I tried, I tried. Two albums down the track, I have to admit that Kisschasy have a catchy sound, but it’s not my thing. Doesn’t grab me.

Recommended by a friend, and it hasn’t disappointed. It still has high rotation on my listening list, but the gloss has worn off a little now. But that’s after a few months of pretty hard listening.

Good stuff. Pretty straightforward, but it backs a lot of the simple rules to follow with hard statistical evidence, and good anecdotal illustrations from the workplace, particularly in some high-flying companies. Worth the read as a primer to establishing the kind of workplace you’d want to work in, but there’s work to be done beyond this book. Happily, it has an excellent bibliography.

Good stuff. If these guys are Australian emo, it’s pretty good. Sort of somewhere between an Australian pub band and stuff like My Chemical Romance. Probably not my first choice for a CD to put on, but not bad.

Bioshock was a religious experience for me, right up until the point where I got snapped out of the narrative, because I was being made to do something that was just flat-out dumb. That was after being subjected to a World of WarCraft style gathering quest. There’s a reason I hate playing World of WarCraft, so bringing that tedium into an otherwise fine game didn’t help matters…

Maybe I’ll go back to it and rediscover the love. But for now, it’s shelf time.

I wish that Stephen King would stop doing interesting things with Roland because then I could pull out of the series and not care. But there are occasional snippets of him – glimpses of why I love the character, that make the book worth reading overall.

It makes the garbage stand out more though. I read through the whole thing thinking “Sneetches… that word sounds familiar.” And if you think so too, when you’re reading it, there’s a completely unnecessary punch in the nuts coming your way at the end of the book.

I like the idea of the Dark Tower being about a series of worlds crumbling together as things go faster and faster out of control. When it becomes a pastiche of pop culture references (particularly when the author tries to tie all his books together into this overarching story) it just seems cluttered and forced. Ugly.

And man, are there some dumb ideas coming in the next book. But… closure. I must have closure, and add to the millions of people on the internet deliberately doing things that make them complain loudly.

Season One has some fantastic episodes. At its best, Heroes is gobsmackingly awesome TV. There are admittedly some bad spots in the writing as well. Season finale, we’re talking about you! Also, a few of the set pieces I was really looking forward to are a little truncated… but it comes out ahead in the balance.

Friends have mentioned that it’s not treading any ground that hasn’t been tread in comics before, and I don’t doubt that. I think it scores points for bringing it to TV in such a slick way though.

The DVD boxed set is worth getting for the commentaries with Gred Grundberg alone. The love he has for the show is contagious.

There’s something bittersweet about finishing a long series… you never go back to those characters that feel like friends with the same vitality, because your time with them is bookended. You can go back and reread old tales, but there will never be new moments.

Maybe I’m nuts, but it feels all the more bittersweet given how inclusive the experience is – I was walking from the tram stop a few nights ago, book in hand, and a random stranger said “It’s great, isn’t it?” Whether you love the series or hate it, it’s had an effect on a lot of people…

Blah

I picked up The Last Oil Shock while I was on a bookshop spree in Newtown. A pang of conscience wouldn’t let me leave the book on the shelf when I had already collected an armful of other fun stuff.

There is, within these pages, some scary, scary stuff. The Last Oil Shock is what happens when the next big oil shortage happens, courtesy of Peak Oil. Peak Oil is the idea that, as a combination of increasing demand and a depletion of available resources, oil production no longer exceeds demand, and suddenly we’ve got a big problem on our hands due to our incredible reliance on oil.

The author (David Strahan, long-time journalist) is clever in leaving the real apocalyptic potential of Peak Oil just at the outside edge of what he’s talking about. The metrics on worldwide consumption (in the millions of barrels per day) are really, really scary.

I’ve talked to friends about Peak Oil, and the rejoinder has always been that there will always be more oil, or technology to create oil from other mechanisms. The Last Oil Shock doesn’t dispute this, but points at the fundamental flaw underpinning that logic: no other technology can produce energy as fast as drilling oil out of the ground. So, there are changes ahead.

It took me six weeks to read this damned thing because, despite the really easygoing tone of the author, it’s often a trudge through a lot of (necessary) figures and projections. When you’re cramming a bunch of technical information for work, Harry Potter becomes a much smoother choice for the off hours.

The first section I read through, and the part that makes the book pay for itself, is the section on what to do to protect yourself. Most of what’s in there makes sense, and even if you don’t buy into Peak Oil, it’s worth doing from an environmental point of view. The bleaker projections put the date for Peak Oil somewhere in the next six to eight years, which is more than enough time to make some necessary changes that will save you money either way. And if you don’t buy into Peak Oil, it keys you in on what the Dirty Hippies are saying! Rebuttal food!

Highly recommended! Scary stuff, but worthwhile. READ IT! (and if you do read it and still disagree, let me know why!)