Halt and Catch Fire – season 2

Season 1 was great. But everyone agrees season 2 was much better.

One of my favourite shows ever. I’ve already started season 3.

Click PLAY or watch a review on YouTube.

Halt and Catch Fire is an American period drama television series … that aired on AMC from June 1, 2014, to October 14, 2017.

Taking place over a period of ten years, the series depicts a fictionalized insider’s view of the personal computer revolution of the 1980s and later the growth of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s.

Audiences give it 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.

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cup of tea in the graveyard

I’m coaching and consulting in Bermuda for about 7 weeks.

Most nights when I get home from the Gym I fix myself a cup of Earl Grey … and walk across the street to the graveyard to enjoy the dying of the light.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

That video was taken on my iPhone X smoothed out by my Osmo Mobile 2 gimble.

That auto edit took just seconds on the DJI GO app.

I’m the Messenger by Markus Zusak

Impressed with his wordsmithery in The Book Thief, I downloaded another Zusak.

The Messenger (2002) … was released in the United States under the name I Am the Messenger.

Four 20-year-old slacker friends in small town Australia spend their nights playing cards and days slacking … or working menial jobs.

Bewilderingly, the protagonist — Ed Kennedy — is drawn into a mystery where he must solve riddles and change the lives of other people in town.

Like Book Thief, it’s original and creative.

Most people enjoy this book.

Some are turned off by the silly plot.

It did keep me going.

Surprisingly Zusak has not published since Book Thief 2005. He plans to release Bridge of Clay in Oct 2018.

“Fake News” vs bad reporting

The news stories I saw on the Pulse Nightclub massacre were speculation. Mostly wrong.

Much of the bad reporting came out of the early FBI interview with the killer’s widow.

Pulse gunman’s widow found not guilty

During the course of the trial, the truth came out:

The shooter tried to kill tourists at the Disney theme park, but because there was a security presence, he opted to shoot up a nightclub, which he apparently did not know was a gay nightclub.

The shooter was not repressing homosexual feelings, as the media alleged, and had never been there before, which also refuted the media’s prior reporting.

Accuracy in Media

St. Georges to Dockyard to Hamilton by ferry

During summer an additional Bermuda ferry runs from St. Georges to Dockyard. That’s a scenic 45 minutes.

On arrival you can transfer on to the Dockyard to Hamilton ferry. Or spend 90 minutes in Dockyard before catching the next one.

That’s a perfect and inexpensive Bermuda boat trip.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Book Thief is a 2005 historical novel by Australian author Markus Zusak and is his most popular work. …

I finally got around to reading this acclaimed novel.

Zusak intended it for the young adult market, yet the language is sophisticated. Almost poetic. He’s an excellent writer.

Quite original. The narrator is death.

Most people love the book but I wasn’t totally won over.

It’s about a young girl living in a small town near Munich with her adoptive German family during the Nazi era.

Taught to read by her kind-hearted foster father, the girl begins “borrowing” books and sharing them with the Jewish refugee being sheltered by her foster parents in their home …

It was adapted into a 2013 feature film of the same name. …

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 46% …

I didn’t bother downloading.

It’s about Liesel (Sophie Nelisse), the orphaned 12-year-old daughter of German communist activists, taken in by a middle-aged couple in 1938.

She and the smitten boy next door Rudy (Nico Liersch) join the Hitler Youth and goose-step around town burning books and fetishising der Führer as little twinges of conscience and doubt slowly begin to manifest themselves.

Then her adoptive parents Hans and Rosa (Geoffrey Rush, all twinkly grandpa, and Emily Watson, super-grouchy but with a heart of gold) take in and hide the Jewish son of the man who saved Hans’s life in the Great War. …

Guardian – movie review

Memory Man by David Baldacci

This is the first book I’ve read by Baldacci. He is a good story teller.

Memory Man is a crime novel about a man whose wife, daughter and brother in law were murdered …

… the first novel to feature new character Amos Decker …

Decker is 6′ 5″ and an obese 350 lbs.

His partner is a chain smoking anorexic.

Click PLAY or watch the author interviewed on YouTube.

After a mass shooting at a local high school, Decker is asked to assist in solving the case by the local police force he used to work for. It soon becomes apparent that the shooting is somehow related to the killing of his family 18 months before. …

I did enjoy the book. It kept me guessing.

That said, I probably won’t continue with Decker. He’s just not compelling enough for me.