Bibliophiles

nhw writes book reviews, amongst other things. He's also got a vote in the Hugo awards (Swainston for the Campbell Nick, you know it, the world knows it). I don't recall now which one of us friended the other first, I've been aquiring 'politics' LJ a lot last few months. So. Why do we care?

This is an interesting (and negative) review of John Scalzi's Old Man's War which is nominated. I read it soon after it was posted. Thing is, Mr Scalzi is also scalzi. He wrote a rather long, and very civil, rebuttal on a number of points of the review in the comments, and also on his blog here. Based on Nick's review, I'd have possibly actually picked the book up, because the premise intrigued me. Now I definately want to read it, because, well, that sort of debate between reviewer, author, publisher (see comments on Scalzi's blog entry) and assorted fans is simply very very cool.

Constructive, involving, civil and useful. Nick's written a follow up here. Spoiler warnings throughout, but spoilers never really bother me.

Now, if we can get politicians to properly engage in such a manner, then democracy still has hope. Yup, Mat the hopeless idealist strikes again. I love the Internet.

Addenda: jantshira? Swainston is up for the John W. Campbell 'best newcomer' award. Just in case you didn't know. Also, do you still have either/both of Year of our War/No Present like Time? Only my father managed to donate a pile of books to charity, including some of the ones I'd loaned him. Yup, that's right, my father gave books away without first asking me if I wanted them. He didn't realise he had any of my books. This included my copy of Jennifer Government and 2 (unknown) others. Not a happy boy when I found out.

Oh dear...
( Which Hoff are you? ?!? )
Done mostly because people that read tyrell may find it amusing. Yes, of course I rigged the result.

On to more sensible stuff. Redid the Political Compass today, it had been awhile. I've moved slightly to the centre economically, but further from the centre socially. I think the latter is me hardening my views through the debate I'm having online. The former is I suspect because the questions had a few more "market" questions and less "safety net" and "ownership" questions; market socialism messes up these tests, I had the same reaction to the OK Cupid thing as well. Anyway...

Your political compass

Economic Left/Right: -3.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.26

Why do we care? Well I did it early this afternoon. Later this afternoon, I saw the latest release for blogthings. Now, do the Compass, then do the blogthing. Compass has been around fot years, do we see a rip-off? Yup, yes we do. Actionable? Not my problem, I merely observe.

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 30% Conservative, 70% Liberal

Social Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

( Coding issues on these tests )

Via thalinoviel I discover the amusement that is Teacher Blogging! Blog Standard Comp is here and I especially liked Water Torture.

On the subject of Goths generally, clicked on a commenter at innerbrat's and found this post on a class presentation on Goth Subculture.
Another attempt to define what it is. Not sure I'll ever see one I actually think sums it all up. Amorphous, indefinable, all in the eye of the beholder?

Meh. /introspective elitism...

OK, as part of my "messing around with TaKtiX to see what works" project, I set up a blog for GW's Warhammer, on the grounds that a) I don't work for them anymore b) I know a lot of players, some of whom are pretty good writers and c) it should be a semi-popular subject.

So, we have a new feed account for it, warhammer_tx_fd. However, I recommend everyone goes to read this review, Tau Empire Codex - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly by mapp, simply because it's great. This has nothing to do with me liking Tau a lot. Mark's a cheesy git when it comes to winning though, I was convinced he was doomed at first, but Pink had no anti-tank on Sunday. Bwah ha!

Thanks Mark, pretty much exactly the sort of thing we need. In case you're wondering though, because blogger auto parses linebreaks (I can turn that off but don't want to), it means you're better off doing <h3>this</h3>with header tags, looks ugly when coding but removes some of the whitespace. I could do something witht he CSS, but that means, um, learning how...

I also like the way the template looks on that page, likely use that basic layout with a better colour scheme for the whole site once I've got it set up, yay!

( Mat's going off on one again ) Recent discussions, ( ... )about the "snobby" attitude of some bloggers regarding Livejournal and similar, personal-style blogging sites got me thinking. ( ... )

Despite my interest in political blogs, the majority of blogspot, wordpress.com, typepad and similar blogs are personal blogs, in a very similar vein to your avarage livejournal. ( Examples ) So, I have an idea. ( ... )

Which brings me to this weeks Britblog roundup. I try to nominate something good every week, and have on occasions nominated LJ posts ( ... ) Tim takes nomination by email (britblog AT gmail DOT com) and is looking for anything that's well written and interesting, regardless of topic( ...  ) That includes posts made on LiveJournal or even (shudder) MySpace. Most of us read non-real-life-friends journals, right? If someone, anyone, makes a public post that's interesting, amusing and well written, nominate it.

It won't, by itself, dispell the anti-LJ snobbery amongst "real" bloggers, but it may help. Besides which, it's fun. Tim's book 2005 Blogged may get a follow up for 2006. Wouldn't it be cool to see something you nominated get into print?

A comment on this Samizdata.net post amused:

I just finished a meeting with a company regarding the filiming of a TV advert for their web-based job search company. It was suggested that they explore the possibility of using a weblog to expand their web reach, against which the in-house webdesigner launched a somewhat excessive tirade along the lines of. "nobody except dysfunctional geeks and pro-Bush gun nuts reads those sort of things" and then asked how many of us actually had a blog.

Everyone (about 9 of us) except him raised a hand ...

Quick handcount now puts me on 5 (sort of) with a lot more on the way very soon, most to be collaborative.

Met with my MP Wednesday. He's thinking of setting one up, can I help? Hmm...

Mat thinks back to his 'plan for the year'. Yup, as I was going to work on you to start one, helping you do so before I've even started the effort seems like a good plan...

Exeter Wargames show tomorrow (well, today), will be selling some old gaming stuff on the bring and buy; had no idea Minas Tirith was worth that much, probably eBay that one if no one picks it up. No plans afternoon/early evening yet, going to a party later evening.

Went to the Dentists today. For those that don't know me that well, that's a pretty momentous event; Iwrote teh full version as to why up here on devils_kitchen; as is usual for a post on the kitchen, swearing and insults are de rigeuer. Short version, haven't seen a dentist properly in five years, last time I had any treatment, the butcher messed it up, I had a very painful extraction and it scared me off.

My parents signed up with a new NHS dentist, and signed me up at the same time. So, I went. And am still alive. Not sure I can afford to pay for the 7 fillings I need, but at least I know I need them. Actually, on the money front, if any Amazon buyers feel helpful, can you go there via a link from the blog when you plan to buy stuff? Could do with the cash. Cost you nowt but a few more clicks, and we get 10%. Yay!

On the way home, it was raining, so my plan of a wonder down the seafront with the camera turned into a walk back to the flat. Went into the local store, and couldn't resist the temptation to buy a bottle of whiskey. Small one mind, not getting carried away. So, I've had a nice relaxing day off recovering from the dentists and slowly getting happy drinking whiskey.

Today has also been the second busiest on the blog ever; Wednesday was the third. The busiest was when someone linked to the stupid blonde joke via a Libertines forum (yes, I felt dirty). Finally made the breakthrough, might even actually get somewhere with the Liberty Central project.

Meh, I know, more memes. But the picutre of Zoe was pretty, I thought I'd try find Inara. Didn't work (again)...
Your results, you are:
Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)( What Firefly character...  )
What do you mean, who's Mal? What's Firefly? Serenity? What kind of Friend are you? In fact, where have you been last two years? Not on the internet much, obviously... ;-)

Second best day yet on the weblog, my coalition post on getting New Labour out is proving rather popular. 47% firefox, naturally. I have an edumacated readership.

Meestor mapp? Bondwoman thinks St Andrew needs to be more prominent, and the Dragon a bit stronger; maybe draw the design of the crosses out a bit, keep the dragon the same? Can drop the Great Britain bit of the title as well, makes the text requirement lower. 'tis a great design still, but improvements are good, right?

OK, I've got to the point that I can read .css, but writing it? Completely beyond me.

So, what I want, is to sort http://not-little-england.blogspot.com/ so that the search box is on the right of the logo, the logo left justified and no longer centered. It's such an easy job, but I can't get it to work properly. What very basic principle am I missing?

Oh yeah; what's the html tag to force a display of unformatted text and/or code? Playing around with the blogger template is teaching me a fair amount, but I just don't 'get' code in the way the code monkeys I know do...