Through Fiery Trials

This is the 10th book in David Weber’s “Safehold” series. I’ve been reading these for many years. Although notionally a science fiction series, a lot of the focus is on the historic scientific progression that was required to advance humanity’s weapons technology used on land, sea, and in the air. In that regard, the series starts from a technical base of approximately the late dark ages or early Middle Ages and brings us to a technology level close to the end of the 19th century. Weber shows an incredible amount of historical and scientific knowledge – many of the scenarios and examples in the series could have been lifted from the American Civil War, WW1 and others. There is also a huge religious aspect to the series with schisms and intrigues similar to what happened in Europe in the middle-ages. I’m still enjoying the series and hopefully David Weber will wrap it up soon.

2024 A Novel of the Next World War

2034 A Novel of the Next World War. Book Cover

A page turner from Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis about a hypothetical near-peer conflict set in the year 2034 between the United States and China. When I spoke about the book with a work colleague, we both felt “2034” was in the same vein as the cold war / hot war thriller “Red Storm Rising” by Tom Clancy from the 1980’s and that is not a bad thing. Enjoyable and a bit scary.

The Celts

Simon Jenkins has created an enjoyable history book describing the story of the people of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It runs from pre-Roman times up to the present day. I would have read some of this history when in school but was hazy on parts. The book is a good primer / revision of this history of this part of the world.

Slow Horses

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

Mick Herron’s book Slow Horses was recommended to me by a work colleague who’s read the entire series. I also understand from him that there is an Apple TV adaptation of it with Gary Oldman. I enjoyed it – it’s the first espionage thriller I’ve read in recent years other than John Le Carré.

Bing Image Creator

I’ve been experimenting with Bing Image Creator as a tool to create a site logo and icon. Image Creator is underpinned by the DALL-E 3 engine. Link here: Image Creator from Microsoft Bing. For this site, I used the following prompt:

In the style of a 1930’s travel poster, create an image with an airliner flying, a spaceship landing, and a galaxy in widescreen landscape format

I got reasonable suggested images in the style I asked for:

A challenge I had was that Bing Image Creator wouldn’t take account of the request to generate an image in any size other than square 1024 x 1024 px. This may be a limitation of the specific implementation hosted for Bing.

I chose this image as the logo – I like the style:

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