Paul Grenyer

My wife is a massive PJ Harvery fan, but I always found her squeaky, out of tune, unable to play and talentless. And to be fair, some of her songs on some of her albums do sound like that. For one reason or another, we missed PJ Harvery at the Roundhouse in 2023, so despite never having been to Gunnersbury Park before, let alone for a gig, I was determined to get my wife to see her this time. The setup for gigs is actually quite good. It’s a relatively short walk from Acton Town and the accessibility entrance was easy to find and the process quick. There was an odd rule about only bringing bags which were A4 sized or smaller. How anyone would get the clothes for all weathers, it was also suggested you should bring, into a bag that small, I don’t know. However there didn’t seem to be much enforcement and we got in with our slightly larger bag and saw plenty of larger ones while we were there. One of the accessibility team who greeted us had a new Korn hoodie. They’d played the previous...

By Frank Herbert ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1473233812 Here ends a journey which turned out to be more stubborn determination than enjoyment. As I’ve mentioned before , I first started reading the Dune books as a young teenager after loving the Lynch adaptation of the 1980s. I didn’t complete the initial trilogy until last year (2023). Dune still stands out as the great story, but Herbert's self indulgence starts with Dune Messiah and continues through the rest of the sequels. I really don’t know why he bothered with Chapter House Dune or Heretics of Dune. They don't bring anything to the story or explain anything which isn’t covered in the initial trilogy. Idaho isn’t that interesting after Dune Messiah and Bene Gesseritt after Children of Dune. However, I do have the satisfaction of having read all six books by the original author. I could stop here, but I am told that the Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson is well worth a read. Perhaps I’ll try that before consider...

When it comes to sound, the Underworld in Camden can be a bit hit and miss and tends to be more miss with heavier bands. I struggled to hear the guitars clearly for Born of Osiris last year and it was the same for both Perpetual Paradox and Phobetor , who were supporting Crypta . It’s a shame as both bands sounded reasonable when I tried them before the show. It wasn’t much better for Crypta. I could just about make out the guitars when there was a solo, but otherwise the guitars got lost in the bass and drums. Perhaps if the sound person concentrated more on the mix than volume it would be better. Despite the sound problems I could tell that Crypta were playing really well and I enjoyed it. They’re so young, it did feel a bit like watching a teenage garage band. I was very keen to see them and I love both albums. Hopefully I’ll get to again and the sound will be better. I was fortunate enough to meet the singer briefly, who was lovely, but my photography skills failed me!

By George R.R. Martin ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0007548279 If this wasn’t the penultimate book written and I hadn’t enjoyed the TV series so much I would be giving up on the book series at this point. A Feast for Crows is boring and long winded. It’s full of a lot of unnecessary descriptive detail and while there are a few exciting moments, it just drags on. This is also where the TV series diverges the most. The vast majority of this book, especially what takes place in the Iron Islands, does not happen in the TV series and, I suspect, for good reason. If, like me, you want the achievement of having read the whole series then read this book and keep going. Otherwise find something enjoyable and interesting to read.

Forgive me father, for it has been six months since my last gig. To be fair, my last gig was The Darkness and they played badly and we ended up next to some idiots in the crowd, so we left well before the end. A week or so before that was My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost at the Shepherds Bush Empire, which was superb! Tool should have been the second gig of the year, but we failed to make it to Myrkur. I’ve been to the O2 Arena multiple times, but this was only my second time in the Bourne Leisure box - this is one of the perks of working for Haven. The previous time was for the SugarBabes and the sound wasn’t great. Tonight, support came from Night Verses, an American instrumental prog band. When they hit the stage the sound was excellent from the off. I find purely instrumental bands get boring after a while, and although these guys played well, I was glad they didn’t play any longer. I first saw Tool at the Download Festival in 2003 and I wasn’t a fan then, so didn’t really get what...

I’ve used a lot of existing Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs and have created several of my own. I see a lot of inconsistency, not just between REST APIs but often within a single REST API. I think most developers understand, at a high level, what a REST API is for and how it should work, but lack a detailed understanding. I think the first thing they forget to consider is that REST APIs allow you to identify and manipulate resources on the web. Here I want to look briefly at what a REST API is and offer some advice on how to structure one, how it should behave and what should be considered when building it. I know this isn’t emacs vs vi, but it can be quite contentious. So, as  Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean said, this “...is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.” Resources & Identifiers In their book, Rest in Practice - Hypermedia and Systems Architecture (‎ISBN: 978-0596805821), Jim Webber, Savas Parastatidis and Ian Robinson describe ...

James S. A. Corey ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1841499932 Abaddon's Gate takes a while to get going. About half the book to get going. It’s all new character introductions and building. The second half is more exciting, but drawn out. Chrisjen Avasarala is totally absent and I’d like to have understood more about where the ring came from and what its purpose was. I guess that’s to come. Inevitably the further divergence of the TV series from the books became more apparent. The TV series appears to have merged and changed a lot of the characters, missed out and changed a lot of the story, but brought it back to mostly the same point. Let’s hope the next one improves.