RED and TED

New York was great. Thanks to all our friends, new and old, for making it such a great week.

New York from Tash's window in Brooklyn

So the idea of India is percolating around my head as I consider the options open to me and all of the time I'll have for writing. I want to maximise the opportunity and get as much work done as possible with minimum distractions (apart from a whole continent to explore of course). I want to work on both book two and three of the 'Juvie' series and make in roads on the idea that I have mentally entitled 'The Park' (something I've been working on and off for several years). I also have an idea for a short story around the idea of augmented reality as well as the comic book idea 'Icons'. As I plan to do some photography whilst there and plenty of reading I imagine that lot should keep me busy.

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Language Deciphered by Computer
"The lost language of Ugaritic was last spoken 3,500 years ago. It survives on just a few tablets, and linguists could only translate it with years of hard work and plenty of luck. A computer deciphered it in hours."


RED
The first trailer for the Warren Ellis based comic book RED - looks good.


Augmented Reality
"Property developers won’t be wasting money on fancy architects if they can throw a skin around their building and flog the exterior to Coke. Particularly not if half the passers-by aren’t seeing their building -- lost in a reality constructed by a Belgian design studio and distributed via Specsavers."
A world we would all see differently depending on our subscriptions and opt-outs.


TED
"It's a bit like YouTube, but instead of featuring cats falling into lavatories, it has short, cutting-edge talks by the world's leading neuroscientists, behavioural economists, video artists, philosophers, particle physicists, rocket scientists, endurance athletes, Aids researchers… you name it, it's been at TED."
If you've never looked at the free lectures on TED you should drop what you're doing and go there immediately.


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Garth Ennis is  favourite comic book author and his Preacher series is one that garnered plenty of press in the last few years. Proud Americans looks at the Reverend's relationship with his friends as he goes after the captured Cassidy. The second part of the book looks at how Cassidy became a vampire and is the better of the two halves. 


The Affinity Bridge is the first in a series of books in the Newbury & Hobbes series from small press Snowbooks. It's a steampunk adventure in an alternative London where Queen Victoria's Empire has been elongated beyond her death and enhanced through technology. It has magic, risen dead and robots. I would say that the two lead characters aren't fleshed out as much as I'd like, but I imagine this is remedied in the later novels.


Haunting Museums is a non-fiction work about artefacts around the world that have strange or inexplicable stories attached to them. A sort of believe or not Warehouse 13. The essay are hit and miss and a US slant. Mildly interesting. 


Read this week:


Preacher: Proud Americans by Garth Ennis  & Steve Dillon
The Affinity Bridge by George Mann
Haunting Museums by John Schuster