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301

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on August 19, 2016, 04:53 PM »

Lavie Tidhar^w's The Bookman, first of a trilogy.

fantasticfiction bibliographical record for Lavie Tidhar



Steampunk to the max.  The Queen is an alien lizard; her Prime Minister has the ominous name Moriarty; her equerry is Sir Harry Flashman VC.  Two factions of the opposition are lead by Karl Marx and Mrs. Isabella Beeton.  The viewpoint character, Orphan, meets both Holmes brothers, Prince Dakkar (aka Captain Nemo), H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, the Mechanical Turk, Inspector Irene Adler, and an automaton of Lord Byron.

You wouldn't read this for the action sequences, but for the characters and the invented world.  I loved the myriad references to other fictional (and some real, I think) authors and their books, and was delighted when I recognised a few of them.  The spoiler are some that Orphan searches through in Chapter 16, 'At the Bibliotheca Librorum Imaginariorum':

Spoiler

Jo March's A Phantom Hand.  William Ashbless's Accounts of London Scientists.  Hawthorne Abendsen's The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.  The Encyclopedia Donkaniara.  The Book of Three.  Emmanuel Goldstein's The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.  Captain Eustacio Binky's Coffee Making as a Fine Art.  Ludvig Prinn's De Vermis Mysteriis.  Gulliver Fairborn's A Talent for Sacrifice.  Colonel Sebastian Moran's Heavy Game of the Western Himalayas.  Gottfried Mulder's Secret Mysteries of Asia, with Commentary on the Ghorl Nigral.  Cosmo Cowperthwait's Sexual Dimorphism Among The Echinoderms, Focusing Particularly Upon the Asteroidea and Holothuridea.  George Edward Challenger's Some Observations Upon a Series of Kalmuk Skulls.

[...]

Gossip Gone Wild by Dr Jubal Harshaw. In My Father's House by Princess Irulan. Burlesdon on Ancient Theories and Modern Facts by James Rassendyll, Lord Burlesdon. The Truth of Alchemy by Mr. Karswell. Stud City by Gordon Lachance. Boxing the Compass by Bobbi Anderson. The Relationship of Extradigitalism to Genius, by Zubarin. Megapolisomancy by Thibaut de Castries. De Impossibilitate Prognoscendi by Cezar Kouska. Eustace Clarence Scrubb's Diary. Azathoth and Other Horrors by Edward Pickman Derby.

More things fell from the books. A coin, so blackened that its face could no longer be discerned. A map of an island drawn in a child's hand. A butterfly, the wings black save for two emerald spots. A newspaper cutting from the Daily Journal, that read:

12 June 1730
Seven Kings or Chiefs of the Chirakee Indians. bordering upon the area called Croatoan, are come over in the Fox Man of War, Capt. Arnold, in order to pay their duty to his Majesty, and assure him of their attachment to his person and Government, &c.

Aunt Susan's Compendium of Pleasant Knowledge. Broomstick or the Midnight Practice. R. Blastem's Sea Gunner's Practice, with Description of Captain Shotgun's Murdering Piece. The Libellus Leibowitz. Augustus Whiffle's The Care of the Pig. Dr Stephen Maturin's Thoughts on the Prevention of Diseases most usual among Seamen. Professor Radcliffe Emerson's Development of the Egyptian Coffin from Predynastic Times to the End of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, With Particular Reference to Its Reflection of Religious, Social, and Artistic Conventions. The Book of Bokonon. Kilgore Trout's Now It Can Be Told. James Bailey's Life of William Ashbless. Hugo Rune's The Book of Ultimate Truths. Harriet Vane's The Sands of Crime. Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Grand System of Universal Monarchy. Toby Shandy's Apologetical Oration. ...

302

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on August 15, 2016, 03:38 PM »

[...] I think he fell victim to two things.
1) New author
2) the Genre, as I said, was Gunpowder Fantasy.  That first part was pure fantasy.

-wraith808 (August 14, 2016, 04:27 PM)

That sounds like he needed a good editor to suggest improvements.  Perhaps publishers and agents don't bother any more.

You said you read a lot.  How do you pick what books to read next, given the vast number available and limited time to read?  Do you frequent favourite review sites, and if so, which?

303

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on August 14, 2016, 03:58 PM »

It starts with A Darkness Forged in Fire, that almost lost me in the beginning.  But I'm glad that I stuck it out through that bit of exposition, as the rest of the read firmly grabbed me.

-wraith808 (August 12, 2016, 09:16 AM)

A dangerous strategy for an author.  I started Gardens of the Moon, first of Steven Erikson's Malazan Empire series, which opens on a protracted scene where two people, neither introduced, pick their way through a scene of World War 1 level carnage - with no explanation whatsoever.  I put the book down.  I picked it up again a few weeks later and finished it, but it was a close-run thing whether I'd bother.

304

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on August 14, 2016, 03:34 PM »

[The Quiet Twin - Dan Vyleta]

-rjbull (August 04, 2016, 05:25 PM)

did you find that one as good as the reviews suggested?

-tomos (August 12, 2016, 06:24 AM)

I haven't seen any reviews of it - I picked it up when I saw it in the library, because I'd read his first novel, Pavel and I (for which I had seen positive reviews), and thought well of it.

In The Quiet Twin Vyleta wanted to consider how the Nazi regime affected the lives of ordinary Viennese (nearly all of them flawed characters), and set most of the story within a single apartment block.  The book kept me reading with some urgency to find out what happened next, but given the era and situation, don't expect any happy endings.

305

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on August 14, 2016, 03:24 PM »

Wow, that's even good depiction of Zagreb main square, with the statue of governor Josip Jelačić in the background. I'll have to pick it up just to see what is it about.

-Attronarch (August 12, 2016, 05:29 AM)

There isn't much about Zagreb as such, but a fair section about the age-old and horrible enmity between Serb and Croat.  Bernie is a non-Nazi German detective; the novels span the early 1930s through to the Cold War, with all that implies.  As a character, he is very much in the 'noir' tradition of e.g. Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe.

More on Philip Kerr's official website.

306

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on August 11, 2016, 04:01 PM »

A full bibliography may be found on Philip Kerr's fantasticfiction page.

307

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommended replacement for Push The Friggin Button (PTFB)?

« Last post by rjbull on August 07, 2016, 03:10 PM »

Mouse Recorder is a freeware by Bartels Media GmbH, the PhraseExpress people.  I haven't tried it: it appears to be a general-purpose mouse and keyboard macro program in the vein of Macro Express.  Their online documentation Window change events looks like Mouse Recorder should be able to automate button-pushing.

308

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommended replacement for Push The Friggin Button (PTFB)?

« Last post by rjbull on August 04, 2016, 05:31 PM »

Here's an interesting situation: two similar lines from the same company?

http://www.remouse.c...tion-Comparison.html

-Curt (July 29, 2016, 04:06 PM)

Copyright © 1997-2016 AutomaticSolution Software. All Rights Reserved.

And also:
Axife Mouse Recorder

Copyright © 1997-2015 AutomaticSolution Software. All Rights Reserved.

309

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on August 04, 2016, 05:25 PM »

'[Vyleta is] the heir to the throne left empty since
the death of Graham Greene. Yes, he's that damn good'
SAN FRANCISCO BOOK REVIEW

Vienna, 1939. Professor Speckstein's dog has been brutally killed and
he wants to know why. But these are uncharitable times and one must
be careful where one probes... When an unexpected house call leads
Doctor Beer to Speckstein's apartment, he finds himself in the bedroom
of Zuzka, the professor's niece. Wide-eyed, flirtatious and not detectably
ill, Zuzka leads the young doctor to her window and reveals a disturbing
view of the neighbours across the courtyard. Does one of them have
blood on their hands? Beer reluctantly becomes embroiled in an
enquiry that forces him to face the dark realities of Nazi rule.

'Nimble, nuanced, fierce, scrupulous' TLS

'A compelling rumination on watching and watchfulness,
served up with Nabokovian glee' GUARDIAN

'Truly a work of art ... one of the best — and most quietly
disturbing — books of the year' NATIONAL POST

'A sharp and confident novel that captures the social
paranoia and mistrust fomented by Nazism ... Vyleta's
subtly engaging thriller is tense with violent acts'
INDEPENDENT

310

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CHS more colourful default?

« Last post by rjbull on August 04, 2016, 04:34 PM »

Here's Dilbert's take:

311

Screenshot Captor / Re: Ctrl+Z Undo doesn't work?

« Last post by rjbull on July 29, 2016, 04:03 PM »

Running short of time, hasty tests on a steep learning curve...

The cursor didn't seem to be in an unexpected field.  What I mostly want to be able to do is to delete the last object added - and now I find the Delete key does that   

I realised that when I got a beep from Ctrl+Z, a warning at the bottom of the screen said "Reached end of undo buffer."  I had only a single arrow added to the image, which I had immediately attempted to remove, so tried adding a few more objects.  Ctrl+Z then seemed to behave more normally, but still not as I expected.  I tried making a text box containing some text, moving it to two or three different positions, dropping it there for a moment, then going back into object mode and moving it elsewhere.  The first Ctrl+Z removed text from the box, and the next re-located the now-empty box to where I had originally drawn it.  SSC didn't seem to step back through each of the different locations with the filled box.

And, Ctrl+Z doesn't remove "the last object added" when that object happens to be the very first object added to the raw image, as I expected it to.

312

General Software Discussion / Re: Recommended replacemnt for Push The Friggin Button (PTFB)?

« Last post by rjbull on July 28, 2016, 04:10 PM »

I'm confused - what about this one?  http://www.ghost-mouse.com/index.html  Says it's version 3.2.3, and this very sparse home page says nothing at all about licensing or price.

313

Screenshot Captor / Ctrl+Z Undo doesn't work?

« Last post by rjbull on July 28, 2016, 03:36 PM »

I only occasionally need screenshots, so I find SSC overwhelming.  But I didn't abandon it because of its complexity, but because Ctrl+Z Undo doesn't seem to work, at least not as I expected.

SSC makes screen captures perfectly well.  My problem is in editing a screenshot.  I start to annotate, then decide I should (e.g.) have put an arrow in a slightly different place.  I press Ctrl+Z Undo to remove the arrow - and just get an angry beep, with no change on screen.  At this point, Hypersnap and PicPick both obediently revert to the previous version of the on-screen image, and that's what I expect to happen with SSC.

Have I misunderstood how Undo is supposed to work, or do I need to configure something?  I have the latest portable SSC, 4.16.1, installed on Vista Home Premium, 32-bit, UAC On, user account.

Thanks.

314

Living Room / Re: recommendations for a free web host

« Last post by rjbull on July 19, 2016, 04:15 PM »

A few local artists, and my parish church, are using weebly, I presume because it makes it easy for people busy with other things to maintain simple sites.

315

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by rjbull on July 18, 2016, 04:29 PM »

Here's an existing thread on exactly the same topic, with some other suggestions:
pls recommend a good benign keylogger
What a pity nobody remembered to search for such a thing before.

316

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on July 16, 2016, 04:22 PM »

This is an interesting take on the concept of hell and tells one man's journey through this temporary plane of existence.

-Josh (July 16, 2016, 03:04 PM)

If you like weird stuff, you might like Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman.

317

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by rjbull on July 16, 2016, 04:15 PM »

from I saw about that program, I don't think it's something suitable
I want a program that will sit in tray and just monitor and save in an dated archive all the text I type

-kalos (July 15, 2016, 06:18 PM)

TEA lives in the system tray, and saves its files as individual text files named from the time they were made.  If all data were saved in a single file, any crash-corruption of that file might lose everything instead of just the current text.  Of course, you could consider actually trying it out, it's free, and there's a portable unzip-and-go version.

318

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by rjbull on July 16, 2016, 04:09 PM »

I did try Text Editor Anywhere, but, though it's quite useful, it's not as easy/simple to use as CHS

-IainB (July 15, 2016, 11:15 PM)

It does a different job, really.  The advantage over CHS is that you don't need to remember to copy text box contents to the clipboard each time; it saves them automatically.

it imposes a complexity and system overhead that I could probably do without.

-IainB (July 15, 2016, 11:15 PM)

I'm surprised - you major in complex systems 

319

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on July 15, 2016, 05:09 PM »

Looks interesting. Which one of these is the first saga?

-phitsc (July 15, 2016, 08:21 AM)

Who are you addressing?

If it's me for the two books by Pernille Rygg, then original publication dates (don't know whether these are original Norwegian, or more likely English translation) are:

The Butterfly Effect (1997)
The Golden Section (2003)

320

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by rjbull on July 15, 2016, 05:05 PM »

I find a clipboard tool (of course I use my own, CHS) an excellent emergency backup for such occasions.

-mouser (July 13, 2016, 04:49 PM)

Further to that, if the OP is typing job applications, the odds are that he is typing the same text repeatedly.  Good clipboard managers such as mouser's superb CHS or ArsClip or many others are excellent for  keeping boilerplate text readily available.

321

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by rjbull on July 13, 2016, 03:44 PM »

What if I type something in a notepad and crashes?
I still need to save that text.

-kalos (July 12, 2016, 04:39 PM)

It doesn't matter what system you use: nothing will completely inoculate you against a crash.  Whether you use a 'benign keylogger', or invoke an external editor as I suggested, you can only recover the text they had saved up to the crash point.  You can of course make them save their text more often, thereby reducing losses, but that's at the expense of causing constant disk access as the programs save their files, which will slow your system down somewhat.  And skwire is right about keyloggers.  Even if you are willing to use one, the saved files can be astonishingly messy.  I know because I briefly tried it with the logging facilities in PowerPro, and that even has two modes, with and without 'invisible' keys like Alt+key combinations.

322

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by rjbull on July 13, 2016, 03:22 PM »

I'm going to trial Text Editor Anywhere, anyway. Thanks @rjbull !   

-IainB (July 12, 2016, 09:12 PM)

I just hope you like it - I've found it very useful, not least because it allows one to use macros, boilerplate text, etc. from your editor of choice. 

<thinks>  I feel a magisterial IainB mini-review coming on...

323

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on June 29, 2016, 10:20 AM »

Two books by the least-prolific and least-known of the Scandi-noir pack.  I read The Butterfly Effect years ago, not long after it first appeared in English.  I promptly forgot author and title - I often do - but the book itself stuck in my mind.  I wanted to read it again, and eventually tracked it down through Wikipedia's Scandinavian noir page.



For the harder of seeing, here's the text OCR'd from the back of the book.

It is a cold, dark, windy night in Oslo, and Igi Heitmann pores over
the debris in her dead fathers office, trying to piece together the
last days of his life as a failed private eye. She discovers a curious
butterfly medallion in his desk - which in turn leads to the discovery
of a young woman, Siv Underland, in a snow-drift, two bullets in her
head and a gun in her hand. Igi learns that her father and the young
woman died within hours of each other. Who killed Siv Underland, and
did the same person kill Andreas Heitmann? Igi is an under-employed
research psychologist, with more than enough problems of her own: her
husband is a transvestite who often wakes up next to very attractive
men instead of next to her. But she soon finds herself in the role of
detective, on a trail that leads not only to the final days of her
father and Siv Underland, but to the city's underworld of corruption,
sadism and child abuse. Igi is caught amongst the shards of a dozen
shattered lives. She must tread carefully if she is to reconstruct the
violent and tragic truth of those lives, and not be killed herself in
the process.

That lead me to look for Rygg's other work, of which there appears to be only one:

Igi Heitmann is being stalked In the suburb of Oslo where she lives
with her cross-dressing husband and their daughter, someone is spray-
painting the walls of the houses. HEITMANN = CHILD KILLER, the
graffiti says. Who would think this, and how do they know where she
lives? On a bitter winter's evening, Igi attends the opening of the
exhibition of an avant-garde artist whose use of violent sexual
imagery has caused great controversy. Moving between the world of
pornographic art and the happy life she shares with her husband and
daughter, Igi must follow a dangerous and shocking path to the truth.

Rygg excels in a calm, detached portrayal of bizarre behaviour and horrific evil.

324

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by rjbull on June 29, 2016, 09:11 AM »

The citizens under his control wear a "torc" which is an explosive necklace [...] I seem to remember some SciFi movie or series that used the idea.  But I cannot recall the name.

-MilesAhead (June 18, 2016, 07:30 AM)

Probably the Saga of the Exiles by Julian May.

There's also a "faceless man" in Ben Aaronovich's "Peter Grant" series, but he's attempting to become an evil overlord.

325

General Software Discussion / Re: save my writings

« Last post by rjbull on June 29, 2016, 05:48 AM »

Text Editor Anywhere, freeware by the author of Listary:

License: Freeware

Current Version: 2.01

System Requirements: Windows 7 / Vista / XP / 2000

Text Editor Anywhere allows you to edit text anywhere with your favorite text editor. It provides a means of taking advantages of some advanced features (like auto-completing, spell checking and syntax highlighting) that are only available in an external text editor. It may also save you from web browser crashes.

For example, you can use Vim to tweet or reply a post in Chrome with the help of Text Editor Anywhere.

• Support all kinds of text editors
• Support all applications
• Support Unicode
• You can pass complex parameters to the editor

It’s very easy to use:

Step 1: Press Win + A whenever you need it. You can hold Win key and press “A” repeatedly to choose another file extension or edit the text with a new extension. It works like Alt + Tab.

With the cursor in the text box, press the TEA hotkey; it loads whatever text is in the box in a new file in whatever editor you've defined in TEA's configuration.



Edit away.  Save the file.  Alt+Tab back to the browser, and whatever text was in the text box will be automagically replaced by your edited text.



I have a scheduled event that archives all TEA's files, then deletes all but the most recent ones.



It's much like the Firefox extension It's All Text!, but browser-independent.