Lin-Manuel Miranda is human sunshine, this is just a basic fact of life. And if you follow him on twitter (as you should do) then you’ll be aware of his tradition of greeting everyone with a morning tweet and wishing them farewell at night. Over time this simple little greetings grew and grew to become a part of the day that made people feel better about themselves and the world, helped you cope on a bad day, or just made things seem a little brighter. […]
The future can feel like the past (visiting an old SF novel)
I saw this book on Kindle and having first read it when I was a teenager I decided to revisit and see what I thought of it now. The picture here is actually the cover it had when I was an impressionable teenager in the 1980s! Even when I read it this was an old book – having first been published in 1963 – and it is aimed at the young adult market with a teenage protagonist. The novel is a baby space opera, set […]
Bringing a community back together
On the 14th of June 2017 Grenfell Tower burned and a community lost 72 people and their home. The recovery process is still ongoing and the building is a scar and a reminder of how cutting costs and ignoring residents can come with a very high price. But Grenfell is a community and they have pulled together in the aftermath of these events to rebuild their lives. And one of the ways they have come together as a community is through cooking – the Al-Manaar […]
Alex Verus was having a bad life
Alex Verus is the British equivalent of Harry Dresden. He’s a mage who doesn’t get on with either the good guys or the bad guys, wandering around in the middle creating enemies out of most people whilst making an eclectic assortment of friends, and perpetually ending up over his head in trouble. He also has Harry’s tendencies towards smart remarks and advertising who he is in a world that prefers silence. He does lack some of Harry’s pop culture awareness and charm however. The author […]