Laurie R. King is best known for two series of detective novels. One stars Kate Martinelli, an SFPD inspector living in present-day San Francisco with her lesbian partner, Lee, and their young daughter, Nora. The other is set in the 1920s and is written in the voice of Mary Russell, the young wife of the still-active sex­a­ge­nar­i­an, Sherlock Holmes.

Here, King ties both series together. Martinelli in­ves­ti­gates the murder of Philip Gilbert, the doyen of the local Sher­lock­ians, who recently came across a manuscript that seems to have been written …continue.

Dune is Frank Herbert’s classic SF novel, dealing with such themes as a galactic messiah, ecology, politics, treachery, and space opera.

The teenaged Paul Atreides, the product of thousands of years of selective breeding by the Bene Gesserit sisters, arrives on the desert planet Dune, home of the drug melange (or ‘spice’). Spice is fun­da­men­tal to the galactic economy: the Guild navigators use it to ‘fold’ space and transport huge ships between star systems, and it confers longevity and health upon those who can afford it. Spice is a byproduct of the …continue.

Rumpole of the Bailey is familiar to us from his later years as an old warhorse, a Fal­staffi­an character living a life of crime (defending criminals), drinking Chateau Thames Embankment at Pommeroy’s wine bar, and sparring with re­cal­ci­trant judges, fellow members of his Chambers, and She Who Must Be Obeyed: his long-suffering wife, Hilda. He has often alluded to his first great case, the Penge Bungalow Murders, when alone and without a leader, he suc­cess­ful­ly saved a young man from hanging for a double murder.

At last, Rumpole has …continue.

My first project at Cozi is to build a simple REST-style Web Service. Nobody here has done that before.

The first thing that I’m trying to get going is a simple URL rewriter, using an ASP.NET HttpModule.

I’m running Vista as my de­vel­op­ment desktop for the first time. So far, not bad, but there are lots of new quirks to get used to. I’ve been a good boy so far and I’ve left the User Access Control stuff enabled, so that I’m not running with ad­min­is­tra­tive privileges by default.

It’s my first exposure to IIS 7. I must say that the IIS UI is much improved (a low bar to surmount).

My first problem was …continue.

The second novel of le Carré’s Karla Trilogy, following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and preceding Smiley’s People.

The "Circus" (MI6) is in sorry shape after the mole "Gerald" was unmasked. George Smiley, now head of the Circus, must go on the offense. They find a trail of money leading to a Hong Kong busi­ness­man, Drake Ko. Jerry Westerby, a newspaper reporter and occasional agent, is sent out to Hong Kong to shake Ko’s tree.

Smiley is a secondary character here. Jerry is the honourable schoolboy of the title, a …continue.

Thraxas is an middle-aged minor sorceror and retired warrior, who is entirely too fond of the bottle, his grub, and the racetrack. He long ago fell from grace at the palace in the city of Turai and now makes ends meet by discreet private in­ves­ti­ga­tions. He is oc­ca­sion­al­ly aided by Makri, a gladiator-turned-barmaid and would-be university student, who happens to be part Orc, part Elf, and half human.

This book was published as two separate novels in Britain, Thraxas and Thraxas and the Warrior Monks. The plots are fairly for­get­table, but fun …continue.

Cozi is the PC Mag Site of the Week.

This is the col­lab­o­ra­tion ap­pli­ca­tion to have for organizing your family life. It has simple, intuitive func­tion­al­i­ty that suits its family target audience perfectly.

Pidgin (formerly known as GAIM) talks multiple protocols, including MSN and Google Talk. To configure, follow the in­struc­tions.

For Google Talk (XMPP), you may also need to set some advanced settings. At least, I have needed this at my last two jobs.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Rowling demon­strates that she really has been building up to this finale across all seven books, laying down material in earlier books to be picked up here.

After a brief, happy interlude at the wedding of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour, Harry goes on the run with Ron and Hermione. A coup has taken place in the Ministry of Magic. A puppet minister has been installed, with Voldemort reigning behind the scenes. Mudbloods are being rounded up. Snape is the new headmaster of Hogwarts.

They …continue.

At the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the reborn Voldemort finally revealed himself to the world. Harry is no longer being dogged by ill-founded claims that he is lying, making his sixth year at Hogwarts easier. Elsewhere in the magical world, Voldemort and the Death Eaters are wreaking havoc.

Dumbledore belatedly takes Harry somewhat into his confidence and reveals that Voldemort has split his soul into several pieces to assure his im­mor­tal­i­ty. Only if these fragments, which are hidden in horcruxes, are all destroyed, can …continue.