{"id":401,"date":"2004-04-03T22:54:58","date_gmt":"2004-04-03T22:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"tag:owlfish.com,2004:colinweblog.20040403225458"},"modified":"2004-04-11T17:59:50","modified_gmt":"2004-04-11T17:59:50","slug":"03042004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/2004\/04\/03042004\/","title":{"rendered":"Bits and Bobs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/2004\/04\/swan.jpg\"><img src=\"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/2004\/04\/swan-small.jpg\" alt=\"Swan on Lake Ontario.\" title=\"Click for larger view.\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-12\"><\/a>Last weekend we were travelling to Arkansas, so I needed to purchase a book to keep me entertained on the flights.  I chose an author new to me, Alastair Reynolds, and a book called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0441010644?v=glance\">Chasm City<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The book is far-future science fiction incorporating many tried and tested space travel ideas.  The writing was generally good, but the relationships between the characters often felt false.  Characters interacted in peculiar ways; conversations lacked emotion and actions seemed driven only by plot requirements.  Even at 616 pages the book felt rushed, as though the plot fit but the story didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>At some point I&#8217;ll try his earlier book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0441009425\/ref=cm_custrec_gl_acc\/002-8489562-0195246?v=glance&#038;s=books\">Revelation Space<\/a>, which is selected as being the superior of the two in the Amazon reviews.<\/p>\n<p>The news that the <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/americas\/3595221.stm\">US<\/a> will be fingerprinting and photographing all visa-waiver country citizens from September is marginally better than the previous plan, making us obtain a US visa, but it still disappointing.  The introduction of biometric passports next year will make this a moot issue anyway.  <\/p>\n<p>The UK passport service <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ukpa.gov.uk\/identity.asp\">is currently saying<\/a> that they will place digitised photos into the new-style passports, but leave space for one other biometric identifier.  Depending on what this second identifier is, and the most logical is a fingerprint, then all countries that you enter and leave will be able to record this information anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Treating people as criminals isn&#8217;t just a policy for people crossing international borders; the UK is also planning to introduce <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk_politics\/3590795.stm\">biometric identify cards<\/a> for the entire population.  State interference in everyday lives seems to be the direction we are heading in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last weekend we were travelling to Arkansas, so I needed to purchase a book to keep me entertained on the flights. I chose an author new to me, Alastair Reynolds, and a book called Chasm City. The book is far-future science fiction incorporating many tried and tested space travel ideas. The writing was generally good, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.owlfish.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}