Paul Grenyer

The Medusa Chronicles Alastair Reynolds & Stephen Baxter ISBN-13: 978-1473210189 Arthur C. Clarke was my favourite author for many years and I loved his collaborations with Stephen Baxter. Baxter brought a new dimension to Clarke's, not just science fiction, but science based fiction. The stories became more human, more exciting and had better characters. So when my current favourite author, Alastair Reynolds, got together with Stephen Baxter to write a story based on other writings by Arthur C. Clarke it had the potential to be something fantastic. And it is! I love stories with references to other stories and pop culture and the Medusa Chronicles is riddled with them. I've complained about Interstellar (film) being a rehash of Clarke's 2001 in a previous review and there are plenty of references and similarities to 2001 here, especially with the exploration of inner Jupiter and the events which take place inside the sun.  However, in the Medusa Chronicles, th...

Naked Element are going to be at the Norfolk Chamber Talking Technology 2016 event on 21st September, why not come along and see us? Talking Technology 2016 An interactive event aimed at developing the use of digital skills and innovative technologies in business to boost productivity and profitability.   Talking Technology will feature expert local and national key note speakers, practical workshops, an expert exhibition and plenty of networking opportunities, including a networking lunch. 15 speakers 4 workshops 16 exhibitors (including Naked Element!) 150+ businesses Register for your tickets here: http://www.norfolkchamber.co.uk/featured-event/page/tickets-3 We look forward to seeing you there!

I don’t recall if I’ve seen Soilwork before, but I’ve always been aware of them. When I discovered they would be playing with Arch Enemy I bought up a lot of their stuff and started listening to it. As metal goes it’s ok and very listenable. Live they were much the same. Thier sound wasn’t all it could have been, and I initially put that down to the Waterfront PA. For a bunch of clearly aging blokes they were really rather good and had lots of energy. I wouldn’t go to just see them again, but I’d check them out if they were on the same bill as someone else I wanted to see. Arch Enemy are one of my all time favorite bands. I’ve seen them several times, but never in a venue as small as the Waterfront . I’ve never been disappointed with Arch Enemy and on this occasion they were better than all of the bands (including Symphony X, Fear Factory and Vallenfyre) I saw last weekend at Bloodstock . Which is disappointing in itself! This was the first time I’d seen Arch Enemy with the sin...

Bloodstock is one of the highlights of my year. It’s a chance for me to get away from it all (well, most of it), listen to some fantastic music and catch up on reading. Friday Gloryhammer are a band I’d never heard of.  Surprisingly good sci-fi based power metal. Lot’s of fun and not to be taken too seriously. Evil Scarecrow were just Evil Scarecrow which means lots of robot and crustacean oriented antics. I’m always pleasantly surprised how much they often sound like Slayer. Then for the first band of the day I really wanted to see, Misery Loves Company.  I first saw them in Bradford in the 90s when they were at their prime. Unfortunately those days are gone and I felt they didn’t play as well as they could have done, but their set was full of old classics. I wonder if there might new a new album on the way, Stuck Mojo and Corrosion of conformity I’ve seen before. I wasn’t that impressed then and nothing has changed now. Venom I had really been looking forward ...

When the deadline for registering to vote in the UK EU referendum approached there were issues with the online registration system. It stopped working due to the high numbers of people trying to register all at once. The system failed to scale and fell over. By scale, I mean that the hardware was no longer powerful enough to service all of the requests made of the software it was running and it was unable to become more powerful. There are two main ways to scale computer hardware, vertically and horizontally. Most software can scale vertically, regardless of how it’s designed. To scale horizontally special design considerations must be taken into account. Vertical Scaling Imagine you’ve got 1000 people to move from point A to point B 10 miles away and a car which can hold 5 people and travels at an average speed of 60 miles an hour. That means it takes 10 minutes to get the car once from point A to point B. Ignoring the return journey and including the driver in the number of p...

Slow Bullets Alastair Reynolds ISBN-13: 978-1616961930 I can't tell you how pleased I am to be able to say that, in my opinion, Alastair Reynolds is back on form! Slow Bullets is a very short book and it's written in the first person, which isn't my favourite style, but that's about the only criticism I have of it. The story is great, well thought out and very much of our time and what could happen in the future as we rely more and more on electronic storage of data. I could relate to all of the characters and it was great see so many female leading characters. It took me about a week to read, but had I had a day to myself I could see myself ploughing through it in a day. On to the Medusa Chronicles.

I enjoy my work (software development) very much. I feel very fortunate to be able to earn a living from doing something I enjoy. However, this does mean I do it a lot. Not just during the working day, but at lots of other times too. This causes many people to ask if I ever stop working or relax. Well, working to me can be and often is relaxing and doesn’t always feel like work. Lots of people tell me I need to stop working so much, they want me to conform to their idea of what not working is. Then there’s Bloodstock . The heavy metal festival once a year (where I am now) where I spend three days in a field and I don’t want to take my laptop. It wouldn’t be very practical if I did. Although having switched from Vodafone to EE (one of the best decisions I ever made) I do now have 4G all the time. I do take my kindle and I find that I read, a lot. Do I miss my laptop? No, not really and I know it’s there in the evening and morning in the hotel if I really feel the need (which I did...

When: Wednesday 7th September 6.30pm to 9pm Where: The King's Centre , King Street, Norwich, NR1 1PH RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Norfolk-Developers-NorDev/events/232490441/  Swift For The Curious  Phil Nash ( @phil_nash ) Swift – Apple’s new programming language –has just turned 2 - and is already at Version 3.0. It has undergone significant development, including now being fully open-sourced! It’s had one of the fastest adoptions of any new language ever (for reasons we’ll discuss) and has been turning the world of Apple development on its head. But what’s different about it? How does it fit in with other modern languages? Is it a functional language, as some rumours have suggested? Does it have any unique features? Should you care about it at all if you are not in the Apple eco-system (or even if you are)? We’ll look at answers to at all these questions and get a flavour of the language itself. Phil Nash Phil is a semi-independent software developer, coach...

Bigger, Better & Bursting with even more content, Nor(DEV):con 2017 is set to be our biggest yet so bare with me as we go through what’s on offer in 2017! Naked Element Ltd. is proud to present Nor(DEV):con, the Norfolk Developers Tech, Agile & Business conference in the heart of Norwich. 2017’s Nor(DEV):con will take place on between Thursday 23rd February and Saturday 25th of February at the King’s Centre in Norwich with keynote speakers Dom Davis on Thursday,  Seb Rose and Russel Winder on Friday and Juliana Meyer on Saturday 25th February 2017. Last year we successfully extended the conference to include extra workshops on the Thursday and extra sessions & workshops on Saturday to compliment our core Friday programme. We welcomed a record breaking 650+ delegates over the three days. This year we have a whole day dedicated to young people & schools aspiring to be involved in the technology industry. Dom Davis will be speaking for the keynote and this...