I finished reading Alastair Reynolds’ “The Prefect” yesterday. It’s set in the Revelation Space universe (in the Glitter Band, before the Melding Plague) and comes in fairly short at ~400 pages (which I read in two suitably epic evening sessions).
It’s very much a page-turner, and I feel he is improving from book to book. Two things weren’t handled terribly (the Thalia Ng strand was not quite as exciting and important as the others, and the reveal about what happened 11 years back doesn’t IMO justify the actions taken afterward by the Supreme Prefect as well as the people at the scene).
So, if you hated Reynolds before, you might hate this book a bit less, everyone else will probably like it as much as I did (which is a lot). I feel this is a good stand-alone novel (in the way things start, move forward, and end) but the other books also add a lot of nicely interwoven additional background information; so I find it hard to judge how I would’ve felt about the book had I not read the other books…

Very recommended.

Hardware – Heavy, although it doesn’t seem much bigger than my 360 when horizontal. Although upright it seems much more massive. I won’t be lugging this back to my parents’ for the weekend. The form itself is odd, and always makes me look twice because out of the corner of my eye it looks skewed and perspectively incorrect. The finish looks very nice (glossy black – Klavierlack) and attracts dust and fingerprints even more so then the PSP, but then you don’t have to touch it as often as the handheld. After it’s been on for about 10mins, the fan goes to its high settings (same as when turning the machine on), which is about the same volume as the fans on my 360 (not the jet-engine derived DVD drive), but a much nicer tone (not as much droning). So far, I don’t own a disc-based game, maybe the spinning drive will provide additional ventilation. It expels plenty of warm air out the back and the right (top) side.
HDMI output at 1080p looks really good; I’m using an HDMI to DVI cable and a mechanical DVI switch (so I can still use my Mac Pro with DVI as well).

Controller – Still don’t like the sticks (large dead-zone, little resistance, positioning). Seems to charge quickly, though. Haven’t seen a single game where the SIXAXIS was useful. The Motorstorm demo had an option for control using it, but I was missing feedback of how far I was turning and how much further I could turn. The triggers have a similar feel of “not knowing where you are”. Rumble is missed. It’s very light. D-pad is decent.

Interface – I really like the XMB in principle (especially on a high-def output device), but it seems a bit cumbersome once you get into sub-menus (e.g. in the audio-output menu, you had to go right to get the screen to save your changes; elsewhere you don’t have to do that and right will change the category). The built-in “swirl” and the music visualiser look very nice (the swirl probably only in HD), although I don’t see what they have in common with the music (but this has been my problem with visualisers for the past 5 years or so).
The text-entry system is a disgrace. Give me a proper on-screen keyboard, getting the USB-keyboard out of the closet gets old fast. The whole set-up process of the console was seemingly focused on being user-unfriendly: Plug in your wireless controller, then you have to use the PS2 display connector first to get a picture to enable HDMI, optical out disabled by default, the on-screen keyboard, …
As for the user-friendliness, something I wanted to mention that contrary to one’s expectation (but not their marketing materials) the PS3 is much more a PC than the 360 coming from Microsoft. The PS3’s got activity LEDs for the HDD, it needs to be properly shut down, it installs stuff after downloading, etc.
But I have to add, most things are fine after the initial set-up. Nevertheless, most companies would do well to rent an Apple employee for improving the unpacking and set-up experience of new shiny equipment… 🙂

Online / Store – I’m not quite sure how the accounts will work for different regions will work, so far I’ve not used my planned main-account name, as I’ll probably reserve that for a European account. I also haven’t bought anything (again because I’m not sure how transferable the bought items are).
The friends system I haven’t tried much, although I registered a few peeps.
The (US) online-store is essentially a web-page (which is slightly sluggish when moving quickly between items). You use the analogue stick to controller the mouse pointer or flick between controls with the D-pad (unfortunately it also scrolls through long description texts). The sections are nice and clear, I like the “what’s new” and “top downloads” side bars.
The downloads themselves are nice and fast (maxing out my 6000 kbit/s connection most of the time, the rest of the time I was torrenting ;)), but they better be because you (currently) cannot do anything else while download. Except cancel the download. Which then tells you that the download has failed if you do. I know, I canceled it!
Good selection of stuff though, I was expecting it to be sparse compared to XBLM, but it’s not at all. I really appreciate the “proper” downloadable at very reasonable prices.
1080p trailers look really, really nice. Recommended are 300 and Black Hawk Down. It’s also nice to have plenty of hard-disk space.

Demos / Downloadable Games
F1 2007 – Quite nice and difficult (played with most of the aids turned off). Looks a bit vaseline-smeared.
GripShift – “Only” looks OK, but seems very fun. Reminds me of Trackmania. Not too keen on the racing, but more on the platforming / collecting side of things. I’ll probably buy this.
GT HD – Only game I recalled running in 1080p. The gameplay doesn’t look much better than you remember GT4, but it’s really sharp and the car models are a lot better (which you would have noticed it they’d simply used the GT4 ones in this). The replay though look really proper good! No force-feedback, even with the Driving Force Pro. Hate!
Motorstorm – Looks and plays nice, but some of the videos I had downloaded looked nicer (with dust particles going in and out of shadow / sunlight and being shadowed correctly). The demo is probably from an older build.
Resistance – Died repeatedly after killing 3-5 of the bad guys with the default weapon.
None of the games I recall as using AA (although F1 used depth of field and motion blur, and so did GT HD in replays), but on the plus side all of them had a very stable frame-rate and no apparent tearing.

(Current) Conclusion
I’ve ordered the US versions of Resistance and Motorstorm, so I’ll see how the full games fare. For me, as a 360 owner there aren’t many more interesting exclusives out at the moment, but the good downloadable games and the stunning picture via HDMI (compared to the lacklustre colours via VGA on the 360) are quite nifty. As is the feeling of untapped potential, but we’ll see about that. 😉
Would I recommended you buy one at the current price? Not really, unless you have enough disposable income or are gagging for a Blu-Ray player. The reason I imported one now was that I sick of Europe getting shafted.

As you may have noticed, I really enjoy Vinge’s books. As an aside, I noticed his books via a mention of one of them by John Carmack during an interview…

Anyway, on to the book itself. It’s rather short, in particular for a Vernor Vinge “novel” at approximately 370 pages, which translates into about three enjoyable evenings. Considering only the hardcover version is currently out, this may be a bit steep for some.

The time it is set in feels very similar to Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”, so it’s definitely near future extrapolation and often arrives at the same conclusions (or solutions to current problems) that Stephenson does. It does not involve as much action, though, although things speed up towards the end of the book.

As is common with Vinge, the distinction between who is good and who is bad is not clear cut. Nevertheless, there is (at least) one near enough villain (if only due to the measures he is willing to take to achieve his ultimate goal). At first, there don’t seem to be any genuinely likeable characters, although all of them are intriguing and you can see why they act the way the do.

The novel does use some sort of annoying semi-XML convention for showing silent messages between characters, which makes those a tad hard to parse, but in some ways can also be seen as elaborate set-up for jokes on cryptography conventions. Actually, the whole novel is full of humour (and cynicism) and some very nice word-play. It is intelligent, but neither forcedly so nor does it hit in the face with an attitude of “I’m proper literature”. Even the title has a funny twist…

Thankfully, the book is not all fun and some very real problems (just scan chapter titles for some obvious examples) are being looked at. Some in detail, some in passing, but usually without passing judgement – that is very much left to the reader, which IMO is a good thing. It is also fairly suspenseful, although not with as much of an overall feeling of dread as “A Deepness in the Sky” or “A Fire upon the Deep”.

It has a good beginning, it has a good middle part, and – most important of all – it has a good ending. Very recommended.

I finished reading Alastair Reynolds “Pushing Ice” about a week back. I was sceptical as it didn’t take place in the Revelation Space universe and was put off by the mediocre Amazon-reviews, but I think the people who gave it those marks didn’t understand it at all.
He manages to convey so much more in 500 pages (which I finished in the span of 2 days) than – say – Peter F. Hamilton in 2000… You have to pay some attention as much information is given in passing or has to be inferred, but this is to the books’ credit, not to its detriment.
It starts of as an amalgam of so many things – alien artifact / first contact story, moving on with strong influences of some Arthur C. Clarke books, but it pulls through brilliantly into something I never saw coming, never forgetting the human touch (and reminding me that fights between women are scary!).
I even liked the ending (which I rarely do), because it stops where it ought to.
Very recommended!