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I'm sure plenty of you knew about the new book already but I'd completely forgotten it was due for release until I picked up "Against a dark background" from the library yesterday.

Anyway, here's the blurb if anyone's interested.  It doesn't look like a culture novel.
Hardback and audio book out on 4th October.

It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year.
The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilisation. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars. Seconded to a military-religious order he's barely heard of - part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony - Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer - a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he's ever known.

As complex, turbulent, flamboyant and spectacular as the gas giant on which it is set, the new science fiction novel from Iain M. Banks is space opera on a truly epic scale.
 

V is for Vienna, daughter of Rico and neice of Joe.

W is for...

[HI-EX!]

H is for HI-EX!

I is for...

Can't be talk like a pirate day, that's next month isn't it (me hearty)?

Which leaves either U.S Coastguard Day or Cowes Week (which starts 07/08)

Gamespot's got some some gameplay footage up.

It all looks very dark, a bit too dark really.  
An awful lot of combat seems to be shooting into the darkness at something you can't see until it's close enough to hit you.
The pentagram thingies as the imps port in are quite nice though.

Link: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/doom3/media.html?gcst=doom3_pc8204_3.asx" target="_blank">Doom 3

Definitely sounds like the dark, tense shooter I was expecting but first impressions of the enemy AI don't sound too good.  
I guess I'll have to wait for Half-Life 2 for the next evoltion of enemy behaviour.

Still reckon they should've called it DoooM (spoken in a deep, movie trailer voice-over way).

It's supposed to be released in America today so if anyone's got a fast plane can you pop over and get me a copy please?

But then a local postman started hoarding letters because he got confused by the new system. Over 5,000 recovered from his and his parent's home, at least 3,000 disposed of. He claims it might be up to three times that (!!).

Eh?
Surely if he had the letters in his possession all he had to do was deliver them.  What kind of system confuses a postman so badly that he forgets how to read addresses?  If it was a new sorting system wouldn't the obvious idea be to ask for help or leave them for someone else to deal with rather than take them home?

Did you get my e-mail the other week Mr D?

'Daredevil...hmmm. Now correct me if i'm wrong, but wasnt Kingpin white?'

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Electra have big norks in the comic?

What about Harvey Dent in the Batman films?
Before his metamorphosis into Two-Face he managed to undergo a Michael Jacksonesque change of skin colour.

Now that's just showing off.

Does the blink tag work or would that be too annoying? (too cowardly to try it myself).

Oops, missing from work desk:

Telephone.
Snapped elastic band rolled up into a circle.
Lump of blue-tac currently shaped like a short, fat worm with a skinny head and tail

Home:
Monitor.
Keyboard.
Mouse.
Control box thingy for my 5.1 speakers (not connected).
Morrowind CD.
Bit of wicker stuff that broke off my dirty laundry basket.
(Just moved house so the normal clutter of stuff is still in black bags/boxes/suitcases)



Work:
Monitor.
Keyboard.
Mouse with wrist support mat.
Croatian flag from the Euro 2004 office sweep.
2 month old birthday card.
2 white mugs (clean)
1 red mug that changes colour when hot (not clean)
Various cutlery in red mug.
Big Homer Simpson mug (half full of tea).
Empty 500ml Sprite bottle.
Candy cane leftover from Christmas.
Pack of chewing gum.
Printout of the Telegraph fantasy football player list for the coming season.
A chain of paper clips.
Black biro.
Wallet
Mobile phone.
Various bits of paper containing confidential BT customer details.
A bottle of Olay moisturising body wash (???).
A post-it note cut into a snowflake shape.
4 packets of hand wipes from M&S sushi boxes.
1 BT issue stress ball containing red liquid and white rubber things that have encouraging slogans written on them and look strangely like testicles (this is now gathering dust as several of my colleague's balls decided to burst without excessive pressure being applied to them).

Genius idea - Terrified victim thinks a shark holds a personal grudge against her family and is following her so she moves to an island.

I wonder at what point during filming people started thinking "Why didn't she just move inland?"

Lucas' attitude to the films always confuses me.  He believes the films are his vision so he can make whatever changes he needs to make the vision a reality.  The majority of those changes have always included the special effects because no matter how good they were originally he's always felt they were restricted by the technology that was available to create them.
Naturally as the technology evolves he's used it to "enhance" the films but only does it in small doses.  I'm curious why he didn't go all the way and replace all the effects with shiny new CGI (although at the same time I'm worried that he might actually do it one day).
All I know is that I'm glad I've still got my original, unaltered films on video and that I missed the furry vampire thingy from Mos Eisley cantina when he was cut/replaced in the special edition.

Still as Ridley Scott once said (I think) - "Making a film is like baking a cake and the director should be the one to cut it"

It probably has been shown here, on channel 4, either in the prime time 02:00 slot or as part of their other Top Ten programmes.

Of course we probably inadvertantly avoided it because it was scheduelled between the "top ten boy bands" and the "top ten people who are so annoying that you'd hate to have them as neighbours and would cross the road to avoid them but they managed to get on TV so now they're celebrities and everything they do or say must held in awe by all no matter how f'ing ridiculous, stupid or childish it is"