Gillard (how could I not have written about this before?!) came to power under circumstances best described as controversial – though far from unprecedented. You don’t have to explain to NSW voters that the leader can be replaced at the drop of a hat. The Liberals have gotten good running out of this.

That said, I understand the reasoning and the political machinery behind this. Rudd was unpopular and with the mining tax was fast making new enemies.  The Labor political machine, spooked once before by Howard’s pincer with Latham over the Tasmanian forestry unions, certainly didn’t want a fight with the mining unions on their hands, especially after they saw what could work with the unions in the 2007 campaign. In a way, the replacing of an underperforming leader is a policy that would be well supported in the market, had the government been a corporation. As it is, the electorate is mostly stunned at the notion, and the “Faceless men” bogey is back.

With an election called so soon, there was no real chance for Gillard to have established herself as incumbent PM, and so we have a farce of a campaign where both parties are pretending to be oppositions. Each side is playing a low-risk, high-attack campaign which puts the leaders front and centre in a presidential-style election that bears no relation to the actual voting method. Most telling for me was a colleague filling out a postal vote asking where Gillard was on either the House of Reps or the Senate ballot – that’s not how the voting system works, but for many they can’t see this until they get a how-to-vote card in hand.

The Coalition has led with a simple slogan that Abbott trots out over and over, but fades from my memory almost as soon as it’s out of mind. Stop the boats, end the waste, pay back the debt, something something. Their policies are defined by what they will do to oppose Labor’s current actions, be it on the boats, broadband, or hospitals. The only policy that goes beyond is for paid parental leave, where Abbott comes in with a policy that is simultaneously left and right wing: maternity leave at full salary-matched pay. A tax on big business to pay for a social entitlement is left; paying people at their full salary, instead of an equal payment across the board (Labor’s policy), fundamentally right-wing. Breathtaking.

Labor on the other hand offers…. not much, really. Gone is the ETS in any reasonable time, gone is any pretence to a fair and balanced refugee policy. The policies being sold are the ones which already are in motion – the NBN, the Health Network, and further pushes on the education front. The attack has been focused on the straw-man of Work Choices returning, which I find unbelievable given the Liberals knew the extent of the rejection at the 2007 poll. Labor have been no more inspiring than the Liberals, offering the status quo as an argument while trying to campaign without their legacy due to their fresh dumping of Rudd.

Gillard stumbled hard after the election campaign started over the manner of Rudd’s replacement, and then faced derision over the Real Julia punt. Abbott has managed to skate through without any headline bumbles as he simply avoids anything where he could screw up. That the man campaigning to be future PM did not show at the release of two significant policies, broadband and, well, the entire financial plan shows the sheer opportunism. Here is a man and a party that cannot say that it has a full grasp of the policy it is relying on the attack their opponent’s key policies.

The media is no less to blame. The headline presidential show of Gillard and Abbott running around the country (in Abbott’s case, quite literally) attracted the media, while real policy debates at the National Press Club went ignored by all but the most serious. Perhaps the apex of this shallow focus was the attention given to Mark Latham acting as Channel 9 journalist – the focus was on the media process, not on the election process. I remember being told as a kid that if you respond to the bully, he will act up more – so why did Latham get any attention at all? I didn’t see a single contribution, positive or negative, from him.

There has been no meaningful economic debate at the highest level, the focus entirely being on the meaningless size of the budget. There’s been no debate on foreign policy beyond the meaningless focus on the boats. There’s been nothing on arts, science, defence, infrastructure, agriculture, or industry, all serious policy areas and key ministries. The debate on gay marriage has been shut out entirely.

The blame for shallowness of the debate and the election can in some part be put at the feet of our election system. The rule of the marginals, you could say – it would be in Australia’s best interest for every seat to be a marginal, the government at all times at risk of being shoved out. Right now though, the marginals are focused on the fringes of cities, suburbia filled with families. The nature of swinging voters in these seats is to simply ask, “what’s in it for me?” and wait to be rewarded. I now live in a marginal seat, and all the advertising locally has been focused on that exact question.

I don’t want to see Australia’s destiny ruled by the marginal seats. Self-interest has been the order of the day for far too long: what is good for the family in outer Sydney or Brisbane or Melbourne isn’t necessarily good for the nation. Population growth is not so onerous yet that we need to make a significant cutback and label the population ministry “sustainable”. Governments can borrow money in the order of billions and not struggle to pay it back over a reasonable time frame – the analogy I prefer is that we need to make a renovation, so we’ll borrow some money from the proverbial bank to build it now, and repay it later with a bit of interest. If you simply save and save and save, you’re going to be stuck in your shabby little house from the 80s for years.

The other analogy should come from business: capital investment. We’re investing this money now because it will pay off in the future. I’ve heard Gillard mention that term exactly once. Abbott would have you believe that Australia needs no public capital investment, and that the private sector will provide. It certainly hasn’t provided so far, so why should it now?

I’m pretty sure I’m going to vote the Greens as my first preference. They’re not perfect – many of their policies take a good idea and extend it to the left. Were they to play a significant role in government, these would need to be moderated by a sense of reality. Nonetheless, their policy platform sits far closer to my ideal than Labor or Liberal. A national broadband network without the stupid filter; investment in education through an increase in the mining tax; compassionate treatment of refugees; and of course, most of all, an ETS that makes some real difference – punish the polluters in order to make them change their ways.

Everyone pretty much knows a vote for the Greens is ultimately a vote for Labor, and that’s disappointing. Labor does deserve to be punished for its presumption of its support base. The Liberals however don’t deserve to be rewarded for blind opposition. I suspect if Turnbull had still been the opposition leader and we were still having the same election we have today, I would have wavered, but Abbott? Are you kidding me?

Here’s hoping for PM Gillard to be returned tomorrow, or we shall learn how truly self-centred Australians really are.

Yessir, I’ve been just a tad bit busy with things, so here’s a consolidated update:

1. WordPress 3: pushing the sky is now running on the latest and greatest WordPress has to offer. Usually warnings apply, if you see anything funny let me know etc etc etc. Apparently this now unites WordPress with WordPress MU (multi-user), so let’s see if I can’t get something going with that…
2. I have an iPad! It is gorgeous and it’s replaced a subset of tasks my laptop once stood in for. The battery life is amazing and everything that’s been promised, and it’s great for general web stuff, though I’d kill for a basic adblock or something. More on this at another point.
3. iOS 4 was released this morning, and I reluctantly let go of the jailbreak in order to play with it. The decision was difficult in some ways, as I’d gotten quite comfortable with my modifications, but the temptation to play with shiny-new-thing was too much. (Maybe I’ll get the best of both worlds shortly.)The main things I’d had jailbreak for were:
   • SBSettings - swipe the status bar, flick services on and off, adjust brightness.
   • Categories - put apps into folders, when you’ve got way too much junk and nowhere to put it.
   • Customisable appearance – background wallpapers, themes, just generally being able to make my phone look somewhat unique next to the other thousand iPhones out there.
   • Five Icon Dock - it’s just logical to me: Phone, mail, messages, web, and iPod. Don’t make me choose.
   • Weather Icon – update the icon for my weather app (PocketWeather AU) with an icon based on the conditions, and update it regularly.
   • SMS Character count – glaring omission from Apple, as some of us cared about going to 161 characters and weren’t interested in counting characters by hand.

   So naturally, there wasn’t too much that was going to sway me over… except shiny-new =) So anyway, here’s how the update went for those services:

   • Settings-in-the-app-tray – almost as good as SBSettings in the sense that McDonalds is almost as good as a gourmet steak from a Michelin-recognised restaurant, i.e. it does the job but it certainly doesn’t do it well. I want it back.
   • iOS Folders – excellent, apart from the 12-apps-per-folder restriction. I can see the reasoning, but dammit, we all know how to scroll. The “rejected” mechanics when trying to add the 13th app is also awful. Overall though, solid win over Categories.
   • Appearance options – background wallpaper: tick (it even carried over my jailbreak wallpaper!). Everything else: fail. Back to shiny app bubbles, back to bog-standard-translucent-blue notifications. To be expected, but I will say this much: Apple’s default icons are definitely amongst the most appealing. Don’t mess with the formula.
   • Five Icon Dock – unfortunately, folders-in-the-dock aren’t quite as elegant as a five icon dock. There’s room there, though I can see the advantage of spacing. Want it back.
   • Weather Icon – of course, no update here; Pocket Weather luckily has implemented (some time since I jailbroke at least) the badge, so I get that much, but still no glanceable information. Mitigated Weather Icon somewhat, but still not as good.
   • SMS character count – finally here! No need to go back for this.

   Of course, there’s plenty of other reasons to have jailbroken, not least of which was background apps, and the ever-so-tempting Lockscreen Info, but I never found much use for those. Other iOS 4 features like better spell-check, mailbox unification and message threading are great though, and perfect for that easier day-to-day use. In terms of the headline features, “multitasking” does make transitions snappy, and there’s other improvements that make it feel a bit quicker. We’ll see how it goes over the next few days.

4. And now for something completely different: my friends and I have been working on a little business we’re trying to get off the ground, and it goes by the name of Finestitch & Co. For years, people have been going to Thailand for their tailored suits, so we thought rather than the customer going to the tailor, we’ll bring the tailor to the customer.

   We’ll take your measurements, get your design preference, and a couple of weeks later you’ll have a suit just for you at your door. What more could you ask for?

   We’ve got some style tips, a look into what custom tailoring is all about, and much more.

   Now, I’m far from being a talented tailor or anything, but a friend of a friend knows what he’s talking about, and so three of us are in this together. I’ve applied what skills I have to construct the website, so please, go check out the new site and let me know what you think!

Whew! and more soon hopefully!

Cost of two movie tickets to a standard session of latest hit: $36
Cost of a medium popcorn and two drinks: $16
(Optional) Internet booking fee to guarantee seats: $1 per ticket

At Home

Cost of a DVD on your giant flat-screen TV on your very comfy couch: 3 months from cinematic release date + $15
Cost of medium popcorn and multiple drinks: $3
(Optional) Seat guarantee: $0

Now, I don’t know about you, but is going to the cinema to see the latest hit really worth the extra $36 dollars? It’s starting to feel less and less like it is…

But before I do that… I have finished reading the book. And it is good. Later parts – indeed, parts that start to get discussed here – of the book are a… little more gripping, shall we say, and the idea of stopping after 6 chapters was blown out of the water. So here’s a few extra chapters of action from Randland…

Chapter 19 – 28

• Tuon and the Seanchan give me the utter shits. The level of ritual and formality in that society, it’s a wonder their army can do anything for all the bowing and scraping they must do to those “above their station”.
  • … on the other hand, we’re finally seeing the White-Tower-gets-hit-by-Seanchan prophecy come together, and in a reasonably sensible way (i.e. Seanchan don’t have to magically conquer everything between where they are now to TV.
• MAAAAAAAAT! Mat is back!
  • Yay!
  • This makes me Happy.
  • Apparently there’s a bunch of people out there unhappy with Mat’s new funny bone. I say bollocks, I love a character who can say “Saidared,” and cause raised eyebrows. Freaking brilliant.
  • Err, nothing much happens when he’s first introduced, save a mention of Ogier that reminds me how long it’s been since we’ve seen Loial or other Ogier…
• Perrin and Faile re-appear but do nothing but angst. Time to get a move on!
• Semi is freed by Shaidar Haran, and then goes nutso on Rand…
• … fucking him up good and proper…
• … and now he’s done what?! Well, Semi is out of the picture at least.
• I suppose you could see this coming if you were reading the right hints, but that doesn’t make it any better.
  • Yes that’s right, I won’t spoil exactly what he did here, because this really is one of the most powerful scenes in the book.
  • In terms of Rand’s character, this is a major Fuck. moment… in terms of the book, it’s a logical progression.
• Rand promptly tells Cadsuane he’s sick of her and that he “will kill her the next time he sees her face.” Minor cheer for comeuppance for most uppity Aes Sedai character ever.
• Gawyn reaches the Rebel camp, gets sat down by Bryne
  • While he’s wandering in he discovers the Aes Sedai who was stripped of the shawl amongst the washer women, and they bring her to the Aes Sedai later.
  • You’ve got to wonder though, with a camp full of Aes Sedai keen on signing up whoever they can get to the novice book why they didn’t ‘feel’ this lady already, and why it took Gawyn to discover her?
• Sheriam is going to get pwnd.
• Egwene manages to be a prisoner with dignity, and is still in a position of influence. This bodes well for her fight.
• Avi finally, finally gets the guts up to ask why she’s being forced to do useless stuff. The reason? Wise Ones don’t get pushed around by nobody.
  • And how do you instil that lesson? By, uh, pushing around the apprentices until they push back. Uh, good learning strategy that.
• Mat chapter again! Mat wanders into a small town for supplies. Hmm, any bells being rung re a certain Perrin-in-a-small-town scenario?
• Here’s why: The townsfolk turn into madmen by night, ripping each other limb from limb. But! They wake safe in their beds the next morning. Bubbles of EVIIIILLLL.
• No I still don’t know why we’re being shown these sequences proving the existence of bubbles of evil dammit.

And so we get to the thick of the book, and the plot is definitely in gear in more than one spot – Egwene is past the point of no return, and Rand appears to be approaching his own quite rapidly. Tune in next week to find out more!

Anyway, the looks on people’s faces when they see me reading is priceless.

Also one particular advantage of having such a large book is that others who are also interested can spot it a mile away. Already I’ve found someone at work interest, someone at a random food court, etc – and it’s always fun to discuss the series and see everyone’s take on things.

Enough blathering! Onwards!

Part the Third: Chapters 13 – 18

Well well well. I really did speak too soon on the topic of plot threads not moving at a sufficiently hurried pace, because suddenly things have kicked up a notch.

I hesitate to add “relatively,” because I know one of the hallmarks of the Wheel of Time has, since probably the third or maybe fourth book, extensive and detailed descriptions of characters and situations, to the point where you could easily construct some of the outfits the characters wear down to their very embroidery.

I guess the high-water mark for the pace was in book 1, when the characters and threads were simple and tightly bound together – indeed, it was about a third of the way into the book before we got a perspective on things other than Rand himself, when the party was separated.

In some ways the complaints of a lack of speed boils down to that comparison – the complex story doesn’t move as fast as the simple story the series started with. A comment in here indicates that at least one major plotline has only moved two or three months since The Path of Daggers, which was released four books and, oh, ELEVEN YEARS AGO.

In amongst these chapters though, roughly a third of the way (chapter-wise) into the book too, it’s clear now that the story is getting a head of steam. I suppose the timeline isn’t as important as the events that take place, so it’s starting to get to a faster schedule. So let’s see what’s happened:

• Gawyn finally learns that he’s fighting against his own one-true-love in supporting the Tower Aes Sedai (TAS), though he still assumes Egwene is being sock-puppetted and it’s up to him to do some rescuin’.
• We also learn here that the TAS have the Travelling trick, and they’re using it actively. Which spells a relatively quick end to be coming to the siege.
• Cadsuane knows how to hide stuff! Put it in a box with a One Power burglar alarm! Hmm, this is going to go well.
• Confirmed: Rand is linked to Moridin.
• Avi’s unexplained punishments are getting annoying to me too, not just the character. This whole ji’e'toh thing is beyond what is necessary now… can someone explain it?!
• Egwene finally has her show-down with Elaida, though perhaps not in the way expected.
  • Fuck yes.
  • Egwene can see a bigger picture, and she’s making an effort to try to show that to others. Elaida on the other hand appears to be getting pettier and pettier. This alone makes Egwene a better Amyrlin, which starts to become evident when…
  • The showdown finally comes when Elaida attempts to humiliate and show her dominance of Egwene in front of 5 Sitters. Egwene naturally doesn’t even give a glimpse of giving in, drawing Elaida’s ire and finally the confrontation we all knew was coming plays out in a dramatic and conclusive way.
  • This is one of the most brilliant scenes so far, at least in the book if not the series. The tension ratchets up and up, and you can vividly imagine the setting in your head as it takes place.
  • I wondered for a moment whether this was RJ or Sanderson writing, but there’s something distinct about it and if Sanderson touched it, it wasn’t so it was obvious or distinct from RJ’s style.
  • At the end of this chapter, things are looking pretty damn bleak for the girls outside….
• Cadsuane finds the key to getting Semi to talk is humiliation and treating her without reverence: giving her a good spanking.
  • Not much is said about how much/what exactly, if anything, she reveals, however.
• Word is out to the rebel (Salidar) Aes Sedai (SAS) that the TAS have travelling. This is going to cause… issues.

The story is starting to move; I still think at times it’s got an ability to wander off on dead-ends, but you get the feeling alongside the characters that the end times are coming, and soon.

The other thing I like about this book particularly is that the perspectives are kept relevant: there’s no page or two of different perspectives on the same event, or of minor characters wandering in the background to establish that the world has complex plots: we know this by now. Tight focus is Good.

Ed note: If I’m perfectly honest, I’ve actually finished the book already and this is going back over it to see how much I can remember. Bits may be a little blurry, and I may resort to a re-read to sort it out.

Thought so. So for those who haven’t read the Wheel of Time, you … might not want to read the next, oh, 6 or 7 posts about this. On the other hand, if you’re looking to draw yourself into an epic fantasy series, you might want to go down to the library and borrow The Eye of the World.  (or if you’re looking to get into an epic fantasy series that’s not endless, go borrow Magician by Raymond E. Feist. And stop reading after Shards of a Broken Crown.)

Side note: so, so very glad we don’t get the American cover for The Gathering Storm in Australia. That just looks awful.

Ahem. Enough of the chitter-chatter. More below the cut!

Part the Second: Chapters 7 – 12

Ok, we’re into Book Proper now, and… ok, some plot threads have started to move, though not necessarily at the pace I’d like it to. There’s also a major sticking point: I’m coming at this book relatively fresh – I haven’t done a re-read to build up to it, barring reading a few of Leigh Butler’s Much Awesome Re-read at Tor – so I feel like I should be reasonably tolerant of some of the recurrent parts of the book, but it’s just not happening.

What I’m specifically picking up on is the constant reminders of “bubbles of evil” and how they are affecting everyone; how food is spoiling and the general malaise that lies across the land. I mean, yes, these things are all necessary to set the scene and show how on edge everyone is, but this doesn’t seem to have had a material affect on the plotline recently, unlike for example the bubble of evil way back in The Shadow Rising.

This includes the one in Chapter 11, which seems to be there primarily to demonstrate Rand is going visibly nuts under the pressure, and that Aviendha is Good at Channelling. But we still haven’t found out why it is that she is being punished, other than for not ‘learning quickly enough’. Similarly, there’s one in Chapter 6 that does little, other than demonstrate how helpless Aes Sedai are in the face of these too. But I get the feeling we knew this already.

That aside, I do like how the pace is slowly building. In these six chapters, we learn:

• Rand has a Plan for Arad Doman
• The sky is pretty grey.
• Siuan still meets with Egwene in T’A'R weekly
• Siuan is head-over-heels for Bryne, to the point where she will trek across the camp to help wash his shirts.
  • Which Bryne appreciates because she’s so damn good at it.
  • About frigging time we had a reasonable romantic plot in this damn story.
• Bryne has some measure of insight, possibly what makes him such a good general.
• Perrin has mixed feelings for Faile.
  • Are we seriously back to this again?
• Perrin doesn’t want to be a lord.
  • Are we seriously back to this again?!
• Mat is Around. Somewhere, but Rand & Perrin aren’t interested in seeing the swirly colours.
  • I’m tempted just to skip ahead to the Mat chapters.
• There are a whole lot of armies with a whole lot of men running around Randland.
  • It’s about to get a whole lot more hectic since so many of them have channellers who know how to make gateways.
  • Instantaneous troop transport! What could go wrong now?
• Bubbles of evil congregate around Rand. Like we’ve known for something like, oh, 9 books? Yeesh.
• Egwene is finally! making some headway in the Tower.
• She also finally gets to meet the Black Ajah Hunting Society, staring down much more senior women in order to assert her authority as alternative Amrylin.
  • It appears to be working too, with some coming for “hypothetical” advice.
• And that would appear to be that for these 6 chapters… yeah.

It really doesn’t feel like much has happened – I’m guessing I need to be more flexible with these posts, leaving it for more logical plot points instead of exactly 6 chapters, though I’ll attempt to keep it to a manageable length before I forget key points myself. The pace is picking up, which is a Good Thing.

That said, having gotten impatient, I’ve looked ahead at some spoilers, and they do look good – I just need a chance to get to those pages!

When I heard Robert Jordan had died, I gave up on the idea of ever getting a satisfying conclusion to the Wheel of Time series. Here was an author who had stretched and stretched a story over 11 meaty volumes, one which apparently at the start had only been destined for 3 books, but due to burgeoning sales managed to get extended. Every book introduced new characters, new plot threads, and somewhere around book 7, I found myself thinking I should only ever pick up new series when they’ve already been finished or the author is dead and I know there’s no more coming.

Jordan promised the readers a conclusion in one book, A Memory of Light, and he said he was damned if he wouldn’t deliver. Well, fate caught up with him first and so his series was doomed to be left with an unfinished story, the remainder of his notes locked away for all we knew. So now we find ourselves with an author who has passed away, and yet the series continues… because there’s a demand out there for this damn story to be finished.

Naturally, with sales to be had, the publishers hired on another author, and so Brian Sanderson was picked to fill the shoes of the indomitable Jordan. Sanderson got to writing… and writing… and writing. It turns out he’s either even worse than Jordan at concocting a quick conclusion, his editor is just as bad at chopping unnecessary bits (not surprising given it’s Jordan’s editor, his wife), or they’re all out for a quick buck.

Maybe all of the above, because what we have now is not one final volume, which would end the series on an appropriate 12 book note, but rather 3 final “volumes” of A Memory of Light, the first of which is The Gathering Storm. I don’t want to complain at the prospect of having more reading material, but lordy, this thing is heavy enough already. Coming 4 years after Knife of Dreams, tGS isn’t so much a book as an old-fashioned tome. I can only imagine what this will be like when bound in smaller paperback format. And what has me worried is that this is only volume 1 of 3 of the final book – and by gods, will it be hefty when finished.

So, it is with this trepidation… that I rushed down to the book store and picked it up, and have been reluctant to put down since yesterday. And it is with some assumed knowledge that I assume you are coming into this, because I know for sure it’ll make little enough sense to anyone else. And if you really do care, there’s a jump to click through:

Part the First: Prologue, Chapters 1 – 6

A quick refresher: when we left Randland at the end of Knife of Dreams, Rand had just managed to lose a hand in one of the most anti-climactic scenes of the series yet, and captured Semirhage as almost a fiat accompli. Egwene, captured at the end of Crossroads of Twilight, was getting regular spankings in the Tower but was beginning to turn into something of a S&M addict from all appearances. Perrin had just managed to save his wife, captured somewhere in the mists of book 7 or 8 or something like that, and Mat, having raised merry hell with the Seanchan in the south, was apparently on his way to rescue Moiraine (finally!) from the Finn. For more details, check the Wikipedia page for KoD.

So where do we find ourselves at page 120? Well, in no particular order…

• Some random people we didn’t know or care about decide to leave their farms and go north to fight.
• Some random people we don’t care about are fighting the Seanchan in Arad Doman.
  • Like they have been since book 2.
• Rand is fucking about in Arad Doman somewhere with 8,000 Saladeans and an unknown number of Aiel.
  • He refuses to torture the master torturer of the Forsaken because she’s a woman.
  • Australia says No, Rand, but for the love of plot, will you just get this over and done with?
  • No-one believes Rand cleaned the taint, and he’s getting a little bitter about that now, ok? (and so am I: that was book 9. These people need to build a bridge.)
• Egwene is still inside the Tower, still getting spanked.
  • The corridors are moving in mysterious ways.
  • Like they have been for the last three books.
  • Oh and Elaida is a little power mad.
  • Like we’ve known… forever.
• Aviendha still loves Rand.
  • But baby did a bad bad thing, and is being punished. But she doesn’t know what, and can’t ask because that would be shameful.
• Gawyn is confused.
• Elayne is apparently secure in Caemlyn and expanding her territory – why now?!
• “The Prophet” Masema is dead.
  • And his rabid followers.
  • Dead dead dead.
  • DEAD.
  • FINALLY.
  • For real.
  • And he didn’t talk about duty being heavier than geography, or mothers welcoming him home.
  • It was in fact one of the shortest, sharpest scenes in the series.
  • Faile killed him. Now time for her to kick some more ass and take names.
  • He’s dead! Yay!
• The Forsaken, the wunderkind taken to pieces by the Wonderkids of Emond’s Field, are down to but a few who are plotting and conniving amongst themselves while apparently also attempting to capture (but not kill!) Rand.
  • Seriously, has a small country town ever in any plot universe produced so many Uberheroes? Whoever these kids’ midwives where clearly knew what they were doing. It’s a wonder the village didn’t have a little band of marauding toddlers who took over the local area at least. Did they have an orgy with Superman for all these damn kids born around the same time to be kicking so much backside all over the world?
  • Pardon the detour.
  • Graendal apparently likes her pretties.
  • Like we’ve known for the last, oh, 6 books.
  • And while she doesn’t appear to have gotten off her fat ass at all, apparently she’s done something to get the nod of the DO.
  • Moridin is sinister.
  • Like we’ve… ok ok you get the point.

So… other than seeing Masema (finally! finally!) killed off, we’ve gotten just about nowhere.

Yes, that bodes… well. I’m hoping this is because Jordan wrote these chapters, and no editor wanted to touch that legacy or something. I’m hoping to get to the point where Sanderson’s vision starts to show through, because it’s certainly not moving at anything faster than glacial. That or Sanderson has adopted Jordan’s vision for the plot quite literally, and is being just as wordy (oh dear god) in an attempt to stay true to the spirit of the plot. Why he couldn’t stay true to the spirit of the first book is beyond me.

What I want to say to Sanderson right now is to start winding in the plot threads and non-core characters being shoved off the scene. No more new Forsaken, no more new nobility introduced, no more new redshirts. Kill off the redshirts you’ve got around already and get the fuck on with it. Yes, we have 750,000 words to go and two more books to sell, but the only reason you’re getting a chance right now is because it’s the first of the new co-written novels. For all that you’ve told us repeatedly that the “The ending is brilliant!”, we want to read it sooner rather than later.

And will someone hire a goddamn editor!?

Like anyone who used to blog with frequency pre-2005, I’d like to post here more often — not just to fill up bits and bytes, but to write again. Remember when blogs were more casual and conversational? Before a post’s purpose was to grab search engine clicks or to promise “99 Answers to Your Problem That We’re Telling You You’re Having”. Yeah. I’d like to get back to that here.

Looking around at the blogs on and formerly on my blogroll, those which are still around mostly lie fallow, updated sheepishly every few months. There’s a few who are still going strong – Dooce, Kottke and the like – but they were a different part of the internet experience to begin with. Few who once posted on a regular basis do so any more, and the list of inactive sites has grown over the months to include former favourite sites.

And here I was thinking what sapped the conversation for me was just a change in lifestyle…

So. Stuff.

Looking at what I get up to most weekends and even week-day nights, I wonder what it is that is keeping me so busy, but that’s only in hindsight. When you try to recount the story of the day, it sounds a little lame – e.g., Saturday: woke up late, hung out the washing, did a bit of hedge trimming and lawn mowing, played a bit of basketball, helped design my parent’s 25th anniversary invite, went over to a friend’s place and watched Speed while chattering away. Oh and when I got home we had people over so I stayed up talking until 1.

And don’t even get me started on Sunday, where I genuinely was shocked when I looked at my watch to find it was nearly 2pm when I decided to go for a shower. Or, indeed, Friday night, where I managed to get four separate things in between 5pm and 1AM when I got home.

So in summary, a social life is no more conducive to blogging, in any extent beyond that of say Facebook status updates or Twitter, short of setting aside time specifically for it. Which says loads about the time when I could pump out four posts a day no hassles. Has anyone else found this to be the case?

I have, on the other side of the coin, been attempting to flex some creaking web design muscles while helping out a friend with a site for his new business, and boy, has it been a while. I forgot how to lay out columns for one, and was half tempted to yank out an ancient copy of Dreamweaver I’m sure I’ve still got a license for and lay about with Tables. For design. Luckily I stepped back from that brink shortly before the temptation was too much, but there’s nothing pure about my CSS for this site, and the theory of grid based design I explored for a short while was put out to pasture while I try to actually get something done.

I am a huge fan of CSS3′s more design-focused properties, like box shadow and rounded borders. Suddenly those hours spent trying to get pixels to line up and not look too incongruent with the CSS-rendered remainder of the page are  gone, replaced by a few minutes of fiddling with a text file. Thank you, powers-that-be, for Gecko and WebKit. Now if someone can give Microsoft a poke…