Just purchased it about a week ago myself.

Ravenprose said:

I have the sample on my Kindle, but haven't read it yet.

I got the sample too as a starter then bought it this morning. It's more than enough to give you a taste for the full book.

Raven, Kindle Ready Player One now.  Thank me later.

Also, Kindle users beware:

is horrible.  Thank god they let you return books.

I am now reading The Making of Prince of Persia which is good, but obviously Mechner is your typical Yale graduate (upper class, privileged twit).

aspro said:

Just finished Jordan Mechner's book/ development journal for the the Prince of Persia. It read more like a novel.  It as interestnig to note how Prince of Persia was initially a commercial failure and how only critical reception and word of mouth eventually turned around sales (that were retarded by a poor box and a marketing director that actively disliked the game and did everything she could not to promote it).

It was a great contrast to how games are marketed today, not ony by big companies, but small one man teams like Mike Bithell.  Mechner would fit in with today's indy developers quite well.

"(upper class, privileged twit)."

Yep, I bet he would.

A good friend of mine recently recommended reading some Neal Stephenson.  Would anybody second that?

gamingeek said:

Anyone know where to get some free e books, good stuff not just self published stuff. Isn't some of the older novels copyright free these days?

Gutenberg.

Thanks.

^  I have a small old CRT TV, Aspro. Feel free to send me your C64 and games anytime.

Could be a bad power supply. Or maybe some bad capacitors. Those seem to be two of the most common issues with old computers and consoles. I've had to replace the power supply to my Atari 2600 Jr twice in the last 20 years. I bought a few extra ones.

After a slew of children's stories I thought it was time for some more science. And what better science than The Study of Ants by Sydney Skaife? Well, there's a lot of better science but not much better science writing. He goes off on random tangents criticising other scientists in a good natured, witty manner and describes his own studies in an equally amusing way. The science is obviously out of date at times and sometimes his conclusions are just plain idiotic, but there's still a fair bit of interesting stuff in there. However, even if it was all a load of crap it wouldn't matter thanks to his writing. The antithesis to Ecology of the Planted Aquarium. Yes, I'm mentioning that again just because of how great it is.

Aldous Huxley - Island.

This is one of the greatest satirical works ever written. Perfectly condensing the most ignorant fetishisation of foreign religions and cultures and vapid philosophical fantasy into an accurate representation of the repression inherent in any social system while also contrasting amusing hypocrisies barely paragraphs away from the dogma decrying them.

Well, I'm going to pretend it's satire anyway.

Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell.

Let's just pretend this doesn't exist when you consider the above statements...and also Island, in fact. Let's pretend Island doesn't exist. This is Island. Okay? With that out of the way, this is genuinely great. Religion and neurology without stigma and judgement: what an impossible thought today. His "wit" is comprised of the same dull name dropping that infested Island, and his tastes and preferences get in the way of his reasoning in their garish implementation. In the name of edginess relevant information is pruned to the appendixes; the rest of which are comprised of more obnoxious narcissism. But even with Aldous Huxley remaining so ever present in his out of body experiences, it's still unbelievably #rare.

P.S. In the Penguin editions of both books, typos and printing errors abound. Including an amusing "it's" in place of "its". It's nice to read something from when an error was an error, and not ignorance, though.