Merry Christmas, Seasons Greetings, Happy Hannukah etc... Today is my last day of work for the year andI'll be celebrating the Yuletide by spending the holidays with my girlfriend in Germany. I've never been to Germany so I'm quite excited. I expect I'll get an education in German beer, food and winter traditions. Bring it on! (Especially the beer, I've heard good things about German beer).

In other news I've been modding a leather bracer for my steampunk gear, it was too big so I've made a few changes and added a few bits and pieces. I'll post pics when I'm satisfied with the overall piece.

Tonight, I'll be DJ'ing at Cambridges Q Club for a Christmas party, while I'll be doing my usual Industrial, EBM, Electronica style set I will be trying to keep it as 'bouncy' as one can. It's a Christmas party after all.

Well that's all for now, I hope everyone has a great holiday and an awesome new year.

There isn't much else I can really add to that. Hitchens was a brilliant man and whilst I have not always agreed with his stance on certain areas, his support for the Iraq war for example, I will miss his writing and the brilliance with which he verbally and logically smacked down the nastier elements of the religious lunatic fringe.

RIP Hitch, I hope it ended peacefully.

I'm not usually one to turn on the keyboard cruise control for cool but HOLY FUCK!. If you haven't read Boneshaker then you better click that link and get it. It's an amazing story with all the best aspects of steampunk and fiction in general. It's got gritty adventure, zombies, airships, a mad inventor, a city filled with poison gas and armed refugees and there's pirates (because it's a well known fact that everything is better with pirates). I was hooked within the first two pages, the prologue alone would make a spectacular short film but apparently they're making a film of the entire novel!.

This has some serious potential for awesomeness of an extreme kind as long as the screenplay writer doesn't do anything stupid (like introducing hollywoodised annoying and unnecessary romantic sub-plots). I really hope they get this right and by right I mean sticking to the original story and not changing a single word. I sincerely hope that Ms Priest has stipulated that their use of the novel rights is restricted to telling the story in its original form because to alter this tale would be an act of artistic blasphemy of the highest order.