Pretty good, realistic-seeming but interesting. Avoids the dreariest clichés of the coming-of-age story. Very well written and keeps the attention.

Weakness: plot and structure didn't really seem to go anywhere. Comes to a kind of resolution, but a lot of stuff is left open. The magic ring plotline seemed a bit pointless, though I suppose it served a kind of purpose in showing that there's no way out.

Overall, seemed like a solid book, but nothing to really rave about.

Salon, NYTimes, Guardian review, review. Author article.

What I'm Watching
Have watched all 12 episodes of the Dresden Files now. Not bad. They don't have the long, tense plots of the books: there's a single plot to each episode, but they do match the mixed comic/dark tone of the books pretty well.

Not sure if there will be a second season: hasn't been an official decision yet, but apparently the ratings were disappointing.

Does seem a bit old-fashioned with the single linear plot per episode. You'd think they'd either go for a continuous storyline, or at least have a sub-plot per episode.

Now just have the second halves of Civilization and The Wire series 4 to go through. So could do with something light.

Ask HuSi
So there's the possibility of some training at work. Possibly just time for online training, possibly an actual course. Apart from Learning Tree and the Microsoft courses, does anyone know of any good courses or course providers?

Software development, advanced C# and ASP.NET, AJAX, that kind of thing.

ODGF
So, for one week now have been cutting down on the food slightly. Have only used the Slim-Fast® products occasionally: substituted 5 meals for them, when the plan would call for 14. However I've also cut down on the sizes of lunchtime sandwiches, and have had smaller evening meals throughout the week.

Saturday July 14
Breakfast: Toast, piece cheese, HE noodles
Lunch: Lamb curry, rice with butter, crunch corner
Snacks: Mango
Supper: Ham sandwiches
Booze: 1 beer
Exercise: 5BX Chart 4 Level A+. Dumb-bells 3x10 all, plus light curls.

Sunday July 15
Breakfast: Slimfast shake
Lunch: Ham and tomato sandwiches
Snacks: Banana
Supper: Spanish duck, potatoes, veg. Choc cake with ice cream
Booze: 1/3 bottle wine, 2 beers, 1 whisky
Exercise: 5BX Chart 4 Level A+.

Monday July 16
Breakfast: Slimfast shake
Lunch: Pepper and cream cheese soup, small chicken sandwich
Supper: Chicken breast, potatoes, carrots, peas. WW choc vanilla dessert
Booze: None
Exercise: 5BX Chart 4 Level A+. 1.75 miles walking. Dumb-bells 3x10 light, heavy. Med 3x1 with heavy weights

Tuesday July 17
Breakfast: Toast, ham, tomato, tiny piece cheese. Banana
Lunch: Smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel
Supper: Omelette, bread, tomato. WW eclair (81 kcal)
Snacks: Kiwi fruit, 3 plums
Booze: 1 whisky
Exercise: 5BX Chart 4 Level A+. 3.5 miles walking

Wednesday July 19
Breakfast: Slimfast meal replacement bar (210kcal)
Lunch: Small chicken sandwich, lentil and bacon soup
Supper: Chicken breast, potatoes, peas, carrots. WW choc vanilla dessert
Booze: 1 beer
Exercise: 5BX Chart 4 Level A+. 3.5 miles walking. Dumb-bells 3x10 all

Thursday July 20
Breakfast: Slimfast shake
Lunch: Small chicken sandwich
Supper: WW beef hotpot. 4 toast. Small piece cheese. WW eclair (81 kcal)
Snacks: 2 banana, 3 plums.
Booze: 1 beer
Exercise: 5BX Chart 4 Level A+. 3.5 miles walking

Friday July 21
Breakfast: Slimfast shake, banana
Lunch: Chicken wrap
Supper: Goulash, bread roll. HE corner.
Snacks: Another banana. 4 plums
Booze: 2 brandy
Exercise: 5BX Chart 4 Level A+. 1.75 miles walking .Dumb-bells 3x10 light, med. 3x20 heavy with med weights

Early indications look promising with an apparent 2-pound loss. Some of that may be water though: felt pretty thirsty on weighday morning.

Web
Japanese Pizza Hut has sausage roll and beefburger pizza. (Ad).

Children less likely to labour in countries with overseas trade.

Videos. Filipino prisoners reenact Thriller video. Let the bodies hit the floor. Jack Chick's Titanic.

Excellent comment on technological progress on Charles Stross' blog.

None of this will of course make any impact, since Charles Stross is a computer programmer, and programmers remain the absolute bottom of the food chain in the sciences and technology. A programmer doesn't actually know anything, and has never had any contact with the scientific method. If a programmer's code fails, he can just run it on a larger machine, or tell the end user it's going to take longer -- physicists or molecular biologists or materials scientists don't have the luxury of changing their basic constraints, but programmers do. A physicist can't just say, "Okay, let's change the constant of universal gravitation to 1/10 of its current value, then re-run the experiment." But programmers can indulge in this sort of technological onanism by fiddling and twiddling with either the hardware and the software until their kludgy crufty junk code runs at an almost-acceptable rate. For examples, see any version of Windows, or, for that matter any dependency-hell Linux upgrade.

Because they've never had any exposure to actual science and know nothing about the scientific method and have never had to deal with genuine engineering problems, programmers like Stross remain the very worst candidates for writing about the future of science. This may explain why the laughably foolish pipedreams of the Singularity have been promoted prmarily by programmers -- Ray Kurzweil, Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow -- rather than actual scientists or engineers. Programming is to real science as alchemy is to chemistry. Real scientists aren't taken in by this kind of singularitarian twaddle.