This PC-cleaning application found it’s way to me via the BBC’s Click Online, and it’s the absolute best I’ve ever come across. It cleans out temporary files, and generally cleans up your system quick as a flash, as well as scanning your registry for errors, and fixing those at lightning speed. It’s absolutely excellent and completely free, so if you’re running Windows and it’s getting a bit sluggish or your hard-drive is filling up fast, download this and give it a go. It’s well worth it.

I’m particularly fanatical about Six Feet Under, and I honestly think it’s one of the best things on TV today. Perhaps that’s because I don’t watch enough or the right programmes, but having just watched Season Three of Six Feet Under on DVD for the first time, I think I’m actually in love with the show.

Six Feet Under, for the uninitiated, is a drama series laced with black humour set in a funeral home. I personally think that statement makes the show sound really bad, but I’ve yet to come up with a better description. It follows the lives of the Fisher family and their friends and employees, with each episode focused to some degree on a particular person’s death and their progress through the funeral home, from their death to their burial (and often beyond).

The first two seasons were undoubtedly excellent, though they could easily have played together to create a single double-length season. The third season, however, changes the show and takes it in an even darker direction than the first two excellent series, and the final episode of the third season is possibly the most perfect season ending of any drama series I’ve seen. This is one of those very, very rare series that actually seems to be getting better with age, and I can’t wait to see the fourth season.

However, because the third season is so different to the others, many people (looking at the Amazon reviews) don’t like it, and say it’s far worse than the first two. I think it’s even better. A good summary of the third season, for the initiated, is given by one Amazon reviewer:

After Season One and Two, season three takes a decidedly different turn. While Season One was about discovering identity, season two was about friends, family and lovers. Season 3 is about relationships, and change.

This isn’t the same show as the first two seasons. Superfially character roles have changed largely and the people you see are mostly new. There’s no Parker here, Brenda doesn’t appear until the 5th episode, Nikolai’s non-existent, as is assistant Robbie.

On a deeper level the show is darker, more subdued, more brooding. It is a tribute to the show’s actors that if they didn’t have the gravitas that they do the show would seem slow, but in actual fact it seems breathtaking up until the eventual climax of the last four actors which is just breathtaking television in every meaning of the phrase.

Six Feet Under, fantastic television.

The particular beauty of owning Six Feet Under on DVD is that you can watch the series more than once, which is fantastic, as you can see different levels of development each time, and get closer to the writers’ intended hidden meaning. Another series I’m hooked on is 24 – this, though, is pretty much 24’s antithesis. Six Feet Under is wonderfully slow-moving, full of the depth with 24 seriously lacks, and is very thoughtful and considered.

The best thing I can really compare Six Feet Under to is The West Wing. Whereas The West Wing is an aspirational drama, Six Feet Under is dark. They’re both just as intelligent – or, perhaps, Six Feet Under is the more intelligent because of it’s focus on the human condition rather than American politics – and they’re both polished and extremely watchable.

I highly recommend Six Feet Under, and particularly the third season. If you’ve not seen it before though, you’ll want to get hold of the first and second second seasons first. It’s definitely worth it.

I’ve just finished reading this book – I’ve featured the paperback version, which comes out in a month’s time, on the right, because that’s much cheaper than the hardback edition which is currently available. Anyway, on with the review…

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It certainly provides what it promises to (“A Short History of British Journalism”), but Marr manages to deliver this with humour and panache. He mixes in lots of his own anecdotes – some longer and more developed than others, but all entertaining – and passes judgement on developments in the media world, as well as informing us that they occurred. It’s certainly a very personal history for Marr, and that helps to involve the reader much more than the normal style of books written by journalists, which tend to read something like extended newspaper features.

Anybody remotely interested in British journalism would be well advised to read a copy of this book – which certainly is no chore – as it provides much background on how newspapers are put together, and how this has changed over the years. It even provides some history on the rivalries between newspapers, looking at (as an example) how The Mirror‘s sales declined at the hands of The Sun, and how Marr’s own Indy set out to be different from everyone else.

This is not intended to be – and nor is it – a detailed history of the development of the British media. Instead, it’s an enjoyable romp through the subject, stopping off at points of interest – particularly recent ones, and many of which you’d have thought he may have liked to avoid. He goes into some detail about Hutton and the problem with modern journalism, making convincing arguments for his point of view – which is, in part, critical of the BBC which pays him. It’s very clear from his writing that he’s experienced as a journalist, not just because he lists his many and varied jobs, but also because of the detailed insight he is able to deliver, and the apparent wisdom of some of his comments.

Certainly, this is a very easy-going enjoyable read, from a political editor who comes across as an affable kind of chap, and a book which I must highly recommend.

A revolution in newspaper puzzling has occurred, and I’m part of it…

I’m addicted to Su Doku. If you don’t read the Indy, Times, Telegraph or Mail, then this revolution may have passed you by, so catch up with the lovely article in today’s Indy: The Puzzle that Ate the World. And yes, I did buy the Indy in preference to the Grauniad today just to experience Britain’s first Super Du Doku. I’m making fair progress with it, but it’ll be a while till I’m done, I expect.

I also have the first Times Su Doku book (right), which seems slightly pointless given that I could have bought the program for only slightly more cash and have had an endless supply of the puzzles. But there’s something more satisfying about doing them from the book. I may well get the program, though, before long… I don’t know if I can resist! I’ve got the demo already…

If there’s one thing about the whole Su Doku saga that amuses me most, it’s that the readers of the Mail can’t cope with a puzzle with such a complicated name (!) – they, instead, are presented with Number Crunch Codenumber (see here). Poor peeps.

Anyway, if you want a go at some Su Soku Doku (who says I can’t spell?!), the Times have their puzzles online here, and the Torygraph have theirs here. You could also download the demo version of the program. Or buy the book.

But give it a go, and you will be addicted. Please don’t blame me!

Nobody can claim that I haven’t given Dan Brown a fair crack at entertaining me. I’ve read The Da Vinci Coda, Angels and Demons, as well as Digital Fortress. And, at least as far as I can see, the best complement I can give the books is the one I first gave them: ‘irritatingly gripping tosh’.

Just like the other two, Digital Fortress is by no means deep, considered, or erudite. It’s a quick story, completely lacking depth, and riddled with predictability. The most irritating part of Digital Fortress was the final thirty pages, where the solution to the whole problem of the book was glaringly obvious, and yet apparently the most accomplished cryptographers in the world were unable to work it out. And, despite having earlier demonstrated an intimiate knowledge of other obscure chemicals like freon, they are unable to recall basic facts about the most famous of all elements. And for a miliatary organisation, there’s an awful lot of insubordination.

And why on earth would one build a dome to house a top secret computer that had both a see-through glass roof to allow any passing spy satellites to have a close look, and given that this computer could melt-down at any time, have no effective emergency exits? And why would a department housing the most accomplished cryptographers have physical security barriers protected with passwords rather than keys? It’s all a little bit bizarre. There are so many gaping plot holes, I often wondered if I was about to plunge into one never to be seen again.

Brown has clearly tried to throw in a little bit of interpersonal relationships into this novel, trying to give us confused signals about who loves who, and what’s going on in various romances. Instead, the whole thing ends up looking freakishly incestuous. And yet that angle is completely ignored.

The problem with the novel is that it is genuinely gripping, because you want to carry on reading to find out where the characters are finally going to catch up with the obvious. Have they not realised that every passing observation they make later plays a key role in a Dan Brown novel?

There’s really very little to recommend about Dan Brown. Unless you happen to be fans of both cryptography and the Catholic Church. Because even in a novel about NSA cryptography, there still has to be a moment of high drama in a Catholic Church. It feels like Brown is desperately trying to avoid dragging the church into it, but can’t quite resist. The only other thing to recommend is that it is extremely easy reading. You don’t need to engage your brain, there’s no complicated moral or philosophical puzzles posed, no deep meanings; you just let the words wash over your eyes. And try to resist the urge to scream out in frustration.

As I hope you’ll have gathered by now, this isn’t a book I’d particularly recommend. It’s not even an author I’d particularly recommend. But if you do feel the urge to read it, you can buy it ‘cheap as chips’ using the links on the right.

I’ve categorised this as a review, but it’s not strictly one… More of a preview, really, and an update on what I’ll be reading over the coming weeks and months.

I’ve just embarked upon the journey that is reading this tome. At almost 1100 pages of small type face and reduced margins it’s easily the longest book I’ve read in my life to date, and I have no desire to even contemplate tackling it all in one go, as I think I’d probably go insane attempting to do so.

But it’s certainly a case of ‘So far, so good’ at this point: The bit I’ve read of it so far appears to be absolutely excellent – the second chapter is possibly the best, most accurate, and most linguistically skilled chapters of any book I can remember.

For the near future, as my first interruption to Infinite Jest, I intend to give my brain a rest and Dan ‘dull and predicable’ Brown another chance to attempt to impress, as he so utterly failed earlier this year with Angels and Demons and the now ubiquitous The Da Vinci Code. I’m almost hoping it will be another ‘450 pages of irritatingly gripping tosh’, as I’m just feeling ready for something like that right now.

We’ll see how this all plays out.

In the mean-time, if you want to buy a copy of Infinite Jest at a very competitive price (very possibly the best on the ‘net), then you know where to click. For a gentle reminder, move your eyes to the right, slightly. It might seem quite expensive, but you have to remember that it is (by my guestimate) almost two-and-a-half inches thick. So it’s not going to fit through your letterbox, just to warn you in advance.

You can expect a review of one of the above a few weeks from now, and the other a few years from now – or so it seems – so keep your browser firmly locked on to sjhoward.co.uk

I’ve just finished this book, and it certainly soars to levels far above anything else I’ve read lately. It has a wonderful central message, which is continually revisited and all brought together nicely at the end, and the quality and style of the language over hundreds of years is spot-on.

The book is essentially constructed of six smaller books, each interrupted at a crucial moment in their story – one even midsentence – and returned to again later. The story spans from the 1800s right through to a distant future, with each of the different small books being about a different time period, and written in the style of that time period. Because of this, the book could have been enormously gimicky, and been very poorly written, but it wasn’t. Mictchell clearly has the amazing talent required to construct such a story of such amazing ambition, and to transcend both styles and genres.

Whilst this is a marvellous book in itself, it reminded me of Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller in several respects, especially since both are essentially collections of stories-within-stories. However, whilst Traveller was an excellent novel, Cloud Atlas is far more accessible, and much more of a populist novel that one can just sit down, read, and enjoy, whilst still maintaining a number of worthy themes and messages. This is accessible literature, but not a trashy Dan Brown airport read.

Cloud Atlas is a very clever novel; in fact, it is so clever that you end up forgetting just how clever it is, and just run along with the story. There aren’t many writers about who can achieve this delicate balance of being smart whilst resisting the temptation to show off and overshadow their own story. That said, I found the first 100 pages or so quite hard going, as I tried to get used to the format of being cut-off mid-flow with no immediate explanation, and leaping from Dan Brown to 19th century America is a fair leap. Still, once you get into this book, you won’t come out until you’ve finished.

I highly recommend this book, and if you haven’t already got a copy, I suggest you get hold of one (and there’s no better way of doing that than by using the new-style Amazon link to the right) and start reading, because you won’t be able to stop.

I’ll be watching this ground-breaking TV programme, and I think it looks worth recommending to you, too. It’s The Quatermass Experiment, on BBC Four, live at 8.20pm tonight. Can’t wait.

Yesterday’s edition of this – focusing on 1955 – was very enjoyable, and I highly recommned the whole season. Tonight, it’s 1965, and I still haven’t been born…

This is another deeply predictable book by Dan Brown. At least when I read The Da Vinci Code the plot seemed original. Unfortunately, this time it didn’t. These two books have virtually identical plots, just using people in place of objects. You could see the ‘surprising’ ending a mile off, and some passages were extremely frustrating to read.

Let me provide you with an example…

‘My father could argue two sides of a Mobius Strip.’

Quite funny, a fairly astute and witty comment.

Langdon laughed, picturing the artful crafting of a Mobius Strip

A little flowery, what with all the ‘artful crafting’ poop. It’s hardly difficult to ‘craft’ a Mobius strip, school kids across the globe do it regularly.

a twisted ring of paper, which technically possessed only one side.

Yes, we know what a Mobius strip is. You’d have to be pretty slow not to know. And I particularly like the italics, just to emphasise what an amazing point he’s making.

Langdon has first seen the single-sided shape in the artwork of M. C. Escher.

No, Langdon would first have seen it when he was in short pants at school.

Why does Mr Brown insist on making a meal of the smallest points? He does a similar thing later on, taking two paragraphs to explain what a relief is (the artform, that is, not the relief you get when reaching the end of one of these tedious passages) – eventually explaining it in terms of the picture on the back of a penny.

One point at which I actually laughed out loud was this:

Glick’s first monthly review had come back filled with superlatives – resourceful, sharp, dependable.

If it was so filled with superlatives, why is it that the author cannot list even one. Or doesn’t he know what a superlative is?

The storyline is good, and it’s an entertaining book, but don’t expect anything deep and meaningful (and try not to cringe when he tries to include philosphical comments) and try not to get too frustrated with some of the more tedious, unnecessary explanations.