Mark Thomas somehow manages to combine cheekiness with right on politics, and humour without ending up sounding preachy. This story of rambling round the entire Israeli is a mix of the tragic, horrendous and baffling. Perhaps not one of his funniest, but definitely worth a read if you want to learn more about the situation on the ground.

This is basically a printed version of this inkscape manual. I ummed and ahhed before buying, not least because of its large page size. It is reasonably well written, so far as a series of tutorials, but I did find some important details missing as I worked my way through. "Select multiple elements", I found myself wondering, "OK, how do I do that?" The internet eventually furnished my answer, it would have been nice if the tute had. Mind you its nice to be doing some non-programming learning so watch this space.

I loved Flusser's accessible brief essays that build on each other. Some of his media theories seem hopelessly optimistic whilst some are wonderfully insightful. More importantly for me, and this is a rare talent for a cultural theorist, his style is accessible, journalistic and at times, at least in this translation by Nancy Ann Roth, poetic. I must say I wonder what he would have made of the web, I suspect he would have seen it as a manifestation of the proliferation of technical images, but I speculate.

Some interesting insights in this book but its businessy style grated on me a bit. Nevertheless it gave me a bit of insight into an aspect of the interwebs that I don't noremally consider much.

After Judith Butler’s Frames of War last month I felt the need to read something a bit more chilled. My dad had left Broken after a visit. I felt that it read like a sort of dark Mills and Boon novel. Maybe a bit too lightweight for me.