Mostly Harmless » Reviews

‘The Road’ Short Book Review

Rowan — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:37:40 +0000

I’d been wanting to get a hold of this for a couple of years but had never actually come across it in a local book shop. ‘The Road’ is possibly the bleakest fiction I’ve ever read. The story follows a boy and his father struggling to survive in a journey south to the coast across [...]

‘The White Tiger’ Short Book Review

Rowan — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:51:38 +0000

An innovative cross between a Dickens novel and ‘Crime and Punishment’ (without the moral / psychological quandry of the latter being at the forefront) ‘The White Tiger’ is the black as coal and worryingly humourous story from childhood to success of a man from the Indian “darkness”. How true to life the story depicted is [...]

Mirror’s Edge Review

Rowan — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:05:11 +0000

Mirror’s Edge is a new take on the first person shooter genre, set in a dystopian city which on the surface looks very clean, polished and ordered. As all electronic and traditional methods of communication are monitored by the city state, those who wish to stay off the record communicate via messages couried over the [...]

Amazon MP3 store – buying MP3s legitimately online in Linux still a pain in the arse then

Rowan — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 11:23:34 +0000

Like many this Christmas, I found Amazon’s offer of £3 of free MP3s tempting. I’ve avoided buying music online all these years on principle because the DRM experience mixed with using multiple computers and OS types has just been miserable. The CD has generally been cheaper, with the very minor inconvenience of ripping it when [...]

Simpsons Game Review

Rowan — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:59:57 +0000

It’s not particular eloquent, but TV or Movie tie in games are normally, well… balls. “The Simpsons game” turns out to be an adequate platformer raised to worth playing status by the addition of tv-quality Simpsons animation shorts linking the levels and a storyline most gamers will appreciate… well, that is if you’re over 20 [...]

O2’s DNS servers in “utterly pants” shocker

Rowan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:03:07 +0000

Well, or not a shocker apparently. Searching around they’ve apparently been defective for months. Only it’s never effected me before because I’ve not used the net at the flat before in the evenings. Never mind, setting third party DNS servers gets things working, but funny to think we’re paying for DNS servers that go to [...]

Slicehost Review – Initial Impressions

Rowan — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:24:50 +0000

I Decided back in the Summer that I would ditch Servage when my renewal came around in the Autumn, I’ll discuss why in a separate updated final review. In short I wanted a system I had as near to 100% control over as possible, so that meant a VPS. Hosting my own and my family’s [...]

Nominet Registrar Information Day

Rowan — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 12:01:17 +0000

I was lucky enough a week or two back to get a day away from the screen up in London to attend Nominet’s registrar information day. The event had a sensible start time of 9.30 for registration (presentations starting at 10.00) making travelling up the same day just about possible (i.e getting up at 5 [...]

Wordpress as a website CMS?

Rowan — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:58:15 +0000

As further proof that whenever you have an idea the Internet is capable of crushing you by showing you that someone has already done it, I’ve been meaning to write an article on this for a while – and now I don’t need to.

Updating a personal website has always been something I’ve known I should [...]

Year Zero Review

Rowan — Wed, 30 May 2007 13:26:14 +0000

It has been such a very long time since there was a record that really mattered, a record that can get under your skin. Something that tries to take on the world, chew it up and spit it out, snarling and cool all at the same time.

The last album that managed that for me was [...]