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Day of the Starwind: The Last Legionary Book 3

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The weakest novel of the quartet, Day of the Starwind sees Keill investigate a rumoured legionaries base on the planet Rilyn.

Following an interesting crash-landing start, the action gets bogged down in dull dialogue with new characters who care little and ultimately matter less.

Glr’s warm friendship remains a high point, although as she and Keill are separated near the beginning of the book it does introduce some distance in their interaction.

We finally get to find out more about the leader of the Deathwing, so far only known as The One and now revealed as a tiny grey mutant in a giant golden cyborg body. Once again Keill prevails in a fight to the death, using his unbreakable organic alloy skeleton to surprise his foe.

At first glance the person looking down on him was beautiful, in an inhuman way [...] for an instant, Keill thought the golden figure was a robot, but then he saw the face more clearly, and knew otherwise — sickeningly otherwise.

Deathwing Over Veynaa: The Last Legionary Book 2

In Deathwing Over Veynaa, the second book of The Last Legionary Quartet, the action is focussed on a single star system where the Warlord is trying to ferment war between two planets.

Keill battles the Deathwing mutant telepath Quern after it is revealed that Quern alone knows how to create the deadly radiation that destroyed Kreill’s world.

The organic metal that the Overseers replaced Kriell’s skeleton with come in handy again, when a second Deathwing agent uses a robot to try to crush Kiell to death.

My people believed … that if you sacrifice everything to win – all principles, all sense of right – you end up with a pretty hollow victory.

There’s a line in a Legion song – better to lose like men than win like beasts.

Not much more is learned about The One and the Warlord during the second book. The action remains fast-paced and Douglas Hill holds back in revealing who the second agent is until the very end. Glr’s humour and bravery comes over well, as does Keill’s growing fondness for his alien companion.

An enjoyable book leading to the next in the series.

Other posts in this series:

Galactic Warlord: The Last Legionary Book 1

When I was about 10 years old I read Douglas Hills’s The Last Legionary and thought it was fantastic.

Now, 20 years later, I was pretty excited to spot a signed copy of the book on eBay. A quick bid later and it was in my hands.

Would Keill be as awesome as I remembered, or would he be reduced to quaint dullness by watching too many blockbuster movies in the intervening years?

Would the Warlord still be as despicable?

Would I still be entertained by a book written for young adults?

My hopes were high.

Spoilers ahoy!

Continue reading Galactic Warlord: The Last Legionary Book 1…»

San Francisco: disaster central?

I was watching The Core as San Francisco was half destroyed by a tear in the ozone layer that let in microwaves from space*, when it occured to me that San Fran and the Golden Gate Bridge in particular get boshed way more than average.

* movie science alert!

This is an on-going list of film San Francisco disasters.

The Core (2003)

Doomed rating: Three star out of five
The Core

Half destroyed in microwave meltdown when the Earth’s core stops spinning and the planet is no longer shielded from electromagnetic radiation from the Sun. Motorists get sunburnt, car tyres melt, and the Bridge’s ropes twang.
Continue reading San Francisco: disaster central?…»

Music mashing with YouTube, YQL and Open Data Tables

BBC’s top 20 chart + YouTube’s music videos + YQL = AddBass top 20 excellence!

The plan

Grab the top 20 chart singles from the BBC web site, look up each song on YouTube and get the most popular matching videos. Show them in the chromeless player and set it so that they play automatically and users can skip ones they don’t like.

Continue reading Music mashing with YouTube, YQL and Open Data Tables…»

Category Clouds WordPress widget

Tag clouds are an effective way of conveying information about the popularity of key words where the size of the word corresponds to the importance of the word. It is also visually more interesting than a standard list and attracts attention.

On Super Fun Days Out we needed something similar to WordPress’s built in tag cloud using categories instead of tags. Fortunately WordPress has an active plugin community and developer Lee Kelleher had already written a Category Cloud widget. A couple of changes were needed to update it for multiple sidebars and to include or exclude specific categories.

Now hosted at WordPress.org at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/category-clouds-widget/.

New in version 2!

Added [categoryclouds] shortcode to use the category cloud on a post or page.

Continue reading Category Clouds WordPress widget…»

BBC Micro Chuckie Egg Level 4 Guide

This is my guide to each Chuckie Egg level:

  1. Level 1
  2. Level 2
  3. Level 3
  4. Level 4

Level 4

Level 4 strategy

With a lift and a gap in the bottom platform, this level combines the features introduced in level 2 and level 3 and adds some tricky jumps to the mix. In particular, the top left jump nearest the caged bird can cause you to fall through if you jump from the nearest platform.

Avoiding hens is still fairly easy where the central ladder can be used to escape.

Continue reading BBC Micro Chuckie Egg Level 4 Guide…»

BBC Micro Chuckie Egg Level 3 Guide

This is my guide to each Chuckie Egg level:

  1. Level 1
  2. Level 2
  3. Level 3

Level 3

Level 3 strategy

This level introduces the lift. This is three moving platforms, moving vertically up the screen. The platforms are not evenly spaced, with two appearing closer together. Missing the lift and falling down the gap between the lift and the platform will result in a life lost.

The level design makes it easy to avoid the hens, but good timing is needed to complete it quickly.

Continue reading BBC Micro Chuckie Egg Level 3 Guide…»

BBC Micro Chuckie Egg Level 2 Guide

This is my guide to each Chuckie Egg level:

  1. Level 1
  2. Level 2

Level 2

Level 2 strategy

The second level has a large number of ladders connecting the platforms. Although there is one more hen compared to level one, there are many jump-able gaps to aid escape and turn back hens.

The single gap on the bottom platform has a gap and falling through results in an instant life lost.

Continue reading BBC Micro Chuckie Egg Level 2 Guide…»

BBC Micro Chuckie Egg Level 1 Guide

I was a massive fan of Chuckie Egg on the BBC Micro when I was about 10 years old. There have been a couple of ports, but it wasn’t until 2009 that Mark Lomas released the ultimate version built on an BBC emulator for the PC.

This is my guide to each Chuckie Egg level:

  1. Level 1

Level 1

Level 1 strategy

The first level is dominated by a central ladder running through all five platforms. Two hens start in the top left of the level, moving slowly towards the bottom. They can sometimes get in the way on the central ladder, but several nearby platforms can be used to wait them out.

The bottom two platforms have plenty of ladders to avoid getting trapped and to practice running and jumping.

Strategy path for completing level 1 of Chuckie Egg

Continue reading BBC Micro Chuckie Egg Level 1 Guide…»

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