Liam's write-only LJ

I have just added a ton of books to my inventory on Bookmooch. If you fancy any of them, all you need to do is join, list a few books you're wanting to give away and then you can request them from me!

Yes, I am trying to get more people to join Bookmooch. I think it's an excellent site. Give it a shot!

( The list... )

Or a few of them, if you want.

It's on the 4^th/5^th of February at Pontin's, Camber Sands, former home of the painfully-hip All Tomorrow's Parties. (Although I had to look this up to learn it wasn't actually originally the title of a William Gibson novel. I am not painfully hip.)

I've just won 4 tickets from Forbidden Planet - to whom my thanks!

Free entry; sadly, accommodation is not included, but it's fairly cheap, in self-catering chalets. There are bars and restaurants onsite, but they don't mind you bringing your own and the alcohol allowance is ridiculously generous, as I recall.

I am hoping to go along with four or five friends, but all but one of us have won four tickets each now, so we have just a few spares!

Last year's was an absolute hoot. I don't go to the paid signings and that side of things myself, but Tom Baker's talk was great, Gerry Anderson's was jolly interesting, and there were good readings and talks by Peter F Hamilton and John Meaney among others - plus films, a quiz, two live bands (one a personal favourite of mine, as it happens), a disco and more. Not your typical con but a lot of fun and a pretty cheap weekend away all in - it cost a lot less than half a typical hotel-based con.

Details here.

Yes, yes - a holiday camp in February. I know. Spare me the sallies. Last time, we didn't spend much time outside except scuttling from chalet to chalet or, in my case, from venue to chalet to top-up the booze supplies... I think there's even a pool. Very kid-friendly, too; huge games room, arcade machines, a comics room with consoles, stuff like that.

Please feel free to pass this message, or links to it, around, too, to anyone who might be interested.

Also, please vote for me for TAFF! :¬)

OK, so, on Monday, I get Even Older.

I was thinking of a small celebration on Saturday night.

Possible plan A:

Curry in the Golden, near Clapham Common Tube, at say 7pm.
Followed by drinks from 8:30 in the Priory Arms, near Stockwell Tube, corner of Lansdowne Way and Priory Grove.

Plan B: much the same, but in Colliers Wood, which is rather handier for me. Curry in the Spice of Raj - pleasant, inexpensive, right by Colliers Wood - followed by drinks in the Sultan, a 5min walk away.

Thoughts? Votes?

I like the local option, but the Priory has a better range of drinks and Stockwell/Clapham are in Zone 2 and thus might be a little more popular with non-south-Londoners.

If I have been a bit quiet on here this month, it's because someone has been paying me to write, which always makes a pleasant change. I spent last week in-house at The Register, one of the UK's top IT news sites, famed for its sarcastic irreverence.

I did mention this on The Other LJ and I've plugged each piece on Twitter and Facebook, but if you don't read such things, you can get a quick list of the articles - nine last week and one from last year - right here.

Enjoy.

Aargh! Forgot to do this last week & now there's only a day and a bit to go...

· Belkin 3-port Firewire (IEEE1394) PCI card
· 2½" notebook 344MB IDE Hard Drive (IBM H2344-A4)
· 2½" notebook 220MB IDE Hard Drive (Toshiba MK2224FC)
· 2½" notebook 540MB IDE Hard Drive (IBM DBOA-2540)

No bids & ¾ of them start at 1p. :¬)

There's some techie ramblings about accessibility, customisabilty and a fairly serious crappy experience from the Apple Store over in The Other LJ, if you don't follow it but might be interested.

On Sunday, I attain the SFnally significant age of 42. But Sunday is a bad day for wageslaves to go drinking, and this Saturday is multiply-booked already, so I am doing it on Friday instead. Come join me!

The venue is Zeitgeist in Vauxhall, the best German-beers bar that I know of in London - and generally fairly quiet, as it's a back-streets place. It's at 49-51 Black Prince Rd, London, SE11 6AB; telling bone 020 7840 0426. Nearest Tube or Rail is - duh - Vauxhall; it's a bit less than 10min walk away. Bring an A-Z or something, as it is not that easy to find.

I plan to kick off about 7pm and will be there until the bitter end. Or the lager end, or the kölsch and rauchbier end, according to preference. They may even do cider, I don't know, but I believe the schnapps selection is quite good.

Open to all - do please circulate this or bring along anyone who you think might enjoy it!

There's a Facebook event here if you are that way inclined. I've basically only invited Londoners on FB, not wanting to spam too unduly, but all are welcome!

There will be more drinking in Croydon on Sunday night, and, I hope, at least one big fireworks display on Saturday - so if you can't make Friday but fancy one of those, email me for info.

This week's clearout is of old Macintosh software. Except for some Mac OS X 10.1 security stuff, this is all for classic 68000 or PowerPC Macs under system 6 to MacOS 9.x. Probably only of real interest to collectors of classic Mac kit, but if you know any such, do please point 'em at this post! Essentially it's all free for the cost of postage. I've put a nominal price of 1p on eBay.

• Pantone ColorDrive 4
• Adobe Type Manager Deluxe 4.0 + 4.5
• Aladdin StuffIt Deluxe + StuffIt SpaceSaver
• Softkey's 1-Stop CD Shop + other CDs
• Intego Mac OS X security software bundle
• Dantz Retrospect Express 4
• GDT Softworks PowerPrint 3
• Xerox TextBridge 3

Another day, another outlet for my peerless prose. :¬)

Linutop 2 super small desktop PC: Linux lightweight – in more ways than one?

Liam appears on The Register for the first time. Comments very welcome, here or there.

ednun is selling his treadmill. It's a good one. Just the thing to get fit without getting mugged or run over... :¬)