Palimpsest has a book group, discussing books read by all the members in a topic on the forum. It has worked really well in the past, but recently has fallen behind a little.

To try and perk things up a bit it was decided that instead of choosing books month-by-month, 6 books should be chosen to cover half a year’s group reading, meaning that everyone knows where they stand. After various discussions and slightly complicated voting systems, the final selection looks like this:

• 1 September 2005: The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Gustave Flaubert
• 1 October 2005: No One Writes to the Colonel, Gabriel García Márquez
• 1 November 2005: The First Men in the Moon/The Sleeper Awakes, H.G. Wells
• 1 December 2005: Dance, Dance, Dance, Haruki Murakami
• 1 January 2006: Virtual Light, William Gibson
• 1 February 2006: The Three-Arched Bridge, Ismail Kadare

Some pretty challenging stuff there!

Go to a personaliseable (!) version of Google at www.google.com/ig. It’s actually pretty good. You have to log in with your Google ID and password, for example your gmail username, and you can set out various bits of info to have on your screen, as well as the Google search box.

The screen is split into 3 columns. On the left I have a list of favourite links, a preview of my Gmail inbox, a ‘Word of the Day’ thing and the latest feed from Slashdot. In the centre I have a few blogs which I like to monitor regularly. The latest 3 posts in each appear here. Any RSS feed can be subscribed to. On the rightermost (!) column I have various news site feeds, including the BBC and Google News.

When I get home I will stick an image of what my screen looks like. It makes for an excellent homepage.

Great quote from H.G. Wells in amner’s review of The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G. Wells.

An animal may be ferocious and cunning enough, but it takes a real man to tell a lie.

One of the great things about Palimpsest is the way it throws up quality discussions about authors I have never heard of. And it brings together fans of that author that might not otherwise ever get to discuss his (or her) work with a fellow devotee.

This happened most recently with Richard Yates. Follow this link to the thread and enjoy. I am certainly going to invest in some Yates in the near future.

Interesting profile of the Austrailian philosopher Peter Singer in last Saturday’s Guardian Review. I remember reading a book of his for an essay on Practical Ethics for A-Level R.E.

George W Bush and Peter Singer were born on the same day – July 6 1946. But there the similarity ends. Only one is an Australian vegetarian who campaigns against animal cruelty and does not believe in the Judaeo-Christian nostrum of the sanctity of life. Only one supports abortion and infanticide in some cases and backs stem-cell research that uses genetic material from embryos. Only one thinks the world would be better if the US were subject to UN sanctions for emitting more than its fair share of greenhouse gases.

And yet there are parallels. In his 2003 book The President of Good and Evil: Taking George W Bush Seriously, Singer quoted from one of Bush’s speeches: “Some people think it’s inappropriate to make moral judgments anymore. Not me.” To which Singer added: “Well, not me either, so that is one view about morality on which the president and I agree.” Both men, in an age of seeming moral relativism and selfishness, insist on the overwhelming importance of moral renewal.

That book nonetheless argued that Bush’s ethics consisted mostly of hypocrisy and intellectual confusion. By contrast, Singer stresses that his moral philosophy is the product of cold logic. Singer concedes his views are often upsetting for Bush supporters. “In a Christian society we have views about the sanctity of life that were formed in a totally different period when we didn’t have to make decisions about embryos or whether you should keep people alive who are irrevocably unconscious. People get stuck with this ethic from the past, which has not been able to adapt itself to other circumstances because it has been encapsulated in a set of religious beliefs.”

Went camping this weekend in Montford Bridge. Here’s a few photos we took. Comments below each one.

Here’s the inside view of the middle living area of our tent.

The outside view of our ridiculously large tent.

This might well be the bridge that gives Montford Bridge its name.

At last! Sean Wright receives the honour of having his own page on Wikipedia!

Very pleasant trip to Cambridge yesterday, ostensibly to attend Bodies in the Bookshop, a Crime Writers’ meet-and-greet thing at Heffers bookshop. Met up with the ever amiable Simon Kernick who joined Al and me in the Eagle afterwards for some pints and banter.

Took a couple of photos while I was wandering about. Enjoy.

Punts, the lot of ’em.

deteculative
Originally uploaded by John Self.

Excellent stuff from the Selfmeister

Click the image to see a bigger, clearer version.

Just realised how rude the title of this post sounds!

Took a couple of photos of our little bungalow, and uploaded them to Flickr.

The Nissen hut thing is meant to be a car port, but at the moment it houses the wheelie bins and bits of crap.

If you look down the left right hand side of this site, you will see I have installed a new Flickr ‘badge’ which looks rather whizzy. Hopefully it will be more interesting by the time I have some more photos uploaded!

Just testing an image to see which is the best size from Flickr to suit this blog template…

Looks like ‘medium’ (500×375) is perfect!

We have invested in a new digital camera, so hopefully a few more photos will be appearing on here and on my criminally underused Flickr page.

It looks like this:

I think he has announced it over on Palimpsest now, so I can let everyone know here that Rick Green has started the first Palimpblog! His posts have already been pretty varied and thoughtful and it will be interesting to see where he takes it.

Rick’s blog.

Since upgrading to Itunes 4.9 I have been attached to the US store and not the UK one and am unable to buy any music. Anyone have this problem? What have I done wrong?!? 🙁

Interesting post over on the TwoWayWeb News:

Christ, I feel terrible. Off work again for the second time in three weeks. Think it must be Glandular fever – others have had it recently. Still, it gives me plenty of time to loll in bed and do nothing other than type for a few days, which is no bad thing given some of the things going on at the moment! More on that in another post.

Still, I’m lying in bed tapping away while the battery lasts on the laptop and listening to my IPod which is hooked up to my Logic3 speakers which I bought a couple of weeks back. Have set it to shuffle through the 960–odd songs I have on there and it is throwing up some great ones.

Just had Star by Primal Scream. And now The Only Living Boy in New Cross by Carter USM! Excellent!

From Phil Bradley:

If you’re a Firefox user, Google has now produced a version of the toolbar for the browser. Features are listed from the link: Google Toolbar Help

A small, and pretty poor, photo I took with my camera phone while yomping round Llanymynech a couple of weeks back.

Had a pretty good drive to work this morning – right up until I reached Henley. Between there and Warwick, I and about 30 others were trapped behind some numpty doing 40 in a 60 the whole way. Meant I missed out on one of the decent parking spaces and so I will be a fair bit later home from work today. Bastards. Why do they do it?

WHY???

Interesting article in today’s Guardian Online supplement:

Just when the government badly needs to show its competence at running large IT-based projects, along comes another wave of bad news. On Tuesday, parliamentary questions revealed that the cost of running Inland Revenue tax credits has risen tenfold over four years. Also this week, an influential committee of MPs reported that many government bodies ignore one of the main measures introduced to prevent IT disasters.