Time for another movie review. Been a while since I did that last time. This time it’s not a new movie, but one I just discovered existed. The movie is from 2009 and is a Sci-Fi Comedy. I usually don’t find comedies very funny. Don’t know, maybe Hollywood potty or drunken humour isn’t quite my thing. This one is different though. Firstly, and probably most significantly, it is British. Most of the best comedies are, with very few exceptions.

Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel is about three nerdy friends in a pub. The one guy played by Chris O’Dowd (from IT Crowd) is obsessed by time travel, and tells a story about a girl he just met who claimed to be a time agent. It’s all a bit silly really, and the guys don’t quite believe him. He doesn’t really believe the story himself it turns out. Then one of the guys needs to take a leak. When he comes back from the toilet, he has been sent forward in time. There is a time-rift in the men’s room! The story quickly gets confusing with several versions of themselves in the same pub trying to avoid running into each other. Some classic time-travel elements like a post-apocalyptic version of the city in snow-clad rubble is added to the mix, as well as evil time villains. It is all delightfully absurd, and there is just enough confusion for it to not be annoying.

Well worth watching if you’re looking for a laid back British comedy film.

Alright, time for another review of an Alastair Reynolds book. This time Chasm City, the second book in the Revelation Space series. This book is independent from book 1, Revelation Space and book 3, Redemption Ark, but takes place in this same universe. The book is about the legendary city on the planet Yellowstone, an earth-like planet orbiting the close star Epsilon Eridani, a star often used in Sci-Fi. The city is located inside a big chasm on the planet surface and has been hit by the melding plague, a plague that attacks technology, even nanotechnology in humans.

The main character, Tanner Mirabel, is from the planet Sky’s Edge, the first planet to be colonized by human beings. The story of this fist colonization is a key element in the book, and we follow the journey of the first settlers in parallel with the main story, a writing style Reynolds use in most of his books. Mirabel is a gun for hire chasing someone into the complex post-plague social world of Chasm City. The story takes us through his introduction to this complex social structure, and as always with Reynold’s stories, it has many fascinating layers of technology, politics and faith. The people we follow turn out not te be quite who they appear to be at first, and as always, Reynolds make everything come together at the end.

This is probably one of the best books yet by Reynolds, and a favourite of mine together with Pushing Ice. It is highly recommended for any Sci-Fi fan, and it can be read as a standalone book without following the series as there are little of the story that depends on book 1 besides a few references.

So I finally got around to buy myself a Kindle from Amazon. Very nice device, but it is not very good with standard pdfs. I have a number of books laying around in text format, and the internet is full of good classics that are public domain (i.e. not under copyright). Check for instance Project Gutenberg which has a number of books available, also prepared for Kindle and other mobile devices. Anyway, as I said, I needed a LaTeX template that is formatted and suitable for generating pdfs for the Kindle. I googled a bit around and found one that, with some modification, worked well.

Here is the template.

…and a few books I’ve formatted using that template:

Edit on 10.05.2011:
Based on a comment below I tested the template with an equation. To do this i added the following packages:

\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}

The result is shown here (click for larger image):

I got hold of the 1980′s sitcom “ALF” here the other day. For once one of the good old TV shows I watched as a kid turns out to be every bit as funny as I remember it to be!

ALF (Alien LifeForm) is a character from the planet Melmac that crash-lands in the garage of a regular middle class American family, the Tanners. They take him in as part of their family to hide him from the government Alien Task Force. ALF is a frantic funny little guy, a bit immature for his 229 years of age. Every episode of the 4 seasons of the show are more or less independent stories involving ALF getting into some sort of trouble or another. Enjoyable easy-going sitcom with many fun moments. It is pretty timeless for being over 20 years old, and have very few obscure 80′s references.

ALF – Episode list

“I shed, therefore I am.” -ALF

Today, October 10th 2010, or 10.10.10, which is when written in binary: 101010 = 42.

So happy 42 day!

Terminal World is the latest book by Alastair Reynolds. The book is set some time in the future in a time when humans are struggling to survive on a cooling planet where zones restrict where advanced technology or even biological life can survive. The main human city is located on the surface of a large spiralling spire reaching out into space. Both the zones and the spire are remnants of earlier times when humans were more technologically advanced. That time is gone, and little knowledge remains of this time. Most of humanity live in primitive zones where only primitive machinery can function.

The main character of the book, Quillon, is an angel. Angels are descendants of some modified and enhanced part of the human race. They can only survive in the zones that allow the highest level of technology. Quillon has been modified to serve as an infiltrator in the lower level zones, and now someone is out to kill him. The story first takes us through his flight, and then we follow him as he learns about the story of humanity and the remnants of ancient technology.

As usual, Reynolds has written a magnificent story. Very imaginative. However as too often with his books, the ending feels a bit rushed and too much left to be explained. Still, a very good read.

Woken Furies is the third book in the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy by the British science fiction author Richard Morgan. I reviewed the first book, Altered Carbon, in September 2009 (here). The second book I never reviewed on its own. It’s called Broken Angels in any case. Each of the books stand on their own, and there is little dependency on the previous one to read the next. Actually I don’t think it matter much which order you read them in at all.

In the first book, Altered Carbon, Kovacs is on earth, some time in the future, when we have colonized the nearby solar systems. He is investigating a murder, and you have your classical private detective story in a curious futuristic and pretty bleak setting. Added to this is Richard Morgan’s rough touch. His characters and settings are pretty hardcore. Violence and sex is frequent, yet suits the story very well.

In the second book, Broken Angels, Kovacs is investigating an alien planet where a corporation is trying to secure an alien portal in the middle of a war zone. The aliens, the Martians as they’re referred to, is an alien race that once inhabited Mars and a number of other planets about a million years ago. They left technology and ruins, and a lot of mysteries. The interest of this portal causes violent fights between corporations, and our “hero” is in the middle of it.

In this third and last book, Woken Furies, we meet Kovacs back on the planet where he once were born. In this version of our future, the human consciousness is stored in a chip implanted in your spine, so you are able to change body if you should die or just want an upgrade. Also, as a means of punishment, you may be put in storage for decades or even centuries. Kovacs reappear after being in storage for a long time, finding a planet not much like the one he grew up on. This book is about politics and is centred around a revolutionary character from the early days of the settlement of the planet. Old revolutionaries which have spent the better part of the last couple of centuries in a small surfer town, is called to arms and the revolution is back on. This is yet another fascinating and imaginative book that keeps you interested from page one. Maybe the best one of the three in my opinion. Yet I wouldn’t want to miss any of them.

SciFi’s new Science Fiction show, Caprica, which started in January this year (although the pilot aired in April 2009) is a follow up show, or actually a prequel, to Battlestar Galactica (the new version). It takes place on Caprica and covers the backstory of how the Cylons first came to be. We see Bill Adama as a young boy, and we follow his family and the Graystone family through the first half season of the series.

There are much similar between Battlestar Galactica and Caprica. They are both Sci-Fi/Drama, but Caprica is less about politics and religion although these are of course in the background. Caprica is more of a family drama, and it works well in this futuristic and slightly alien setting without becoming to remote from the world we live in. Much is familiar, the main difference is a few levels up in technology, though this is not overplayed as they do in more traditional Sci-Fi like Star Trek. A lot like Battlestar Galactica really, except Caprica takes place on the ground and not in space. The Cylon side of the story greatly reminds me of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which also was an excellent show I might add.

Caprica is a show well worth watching if you like Sci-Fi and Drama alike. Especially if you enjoyed Battlestar Galactica in its first seasons. I’ll be looking forward to the second half of season one which unfortunately isn’t scheduled to start until January 2011.

Finally got around to see it. It has been out for a while, and you still need to prebook seats to get a good spot. Anyway, saw it in 3D, and the glasses worked really well. I knew not to try and focus on stuff that weren’t supposed to be in focus. That’s what hurts the eyes. The 3D became very realistic at times, I almost waved the dust away when the big tree fell!

The story was good, though maybe not original. However I don’t necessarily mind that. Many stories are good for a reason. Good character development, but very predictable. Very textbook I think. All that aside, what really sells the movie is the amazing beautiful planet and very creative plant and animal life they created with their CGI. Great attention to detail. Now that is a very important point. The animated details are amazing. Also all that treehugger-mumbojumbo was framed in a plausible setup that didn’t make my sciency side cringe.

The movie has a definite wow-factor to it, very similar to what I felt when I saw Jurassic Park the first time at the cinemas (was the most expensive CGI movie of its time back 17 years ago).

This movie may very well deserve a place on my best movies list, and definitely the best one of 2009 (and I’ve seen a lot of movies in 2009). I think it beats Inglorious Basterds and Public Enemies, though they don’t really compare as they’re in a different class.

This is a definite must see, and it must be seen in cinemas. I’ll be getting the BluRay when it comes out. 1080p is the only way to go for this one!

A very different book by Alastair Reynolds. In this book humans have long colonized our galaxy and split into many different sub-species and sub-civilizations. One such sub-civilization is the shatterlings. They are clones who’s purpose are to explore the galaxy. The particular faction we follow are all clones of a woman who’s childhood is one of the parallel storylines in the book. These clones live for millions of years, both due to relativistic time dilation and cryogenic technology. But something threatens their existence, most of them are killed in an attack, and the survivor are left to figure out what happened.

The setting of the book is brilliant, but this time I think Reynolds got a bit lost in his storylines. I felt too much time was spent on less significant tracks, and too little on the conclusion. The end of the book comes really fast and while magnificent, a bit hasty. Still a very good book.