Jeremy Stake the private detective is brought in to go to Sinan, which is a planet in another dimension to work for the corporation to investigator why this small village is now growing by it's self using smart matter and duplicating it's design on Punktown in every detail. The locals are now calling it Bluetown and the fear is that it will wipe out all the other towns and cites and start a new war between Ha Jinn, Jin Hass, and the Earth Colonies.

Why would such a war start, well it something to do with the special gas which is find within Sinan and fuels the dimensionally travel system. With it the earth colonies and it allies will loss the power it has gained. Now this does sound a bit like the problem on earth now with the oil supply running out ?

This is fourth in the series of Punk Town novels by Jeffery Thomas, and not having read any of his books before I was impressed by the imagination of the author taking many elements from earth based ideas. The only problem with the book was a bit too much lovely duffy stuff which just bores the pants off me.

Overall this very good read and I may go back and try some of his other books out soon.

This does sound very intriguing and from Kens previous books I was expecting something good! However this book did not live up to my expectations as it felt like a main stream book style running with the west's current fear of terror or terrorists to sell the book, with the action film to follow within the next year (not really). May be that is a bit rough, as it does stand out as a thought provoking book that some how does feel too close to what reality is or could be very soon.

It's set within the post 9/11 world where terror won so to speak and the world order is different to now, or it's different to now but could be the future within the next couple of years. The United Kingdom has had to overcome many different national challenges and only just survived the flu pandemic. The food crisis has happened and millions of people have been displaced with camps being set-up, does sound like this could already be about started? The USA is struggling to stay as the Ione power with China and Communist India being the powerhouses of the world.

It starts in Scotland with suspected terrorist attack on an air base, but with local activists spotting something odd before the explosion and the chase by the security forces things start to hot up. Another attack on the Grangemouth refinery, then on motorway bridge and the UK goes into meltdown. But the key figures are all involved to some degree with one family playing key roles within it.

I may have said this book was a let down, but that was to my expectations of the author and previous books which I have read. Overall it's a good book, fast moving and partly of twist and turns to keep you hooked. The idea to the ending of this book, comes from another well know science fictions book that it should not fit in with this, but it does and does Ken know something about China we do not.

It's a thought that not many people may think about as we are so used to just flicking the switch or turning the tap to get what we need. But one day soon this may happen, and we could be left to supply our on power and water we need to live our life’s.

So after doing some research on-line I came across the off-grid.net website created by Nick Rosen who also wrote a book with the same name. So with the book purchased off I went into the world of off-grid living.

The book is about the authors investigations in to how to live "off the grid" and the desire for himself and his family to join the off grid world.
It starts with his original idea off purchasing some cheap land in the Mediterranean many years go, which had a small shepherds hut on it. This was mainly used as weekend get away but soon understood that the flights taking him they was not good to the environment. This was just the starting point as from they he then decided to look closer to home and see what, how and where people did this within the UK.

His main idea was to buy a van and then travel around the UK meeting up with people that have chosen this type of life style, from people in vans to community based projects or to the lucky ones that have the funds who can do it with out the worry. It's very surprising that many people seem against the idea of you getting land and building your own off the grid world!
So many restrictions are forced upon them like local planning , neighbours who are worried about their property value and people who think they are just a bunch of drug smoking hippies.

As this is a personal account you may find that you don't agree with his point of view or the way which he approached it , but this book will really open your eyes to the possibilities and opportunities that you can get from this move, also a lot of good tips and tricks that he picked up on his travels. For someone moving to off-grid will be a tough experience, as it's not going to be easy and you will have to adjust your life style. This will in essence give you freedom, even if you cannot go 100% off grid you should just try a little to start with as you will learn so much.

Richard Dawkins talks about all the reasons why he does not believe in god and what the dangers of religion are having on the human mind and state in general. It's a worrying point that religion seeks to hide and ignore scientific fact and forces only the view of a creationism view of the world.

He manages to cover all the angles that religious faiths will say why god exists and that science is wrong with strong evidences that disproves the religious stories. Yet people seem not be able to see through the trees and deal with the matter that what you believe in is wrong, based on false hoods.

He writes the book in away that completes the cycle and does not get to heavy reading or too difficult to understand. I may go back and read some sections again to just understand the point, but that does mean you cannot understand it as it's in plain English. You would really have to be closed minded not to understand or just crazy.

It's not about believing in a religious faith that is based on old fiction, Chinese whispers and historic stories.

In the beginning god created the earth and everything else in seven days, and the earth is only 10,000 BC years old , this makes The Grand Canyon differcult to explain seeing as it was carved out six million years ago.

The book will delve in to all the subjects and reasons that make it sense that god is a myth.

Go and read it with an open mind, and of course enjoy.

Now the book in question is called the old Patagonian express by Paul Theroux and it describes his journey by train from Boston to Esquel Argentina (Patagonia) via Mexico and into the humid jungles of Central America. After a detour of politically unstable Nicaragua, he then proceeds over the Andes and finally reaches the cold, bare heart of Patagonia, the small town of Esquel. He endures harsh climates, including the extreme altitude of Peru and the Bolivian Plateau, meets the famous author Jorge Luis Borges in Buenos Aires who seems a right old good character.

The idea came when taking a local commuter train in Boston which was full of commuters and not getting off till the end of the line. We've all had the same feeling of staying on the train till the end of line and one day I think I will , but only if its going somewhere interesting.

Paul manages to write in a clear and understanding way that is light-hearted but not weak.

The book covers all the various different characters he meets and places that are visited with humour, fascination, concern and amazement . The reason for his traveling is because he could and he was able to write a book about it which would in the end pay for his travels. He must have a very understanding wife who lets him go for about 3 to 4 months without her. To follow his journey today would be very difficult as I'm not sure if a passenger rail network still exists in Mexico or Guatemala. I have been to both countries and saw no passenger trains, apart from the train in Honduras which I caught and one in Panama which is more of a tourist train. So he picked his timing well which was around the late 70's to take this trip before many of the train lines were closed down and the road took over.

It's a wonderful read which gives you a feel on how each country looks at its self and of its neighbours, they all say they are the best and they would never travel to each others country. He had to tow a fine line as it would not be good to say a bad word about the country he was in, even if it was bad. Another thing is that only the poor travel by train whom seem to be mainly the indigenous natives, but a few westerns take the plunge as well.

It was one of the best travelogue every to be published in my view and really gives a good insight on how to travel if you are looking for a real experience.

Before the war finished, Aubrac, with a few other men, was given responsibilities by De Gaulle in rebuilding the country. His district was Marseilles. He had to be tough and ruthless in his decision to requisition the local industries but he managed to put the local economy back on the tracks.

He went on doing his job as a road and bridge engineer working in Morocco and Vietnam before going back to diplomacy especially working with Henry Kissinger trying to end up the Vietnam war. In the process he made friend with Ho Chi Minh.

After the end of the Vietnam war he carried on working on an agricultural project between France and Vietnam and was the initiator of a world agricultural database years before the Internet.

This book is full of anecdotes relating historical events that people had not heard of before, sometimes putting the records straight. This book should be read by everybody especially children who are studying this period of history at school.

Now having been a fan of Underworld since the early to mid nineties, it was a great pleasure to find they have released a new album and gone touring again.

This album has been released for a couple of months now , so if you have not got yourself a copy yet then it's about time you did.

Many people would have thought that Dance / Electronic music was dead and that the days of the big groups doing tours and festivals were numbered , but with the release of Chemical Brother's new album it appears that it's making a comeback which is very refreshing. I for one have got bored of the usual band's which really are just doing the same old stuff.

Anyway , back to the music , 'Oblivion with Bells' is good with a nice mixture of tunes from stomping to relaxed chillout with some vocal tracks in the mix as well.

If you have seen the film Sunshine then you will have heard some of the tracks already as Underworld did the soundtrack.

It's not ground breakingly new in the style of the music but its shows that the band have matured by being able to push soul and feeling into the music.
I'm not going to talk about each track as it's up to the listeners to decide for themselves but I'm sure whether you are young or old this album will shine through with the quality and freshness that will put electronic back on the map.

It's nice that by listening to this album you can just let your mind wander , it helps hide away the dark and cold winter nights.

The book is about a guy called Nails , a tracksuited slacker who spends most of his time searching for his next line of speed and dreaming of some strange conspiracy theories about the national economy and the Russkies (Russians). Many other things happen that take some understanding but it seems to be all one big trip.

It's written in a way that feels like the author was on speed as it's fast and disjointed, so you speed freaks will understand.

I for one did not enjoy this book as much as I hoped, it sometimes just seemed hard to follow and to mixed up to make a good go at it, or was it the fact that I had the flu!!!!

4/10

At the moment there isn't a lot of PS1 games available, but then it's only been on-line for a few weeks, out of the current selection Crash Bandicoot stood out as I'd always enjoyed the series and had fond memories of the first one and at £3.49 it's a bit of a bargain.

The game weighs in at 400mb and can only be downloaded if your PSP is connected, in order to ensure no copying I guess.

First impressions are good, the game looks crisp and although this is game is 11 years old the graphics don't look that dated, maybe the cartoony style helps, as with a lot of the early PS1 games it's not widescreen so the PSP runs in 4:3 mode which is fine, if you do stretch it to fit everything looks a little odd!!. The game plays well with no slowdown or graphical glitches, sound is exactly as I remembered which prompted a smile when the theme tune started up.

The controls on the PSP let it down a bit, the 4 directional buttons are spaced a bit too far apart for comfort and the analogue nub isn't very sensitive, so I found myself switching between the two depending on how acurate I needed to be while moving/jumping, slightly annoying but doesn't take away too much of the enjoyment.

As with a lot of older games, you suddenly realise how much harder they were due to extended save points, making perfect level scores a real acheivement when you finally break that last crate.

For the money this is definitely worth downloading.

After thoroughly enjoying Snow Crash I picked up Diamond Age, the synopsis on the back looked good 'A nanotechnologist, John Hackworth, breaks the moral code of his tribe, the neo-Victorians. He has made an illict copy of a device called "A Young Lady's Primer". Its purpose is to raise and educate a girl capable of thinking for herself, but Hackworth's copy has fallen into the wrong hands.'

I've given this book 2 tries now but I still didn't manage to finish this book, I just found it too slow and the characters were not that interesting, so I didn't really care what happened to them, in the end the book became more a chore than a pleasurable read.

Although this book is set in the future with various high-tech stuff going on the main theme seemed to be about how people are divided by the race/status & that if only people had an education & direction in their life they could improve themself, the way in which this was written was very obvious and seemed as if the writer had some axe to grind.

I'm not sure what a cyberpunk book is meant to be like as I've only read this and Snow Crash so I can't say if it fits the genre, but as a general work of fiction it was boring and a little self righteous.

1/10 - only worth reading if your stuck on a desert island with nothing else to do.

When it comes to upscaling standard dvds there is always going to be a bit of a compromise, NCIS is still only TV quality, but newer CGI heavy films like Lord Of The Rings should look much better, after reading many forums and looking through the net it seems the best upscaling player for your money is a Playstation 3 of all things, it does full 1080P, HDMI output and you get a games console as well :) but at £300 it's a bit out of my price range.

I initially thought that as my X-Box 360 will output 720p/1080i for games it would also upscale dvd's - I was wrong, it still only outputs DVD's at standard resolution.

Having already owned a Pioneer DVD player(DV525) which I've always been happy with I decided on the DV600AV, it does full 1080P HDMI output, handy for when I get the go ahead for a new TV as my Bravia only does 720p or 1080i - quick note before I go on, LCD,s less than 37" will not do 1080p. Anyway back to the review, video connections include HDMI, Scart, S-VHS and Component connections, on the audio side there are stereo RCA, Optical and Coaxial digital connections as well as 5.1 through the HDMI connector if your amplifier will support it.

I'm using the coaxial digital connection for sound which I have to run in Dobly Digital 5.1 mode as my amp doesn't support DTS, the sound quality is excellent although seems a little quieter than the DV525, the fight scene in LOTR:Return Of The King sounds fantastic, you almost fell as if the battle is going on around you.

In upscaled mode the picture quality really depends on what your watching, as I mentioned above NCIS doesn't look any better and at times there is a lot of artifacting especially in darker areas , but Over The Hedge looked much crisper with good vibrant colours. There are a lot of settings you can fiddle with for fine tuning the colours, sharpness, chroma, RGB, etc but if I mess with those I usually end up making things look worse , but if you know what your doing I'm sure you can make the picture look even better.

One of the other features which attracted me to this model was a USB interface, from here you can show pictures and play mp3/wmv files. I tried to test this with a 160gb portable HD but after 6mins of reading the disck I got bored & gave up, I'll try a 2gb memory stick at some time to see how user friendly the navigation is.

You can also play DivX 6 & DivX ultra files, but only from a disc, not via the USB port.

At £129 this is a reasonable way of getting close to HD quality without worrying if you've bought into the wrong format.

As with the last two games you get Kudos points for performing various 'cool' moves (drifting, handbraketurns, etc) as well as points for maintaining the racing line and speed through the bends, these points are then used to buy extra cars, bikes & race tracks.

The biggest change is weather effects, not only do you get rain and fog, but you also get snow, which is a first for a racing game that doesn't have Rallying in the title!! and boy does it effect your handling, racing a 60's F1 car round the Nürburgring covered in snow is a real challenge, you have to be much more careful with the brakes and throttle, something you don't normally have to worry about in an arcade racing game.

The racing is split into Arcade events & Career mode.

Arcade races can either be done on a bike or car of a specific class & will be of one of the many racing modes, Eliminator, Street Race, Timed, Hot Lap, Kudos to name a few.

Career mode is based around a racing calender with various championships appearing on the current day and depending on your ranking different difficulty levels are available. When you enter a race championship you only have one chance to select your vehicle, so a compromise is always made, which can really hurt you chances of winning if you get it wrong!!.

The handling has been improved, the cars give a good feeling of weight and grip levels without crucifying you too much if your a little ham fisted with the controls, and compared to some of the other arcade racers out there this is a real welcome change.

As with all second generation 360 games the graphics have improved with nice use of lighting & reflections, the frame rate is still high with no slowdown giving you a real feeling of driving fast, especially when in bumper cam view.

On-line racing is good, lobbys are quick to connect and as long as everyone has a reasonable connection no lag is noticed, you still get the same problems with idiots slamming you into the walls but there's nothing you can do about that!!

Overall this is an excellent game, well worth buying.

8/10

The plot is a bit weak compared to other Discworld novels, the characters just aren't as interesting, which doesn't make sense considering they have all been in other books and the main character (Moist Von Lipwig) was also the main character in the previous book(Going Postal).

As with most Discworld novels the story parallels things that are going on our world e.g corruption, racism, religion but this time Terry Pratchett doesn't seem to have fully understand what he was writing about, which is probably the main problem with the book.

If your new to the Discworld series, do not start with this book, all the other books are far better than this one.

After 20+ books there had to be a duff one, but it's still a let down when it arrives.

3/10

The plot for the single player campaign falls in the current terrorist trying to blow-up the west category, with you playing either a Marine or SAS Commando. As with most of the COD games the single player campaign is a bit short and unless your playing on Hardened or Veteran level can be a little easy, although this time they have added a few nice touches. One level sees you having to carry a wounded squad member to an evacuation point, and unless you put him down your unable to shoot, in another level you have to sneak past guards in your Guille sniper suit rather than blasting them as ammo is very limited.

One feature which has been added by using the power of the Xbox is he ability to shoot through certain objects, with he bullet losing a certain amount of force on the way through, as would be the case in real life you can't shoot through everything ; tanks and sand bags being an example, so no more indestructible wooden fences!!

The multiplayer game is really where COD4 comes into it's own, when you first start you have very few weapon and game mode choices, but as your rank increases more weapons and game modes are unlocked. When you unlock a weapon there is also a list of Challenges to go with it, these are based on reaching a number of kills, but under certain conditions i.e headshots, lying prone, through walls, etc which unlock upgrades to your kit, better sights, grenades, less recall to name a few. You can't select every upgrade so you have to match them to you gaming style, for me it's all about fire and reload rates, as long as there's bullets in the air I'm happy :)

One of the better mulitplayer features is removing team killing unless your playing on the "one shot - one kill" type modes, which removes an awful lot of frustration from playing as there is nothing worse than having some 14 year old idiot shooting you in the back all the time because he thinks it's funny.

The graphics are a major improvement from COD3 with nice use of shadow & light, sound has also been improved with nice use of Dolby Digital II

Overall this is a big improvement over the other COD games and while at first it might have seemed a mistake for Infinity Ward to move away from the WW2 setting I think they've pulled it off.

9/10

I downloaded it in RTF format for reading on my Nokia N800 in FBReader.

I've never read any books by Rick Dakan before , but fancied a change from zombies after reading the Monster Island , Monster Nation and Monster Planet trilogy from David Wellington.

Anyway.... Geek Mafia is a story about a guy called Paul Reynolds who after meeting a con artist called Chloe gets revenge on his previous employer with the help of her 'hacker crew' , this leads him on to join the group and other cons.

I'm only just started reading but am already intrigued in how it will end up , especially knowing there is another book to follow.

Head back later to read the finished review when I have complete the book.

Some people may not like the idea of reading a 1200+ page book, but this one doesn't get boring or sound the same. It has many different story lines that interlink during the story.

<!-- WE NEED TO REWORD THIS A BIT DOOD
Peter F Hamliton has done a master piece of a SF book here that can be far away from reality but then still in touch with soft touches down to the damm right hardcore nasty.
-->

There is no point going into detail about this book , but a small outline below should give you the general idea.

The possessed have returned from the beyond and have taken control of large areas of the universe and wish to turn it into their reality of paradise.
Other elements namely one <!-- dont understand namely one ? did you mean Named One ? --> is trying to bring the darkness to fall across the earth and the rest of the universe. But a small band are in search of the naked god which hopefully will bring the answer to the problem of the possessed and how to deal with the beyond.

Can the humans deal with it?

The book is broken up in to five separate parts :-

• Part 1 - Casing the Establishment covers Footprinting , Scanning and Enumeration.
• Part 2 - Exploiting the VoIP Network includes chapters on Denial of Service , Network Eavesdropping and Network and Application Interception.
• Part 3 - Exploiting Specific VoIP Platforms covers Cisco Call Manager , Avaya Communication Manager , Asterisk and Softphone s.
• Part 4 - VoIP Session and Application Hacking covers Fuzzing VoIP , Disruption of Service and VoIP Signaling / Media Manipulation.
• Part 5 - Social Threats like Spam / Spit and VoIP Phishing.

I`ve only just started reading it but so far it looks well thought out , its good to see they cover the prevalent Asterisk PABX as well as commercial offerings.

The book also has a companion website at www.hackingvoip.com where you can read more details and download the tools they used throughout the book.

This is what happens here where King Tsongor's children, after his death, are unable to communicate and make a decision.

Samilia's character could have been more developed and the war scenes between the two rivals shortened.

In spite of this, the writing is superb. One can easily imagine the novel being adapted to the theatre.

I have had my Nokia N800 for a few months now , I bought it directly from Nokia France but after some payment problems you may find it easier buying from Amazon.

The Nokia N800 was purchased to replace my previous PDA - a Palm Tungsten C , and it exceeds it in every way.

Read on for my review about using it for reading , listening , watching and playing.

Eva Luna is "The Woman" within a male's world. She deals with her life, she decides and she leads it where ever she wants. She is a modern Scheherazade.

Even though the writing is not as subtle as in "Daughter of Fortune" written later, you still are hooked and want to know what is happening like in a good series.

When I first heard it mentioned on The Linux Link Tech Show I was a bit apprehensive fearing it would be some sort of comic book series , but it turned out to be much more down-to-earth , this made the characters and series much more believable.

It starts with a scientist taking over his late fathers research into the way the human race is evolving giving some people special powers.

As the story unfolds each of the many heroes realizes they have a super power but don't know why or really how to use it. They seem confused and worried about being a bit different from everyone else.

Their powers aren't super-powers like Spiderman or Superman possess , instead they are more subtle like being able to heal from any injury , painting the future or reading someones thoughts. The powers that are more substantial (like flying and time travel) aren't overly used which makes you look forward to seeing when they will be used.

The Heroes all come from different places and backrounds , its interesting to watch how each of them discovers their individual powers and makes you wonder how they eventually meet and join in the common cause of saving the world.

Recommended viewing.

More information at IMDB