Children of the Sky

A Fire Upon the Deep was one of the best Space Operas I'd ever read... it's still high on my favourite lists and unlike pmcray I did like the multi-minded Tines.

I've been looking forward to seeing the sequel, which has been a long wait given that Vernor Vinge is no Charles Stross, Peter Hamilton, Iain Banks, Alistair Reynold... (insert name of any normal SF writer here) when it comes to output.  Anyway, finished it while in Orlando and need to read it again... it's a dense book, with a lot of stuff - although less than meets the eye.  I suspect the reason for this is that when he started writing it and plotting it, he realized what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go, and that's a WHOLE other book.  So I think we're going to be seeing the last book in the Triology he probably didn't know he was going to write 20 years ago.

Now I've read it I wanted to make the following observations...

( SPOLIERS! )

Lifelogging - 12/8/11

Bit delayed in catching up with what's been going on.  We had a project shift the deadline from the 19th to the 12th...  a fairly significant shift.

Anyway.

Orlando - Friday was a bit of a non-day, involving, as it did, around 8 hours of travel.  Florida, like much of the East Coast, really does feel like a foreign country to me.  But I had a few hours to work - thanks to inflight Wifi, and a lot of time to read the new Vernor Vinge.  We had an early(ish) night, except the time difference had me completely thrown.

Saturday - early(ish) start and off to Universal.  We took the free shuttle, with the weirdest driver possible - not somebody I'd feel comfortable around on a bus with children, and we decided that we'd take a taxi home.  There are only so many "Is anybody going to get Wet and Wild at Wet n' Wild then!" jokes you can take.  We powered through the park, having got over the shock that Universal take your frigging fingerprints at the entrance!  

Started with The Wizarding World of Harry Potter - what can I say?  It was fun.  The main rides were pretty good fun.  Although the Hogwarts ride broke down half way through, which got us a free ride.  It's an interesting motion based ride with some pretty effective glasses free 3D.

A pint in Hogsmeade and we headed off to do as much as we could of the park, finishing off with dinner in City Walk.

Sunday was a rinse repeat with finishing the rest of the park and a movie.

Overall thoughts: the new rides are great, but some of the older ones are looking their age.  Apparently Jaws is retiring next year - that was bad but not as bad as Twister.  Couple of great new effects.  A virtual Christopher Walken that I just couldn't figure out, which was nice.

Lowest point, frankly, the food - which was uniformly average.  Biggest surprise - the beer in Universal wasn't expensive.

Monday was the Hackathon all day....  ugh... that was a LONG day.

Tuesday another 8 hours travelling.

That's things about caught up.  Wednesday a client stole a week from us.  Heh.