More of My Flickr photos

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Aah the classics

As you can see on the right, I churned through the books in the weekend due to a trip down to my partner's Father's house just out of Cambridge. It's the most peaceful place ever, so I absolutely had to get a book to read by the fire, or by the babbling brook outside.

Having just finished reading "Digital Fortress" by Dan Brown, I figured I may aswell complete the current works of the author, and picked Deception Point. Boy was that a mistake and a half. I was sorely disappointed by this book, more particularly, the way it took 256 pages to get into any form of excitement - a lag not seen in the three other Dan Brown books I've recently read. This particular conspiracy theory was, in my opinion, a blatant allusion to the theory that the United States were not, infact, the first to land on the moon and that they did indeed fabricate the entire Apollo 11 mission. Dan Brown is the master of the conspiracy theory, focussing (so far) on the Vatican (and more generally, ancient Christian pioneers) and the Government of the United States.

The great thing about Dan Brown's books, however, is that they encourage (albeit subliminally) the reader to think, and in most cases, to research for themselves. I remember after having read "Angels and Demons" (which I read BEFORE "The Da Vinci Code") I spent the rest of the day on the internet researching the Illuminati, the artworks of Bernini, and looking for photos of the interior of St Peter's basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and (more specifically) the secret corridor between St Angelo's Castle and the Pope's private library. So too after reading "The Da Vinci Code" did I spend countless hours researching the Priory of Sion, the Holy Grail, and different historian's hypothesis of what the Holy Grail actually is, and how they came to these conclusions. It was all very interesting, and even though Dan Brown has been criticised for his 'lack of research' apparently evident in his writing, I'd like to commend him for writing in such a way that is marketable to the western world, and for provoking thought and independent research to an apathetic society.

Ok, I digressed a huge amount from my original point of this entry. Sorry folks for the rather long interruption.

Back to the point - I churned through the pages of "Deception Point" at a rather alarming rate, that I was finished by the time we left Cambridge. By the time we got home I was so tired anyway that I couldn't read if I tried, so there was no great issue anyway.

Come Monday (yesterday), and my inbox screamed tales of overdue reports, projects, metrics - you name it, I hadn't done it yet. So I figured I would go get a latte, have some breakfast, and attend to it all 'momentarily'. So I did all that, yada yada yada, got back to my desk and lo and behold-

The network was down!

I'm not just talking Email- I'm talking the whole lot. No server connectivity, no internet, no PHONES (ip based) NADA! Everyone else had the same issue aswell, except that they'd already pulled down the work they needed from the servers, while I decided that a latte and breakfast were more important... Yeah I was in trouble. I couldn't even PRETEND I was working by surfing the 'net! So I took a (really really really) early lunch, figuring it would be fixed by the time I got back. Well no - by the time I got back it hadn't fixed itself, so I went for a walk - via Borders.
So, inside Borders I saw a table DEDICATED to the classics. Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Dickens, and all the rest. Well, as you can probably tell by my sidebar, I'm not usually a classical reader. The most classical reading I ever did was in High School English, where I read 2 Shakespearian Plays ("The Taming of the Shrew" and "Macbeth") and "Death of a Salesman", and Classical Studies where I read the Iliad and the Odyssey. I've always been a fan of Chick Lit', so I figured I should really get into Jane Austen - the original chick lit author(ess) - and I'm not disappointed. I also picked up a copy of the Iliad, because I love that story, and HOPEFULLY it will take me so long to get through it, that I won't have to spend ANY MORE MONEY on books before HP+HBP comes out (given my propensity to delay their return, a library membership would not be cheaper).

An update on everything else in general: B/F is currently playing 'The Jade Empire" on Xbox (and loving it), I haven't played the Sims 2 in over a week (have taken to leaving my laptop at work because it's too heavy to lug all the way from the carpark and back each day), I've started a Semi Diet (Special K Bar and Apple for breakfast with my latte, Noodles for Lunch, KTime bar for afternoon snack, replaced coke with Orange Juice at home, and snack on fruit when hungry). I decided if nothing else, the increase in fruit should increase my vitamin C and stop me getting sick all the time!

In the ARG World, I'm (loosely) playing the Alias ARG, but having geographic issues in that one of the characters is scheduling a meeting in July in Chicago, which I'll obviously miss- am following along a Cash Prize puzzle trail called
CHALLUS which is exercising my Google use, and hopefully I'll be able to update y'all on something else ARG'ish soon like.

I think that might be it for now! Ciao!

Labels: , ,