No point starting with this one though, may as well start at the beginning.

Also a bit wary of the way the gimmick where the hero is the only man without magical powers may be weakened by the development at the end. I do like the way he's forced to use the traditional Fantasy elements of ingenuity, bravery, powerful allies and unlikely coincidences to solve his problems instead.

Museums
Saw the Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries at the National Gallery. Fascinating exhibition, though it doesn't bring any visiting works into town. As the title says, it just shows various fakes, misidentified and misleadingly restored works.

The only annoyance is that for once they have huge captions by each painting, when of course you want to guess. But for once it's free, so it's well worth taking a look.

Also strolled round the corner to the National Portrait Gallery. The BP Portrait Award is pretty good as usual. Didn't seem to be any pickets or protestors in evidence, despite the rumours. Free.

For a fiver you can get into the Camille Silvy exhibition. Innovative Victorian photographer, mostly based in London. As you'd expect it's mostly portraits: he specialized in visiting card portraits which seem to have been popular at the time. But there are also some clever landscapes, with double exposures to get the clouds in; and some historically interesting pics with vehicles and tradesmen of the period. I liked it.

Web
Economics. Kurzarbeit benefit keeps Germans in work. The crisis of middle class America (via).

Video. Hideous Telepresence robot (via). 5 Seconds: End Zone. Lightning. Incepción. Flower fight. Quadrotor bot balances.

Random. Californians wear COBOL is my hero T-shirts. Zoomable IT Crowd basement panorama. Intimidator puzzle pistol.

Pics. Model Tube stations. Facebook alternatives. Very long exposures. Racist Tea Party cartoons: real or hoax? Gloup NSFW webcomic.

Articles. Charles Stross: Space colonization is implicitly incompatible with libertarian ideology. How did animals get from the Ark to isolated places, such as Australia? The Undeserving Disabled.

Sci/Tech. Chernobyl wildlife actually in decline.