Killing time

As the weather currently means I'm also too hot to even live, now is the time for me to do as little as possible and enjoy trying to stay cool.

I'm mostly calm on the NHS front at the moment. Though I do need to get around to reading the new framework sometime soon, just not right now. Remember kids, not all targets are bad.

At the moment I'm working my way through Pandora's Star. It’s the first Peter F. Hamilton book I've gotten around to picking up. The sense of epic scale and massive, massive amounts of world (galaxy) building going on are really good in my view. He paints pictures of this world he has created then keeps on painting. The chapter where he just outlines the history and growth of an entire species, while technically being an infodump, is a window into a very alien world and certain one of the most inhuman set of aliens I've read in sci-fi lately. I'll certainly be picking up his other stuff soon.

On the less high culture side, Steam currently has an epic summer sale and I can feel my bank balance dying already. Shiny new ways to blow things up? Yes please!

My other currently big time killer is new Internet media. Falling prices of recording equipment and video capture/editing software, plus increased home computing power and space make it all possible. Internet fan movies have been a slow growing thing, and I really need to start watching some.

But what really peaked my Internet was a few Internet review shows I've been watching. Along with just interesting me as a nerd, seems more than a few people are using them to backdoor their own creative ideas. And I really like this. Booking shows with skits of various natures and showing off a little film making talent. Sure its amateur backyard stuff, but some of it is really cool.

From the internet fame of series like Red vs Blue, to things That Guy With The Glasses does, I just approve. Nice to think "hmmm, nothing on on-demand TV, but that's ok, because there's an entire web series I've been meaning to watch!" While I can only speak for the more geeky fandom stuff, I'm sure there will stuff out there doesn't use video games / sci-fi as a creative source.