Orderoftheflame

Farewell trusty(ish) 1998 Daihatsu Grand Move Plus. Hello new car!

So, more time to read, means more great books to recommend.

Failure Is Not An Option – Gene Kranz

For those that haven’t heard of Gene Kranz, he was one of the key Flight Directors throughout the NASA Gemini and Apollo missions, most famously the Apollo 11 moon landing, and Apollo 13 successful failure. Kranz is a person that I’ve always found particularly interesting from interviews and other book, so taking a look at his auto-biography / account of mission control was something that I’ve intended to do for some time.

Failure Is Not An Option is a fascinating insight into those left behind on the ground with space missions, and the pressures and responsibility that they can are burdened with. I really enjoyed reading the combination of detailed accounts of missions and humorous side stories and it’s certainly not just for people interested in the space race. It’s a great examples of leadership, team work, and an attitude and style of accomplishing goals that isn’t seen today.

Sam & Max : Surfin’ the Highway – Steve Purcell

I don’t remember exactly when my first encounter with Sam & Max was, but I remember it was the first game “Sam & Max Hit the Road” that introduced me to them. Long since then, Telltale Games ended up with the licence to make games using two of the funniest most entertaining characters I’ve known. The copy of Surfin’ the Highway I’ve got is a special 20th anniversary edition republished by Telltale Games recently, and contains the collection of both the original comics, strips from “The Adventurer”, Lucasarts’ newsletter, as well as some new artwork.

Obviously, many of these comics are the genesis of the characters from long before I became familiar with them (and in some cases.. was born), so as you’d expect the same diverse yet fantastic humour is present. This coupled with Purcell’s fabulous art, makes me very glad that I ended up with a copy. Definitely one that any fan should pick up.

Band of Brothers – Stephen Ambrose

I’ve had this copy of Band of Brothers sat on my shelf for well over two years since buying it after watching the Tom Hanks/Stephen Spielberg miniseries based off of the book. It follows Easy Company of the 506th Airborne Division throughout World War II from their training and D-day, right up to the end of the war and beyond.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the book, reading it at the same time as watching it’s television counterpart really highlighted the work that Hanks and Spielberg had put into the details of their program. To highlight one example in an early episode, in the background behind two characters there’s one soldier shaving another’s hair, and it plays out exactly as in the book.
Sounds minor, but it’s something that I’d not given more than a casual glance at any of the plenty of other times I’ve watched the scene. In watching the whole of the series again I noticed loads of small details like this that have been added, small things that I’m sure 99% of people watching wouldn’t even notice, but that add to the accuracy of the experience.

Not only was the book an amazing read and deep insight into the life of Easy Company, it uncovered an entirely new depth of enjoyment for me when watching the series. A great book.

I feel this is something I feel I should share for anyone that hasn’t seen it yet.

The Foo Fighters have released their new album in glorious entirety for streaming.

http://wastinglight.foofighters.com/

It’s incredible by the way.

So… all cosy and settled on the new server. Everything should be moved over and hooked up hopefully, though I’d be amazed if there’s not a few things forgotten.

Hopefully the new twitter integration that I’d been nagging my old host for ages to enable cURL for works. Otherwise… business as usual again!

So, back home and jet-lagged to hell. I didn’t take many photos this trip, but have some stitched panoramas of the city from the top of the Rockefeller centre.

In other news, I’ll be moving web hosts soon. Mostly because the support from my current host seems to have been non-existent for a while now. Hopefully… I’ll be able to do this with little to no downtime… but just in case, heads up.

So, I’ve done a few posts about albums I have enjoyed, so it seems fair to mention albums that I’m anticipating as well. And there’s two albums forthcoming in the next month that I’ve been waiting for for years.

Firstly, the Foo Fighters’ new album, Wasting Light. It sounds like this is going to be heavier than the average Foo’s album given the two songs I’ve heard from it; Rope and White Limo. Not a bad thing at all though. Four years since their last Studio album, I really can’t wait enough. I’ve been listening plenty to this and getting very hyped up to it.

Something else I also can’t wait for, The Strokes’ first album since 2006′s First Impressions of Earth. I listened to all three of the Strokes’ albums a lot throughout my time at university, and I quickly found them to have a unique sound that I loved. I always found that I just wished they had more music though. Given the two tracks I’ve heard from the album; Under Cover Of Darkness and You’re So Right, I’m very excited for this albums release.

Bought some new albums over the last few months, time for some reflection on them. As before, this is based on my arse all knowledge of music, and just personal thoughts on it.

Flamingo – Brandon Flowers

I’ve been a reasonably big Killers fan since Hot Fuss, so I’m surprised it took me so long to get a copy of their front man’s first solo attempt. It feels much calmer than a lot of the Killers albums, but this is something I enjoy from it. Superb vocals from Flower’s I expected, and there’s some really great tracks I feel. Definitely something I’d recommend to any Killers fan.

Sigh No More – Mumford & Sons

I picked this up based on the recent award success that Mumford & Sons have had and I’m extremely pleased that I did so, and slightly distraught that it managed to evade me for so long. I love the folk rock style, and find it an exceptionally easy album to listen to over and over. I’d recommend it to anyone in a heart beat and look forward immensely to the next offering from them.

Different Gear, Still Speeding - Beady Eye Oasis

So the first post-Noel Oasis album under the new moniker Beady Eye. I’ve enjoyed Oasis’s music for a long time and had the pleasure of seeing them live, but I was very wary of this album. All of their greatest tracks are Noel written ones in my opinion, so I didn’t have a massive amount of expectations for this.

All in all it’s still a pretty pleasant album to listen to though. As you’d expect, it holds onto the classic Oasis sound but also seems to find room for a lot of Beatles influence on a few tracks. There’s a great mix of tracks of different tempos and moods and an album I’ll enjoy for many plays through to come. That said… I’m still immensly looking forward to see what Noel Gallagher will produce in his first solo album.

So I’ve given the Dragon Age II demo a spin now, and I’m pretty pleased by it. Some of the voice acting and character models seem a bit bland, but I only found them minor annoyances. What I can grasp of the changes to combat seem quite good, though I’m pretty ambivalent to change in that area, I liked DA:O as it was. The story has me intrigued, though the demo gives little clues to the full extent of it, there was one interesting appearance of a character from the first game that asks a considerable number of questions…

I’m not going to be an idiot and hold out for it to be bigger and better than the first game, I’m just going to enjoy the ride. To be honest, if I get a tenth as much enjoyment from it as the first game, it’ll be money well spent. Can’t wait.

So when I actually think about it, a lot of my favourite tracks are cover versions of songs written by other artists. I don’t think it’s just the fact that they’re covers that interests me, but the fact that for some reason sometimes taking a song that already exists and developing it in a new style seems to work really well.

I thought I’d talk about some of my favourites over a few posts, but a disclaimer first. While I love my music, I have little to no musical knowledge or talent, so don’t expect detailed analysis or anything, just my brief feelings on them.

Cover by The Jimi Hendrix Experience On Electric Ladyland

All Along the Watchtower

Original by Bob Dylan On John Wesley Harding

Jimi Hendrix’s version of All Along the Watchtower has been one of my favourite pieces of music for a long time. As you’d expect it’s full of his signature sound, and quite a departure from the Bob Dylan’s original version of it.

Both Jimi and Bob’s versions of it are superb, but I feel that Hendrix’s ability to deliver it with a lot more power behind it really pushes it up there.

Cover by Foo Fighters On The Colour and the Shape (Bonus)

Baker Street

Original by Gerry Rafferty On City to City

I didn’t really listen to either version closely until Gerry Rafferty’s recent death, but it’s song that everyone should recognise when they hear it, even if they don’t know who wrote it or even what it’s called.

The Foo Fighters version swaps the famous saxophone riff onto the guitar, and adds a much heavier sound across the whole track. This combined with Dave Ghrol’s great talent applied to the lyrics make it well worth listening to if you can find a copy.

I’ve been getting through some books again. I love reading, but often struggle to find the time. Since starting my job, I’ve been making the time for myself and in an attempt to get back to at least one blog post a week I thought I’d share what I’ve been reading the past few months.

Mogworld – Yahtzee Croshaw

This would be the first book by Ben Croshaw of Zero Punctuation fame. I enjoyed it mostly to be honest, even if the story wasn’t as strong as I had hoped.
Yahtzee as you’d expect knows how to deliver a funny one liner perfectly, but while the story started strongly, it quickly became predictable in what was going too happen. On top of this some of the characters got pretty repetitive as the book went on.

Still despite this, there’s lots of great references to things that you’d expect the target audience to be in touch with, and certainly has moments that had me in stitches. Worth a read if you come across a copy and you enjoy his other work.

Carrying the Fire – Michael Collins

Despite being less well known than he deserves, Mike Collins is most famous for being the Command Module Pilot for the Apollo 11 moonshot. I have to admit that I find him by far one of the more interesting astronauts based on documentaries and interviews I’ve seen with him, so when I saw this in a bookshop I couldn’t resist picking it up.

The book covers Collins’ life before he joined NASA right up until after the Apollo 11 launch in great detail and manages a great mix between the humorous human side of himself and the great technical details and knowledge he provides to the book that made it especially enjoyable to read for me. This actually pops into the top few books I’ve read actually, a superb insight into a fascinating life.

In the Shadow of the Moon – Francis French and Colin Burgess

Another book following space exploration in the 60s (it’s an interest of mine if you hadn’t noticed..), differing from the previous book this is an in depth account of both American and Russian space programs up until the first moon landing written by space historians Francis French and Colin Burgess.

The book contains lots small interviews from many different astronauts involved in the two programs, giving a great range of opinion and detail on all of the flights leading up until the first moon landing. My only criticism if I had one would be that it ends abruptly with the moon landing, and doesn’t even cover the first steps on the moon. Despite this it’s another great read that I thoroughly enjoyed, and would recommend to  anyone interested in the subject.