pouët.net

Following on from my long forgotten "Sci-Fi book thread". If you include non-fiction (articles, essays, texts etc. at least a link please).

Ive got a list of stuff I got given for my b'day/xmas that I haven't even looked at yet.

What's populating my dunny/bedside table/backpack at the moment -

Saga of the Seven Suns by Kevin J Anderson. I'm currently rereading no. 7 "Ashes of Worlds". Good solid space-opera. Done well. I just can't forgive him for doing the Dune stuff with Brian Herbert.

"Necroscope:The Lost Years" by Brian Lumley.
Is there any other Harry Keogh fans out there that think it's time for a necrosope/Wamphyri movie?
A hero that talks to the dead and can jump thru space and time (via the Moebius Continuum) who battles vampires from another dimension? Hollywood's missing a beat here.

The Mind of God - Paul Davies.
Now I've read the "Last 3 Minutes" and I've also read a couple of Richard Dawkins' books (what I would consider a follow on from PD). I've seen Paull Davies talk and met him.
Mind of God was the book that opened me up to meta. Everything. It's a fairly simple read but trust me when I say - if you walk away unchanged in your thinking having read it you probably should stick to reading books that have holes in the cardboard pages where you can waggle your fingers.

I've got to look forward to Tournment by Matthew Reilly and The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks (RIP). Both of which I'm keen to start but uni starts in a couple of weeks and I'm sure many of you can relate - reading when you have loads of other readings kinda sucks.

Sorry.
The Mind of God.

i'm reading about what edison was able to do in his time and his area.

^ Isn't it lucky you found that website before I posted this post.
Quick everyone, sign up for that well known book review website and post your responses there rather than maybe have an interesting discussion about books (and not demos) here in this thread.
Cause god knows - pouet should never any posts in the bbs unless they're all about demos.........................................................................................................

Some cool picks btw ps.

ringofyre: you were asking for people to share what they been reading, that's what i been reading, in case anyone wants to snoop or discuss with me some of them. i wasn't implying anything else beyond that.

@ps - Fair enough - I guess I was looking for more than just a link I suppose. But as I said - some nice pics, cool.

*picks*

Is it even possible to talk with you about demos ringo? Why are you constantly trying to talk about everything else but demos?

we can talk about a fire upon the deep and a deepness in the sky, both books and demos. although haven't read the books yet, need to get them.

spent last week going through all the manga of attack on titan after having watched the anime. pretty cool, even though the drawings are not 5 star quality, especially in the first volumes. in the anime it works better from the start. and it suffers a little from the japanese syndrome of building up things in arc that sometimes feel abit forced and repeating the same info instead of explaining the real mysteries. a mix of making it up as you go and wanting to extend it's life cycle to the max.

in that topic, the bakuman manga and anime also covers that issue very nicely and tongue in cheek, very cool read/watch if you're into manga / anime stuff and the whole japanese culture and creative drives behind it.

Never read much manga tbh. Attack on Titan looks quite interesting - I may have to cheat and watch some episodes first tho.
A few years ago my missus went thru a phase of watching Evanagelion. I can relate to the build up and repetition you're talking about.

@v3nom - have you even seen the front page of the bbs? Short answer is I don't come to pouet for demos (shock! horror!). I come for some of the lively and interesting discussions that go on in some of these threads and in the oneliner. Otherwise you'd have to be a fairly one-dimensional person to only have a single interest in any site online, don't you think?

Have you ever watched a demo at all?

Yes. Have you ever read a book that you found interesting enough to post and or discuss here?

Yes.

evangelion is awesome. :)

this.misses(the "random"-part a bit!)

But ok, good reads are spread everywhere, in books, in the net...something that caught my attention lately and is some advertising-stunt in the end, but a very nice read for sure:
(you feel enlightened about it aswell afterwards, if you never played it yourself!)
The Bloodbath of B-R5RB, Gaming’s Most Destructive Battle Ever

If you dont dare to click the link by now, lemme tell you they destroyed 300k US$ in ~28 hours! Read that already! ;) The Advertising is the Article itself, making you hungry to get involved yourself, as this is almost what we all always wanted to do! ;) Being Picard|Pirate in the Open Space! ;)

be sure to follow the links aswell ;) Especially the "Every Spaceship-ever"-Comparision-Picture rulez! (all the spaceships of everything we know in SF (StarTrek, StarWars, etc.) in a size-correct comparision!)

Roadside Picnic (book)
Roadside Picnic (demo)

I think ringo is way into demos, else he wouldn´t be here constantly! ;) (except maybe for the nice format the Random Picture Thread got delivered to him in the first place!)
Atleast he knows a lot about Computers, more than i know myself about linux for example! ;)

I say: as long as it´s categorized "residue" you dont have to mind anyway, just set the flag to not show residue if you feel annoyed!
Also sometimes i feel like having read all of pouet, but still want to continue, so i choose some residue and get happy with it most of the times, especially if started by ringo! :)

But let us try maybe:
Ringo: What do you think about the upcoming newly introduced 8k-Intro-Category/Competition to be held for the first time at Revision 2014?

Thanks hArDy.
Ever since I started to code I have always believed in the premise of "Small is Beautiful" (don't misunderstand me tho - I think Steve Gibson is a bit of a hack driving his own agenda). Now I'll be the first to admit - I taught my self to write in asm and then c and I'm not *ahem* very good with either.
Then one day in my internet wanderings I came across a small com file called tube - don't ask me where from cause I have trouble remembering what I had for breakfast this morning!
And this thing blew my fucking mind! Here was some sweet seamlessly looped visuals in 256 bytes! Whoa! Then I managed to find a zip with the source and had a look at how it was written. To me that was some nice code.

My point? I've always admired the idea of 'size constraints' as a compo - everything in 4k is a challenge. I don't think that means you're going to get twice as much "bang for your buck" in an 8k compo but I do think the level of complexity will increase. Which can't be a bad thing.

These days I like to post and read some interesting threads here, I like finding some of the music and having a listen (something I dabble in myself). I'm not here to watch hundreds of demos, collect glöps and thumbs up or down - if there's a link to a prod in a thread I'll have a look at it to see what people are talking about but I have tbh here, by the time I've got it to run in wine or another emulator - I may as well have watched it on youtube. But that just me.

Again - thanks for the kind words, I hope I answered your question.
Cheers!

On topic: why is it that most demosceners *seem* to be mostly interested in reading Science Fiction and/or Fantasy books? These both are my least favorite genres of books.

I appreciate the fact that in some Science Fiction books an attempt is made to analyze or criticize certain aspects of society and this can of course be interesting. But often I get annoyed with the flat characters and cliche dialogs. Besides that, in general I find action sequences annoying to read.

I think the demoscene itself is an escapism, just like immersion in sci-fi / fantasy worlds; I can only speak for myself, but I enjoy both demos and sci-fi / fantasy because they're not real, they're something you haven't seen before and (probably) will not be able to see in person, and that fascinates me.