Got the review copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s (and Stephen Baxter’s) new novel ‘Firstborn’.

The Firstborn were the mysterious builders of the black monolith, in the 2001 film and book, and the accompanying introductory letter with the book states the Firstborn “are seeking to stop the advance of human civilization by employing a technology indistinguishable from magic”. Inneresting.

It goes on to say “Now, the Firstborn are back. This time, they are pulling no punches: They have sent a quantum bomb speeding toward Earth. It is a device that human scientists can barely comprehend, that cannot be stopped or destroyed - and one that will obliterate Earth”.

Entertainment Weekly says “Clarke and Baxter have mastered the art of saving the world in blockbuster style. But will the world survive when it confronts the Firstborn face-to-face?”.

Sounds like I have found something to read that will stop me playing WoW.

An agent has phoned about a position it Gibraltar. They provide flights to and from the destination at the beginning and end of the contract and accomodation. They are not too keen on people flying home every weekend though as there is sometimes weekend overtime. OK, I can do the overtime but if there is none then I would want to come home. This is one of the very few times when I would want to have a telephone interview first to find out exactly what the terms are. 

Had to do a hard reset on the Treo to get around the reading email problem, which rebooted the Treo. Now the pain of setting up 4 email accounts on it and whatever other settings I had amended. It still doesn’t work at home though as there is virtually no network coverage at all, so it looks like I might have to jump ship.

I think the only network that will give me a service from home is Vodafone and I’m not sure whether they will be able to compete with T-Mobile’s tarrif. But if T-Mobile doesn’t work from home it doesn’t really matter how cheap it is.

Quote of the day

‘No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar’ Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

My Treo 650 has started to reboot every time I try and read any email, and email is at least half the reason for having a Treo in the first place.

Did a quick search on Google and didn’t immediately find any help that was relevant so instead I decided to setup the Treo software on the Vista PC. The usual clunking about process hoping that the software would work on Vista. I added 4 email accounts, which are already setup on the device, and resync’d. The Hotsync window displayed its synchronizing progress, which is a bit worrying as so much of this data I would prefer to keep private and I obviously have no idea what Hotsync is doing. All kinds of filenames were displayed as being updated and backed up and it could have been mashing everything up for all I know. None of this software has ever been independantly tested or verified, we just have to believe that Palm have tested and proved it to some standard they regard as sufficient before it is unleashed into the wild.

Disconnected the Treo, started its email application Versmail and it rebooted immediately. Consistent. Back to Google I suppose.

Have stumbled to level 20 in WoW and I’m still very much a newbie. I was levelling up at a rate of 1.5 levels a day but there is no way that is going to continue, soon it’ll be a level a week I reckon.

I never got the option to get any Zeppelin tickets. All 3 applications weren’t pulled from the hat but considering there were a million names in the hat and only about 18,000 tickets it’s hardly surprising. 

Quote of the day

‘How does a project get to be a year behind schedule? One day at a time’ Fred Brooks