Joep’s wonderlijke avonturen When I first read Herman Heijermans’ “Joeps wonderlijke avonturen” (Jack’s Wondrous Adventures) I was pleasantly surprised for two reasons. The first was that it was by far not as bad as I had expected based on what little I knew from Heijermans, third hand knowledge I had about his play “Op hoop … Read More
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone review by Branko Collin “Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” This must be one of the clunkiest opening sentences I have ever read, and yet it is the opening sentence of one of … Read More
Synergy Synergy is a small cross-platform tool that lets you share keyboard and mouse between several systems. How is that relevant, you ask? Well, I was looking into a dual monitor set-up, because I liked working with one at a customer’s. Somebody pointed me to Multiplicity, a Synergy-like tool, which unfortunately only works on Windows. … Read More
Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, has been terraformed, and enough time has passed to accept pioneers to homestead a piece of land. The conditions are horrible; lose access to outside (read: Earthly) help, and you are condemned to a certain death. But at least you get a chance to get away from overcrowded planet Earth. … Read More
The Robber Bride is a very, very, very slow book. It could have easily been told in 50 pages instead of the 528 it took. The blurbs bubble on about how witty and funny it is; I guess I completely missed what this novel is about. But perhaps I can re-tell the surface story; we … Read More
I started watching this film three times. Half an hour into the third time, I noticed something odd. A quick look at the DVD box confirmed my suspicions: this is a comedy. A man takes the train to the big city, where he gets mugged by thugs. They leave him to die in a puddle … Read More
Neuromancer is about a bank job. Case used to be an ace safe cracker, until he got cocky and took off with his customer’s money. They broke both his hands in retaliation. But that is what makes him perfect for this job: nobody will suspect he is involved. The team that is collected around him … Read More
Film with Sly Stalone, Sandra Bullock, Wes Snypes, and Dennis Leary. If I got their names wrong it’s because I don’t really care. With a cast this bad, this movie can be nothing but … well, surprisingly average, actually. Sly plays a 20th century cop who is cryogenically frozen for some reason or other, only … Read More
I invoke the power of my memory and proclaim this to be one of Dahl’s lesser books. Still, with Roald Dahl that still means that this is a ripping read. Switch Bitch contains four longish short stories that all involve some kind of switching sex partners. And knowing Dahl, either the switcher or the switchee … Read More
A short review about this SG-1 episode I saw, because there were a couple of things that I liked and that stood out for me. In Stargate SG-1: Disclosure, several ambassadors of large nations are informed of the Stargate program by general Hammond and that irritating senator you love to hate. The ambassadors are invited … Read More