The Girl Who Played with Fire gets off to a much quicker start than the previous book in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The mystery drives the story along quickly and I didn’t even notice that this book was actually longer than the previous (at least narration-wise). However, like the previous book, I found it to have an overwhelming cast of characters to track, which was perhaps exacerbated by listening to the audible version. Additionally, the dark subject matter once again makes me cautious as to who I would recommend it (keep in mind that the first books directly translated title is "Men Who Hate Women"). Lastly, in complete contrast to what felt like several endings in the first book, this one ends so abruptly, it felt like there was perhaps a chapter or prologue omitted. I have heard that the third novel picks up very close to the end of this one.



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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Listened to the Audible version.

Very slow to start, with an overwhelming amount of details, but then picks up. The end dragged on a bit, but overall very compelling.

However, there is definitely some very dark subject matter here, and I would be very careful to whom I recommended it.

View all my reviews

It’s 2010 & the Ottawa election candidates page lists their phone, fax, & email but not website. Yeesh.

For those of us comfortable with the internet, I’ve compiled an improved list of the Mayoral Candidates to add a website, Twitter, and Facebook Pages links wherever I could find them.  I’ve also omitted the Fax number from the original City of Ottawa page.

Nominated Candidates for the 2010 Elections

Mayor

1. Values as of Sept. 19, 2010
2. This is actually a link to a Facebook profile, but since it’s linked from the candidate’s website I’ve included it.

Have a correction to the above information? Let me know in the comments below.

You should follow me on twitter here.

LockInfo and the Lock Weather Plugin running on my jailbroken iPod Touch 2G

The simplicity of JailbreakMe.com was just too enticing to pass up. My aging 2G iPod Touch is now “jailbroken,” for the second time this year.

The first time was a few months ago. It took several hours, exhausted my fingers by requiring vulcan-nerve-pinch button presses, and ultimately left me with a device which needed to be factory reset again a day later. One can only wait through so many 3 hour device restores before giving up and moving on.

This time, however, it was simply a matter of browsing to JailbreakMe.com, and “sliding to jailbreak”. Genius. Of course, it uses a PDF/Safari exploit which won’t last beyond the next update (and which, ironically, can currently only be blocked by jailbreaking your device and installing an unauthorized package), so get it while you can.

Just Slide to Jailbreak

Benefits:

• LockInfo + Lock Weather Plugin: See the screenshot up and to the right. Important info, at a glance, without having to unlock the device. This should be built into iOS. Currently running in trial mode, but it’s pretty great, I might have to buy it.
• Features 2G: Enables multitasking & home screen wallpaper support. Why the latter isn’t allowed on Touch 2Gs is beyond me.

Drawbacks:

• Battery life: Of course, this wouldn’t be as much of a problem if I didn’t turn on multitasking using Features 2G.
• Cydia: My god this app is painful to use. Does it really need to reload packages on every open? And the downloading of package information from repositories (I’m looking at you modmyi.com) is just… so… slow… And you still need to wait for another page to load to see any screenshots! Have you guys seen the AppStore? It is the standard you’re being measured against. Step up.
• More to do: This may be related to the pain of use and lack of curation in Cydia, but I aside from the two tweaks above, I can’t find much else I would want to install.

Anyone else have a jailbroken iDevice? Let me know what other packages I should look into in the comments.

• Buzz Out Loud – A daily tech discussion show. A great way to stay up to date with current topics in tech. Usually pretty easily digestible at around 45 minutes. Website & iTunes direct-link

• Co-op – A weekly gaming review video podcast. Really good, but not very audio-only friendly (lots of video clips from the games they’re reviewing), so skip this one if you’re looking for something to listen to while driving. Website & iTunes direct-link

• The Totally Rad Show – A weekly video podcast. Three dudes talk about movies, video games, tv shows, comics, pop-culture, etc. The kind of show I wish I was hosting. Works pretty well in audio-only format as well. Website & iTunes direct-link

• Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show – A weekly video podcast.  Kevin Pollak interviewing people in entertainment. Each episode runs pretty long (1.5-2hrs) but they’re almost always interesting and often really funny. Also works great in audio-only format. Website (don’t bother with the website though, it’s terrible) & iTunes direct-link

• ROFL – A weekly video podcast. Standup comedy cut down to one joke (presumably the best of the set?) from comedians all over the US. Also works great in audio-only mode. Website & iTunes direct-link

I’ve got more… but these will do for now. Do you subscribe to any podcasts? If so, which ones? And if not, why not?

"Bookstore" by ImaginaryGirl on Flickr

When I was young I read a lot. Then I went to University. Some of you may be familiar with my 9 year dance with post-secondary studies. The details of which being longer than I ever care to write about, the take-away point is that during this period, I pretty much stopped reading anything I wasn’t required to read (two exceptions being The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings books, and the Harry Potter series, the inner-nerd in me types gleefully).

Over those 9 years, I kept telling myself it was ok because I was just tired from all the required readings from school. Then, once school was finished, my tune smoothly transitioned to the I’m-so-busy-at-work and recently the oh-my-god-being-a-new-parent-is-so-exhausting excuses. But I’ve grown tired of these excuses and want to find something to read… damnit!

"Hardy Boys Collection" by hyperboreal on Flickr

One problem: decisions. Some of you may be familiar with my 30 year dance with decision making. When I was 10 and there were still a couple thousand Hardy Boys books left to read the decision of what to read was really easy, just read whichever book was next in numerical order. Later, I had endless time to wander the aisles of the Lindsay Public Library and found some authors I enjoyed. As an adult, though, how does one choose what they want to read? While Harry potter was fabulously fun to read, I did of feel somewhat like a twelve year old when deciding I was going to read it: Magic?! Awesome!

So I turned to the interwebs for advice and signed up at Goodreads.

Goodreads is the largest social network for readers in the world. We have over 1,900,000 members who have added over 44,000,000 books to their shelves. A place for casual readers and bona-fide bookworms alike, Goodreads members recommend books, compare what they are reading, keep track of what they’ve read and would like to read, form book clubs and much more. ["about goodreads"]

Unfortunately, Goodread’s “find friends” service (really awesomely providing Google Friend Connect and Facebook App as options) was merely an quick and easy way to discover I don’t know a single one of those 1,900,000 members. The site seems to be reasonably well designed though and I think it would be a lot of fun if I knew some people on the service.  One feature I liked in particular was the ability to customize the “book links” that appear below each book.  In addition to standard Amazon, and Indigo.ca, I saw you could add links for the Toronto Public Library search, and added my own for the Ottawa Public Library.

So, take 2. I’m casting out this post into the murky social-netwaters to find out who of you are avid readers, how you find and share good books online, and what the hell you think I should read.  Add comments below, email me, or if you don’t already have an online service to manage your virtual book shelves give Goodreads a try and add me as a friend so I can list something more than the Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings books on my profile.

A little known fact: This film made up approximately 90% of the french immersion curriculum when I was growing up.

Classics such as Mon Oncle Antoine and Nobody Waved Goodbye are free for online screening, along with pioneering animation by Norman McLaren and animated films such as The Big Snit and The Cat Came Back.

A group of filmmakers and curators chose the first films to be made available from among the 15,000 productions made by the NFB, said Deborah Drisdell, director of strategic planning. [CBC.ca]

Not only are they available online, but they’re also available for sharing on various social networking sites as well as for embedding wherever you want.  So I present to you, probably my most favourite NFB film of all time, The Log Driver’s Waltz:

You can read more the whole process, and whats been added each week, over at the NFB Blog.

The differentiating factor appears to be notoriety.  Twitterers who have some level of notoriety, often due to some level of fame (even in a niche community like some podcasts) have a much easier time gaining followers on the service.  The more followers you obtain the more the service changes from a micro-blog to a social experience.

The stories that intrigued me the most about Twitter were about instant-gatherings (where one Twitterer might post “I’m going to such-and-such a place, anyone else want to go?”), or the ability to get responses to questions almost instantaneously (John Hodgman, @hodgman, often throws questions out to what he has come to refer as the “Hive Mind“). These experiences simply aren’t possible without a high number of followers, and often even more than that, a high number of followers within geographic proximity (for questions like “Where’s the best X in Y“).

My approach to following people on Twitter is to be selective rather than promiscuous. I don’t want to just blindly follow every user I find in the hopes of getting a follow-back from the user and increasing the number of followers I have. I only want to follow the tweets of people of which I have some common interest. Furthermore, very very few people I know in person or at work use the service (less than 5 people so far). So for me, of little notoriety, my rate of follower count increase will be quite low.

All this being said, I return to my second statement: I enjoy using Twitter. Its just that what I’m getting out of Twitter doesn’t match what some of it’s biggest proponents describe.

Thoughts?

Does this mean I will write more? Unlikely. While I’ve gotten quite good at typing on the touch, this hardly feels like the right interface for long-form posting.

FYI – getting good typing on the touch basically means relying on Apple’s auto-correction system, ignoring the urge to make sure you’ve types each character properly, and just plowing through.