compare it with the emergence of certain genres in fiction, like alien invasion sci-fi or comic book super heroes. First there are some original authors that come up with an idea. The idea is well liked, bought and distributed. It becomes well known so that other people start making work of their own that is inspired by that. It's almost organic, with reproduction, mutation, cross breeding and extinction. However, the integrity of religions is mostly enforced by communities of people that insist on changing nothing. They stop evolution, but also protect against extinction. Is stagnation the hallmark of religion or is it the stability that it provides in a world in continuous flux of change?

I will tell you this: I like evolution. And I mean it in the most general sense, not only the Darwinian one. I find it ironic that in my mind religion is the opposite of evolution. Or maybe that's a cultural bias. Hmm...

The Shigurui (Death Frenzy) manga is now complete. The beautifully terrible story of two exceptional samurai in a world of politics, betrayal and cultural conditioning, locked in absolute rivalry, has ended with the 84th chapter, Pure Crimson. There is an anime with the same subject, I've also seen it and it is really great, even if it stops dead after 11 episodes. I actually recommend to watch the anime and then continue with the chapters in the manga, in order to understand better the feeling of the story. It must be said that the translation from a book written by a war veteran to a graphic novel by a mangaka 58 years his young and then translated to TV anime has not lost, but gained insight and emotion.

One can read the entire manga at MangaFox.