Spacedmonkey

Shadowmaic cover

I came across shadowmagic when I was installing Itunes on a new computer a while back and I completely fell in love. It is an free audio book from podiobooks, read by the author John Lenahan available as podcast or download from the offical web site.

Here is a quote from the shadowmagic website

Shadowmagic is a rip roaring fun fantasy adventure novel by John Lenahan very loosely based on Irish mythology where every chapter ends on the edge of a cliff (or at least a high curb.)Join Conor as he grapples with typical teenage problems like, how to deal with a father’s high expectations, how to survive in the world on your own and how to woo a beautiful girl - that wants you dead.Shadowmagic a podcast novel for young adults from 12 to 112.

It is the most compelling and interesting story I have come across in a long time. I enjoy fanasty stories like Lord of the rings but I think that stories like that lose themselves being far to seriously. In this book there are lots of fanasty elements but their are flamed in a modern age teenage boy, who pokes fun of everything. It makes the story very accessibly and easy to pick up. It was easy to put myself in the shoes of the main character. The podcast version is so well read and done by the author, meaning it lovingly done by someone who cares very much about the source matterial. The way is was written was very good, anyone doing a English or writting would be best to read it for ideas on a good way of writting. Give it a go.

In case you didn’t heard, Apple’s much fated touch screen mobile phone the Iphone has finally hit the UK. It has only been a matter of days and I am already sick of the thing. The amount of press coverage this stupid little device has got makes me want to be ill. It seems to turn everyone from the press to the nerds into small children, who want to play with a new shiny toy. I can’t believe how much people are talking about this one thing. Has a fan of new and technology news particularly, the coverage of this small device has blown me away. The best example of this is BBC news website, which is one of the most trusted news web sites in the world, wrote a review. I asked you, how on earth is a review of a phone, news? I try and keep up to date with all the new stuff happening in the world of tech, but the news is all about the iphone. I used to really used to enjoy listening to tech podcasts like Buzz out loud and TWIT but it is nothing but pointless detail about this stupid phone and it is making my life a living hell.

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After completely my first year of uni I decided to treat myself to a brand new Xbox 360. This decision didn’t come lightly, as the console cost as much £250 and games nearly £50. But as many of my friends had already got them, I decided to give it a go. I have had it nearly two months now and I must admit that I am completely hooked. I don’t know what it is about the thing but I can’t seem to put down the controller and playing. I got a really good deal on Play.com which also ment the console came with another wireless controller and three games best game of the time, Gears of war and PGR 3. It also came with Xbox LIVE Arcade Unplugged. I love Gears of War, parts of it a simply great to look at. But oddly some of the funniest games are the xbox live arcade which had mini downloadable games like Pac-man. Why this funny is that the xbox 360 is an extremely advanced piece of kit, with 4 proccessors and people are playing 20 year old arcade games on them. The best arcade game that I have played is called Hexic HD. It comes free with the console and I must admit I am still playing it months on. It is a puzzle game from Alexey Pajitnov, the original creator of Tetris and it is as adictive.
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These days it is not always easy to find the time to read, specially in Britain, with the longest working hours in Europe. It is not always easy to find the right time or novel to sit back and read for fun. But if you enjoy a good novel but don’t have the time ( or for that fact money) to sit down with a good book, there is an answer. The site is called LibraVox, that has volunteer based service that has tonnes for free audio books to downloaded and used how you like.

How they do it ( quote from LibriVox site)

LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain, and then we release the audio files back onto the net (through a podcast, catalog, and bit torrents). We are a totally volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project, and we operate almost exclusively through Internet communications. We have a flat structure, designed to let people do just what they want to do, but we do have several slightly different types of volunteers:

The site only reads only out of copyright books, from sources like gutenberg, so while looking at the titles on offer, remember there will be no Harry Potter or da vinci code. There are still lots of really cool titles, including some of my personal which are

• The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The site has a wonderful catalog system that allows for easy searching, so you can find something that takes your interest. There site also has a Podcast, which is updates weekly, of little shorts and poems. This is a nice site, made by people that give up there time to help others enjoy literature.

Now that everyone seems to have got an IPOD or other mp3 player these days and this is a wonderful idea for helping people access classic stories/novels.