June 28, 2002

I released Blog 6.0 yesterday 🙂 Of course, I just updated the sidebar and the download page and didn’t make an announcement here since I was just saving it for today. So here’s the announcement though I believe BetaNews beat me to it at their site :p One thing I realized later though was that the build I uploaded still has the version number as 5.93 – I guess I will have to re-upload a corrected build today but a few early birds might be left with a wrong versioned build … but don’t worry, other than for the version number, everything will be the same between both builds 🙂

I went back to Amazon.com UK yesterday and realized that they now do indeed have a wish list option. So I started a new wish list on their site just for books. I was initially going to move over all the stuff from my Amazon US wish list and simply take that one out of the side bar but then I realized that I’d have to get UK DVD’s then and UK DVD’s always don’t have the same features as the US ones :p So I decided to keep two wish lists on the sidebar – not that anybody (except of course for Nigel <g>) – has sent me anything from the wish lists but still, I like to have them there 🙂 Incidentally, I had thought I was missing only a couple of Feist’s books but when I did a search on Amazon, I discovered that he’s been creating a whole cottage industry around the land of Midkemia by collaborating with different authors! There are so many books which are slated to be published soon about Midkemia that it seemed impossible for one man to do all of that. Unfortunately, the bulk of the stuff is in hard cover and so my wish list stayed as brief as it currently is :p

Speaking of Nigel, he made the world’s first (that we know of …) phlog entry over at his site – I’d give the URL to the actual entry but I’m offline at the moment and so can’t get to his site .. plus, it’s an interesting site and it would do nobody any harm to browse through <vbg> In case you are wondering, a phlog is a phone blog – a blog maintained via an e-mail capable phone like the Ericsson T68. Since Blog in Server mode simply checks an e-mail account for e-mails with the proper subject line, you can basically send entries for your Blog from anywhere – as long as you know the proper format (and don’t send any formatted e-mails or HTML e-mails …) I really like the concept since that gives you a whole lot of freedom …

I began reading Robert Heinlein’s “Glory Road” yesterday. As some of you long-time readers may remember (are there any such? :p) I mentioned a while back that I got about forty odd Heinlein books in an eBay auction. I hadn’t had the time to start reading those but I decided I might as well start now and see if I still had a taste for Heinlein. I’m into chapter two at the moment and I’m already beginning to see why they labeled a lot of his novels as “adolescent novels” <g> I’ve read more references to breasts, nipples etc. than I did in the whole Serpentwar saga from Feist! Yes, Feist mentions sex and relations between men and women but in a very discreet, subdued manner whereas Heinlein is very open and blatant about it all … I’m not sure whether all the other books that I’ve read by Heinlein were the same since I don’t recall anything like that but then again, the only books I can actually recall as far as actual content goes, are “Starship Troopers” and “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel”.

On the subject of relations between men and women, why is it that most authors can’t do a romantic relationship properly? I like a well done romantic relationship – probably because I’m a sap :p – but other than for authors who write purely romance (both Barbara Cartland and Georgette Heyer were my favorites at one time …) the only authors I’ve seen who even manage it passably well (and that I liked – I mean the author) are probably Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey. It’s interesting that they are both western authors, incidentally. Or maybe I thought they did it well at the time I was really into them – during my western period. I don’t know … But I do know that there is something really lacking in Feist’s handling of romance but then again you could argue that he does it to fit the characters since the only major romance that I remember from Feist’s work is Jimmy and Gamina’s meeting but since Gamina is a mind reader, they meet, fall in love and it’s all over in about five minutes :p I can’t even remember the other major romance of Feist’s – the love affair of Arutha and Anita – since it has been a long time since I read it …

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