Music -- Ten

Ten Music Albums that stayed with me ..

• 1974 -- Mike Oldfield -- Hergest Ridge
• 1983 -- Yes -- 90125
• 1983 -- The Police -- Synchronicity
• 1984 -- Sade -- Smooth Operator
• 1985 -- Latin Quarter -- Modern Times
• 1987 -- Queen -- The Works
• 1989 -- Tom Petty -- Full Moon Fever
• 1990 -- Indigo Girls -- Nomads Indians Saints
• 1991 -- Baby Animals -- Baby Animals
• 1993 -- Marc Cohn -- The Rainy Season

Best Served Cold

In the past months I have been reading or (to be more precise) listening to the First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. For the most part I rather enjoyed the books, not so much because of the story itself, but the characters are very interesting (I wouldn't call them heroes), and the writing which is fresh and entertaining.

So I am usually skeptical about book series (I am looking at you Wheel of Time), but upon a recommendation by a friend I started listening to the sequels, starting with Best Served Cold. I am about 1/4 into the book now, and I must say it's again another good read. And I appreciate the fact, that the author didn't continue the story from the original trilogy, but started a fresh one.

The Next Great Thing?

Winamp: Gracenote Services Terminated

Unfortunately the autodetection of (music) CDs in Winamp is no longer working, which means, that the automatic tagging is no longer .. automatic. DrO, member of the Winamp team, posted the following explanation in the Winamp forum on May 15th, 2014:

it looks like the access Winamp had to Gracenote's services has been terminated and is the reason why things have stopped working. this was going to happen anyway as a result of the sale of Winamp and SHOUTcast in January where the deal with them was not going to be renewed (and if Winamp and SHOUTcast hadn't been bought, what you're now seeing would have happened anyway), but we weren't at all sure when things were going to stop working (as all that was known is it might be sometime between the start of 2014 and early 2015). as such until a new Winamp client is released with a Musicbrainz based solution (as we're not aiming to have a new client out until the end of the year due to the mass of work required to remove / replace the AOL / Gracenote specific parts), there's not much i can really suggest at the time on what can be done as an alternative for the Gracenote powered features.

Femme Fatale

Content of the "Dangerous Woman" anthology (as per Wikipedia):

1. “Some Desperado” by Joe Abercrombie (The First Law) -- In the wild west, a desperate woman is chased by bounty hunters into a derelict town and still manages to come out on top of the situation.
2. “My Heart is Either Broken” by Megan Abbott -- A husband suspects his eccentric wife of their daughter's murder, but the truth turns out to be worse.
3. “Nora’s Song” by Cecelia Holland -- A story about princess Eleanor and her observation on the royal household of Henry II of England and (future) Richard I.
4. “The Hands That Are Not There” by Melinda Snodgrass -- A lieutenant in a dystopian future hears about a conspiracy theory about an alien race capable of genetically altering humans.
5. “Bombshells” by Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files) -- A young wizard's apprentice finds herself caught between warring factions and must race against time to save a vampire.
6. “Raisa Stepanova” by Carrie Vaughn -- World war II Russian fighter pilot with an ambition to become an ace. The tale of the Russian resistance and her plight are interwoven with her own struggle for recognition.
7. “Wrestling Jesus” by Joe R. Lansdale -- Two wrestlers become spellbound by a woman and continue to wrestle each other even after retirement on the unspoken condition that the winner gets to keep the woman.
8. “Neighbors” by Megan Lindholm -- In a scenic suburb of Seattle, alzheimer's disease changes the way of life for elderly women. A bit of magic and time travel are thrown in for good measure.
9. “I Know How to Pick ’Em” by Lawrence Block, a contemporary crime thriller Femme fatale crime story with a twist.
10. “Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell” by Brandon Sanderson (The Cosmere) -- In a forest inhabited by supernatural evil beings called shades, an elderly inn-keeper turns bounty hunter at night.
11. “A Queen in Exile” by Sharon Kay Penman, chronicling a little-known episode of late 12th-century Sicilian history -- Constance of Sicily, goes to great lengths to secure the support of the people for her son, (future) Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor.
12. “The Girl in the Mirror” by Lev Grossman (Magicians)
13. “Second Arabesque, Very Slowly” by Nancy Kress
14. “City Lazarus” by Diana Rowland
15. “Virgins” by Diana Gabaldon (Outlander), an 18th-century Scots mercenary adventure
16. “Hell Hath No Fury” by Sherrilyn Kenyon, a present-day Native American ghost story
17. “Pronouncing Doom” by S. M. Stirling (Emberverse), a "hanging judge" tale set "in a postapocalyptic America devastated by plague and machine failure"
18. “Name the Beast” by Sam Sykes
19. “Caretakers” by Pat Cadigan
20. “Lies My Mother Told Me” by Caroline Spector (Wild Cards)
21. “The Princess and the Queen, or, the Blacks and the Greens” by George R.R. Martin, a tale of "continent-burning warfare" that explodes between Targaryen Princess Rhaenyra and her stepmother Queen Alicent, set in the Westeros of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, 200 years before the events of A Game of Thrones

A deniable way of agreeing with people

"You might very well say that, I couldn't possibly comment." -- Francis Urquhart