Am currently reading On Beulah Height, by Reginald Hill. Not very far into it, but the change of pace is startling after Destination: MORGUE!, I have to admit.

There is a distinct paucity of Hill info on the web, just a forgotten author’s page at his publisher’s site, which is a shame. I think I might at least produce some links and do a Hill page on my site. Watch this, or rather that, space!

Here, as promised earlier, is a slightly edited version of my Palimpsest post about James Ellroy:

Frankly, James Ellroy is God. He is without doubt the world’s best living crime author, and I’d wager that he’d the best crime writer ever. Fascinating, if horrifying, life, too: his mother was murdered when James was ten, a crime that has gone unsolved. He then lived with his father, a man who did the odd bit of accounting for Hollywood stars, was obsessed with sex and was hung like a donkey. Apparently. Anyway, James pretended to be a Nazi at his largely Jewish school, got kicked out, joined the army, got a dishonourable discharge (what an ungainly phrase), his dad died, James lived on the streets, sleeping in squats and parks, getting high by swallowing the swabs in nasal inhalers, drinking far too much, breaking into houses and stealing women’s underwear. All through his life as a creep (as he describes it) he was reading crime fiction, watching crime shows. He always knew he would be a writer, but just couldn’t be bothered trying. In the end, health problems made him kick the drink and the swabs, get a job and a flat and start writing.

Here’s a quick rundown of his work.

Brown’s Requiem (1981) – His first novel, written and published while he was still working as a golf caddy. I haven’t read this. I feel like I ought to, if I want to be a true Ellroy-phile.

Clandestine (1982) – I believe this was Ellroy’s first attempt to write about his mother’s murder. I haven’t read it. See above.

Lloyd Hopkins series: Blood on the Moon (1983), Because the Night (1984), Suicide Hill (1986) – these are the earliest of his books that I have read. Available in a handy omnibus format, they are Ellroy-like in their pretty graphic violence, and the high regard he holds women in is evident too, which comes out more forcefully in later books. However. Ellroy acknowledges the influence of Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, and much of the serial-killer type content in a couple of these doesn’t really ring true: because, of course, it never does. Ellroy is much, much better when fictionalising real life events and characters.

Silent Terror, known as Killer on the Road in the States (1986) – I have this in my to be read pile. I don’t think it is amoung his strongest work, being his first real attempt at autobiography in his fiction. It’s a first person serial-killer thing. I’ll let you know when I have read it.

The Black Dahlia (1987) – Ellroy’s first classic, and the first book in the LA Quartet. He had for many years closely aligned the unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short with that of his mother, and this book is his attempt at cahtharsis. It makes excellent use of some of the modernist elements of Ellroy’s style, notably the insertion of (fictional) newspaper clippings and police reports, often following one by one describing the same events, so with each one you build up a bigger picture of what is going on. It’s gruesome, gripping and the book where he really came into his own.

The Big Nowhere (1988) – The first book to feature Dudley Smith (edit: just realised this is a lie, he appears in Clandestine, apparently), though here only in very much a background role. The storyline is pretty bizaare, and unpleasant, involving communists, gay cops, an actor with a severely nacissistic streak, police corruption, drug deals and all sorts else besides. It’s the real start of Ellroy’s fiendishly complicated plotlines. Trouble is, much of the story is taken up with the hunt for a serial killer, and so I found it therefore pretty unsatisfactory in itself. It is essential reading, however, if only because it sets up the work of genius that is

LA Confidential (1990) – The book that really set Ellroy apart from anyone else writing crime fiction, anywhere, anytime, as far as I am concerned. The brutality, darkness and seediness that infests the novel grips the reader in. In this book Ellroy also starts really developing his style, the scattergun use of clipped sentences, one word sentences, one word paragraphs. Alliteration, too – sometimes you feel you are reading a scandal rag like those lampooned by ‘Hush-Hush’. Ellroy claims he writes about men better than anyone else on the planet, and he has a point. Probably his most famous book, what with Curtis Hanson’s film being released to tumultous praise in 1997. The film is brilliant, the book shits on the film from a great height. It has some good jokes, too.

White Jazz (1992) – Have only read this once, a couple of years ago. It’s widely considered Ellroy’s best, even better than LA…. I think it requires a re-read from me. Dave Klein, an LAPD detective, gets embroiled in the Dudley Smith / Ed Exley feud. The twists and movements and jumps in perspective come one after the other, and it is often hard to know who is on who’s side at any one time. I think that’s the intention, though. The Ellroy site says this: “When his editor asked Ellroy to shorten his 900 page work to 350, Ellroy did so by eliminating the verbs. Stylistically, it’s the strangest prose Ellroy’s written.” Too right. The last of the LA Quartet.

American Tabloid (1994) – The start of Ellroy’s move away from ‘straight’ crime fiction and into a genre busting historical/noir/crime/politics thing he calls the ‘Underworld USA’ trilogy. This is brilliant, my second fave Ellroy and features his greatest character, Pete Bondurant. Telling the story of JFK’s assasination, and the Bay of Pigs fiasco from the viewpoint of the Mob, the FBI and the political establishment. I guess it might put people off – ‘duh, another JFK conspiracy book’ but it’s well worth reading for the other bits, which make up 90% of the narrative. Indispensible reading.

Dick Contino’s Blues and Other Stories (1994) – This is a collection of short stories centered on the characters in the LA Quartet. I haven’t read this yet, but own it and am looking forward to it. I believe it is known as Hollywood Nocturne in the US.

My Dark Places (1996) – Shocking. Part true crime, part memoir, this book details the murder of Ellroy’s mother, the failed police investigation, his life subsequent to that, and his own attempt to solve the crime. He fails in that, but the book is a triumph. I’ve read some reviews which claim the descriptions of police procedure drag, but they must be wimps: Ellroy’s momentum carries you through. What shocks is Ellroy’s candour, especially about his own feelings and failings. Excellent.

Crime Wave (1999) – A collection of Ellroy’s true crime (mostly) pieces from GQ. I don’t have this, so can’t comment, though I think gil might have mentioned it disparagingly in Palimpular past. Ellroy does have something of a fetish for documenting routine police procedures, which could get irritating, I guess. I’ll have to wait and see.

The Cold Six Thousand (2001) – This was Ellroy’s first full length fiction for five years, and the follow-up to American Tabloid, and is a beast. Long, inpenetrable, complicated and violent, it is brilliant. Some reviewers attacked it’s style, which I’ll admit is an acquired taste, but their inability to stick with it shows what a lily livered bunch of geeks they must be. The story mesmerises you – you haven’t a clue what is going on half the time, but who cares?! It’s a wild ride, and Ellroy treats his most endearing character (the afore-mentioned Bondurant) well and generally it ends pretty satisfactorilly for the reader, if not the protagonists, which makes forn a nice change.

Destination: MORGUE! (2004) – Another collection of different bits of prose, I’m not sure if some of the essays have been published elsewhere or not – there aren’t any acknowledgements. Covering true crime, boxing and autobiographical pieces, Ellroy is again at his most confessional. I’m in the midst of this at the moment, and it’s a really worthwhile read. The last two-thirds of the book are taken up with a 3 part novella, which I’m looking forward to. Will update when finished.

The follow up to The Cold Six Thousand and the last of ‘Underworld USA’ is putatively titled Police Gazette and should be published towards the end of 2005. I can’t wait. After that, Ellroy is moving onto the 1920s.

The SCO website was cracked this afternoon, with this amusing effort:

Very good!

My sister has just bought a laptop and she wants to go on Broadband with it. She asked for a bit of advice, and I might just have gone over the top a bit on the security issue…

I’d seriously recommend using the following software – I have most of it on disk although all is ree to download. Especially vital if you have broadband.
1.Service Pack 2 – this is an update for Windows XP which tightens up an awful lot (but not all) of the security problems with XP. I have the CD – but it takes a while to install.
2. Firefox – A web browser to replace Internet Explorer. IE is evil and lets in all sorts of viruses and other nasty things. Firefox won’t, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to use, too. This is possibly the most important change to make – if you have any sense you really will use this rather than IE.
3. Firebird – An email program to replace Outlook Express, if you use it. It’s more secure and all round better. If you just use Yahoo mail on the web, then there’s no need to bother with it. If, though, you’re like me and have about 5 different personal email addys, it is vital.
4. AVG Anti-Virus – A free virus checker, which I have and is easy to use and pretty comprehensive. Scans all files coming in and out of your PC. You may already have something by Norton or McAfee pre-installed on your system. This is fine for the period you can download updates for free, but at some point they will want £30 – £40 off you. Better to remove it and add the free options you can keep up-to-date for no outlay.
5. Zonealarm – free firewall. Limits the programs that can run on your computer. Absolutely essential. I don’t actually use this myself as I get a free McAfee firewall with AOL, but this is just as good, apparently.
6. Spybot – Search and Destroy – This scans your computer for ‘spyware’: malicious little programs that get on your system despite all the above protection, then deletes them.
7. Ad-aware – another spyware programme. I have (and use) both.

I didn’t mean to scare her at all….

The Daily M*il is currently running a promotion to boost sales and thereby increase the net amount of bile and hatred in the world. They are giving £10,000 to each of 50 charities nominated by readers. 25 of these will be picked by a panel of “experts” (probably BNP activists, Melanie Philips, Norman Tebbitt and Chris Woodhead), but the other 25 (they claim) will be chosen by members of the public, drawn at random. Now, presumably the Mail are expecting that the winners will be people like the RNLI, Guide Dogs for the Blind and the National Trust. However, if enough people nominate (say) the Refugee Support Council or Stonewall, there has got to be a chance the the Daily Mail will end up giving them the money. Wouldn’t that be great? 10 grand of Paul Dacre’s money to asylum seekers. Just think about it for a second… You’re smiling, aren’t you?
You can even do it without having to buy a copy of the Mail (which saves having to give them any of your cash). Go on – doing this will make the world a slightly nicer place, it won’t cost you anything and there is a chance it could really annoy the Daily Mail. Do you have a better way to spend 10 minutes of your time?

Click here.

The Elmcroft Associates website is now online and working! Hoo-ray!

I am currently reading the latest from my all-time favourite author, James Ellroy. It’s a collection of essays and autobiographical pieces, as well as three novellas. It is (obviously) brilliant.

I am currently putting together a fairloy lengthy Palimpsest post on Ellroy and his work, and the Wikipedia entry for him is rather sparse, so I might have a go at updating that. Will link to them when they are finished.

I had a look round the Kingo branch of ‘The Works’ (which the carrier bag claims has the website www.theworks.gb.com) today. They seem to stock mainly remaindered stuff, but I got an Ian Rankine three novel omnibus for £4.99 and a volume of 2 Carl Hiaasen novels (Sick Puppy and Skin Tight) for £1.99. Bargain! I bought the latter having had my interest grabbed by this in the Guardian recently.

The report I wrote about the Norfolk Scrutiny Conference last week can be found on the Centre for Public Scrutiny website here.

Next stop for it will be the Local Government Chronicle and the Scrutiny Champions’ Bullettin. How exciting!

Read these yonks ago, but never got round to posting anything on them…

A Brief History of the Future – John Naughton

This is an excellent study of the origins of the internet, by academic and journalist John Naughton, whose Observer column (go to The Observer site and search on his name, or try his entertaining blog) is essential reading for anyone remotely interested in the ‘net and its possible applications. He traces the web all the way back, before ARPAnet at the Pentagon and discusses the ideas and theories expressed by those dreamers who imagined a vast communications network before any of the technology existed. He writes well, and manages to pass on his enthusiasm to the reader, especially when discussing issues such as open-source technology and the collaborative nature of the internet. Highly recommended.

How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World – Francis Wheen

Another non-fiction one, this time dealing with the current decline of rationality in both politics and society in general. Written by Francis Wheen, a columnist on The Guardian, it is by no means lefty polemic, though much of the neo-conservative values are attacked, quite rightly, as being completely irrational. Other targets include ‘New’ Labour, spiritualism, homeopathy and Islamic fundamentalists. Wheen starts off with the rise of Marget Thatcher and her idolation of the free market; but mirrors that with the coming to power of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Thatcher wanted to taken Britain back to her golden age of late-Victorian values and entrepreneurism; the Ayatollah also wished to take his country back in time, but to a medieval-like society. All kinds of fuzzy thinking is subjected to Wheen’s witty and thoughtful attack – he genuinely laments the apparent loss of scientific understanding in almost every walk of life. Of course, much of what he writes is mere common sense – the taking of any political or religious creed to extremes is a pretty dumb thing to do – but I think this is a timely book, and a call-to-arms for all of us of the opinion that all people need to do is think now and again, and then everything will be ok. The trouble is, of course, is that they never will, and nor will it ever be.

Great article in PC Plus this month about Google’s plans to take over the world, kinda. There has been much speculation across the net about the fact that Google have headhunted a couple of Microsoft staff, been very cozy with the Mozilla people and have registered the gbrowser.com URL.

The article speculates that if Google were to develop a browser, it could then use this to create a whole online computer environment. They already offer mail, websearch, news, usenet, blogging and image handling. The addition of a browser would make further technology possible – perhaps a word processor/spreadsheet app that runs online, some kind of personal information manager – gmail already offers a very comprehensive contacts section – and a music search, and everything you need on a day to day basis would be available online, from any machine, whether Windows, Mac, Linux, or a handheld.

Just come across Bloglines for the first time. It’s basically an RSS feed reader, but which operates within a browser window, so you can pick stuff up from anywhere. This article from the Guardian’s Online section might help explain more about RSS:

Answer to a news junkie’s prayers Web feeds offer an easy way to keep up with the news, reports Bobbie Johnson

Monday November 1, 2004

It’s been setting geeky hearts aflutter for some time now, but syndication is finally starting to take hold on the internet. Net technologies called RSS and Atom, or to give them the more user-friendly and generic tag of “web feeds”, take the hassle out of keeping up with the news. Once you’ve taken the plunge, you’ll never want to go back.

How does it work?
Reading web feeds is a bit like watching the headlines on the evening news. Essentially, you ask a program to check your favourite websites every so often, looking for the things that have changed since you last popped by, and then present the new stories to you. That means you don’t have to waste your time by trekking through sites to find out what the new developments are, or find yourself reading an interesting story only to realise you read it before – but somebody’s changed the headline.

You surf around, and if you find a website or page that you like, look out for a little icon reading “Web feed” or “RSS” or “XML” or “Atom” – you’ll find one on, say, Guardian Unlimited’s football news. Click on the icon, and paste the address of the resultant page (normally filled with computer gibberish) into your feed reading software. And … well, that’s it. From now on, with the click of a mouse, your feed reader checks for fresh headlines and then delivers them to you in a jiffy.

Your feed reader picks out all the stories that have arrived since you last checked in and presents you with a summary of them, along with a link to the original.

Bong! England storm to victory in the World Cup final! Bong! Frank Lampard seals victory with hat-trick! Bong! Brazilian coach resigns after “total footballing humiliation”!

OK, so your feed reader won’t tell you what you want to hear – but it will tell you what you need. In fact, most programs let you customise which headlines are presented to you, and how they’ll look on your desktop. For example you could browse all the latest reports, or you could choose to look at all the stories you haven’t read before. Or perhaps you just want to look at the top stories. It’s like the paper boy suddenly worked out that you only read the most interesting bits of the newspaper and decided to save you ploughing through the rest.

Why should you be interested?
Web feeds sound great in principle – but then again, so did that triple-extra-hot vindaloo pizza last night. Sometimes judgment can be clouded, and after all, barely a week goes by without some new technology being heralded as the greatest thing since sliced white. These days fancy dan techno-gadgets come and go in the blink of an eye, and sceptical readers are probably wondering why web feeds important – or even useful – to them.

First of all, web feeds can save you an awful lot of time. If, like any self-respecting news junkie with an internet connection, you’ve spent countless hours refreshing a web page waiting for latest news update, then this takes out the hard work. Now all you need to do is log on to your feed reader and it can present you the stories that have arrived since you last looked. No hanging around.

Web feeds can also be extremely useful if you’re on a dial-up connection; your reader program checks sites for you, saving you the hassle of loading up heavy pages and spending countless moments watching that egg timer flip over and over.

And of course, it’s not just news that you can run through RSS. Many weblogs have feeds that you can subscribe to, and if you’re addicted to reading them, it makes light work of the chore of doing the rounds by simplifying the whole business of keeping track of dozens of different sites. You can get recipes, cartoons and all kinds of material delivered through feeds.

Once you’ve got a wide selection of sites drawn together and displayed with the freshest content at the top of the pile, keeping track of multiple sources becomes easy.

Web feeds hand power to you, the surfer, rather than to the producers of websites. Instead of you going to them, they come to you. Feeds let you narrow down the particular bits of a site you want to see, and they help bring the things you’re interested in to your attention. Essentially, they help you customise your web experience by building your own personalised website by syndicating the content from all your favourite places.

Is there anything else?
Right now web feeds are relatively simple stuff. This is by no means the crest of the wave – it’s probably more accurate to say that we’re still splashing around in the shallow waters by the shore. But all across the planet, hordes of feverish technologists are bashing away in attempts to try and come up with new ways to use web feeds. And if the apocryphal bunch of monkeys with typewriters can produce the complete works of Shakespeare, you can bet that a gang of geeks with computers can come up with something.

Now where do I look?
If this has got you excited, then you should go and get yourself some feed reading software. PC users could have a look at FeedDemon, while Mac users might like a gander at NetNewsWire. You might also like to have a look at Amphetadesk, which can be used on PCs, Macs or Linux machines.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to – or can’t – install a news reading program onto your computer, you might want to have a look at websites like BlogLines, which allow you to do the same thing through a web-based interface.

Those are just some of the most popular programs: take a look at this Wikipedia page and you’ll see that there are plenty of other readers out there. Go try them, and see if it changes the way you use the web.

Ohmygod. Another 4 years of George W. Bush as the most powerful man in the world. Well, the second maybe, after Bill Gates. Anyway.

Even as a conservative (small ‘c’! small ‘c’!) kind of guy, Bush fills me with loathing. He’s the embodiment of the idiocy that seems rife in the world at the moment, at every level of society, that culture which wears ignorance on its sleeve and is proud of it. Not to mention his religious fundamentalism which puts him on a par, as far as I am concerned, as those he claims to wage war on. Surely anyone that takes anything too seriously, whether it be Xianity, Islam or whatever, is worthy only of contempt?

At the end of the day, if George Bush hadn’t decided to go to war, Britain wouldn’t have been involved either. It’s just a shame that our PM hasn’t the guts to stand up to the smirking, brain dead simian and get the hell out of Iraq.

Perhaps Kerry just wasn’t a strong enough candidate to beat Bush. Maybe next time, eh?

I have always been a fan of Google – and that’s not just the websearch. I use their email system, their mailing list groups, and of course Blogger, which is now owned by Google.

I’d never given much thought to the way that the company operates, generally believing that they aren’t evil, as they claim so proudly. But a couple of links might have made me think a little more about it:

Google Watch and Gmail is too Creepy.

The old ones are always the best… had this brought to my attention on Palimpsest.

THE BASTARD OPERATOR FROM HELL OFFICIAL ARCHIVE

Some well thought out points on converting from IE to Firefox – you know you want to do it…

Phil Bradley:Firefox

It is a wonderful thing when something you think might be really complicated turns out to be really simple.

On www.davebriggs.net, I have three columns. The left one holds links common to all pages, including the internal site navigation; the centre one holds all the content; and the right one has links and stuff relevant to that page.

The problem with the left hand column is that if I want to make a change to it, I would have to do so with all the pages one by one. While this wouldn’t be too much of a burden at the moment, when the site starts to expand it would become seriously time consuming.

Fortunately PHP (www.php.net; http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=php) comes to the rescue. By typing the HTML for the menu content into a separate HTML file, called say “menu.html”, I can then call up that file anytime I like using:

<?php
include(“filename.html”);
php?>

And that’s it!

So all I have to do is update menu.html and ALL the pages change in line with that!

Plenty has happened since I last posted. I have had a total re-think of how I am going to ‘do’ davebriggs.net. Instead of going for a graphics-heavy Dreamweaver approach, I’m going to do it in Linux, more or less hand coded, using Bluefish and The Gimp, and make it accessible and fast loading on as many browsers as I can test it in.

This approach, however, has its downside. I still can’t get my internet connection to work on Linux, so I have to do all my work, save it onto a floppy, then log into Windows to FTP it to the web host.

Why am I bothering? Because I think it’s important. The coding part of the process is far quicker and more controlled, using Bluefish, and the Gnome environment I work in makes it easy to test and plan. Not least because of the multiple desktops – I have Bluefish open in one, various browsers in various others, OpenOffice.org Writer in another, in which I keep my site plan updated, and one desktop has a terminal, where I can do any file management stuff. It’s simple, straightforward and gets everything done perfectly.

Because of this new design decision, it means that I can change the layout of this blog to suit the whole site. I’ll still keep it hosted at Blogspot, though, simply because it’s too easy not too!

I have abandoned ‘Consider Phlebas’ with a third of the way to go. At the end of the day, I don’t like SF enough to read nearly 600 pages of the stuff.

So, fiction-wise I am reading ‘Lolita’ now, which hopefully will be a quick one. The few chapters I have read make it clear what a superbly written book it is, and it should be a real joy.

Non-fiction-wise, I have still got Boris Johnson’s ‘Lend Me Your Ears’ on the go, though that is a good dip-in-and-out-of book. I’m certainly enjoying the early Politics section which covers the early 1990s, specifically on Europe. Obviously it comes from a sceptic viewpoint, but it is still filling me in on a time when I was too young to know what was going on.

I am also seriously keen to start John Naughton’s book. In fact I might do so tonight.