Author Archives: Andrew
Review: El Dorado Blues
By Shaun Morey
Another enjoyable romp
Like the predecessor novel, Wahoo Rhapsody, this is an enjoyable romp which charges on at an impressive pace. As a complete antidote to all the “Templar Treasure” novels of recent years, while this does feature a long-buried fabled treasure, which is located and dug up in the first few pages. That’s when the trouble starts…
Thereafter the story becomes a tale of rich and unscrupulous dealers and collectors trying to get control of the treasure, with a few reasonably honest characters caught in the middle. It’s neither a very long story nor a very complicated one, but it’s quite fun.
I liked the new unpleasant characters, and welcomed the return of the same “good guys” from Wahoo Rhapsody. I just hope Morey has done his legal homework creating a wealthy collector with an ill-fitting toupee called Ronald Stump!
My only complaint about the first book was that it felt a bit too obviously a copy of a Carl Hiaasen, and there’s still some truth in that criticism. In particular Atticus Fish does feel like an echo of Hiassen’s character Skink. However, that’s a minor complaint, and I look forward to the next book in the series.
Review – Olympus TG2 “Tough” Camera
There’s a salutory lesson here about not jumping to premature conclusions. Based on my first impressions of this camera I had mentally started drafting a review based on praising the hardware, but with some criticism of the software and firmware. Continue reading
Occupational Hazards
Rory Stewart is almost unique as a commentator on the post-war development of Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade. Following an early military career and extensive travel in the Muslim world, he then spent over a year trying to Continue reading
How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog
Professor Chad Orzel and his mad mutt Emmy are back, this time to explain the concepts of relativity. I enjoyed enormously the companion book on quantum physics last year, and was very much looking forward to seeing the other great Continue reading
News from Gardenia
William Morris’ 1890 novel News from Nowhere describes a utopian vision of the late 20th century. In News from Gardenia Robert Llewellyn brings the story up to date, with a visitor from 2011 ending up in 2211. Like Morris, Llewellyn’s Continue reading
Responsive Web Design
There are, broadly speaking, two types of technical book: those which attempt to bring large amounts of knowledge comprehensively covering a subject area under a single cover; and those which concentrate on really communicating the core concepts of a topic. Continue reading
Fixing Holes
I’m making decent progress rolling out my new design to the website, but apologies if you’re waiting for some more interesting content! I’ve now got to the “fiddly” stage, making sure that the new theme works on the slightly more Continue reading
Updates Rolling…
The updates to my website are now in progress. The eagle-eyed amongst you may have already spotted changes to my blog and front page, and the rest of the website will follow over the next few weeks. You should now Continue reading
Man At Work!

Apologies to regular readers of my blog for the recent low output. I’m currently working on a major overhaul of my web site which will see it considerably modernised and should enable it to be viewed successfully on all sorts Continue reading
Photographing Waterfalls

I’m afraid I don’t subscribe to the received wisdom that waterfalls should be photographed with long exposures which capture the flow as a sort of silky mush. That might work for gentle trickles in dappled glades, but if you’re looking Continue reading
USA 2012 – Technical Review
Or, “What Worked and What Didn’t” As usual, I tried to take a few notes regarding the more “technical” aspects of our holiday, which may be useful to others planning a similar trip. One spectacular success was having Laurent Matres’ Continue reading

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