Simon MacDonald's Blog

Review

Rating: (2.0 / 5)

** I was given a review copy by NetGalley **

This book is set in and around the city of Koln in an alternate Medieval age where demons and magic abound. The premise of the story being that an evil wizard enchants a young man forcing him to embark on a campaign of rape to impregnate women (and men) with demon seed forcing them to give birth to demons. His antagonists are a magical dwarf and a young illegitimate boy raised in a whorehouse (the Bastard of the book’s tit...

Review:

Rating: (4 / 5)

I am a great fan of Alastair Reynolds’ books, and I have read most of his work. This book is written in a different style and is set in a new universe.

The story is a fast paced science fiction adventure. The action is set in a decayed planetary system – possibly in the distant future- where the inhabitants live in the Congregation – a swarm of thousands of artificial habitats and planetoids . Civilisation has risen and collapsed many times, and technology is barely...

Review:

Rating: (1.5 / 5)

A bleak, nihilistic, and dark satire on the space opera genre. The drug and violence fuelled excesses of William Burroughs, meet and corrupt, shades of Banks and Reynolds. The plot is weak, the characters shallow, and the (anti-)hero totally miserable and unlikeable. All of this buried in impenetrable, florid prose.

An SF classic? May have been when it was written in 1974, but now it’s just wearisome.

Don’t read this, unless you are particularly masochistic . ...

Review:

Rating: (4 / 5)

Perhaps the best book I have read this year. There is a strange and complex beauty to the writing of this book, where the reader is dropped into a maelstrom of events that are initially confusing. Just go with the flow and enjoy the strange culture, characters, and exotic technology that populate this universe. Book Synopsis:

Jean le Flambeur gets up in the morning and has to kill himself before his other self can kill him first. Just another day in the Dilem...

A not so simple upgrade

It took me a while, but I finally managed to upgrade my Windows 8.1 Pro to Windows 10 Pro. It would seem that the upgrade either works flawlessly the first time, or it is a real pain in the ass; unfortunately the latter scenario was what I encountered. Why didn’t mine work OK – I don’t know why. My laptop is nothing out of the ordinary; it has a reasonable spec :- An HP Pavilion with an i7 processor, 8Gb RAM and 1Tb hard disk.

I had to download the ISO file from Microsoft, and burn a DVD as I could not get the upgrade downloaded to Windows update to work. I also wasted some time by not verifying the DVD after I burnt it, and tried to run the install from DVD, which packed up half way through with disk errors, so I had to burn a new disk.

So, was all the hassle worth it. Yes. I’m still working my way through Windows 10 features, but it is definitely a much better product than Windows 8. The only major dislike I have is that there is no way I have found (yet) to turn off the automatic update feature.

Some hints and tips you may wish to consider doing yourself

 Back up your system disk where your current installation is installed. I don’t keep any data on my C: drive – I have other drive partitions where I store this and back these up separately.  I use Easeus TODO Workstation  software to backup onto a Synology network server, and that is separately backed up onto  Amazon S3 cloud. ( I like to be secure!). My C: drive backup was large – 165Gb. I’s also worth doing a test to ensure you have a valid backup and that your recovery software can access the backup.
Go into Windows Update and install any outstanding updates for your current Windows version, including Optional updates. I have my updates set to install manually so I had quite a few of these. Check they have worked ( they don’t always) and reapply any that fail.
Download the Windows 10 ISO  install file and burn and VERIFY an install DVD.

Download and run Slim Drivers, and install all the latest updates for your computer. You don’t need to reboot until you do the last update.

Scan your PC with your current Antivirus software to ensure that there are no nasties lurking around. I use ESET Smart Security and also Malawarebytes.
Uninstall your antivirus software – don’t just turn it off. You can reinstall this again once you have completed the upgrade. Check to see if there was a specific new update for Windows 10, and download this. There was a Windows 10 update for ESET.
Go into Task Manager (CTRL,Shift,Esc) Startup tab and disable any non-vital startup programs. If you are not sure leave it alone.
 Disconnect any unnecessary devices, such as cameras, external disk drives, SSDs, etc – just leave mouse and keyboard if required.
Make sure there is no rubbish left around from previous upgrades or failed upgrade attempts.

Go to C:\$Windows.~BT folder and ensure the Hidden items option is checked in the toolbar section of the window. Delete many files and folders as possible. Some files cannot be deleted due to permissions issues.
Do the same for C:\$Windows.~WS\
If you have problems with this open a Command Window in Administrator mode and run the following commands (you can cut and paste them):
takeown /F C:\$Windows.~BT\* /R /A
icacls C:\$Windows.~BT\*.* /T /grant administrators:F
rmdir /S /Q C:\$Windows.~BT\
takeown /F C:\$Windows.~WS\* /R /A
icacls C:\$Windows.~WS\*.* /T /grant administrators:F
rmdir /S /Q C:\$Windows.~WS\



 Now you are ready to go. Insert the DVD and start the install. It will take a long time! At some point you may start to worry that the install has hung. The point to note is – Is your machine looking dead, or is it making some noise? Is the drive light  flickering or flashing? If so, then it is best to wait.

Microsoft has detailed a few points in particular, where the Windows 10 upgrade process may appear to hang:

At 30-39% : At the black screen with a blue circle. Here  Windows 10 is still  downloading all dynamic updates for Windows 10
At 96%: Windows 10 is busy backing up your data
At message: It’s taking a bit longer than usual to set up your device, but it should be ready soon. Things are just about done – just hang in there!


Good Luck!

To date my experience of iPlayer on my Nexus 9 tablet has been pretty poor. Downloads worked OK,  but forget trying to watch live TV. The video was distorted and froze every couple of minutes, and the sound was crackly and dropped out frequently – at different times to the video, of course.

This has been a notorious problem, but even so, I also submitted a bug report to the BBC,  which elicited zero response.

Last week Android updated itself to the latest version of Lollipop –  version 5.1.1.  I thought I would again try iPlayer, and,  blimey,  it now works perfectly.  HD video  and  crystal clear sound!

An excellent article from Luke Wroblewski –  Defining Mobile: 4-5.5 Inches, Portrait & One-Thumb.

This year I’m growing several variety of chillies from seeds. They are currently snuggled up in seed pods on a nice sunny windowsill, so in a couple of weeks, I’m hoping for some nice healthy seedlings. From there, they will progress into small pots in the conservatory, and then some will go into the greenhouse on the allotment, and some onto a sunny spot on the patio.

One thing all these have in common is that they are all prolific fruit bearing plants. However their heat factor varies enormously!

Two varieties are mild:  Santa Fe Grande, and Fresno Supreme are about 750 Scoville units, and both are fruity tasting, and ideal for general cooking.

One slightly hot: Big Jim at 2500 Scoville units grow to 20cm in length and are great for stuffing.

One very hot: Numex Twilight at around 50,000 Scoville units is an attractive plant that is both decorative and cooks well. It’s  fruit start out purple, then move through yellow and orange, becoming red when fully ripe, producing a rainbow effect on the green plant.

Finally, one insanely hot: Habanero Paper Lantern which can be between 350,000 – 450,000 Scoville units – I won’t need many of these!

Further updates as they grow.

When I cook I like to use non-stick sauté pans. My other pans are heavy weight stainless steel, but for frying I like non-stick, and I like pans that you can use on both the stove top and in the oven. Up until now I have regarded non-stick pans as being, unfortunately, disposable. The non-stick coating wears away and gradually becomes less non-stick.

I have found two reasons for this:

 Putting non-stick pans in the dishwasher – this abrades the coating.
Using them in the oven at a temperature higher than they at which they are rated – usually around 180°C – I often use them at heat greater than this.

So up until now I have bought medium price pans, and chucked them away when they lost their non-stick. The other day I came across some Tefal Ingenio sauté pans, and I have bought a 28cm pan. They have some good design features:

The non-stick coating looks to be of very high quality, and comes with a ‘life’ guarantee – provided you don’t use it in the dishwasher or outside of the oven rating.
A high oven rating – 260°C
Removable handles so you can lift the pan from the  stove top and put it in the oven, release the handle, and you now have a non-stick roasting tray. The lift rating on the handle is 10Kg which is a lot more than any food that I cook! This also means you can have several pans and only need a couple of handles.

I bought this pan in a Designer Outlet for £42.00 – £30.00 for the pan and £12.00 for the handle. The full price should have been £62.00.

So I will treat this pan with more respect than I normally do – and definitely no dishwasher. So far it has been performing well.