During 2012 I have read 57 novels, which is significantly less than the previous year (83 between 09/10 and 12/11), when I first received my Kindle but still probably more than most other years since I was a child.

Here is what I read during 2012, in rough chronological order:

1. Guns, germs and steel by Jared Diamond - Similar to Why the Rest Rules (for now) and equally as enjoyable
2. Start Small, Stay Small - Rob Walling
3. A people’s history of the United States by Howard Zinn - Some parts very interesting, some parts dull.
4. Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley
5. American Pyscho by Bret Easton Ellis - Enjoyable, but sick, very sick.
6. Watership Down by Richard Adams
7. A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin - Reread as a precursor to the latest series being on tv.
8. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card - Really enjoyed this entire series
9. Ender’s Shadow: Book One by Orson Scott Card
10. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
11. Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott - interesting but not great
12. Xenocide by Orson Scott Card
13. Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card
14. Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card
15. Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card
16. Shadow of the Giant by Orson Scott Card
17. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
18. A Clash of Kings by George RR Martin
19. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - quite enjoyed the first two parts of this fast paced YA series.
20. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
21. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut - surreal but ultimately felt like a struggle
22. Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card
23. A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin
24. A Feast for Crows by George RR Martin
25. A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin - really enjoyed, intending to reread to ensure I captured all of the detials
26. Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett - A discworld novel, I read one from the Guards! series every so often as a short light hearted interlude after an intensive reading session.
27. Makers by Cory Doctorow - another re-read
28. The Making of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr
29. Dune by Frank Herbert - I’d started reading this series before but didn’t remember getting to the end so I decided to re-read. Dune is the best of the Dune series.
30. Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert
31. Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
32. God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbet - It is a dull drag, I stopped my re-read after this novel, previously I read the sequel to this one, but remembered that that too is a dirge.
33. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins - The finale of the Hunger Games series, quite different to the previous two, slightly clumsy but still enjoyable.
34. A Walk-On Part: Diaries 1994-1999 by Chris Mullin - The first chronologically of the Mullin diaries but the last one I read. The whole series is a really good inside look into British politics from the perspective of an MP/junior minister rather than from the PM or cabinet. This isn’t the best in the series but worth a read if the others were enjoyed.
35. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton - The first film I saw at the cinema, I enjoyed the book too.
36. The Lost World by Michael Crichton - Very different to the film, a worthy sequel.
37. Next: A Novel by Michael Crichton - A dystopian fiction about genetic engineering nad intellectual property. Worryingly close to fact.
38. Congo by Michael Crichton - The most similar Crichton novel to Jurassic Park. Very enjoyable.
39. Disclosure: A Novel by Michael Crichton
40. Airframw by Michael Crichton
41. The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
42. Childhoods’ End by Arthur C Clarke - I didn’t realise until I got about half way through that I’d actually read this before, which must have been a very long time ago.
43. The autobiography of Malcom X by Malcom X - What a remarkable life.
44. Why The West Rules (for now) by Ian Morris - Re-read. A history of the development of Chinese and Eurasia. Not dry at all.
45. Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctrow from the first humble bundle
46. Pump Six and other stories by Paolo Bacigalupi - Several future dystopian short stories - I really wished most of these were full fleshed novels.
47. The Secret World Chronicles by Mercedes Lackey - The beginning of a series of books partially populated by X-men like superheroes. I really enjoyed this, was most disapointed to find the other books are not yet available as ebooks.
48. Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link - A mixed bag of short supernatural stories. Some are great (the title novel), some are less compelling.
49. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett. Another Guards! discworld novel
50. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi - Similar to Starship Troopers, my first Scalzi novel, I intend to read more.
51. Penpal by Dathan Auerbach - I found this short novel split across several /r/nosleep posts and decided to buy it immediately. A good example of how self-publishing can work.
52. Final Empire: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson - The start of a fantastic fantasy series. Not sure where I picked up on this from but I’m glad I did.
53. The Well of Ascension: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
54. The Hero of Ages: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson - The finale to the series.
55. The Alloy of Law: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson - Set in the same world as the other Mistborn books, but 300 years later.
56. Zoo City by Lauren Beukes - An interesting book set in a world where criminals have magical animal familiars.
57. Utter Folly: A high comedy of bad manners by Paul Basset Davies. A pretty funny farce in the English countryside.

I started reading War & Peace a few weeks ago, which is obviously going to take a while, I think I’m about 25% of the way through.

Since I last blogged about playing Diplomacy I’ve continued playing solely using droidippy. I mentioned I had a good feeling about the game, and indeed I won! Unfortunately (and fairly really) your first game isn’t counted in the statistics, as there are so many people who drop out or who are clueless. Which is sort of why I won, so it seems fair.

My last game was played as as Austria. I groaned when I drew them. Austria are traditionally seen as the weakest team - they have enemies on four sides and are usually the result of a carve-up between two or more of Russia, Italy and Turkey.

In this game I decided to take the lead rather than let things happen to me, I secured a long-standing non-aggression agreement with Italy. If you are playing as Italy or Austria this is vital as otherwise you sit with at least one unit each stalemated for the entire game. I also secured an agreement with Turkey to carve up Russia and an agreement with Russia to carve up Turkey.

My plan was to ensure that they did not ally with each other against me and to keep them both as weak as possible. My first move was to convince Turkey to move into the Black Sea and to convince Russia to move to Romania, telling them that if Turkey took the black sea they could build another fleet and force them out (they could, but having two fleets in the Black Sea would limit their capabilities). I also convinced Germany to stand Russia out of Sweden to deny them another build.

On the next round I convinced Russia to support my Serbian army attacking the Turkish Bulgarian army. At the same time I told Turkey he could take Greece in return for supporting my Budapest army against the Russian fleet in Romania. Convinced I would pull this off (and cackling wildly the whole time), I was sorely tempted to proceed with both plans and to stand Turkey out of Greece. The audacity was tempting but the possibility of them then both uniting to beat me was too worrying. I decided to stab the Turks and remain allied with the Russians. Stabbing Russia would cost me Greece and Turkeys natural route to winning is through the Balkans and Med, I’d constantly be looking over my shoulder.

The plan worked wonderfully, by spring 1903 I held Istanbul and all of the Balkans except Romania. The Russians has taken Smyrna and were poised to take Ankara. My allies Italy were expanding through Marseilles and into Iberia. Time for another stab.

This time the trusting Russians were the victims, I moved my Balkan armies into Romania and moved my Aegean fleet into Smyrna. For all of their efforts in Turkey the Russians got no extra builds. I on the other hand had three but wasn’t sure where I could get any more.

I decided to ignore the remaining Russian units in Turkey and threaten their jugular - Moscow. I moved my Romanian units into the Ukraine but quickly got stuck. In the meantime England and Germany had smelt blood and had taken Scandinavia and were moving on Saint Petersburg. The Anglo-German alliance had practically eliminated France and were also starting to threaten my Italian allies.

By Fall 1905 I had aborted attempts to take Moscow and instead took Sevastopol, this then enabled me to manoeuvre around the black sea and take the remaining Turkish supply centre that the Russians had held. It also removed Russian units so that I could take Warsaw. With the Russians decimated I took Moscow in 1907.

During this time the English and the Germans had managed to push Italy all the way back into Italy and were starting to threaten the Med. Despite being in the lead, all my hard work looked like it wouldn’t be enough. Let down by a weaker ally by the end of 1908 I began to despair. It looked like with good team work and communication they would be able to slowly grind me down.

England didn’t seem to have the patience for that though, or didn’t want to share the glory and stabbed Germany. This enraged Germany enough that he tore straight towards England and openly invited me to take over his possessions. I finished by stabbing Italy rather than fighting over the German scraps.

If you are trying to play audio on your raspberry pi over hdmi and it is not working then you need to ensure that the raspberry pi is driving your tv or monitor in hdmi mode and not dvi mode. To do this type

/opt/vc/bin/tvservice -s

If it’s running HDMI it will print something like

state: HPD high|HDMI mode|HDCP off|composite off (0x12001a), 1920x1080 @ 60Hz, progressive

If it’s running DVI it will print something like

state: HPD high|DVI mode|HDCP off|composite off (0x120016), 1280x720 @ 60Hz, progressive

This happens because the raspberry pi asks the monitor about itself and deduces the best resolution from this information. To view this information run:

/opt/vc/bin/tvservice -d edid
/opt/vc/bin/edidparser edid

This will then list the resolutions supported for your display device and the id number and the score for each. CEA (hdmi) are in tv format (1080i etc) and DMT (DVI) in screen resolution (1280x720 etc). Note down the id of the highest scoring CEA resolution.

Open /boot/config.txt and add:

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode = x # The ID number you noted

Then save, quit and reboot. and /opt/vc/bin/tvservice -s should include “HDMI mode” as above.

I assume that including hdmi_drive=2 does the same thing - automatically choose the highest scorign CEA option.

My netgear DGN2000 router has an annoying bug where the IP address reservation refuses to reserve addresses for devices with MAC addresses that don’t begin with 00. This happens when you:

1. Log onto your router at http://192.168.0.1/
2. Click LAN Setup
3. Click Add at the bottom of the central frame
4. Click on the device you wish to reserve an address for
5. Press Add

An alert that pops up saying “Invalid MAC Address, please enter again!”

Half of my devices have a mac address that begins with something other than 00, so this is annoying. Thankfully the validation is only done in javascript so it is very easy to subvert. Simply turn javascript off in your web browser.

A few weeks ago I started playing diplomacy. diplomacy is a board game that is like a combination of chess and poker that looks like Risk. You have to think about the positions of your units and tactics but you also have to make alliances, bluff everyone and stab your allies in the back.

The mechanics of the game are on the whole simple, you have fleets and armies and on each turn, each unit can defend, attack, or support another unit. The object of the game is to capture 18 supply centres, each supply centre allows you to build another army or fleet. The complexity and the fun comes from your interactions with other players, between each turn you have time to talk with them - to plot with them against another, to declare truces and plan DMZ and to leak anothers plans to them (fictional or not).

Stories like this one persuaded me to start playing the game.

It’s a game for the patient - my first “live” game took 3 hours and the one turn every 24 hours games I’m playing via the internet last about a fortnight.

I have been playing online using Web diplomacy and Play Diplomacy, both have their ups and downs but play diplomacy emails reminders when a new turn has begun, which is very helpful.

I’m in the midst of my first game on Android using Droidippy which also has a web interface to the same games.

My current results are played 3, lost two and two-way drawn another. I have a good feeling about the game I’m playing on Droidippy now.