July 11, 2008

The “Rush to the Cloud” - Not So Fast… « Shepherd’s Pi

I must be even more geeky, because I was sure you were going to write “manticore.”

one amusing typo from the GCN story: when it gets down to my remarks, just before I got in my inevitable plug for semantic computing, I was speaking about “manycore and multicore processors,” but perhaps because I was talking about their powering small devices or being embedded to drive services, it came out as “mini-core.”

The “Rush to the Cloud” - Not So Fast… « Shepherd’s Pi

You know what was the single factor that moved me to the cloud?

Giant .pst files in Microsoft Outlook.

German Pocket Battleships: Shipcraft 1 by Rogar Chesneau

. In the volume, the author has chosen the German ‘pocket battleships’ of WW2, the best known of which was the Admiral Graf Spee, scuttles after the battle of the River Plate in 1939. This innovative and infamous class of surface raiders has long been a popular subject for ship modellers, many manufactures producing kits of the Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer and the rather different Deustschland. This book shows model shipwrights how to turn their kits into something really special, while its unparalleled level of visual information is a superb source for the general warship enthusiast.

Antonio Bonomi is working on a volume of Kriegsmarine Naval Histories for Nimble Books that will complement this perfectly.

Yorktown Class- Aircraft Carriers: Shipcraft 3 by Rogar Chesneau

The subject of this volume is the Yorktown class, the near-legendary American aircraft carriers that kept the Japanese at bay in the dark days between Pearl Harbor and the decisive battle of Midway, where Yorktown hereself was lost. Hornet launched the famous Doolittle Raid on Japan before being sunk at Santa Cruz in October 1942, but Enterprise surived the fierce fighting of the early war years to become the US Navy’s most decorated ship. With its unparalleled level of visual information-paint schemes, models, line drawings and photographs-it is simply the best references for any modelmaker setting out to build one of these famous carriers.

I am thinking about doing a “Why She Matters Today” book on a WW2 aircraft carrier, either Yorktown or Enterprise.

King George V- Class Battleships: Shipcraft 2 by Rogar Chesneau

The second volume in a new series providing ship modellers with all they need to know about a famous class of warship and associated model kits.
The five battleships of the King George V Class were the most modern to serve the Royal Navy in World War II; all rendered invaluable service in the war effort, and, indeed, the first two could be credited with influencing the very course of the conflict. Instrumental in the sinking of the battleship Bismarck, they bought about a fundamental shift in German naval policy, the emphasis moving away from heavy surface ships and towards the U-boat arm. With its unparalleled level of visual information- colour schemes, models, line drawings and photographs-it is simply the best reference for any model-maker setting out to build one these great battleships.

If you’re going to apply that logic, then you should also credit PRINCE OF WALES with changing the course of the war in the Pacific, sealing the loss of Singapore, and ending the British Empire.

That being said, I’d love to have a copy of this book!