NPCT

When I bought our Wii a couple of weeks ago, I immediately bought Wii Play, because friends had told me that while the game is not worth $50, you effectively get the game for $10 if you were going to buy another remote anyway. This pretty much sums things up. The games are [...]

I have only played one other game in the series, Railroad Tycoon II, but I am a really big fan of that game and I continue to play it today even though it is quite old now. When I heard that there was to be a new version out, Sid Meier’s Railroads!, I was [...]

My PhD supervisor has just finished his new book entitled Power. I don’t know much about it, to be honest, but here is an intro:

Seven internationally renowned writers address the theme of Power from the perspective of their own disciplines. Energy expert Mary Archer begins with an exploration of the power sources of our [...]

I know I am really behind the times here, just now writing a review of Half Life 2, but with all the buzz right now about the upcoming additional level Lost Coast and the expansion pack this fall Aftermath, it seemed like as good a time as any to talk about why I am so [...]

Last night I went to the Arts Picturehouse Cinema with some friends to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I’ve heard some reviews that make some complaints about it, and I can understand them, but I enjoyed the movie a great deal and consider it money well spent. I would encourage anyone who [...]

This book examines the 1968 transition of US leadership in Vietnam between two generals, William Westmoreland and Creighton Abrams, the change of strategy associated with it and the impact on the remainder of the war. Sorley really beats you to death with the idea that Abrams’ tactics caused the US to start winning the [...]

I know I’m way behind the curve here to go and post a review of a game that came out in, like, spring of 2004, but what the hell. Far Cry is a first-person shooter game where you play the role of Jack Carver, a former “special forces” guy who is now a charter [...]

I actually listened to this book on audio CD about a month ago. It wasn’t abridged, however, and it was read by the author, so I don’t think I missed out on anything. In fact, since he was able to convey his intended tone, I may have actually appreciated it better than if [...]

This is great fun and a quick read. It is truly bizarre and isn’t the sort of book I would’ve picked up on my own. Brenda said I might enjoy it and its zaniness, and frankly, she knows me better than I know myself. I won’t spoil the plot, because the book [...]

I desperately wanted to like this book, but I just didn’t think it was all that good. It is difficult to identify why. The writing style is not very impressive, but it was not a book meant to be stylistically driven. Clearly, this book was about plot and Stephenson’s imagination. It [...]

This is a very interesting sort of book. It is hard to decide what sort of genre to place it in. On one hand, it purports to be a lay book about mathematics. To that end, it does not go into detail about the specific topics and never tries to force a [...]

This is the followup book to Richard Feynman’s anecdotally autobiographical “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” and it came out in 1988. I last read it in high school (probably around 1993) but I received a copy of it this past Christmas, so I decided to revisit the book. I am quite glad that [...]

The story follows in parallel three storylines: a World War II cryptographer, a World War II marine and a modern tech entrepreneur/hacker who is the grandson of the cryptographer. In some ways, Stephenson is defining a new genre of fiction that specifically appeals to the modern technophile. I enjoyed the book, but I [...]

Before I go into detail about all the things I liked about this book, I should say up front that I thought the writing style was pretty annoying, perhaps even juvenile. The author tries to fit every possible metaphor he can come up with into the book, at every structural level. This results [...]

I am an enormous fan of the late Nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman. He has been a huge influence on my life. I have been gradually trying to read all of his books over time, having enjoyed Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? [...]

Go buy this book right now. It is perhaps the funniest and most insightful commentary about our United States in a long time. It is like taking a long warm bath in The Daily Show. The truthful parts are interesting and the satirical parts are hilarious. Why are you still reading [...]

Last week I finished reading a book called The Haj by Leon Uris. I have still not decided what to think about it. In the title, the word “haj” does not refer to the pilgrimage to Mecca directly, but rather to an individual, a leader of a Palestinian village who has made the [...]