Digital Retro is a lavishly produced, large format book that is simply stuffed full of pictures of old and obsolete computers. It covers 44 machines over 192 pages, from the MITS Altair 8800 of 1975, through to 1988's exclusive NeXTCube. For anyone who was interested in such things at the time, this book is a real nostalgia trip. In addition to the well-chosen pictures, there are also a brief accompanying narratives that give the company history and tell you what happened next, plus some interesting trivia nuggets.

The sturdy BBC Model B microcomputer that was the staple of computer science lessons in British secondary education in the 1980s is here, as well as the obscure machine that used to sit unloved in the corner of the computing classroom at my school. It turns out it was a Sharp MZ-80K. We used to play Elite before the lessons started (and sometimes during, I have to admit!) until the teacher used to flip the master power switch off. The sudden repeated removal of electricity didn't seem to have an adverse effect on the BBC Model Bs. Computers were built to last in those days.

All the Sinclair machines are featured and my beloved ZX Spectrum is pictured with the full range of official accessories, including the ill-fated Microdrive tape storage device. I vaguely remember eagerly awaiting for the constantly delayed Microdrive to be launched, because I was so fed up with the unreliability of using a cassette player as a data storage device! It seemed that the quality of a game was in direct inverse proportion to the chances of loading it successfully.

The book includes all the seminal machines on the incredible computing journey that led us to where we are today. I mentioned the Altair but there's also the Apple II, the original IBM PC and the 1984 Apple Macintosh—none of which have ever been part of my life! These computers are all well-documented and it's much more interesting to see and read about the obscura, like 1983's Oric-1. I remember seeing an Oric-1 in the stationery store WH Smith's and thinking that it was really cool because you could get it to play four realistic sound effects, a phenomenon actually documented in Digital Retro.

Apparently some of the machines pictured in the book aren't original, but I'm not enough of an expert to have noticed this. Others have criticised it for being short on text, but I think that misses the point, which is that Digital Retro is a coffee table book that's made to be dipped into. If anything, I would have liked to have seen more pictures, in particular some screenshots would have been good. In spite of this, Digital Retro is a lovingly-put together book that will jog more than a few memories if you were into computers during the era it documents. 4/5.

Anti-hero Chris Faulkner inhabits a London where the motorways are empty apart from rich executives duelling to the death under the watchful eye of the all-seeing Driver Control. This is road rage evolved and used as a means of doing business; the driver who makes it into the office alive wins. Morgan freely acknowledges a Mad Max influence on this aspect of the story.

Faulkner works in Conflict Investment at the powerful Shorn Associates, his job being to manipulate conflicts on the other side of the world so that they return a dividend for Shorn's shareholders. Faulkner is part of the rich elite, although he sometimes leaves the safety of his part of town to go play in the “zones”, where he grew up.

The journey sees Faulkner battling with his conscience, his wife and ultimately anyone else who gets in his way. In common with Morgan's previous novels, he's a damaged leading character who is hard to warm to, although you grow to understand why he's the way he is and perhaps feel a certain sympathy. Morgan's trademark ultra-violence resurfaces too, although it is integral to the tale.

Market Forces gives a clear indication of Morgan's thoughts on the way the world is run, by extrapolating aspects of modern life to extremes. Some parts of this nightmarish future world seem unlikely, until you reflect back on the some of the ways in which today's world is different from that of your own childhood. I found this a fast-paced and sometimes thought-provoking read.

I have to mention this—something very weird happened whilst I was reading Market Forces. On page 311 the two main characters go to a fairly obscure pub in London, that I myself had been in only the week before I read about it in the book. Spooky! 4/5.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Michael Hiltzik attempts to address this shortcoming with Dealers of Lightning, a thick tome weighing in at 448 pages. The book is split into three parts and each chapter is primarily about the people who made it happen and their backgrounds, as well as their recollections of being at PARC. Helpfully there is a cast of characters at the front and at times I found myself flicking back to it on a regular basis.

If you're looking for a hardcore account of the technology created at PARC, then this isn't it. Having said that, the genesis of all the revolutions that PARC is justly famous for are covered. This book also contains probably the only definitive account of Steve Jobs' legendary visit (actually two) to PARC, pieced together from the differing and sometimes conflicting recollections of those who were there.

Probably the most interesting character that I learnt about by reading this book was PARC's associate manager Bob Taylor. He inspired fierce loyalty amongst the members of the Computer Science Laboratory he championed, and fierce resentment amongst those who worked in PARC's other two labs, which Taylor viewed as competitors for funding and as sideshows. His conviction that a networked personal computer with a bitmapped display was the direction to head in, led to the creation of the Alto in 1973. It's fascinating reading about how the powerhouses of PARC—for example, Butler Lampson and Chuck Thacker—created the Alto in a bygone era when one brilliant man could single-handedly design a brand new CPU. The Alto didn't have much software for a while until Charles Simonyi wrote Bravo, the world's first WYSIWYG word processor, a feat he would repeat later to create Microsoft Word.

The story that really comes out of this book for me is of the tension between the free thinkers of PARC and of the rest of Xerox, who in spite of being blown away by what they saw at the PARC-organised “Futures Day”, just couldn't successfully commercialise PARC's creations in a timely fashion and on a large scale. A lot of the internecine feuding between the key players is revealed, and you can feel the future slipping away from Xerox as the chapters come and go. Things all come to a head at the end and there are casualties.

Hiltzik doesn't really single out individuals for blame, but each person's contributions to the ultimate failure are documented and the final impression is of a decaying organisation struggling to pull in one direction. It's rather sad reading, particularly as many of the Xerox executives were enlightened forward-thinkers who created a unique research establishment, the likes of which has never been seen before or after. The epilogue sees the author attempting to assess whether Xerox could have done better; at the moment I'm ambivilant about the conclusions he draws. I did find it interesting when he mentioned five PARC alumni who are now at Microsoft Research, although Charles Simonyi has sunsequently left since the book was published in 2000.

Although I enjoyed reading Dealers of Lightning, its biggest shortcoming for me is the fact that they're aren't any photographs! Of course there is some archive material of PARC available online but the author must have had the opportunity to unearth previously unseen photographs whilst he was conducting the extensive interviews for the book. In spite of this it's the best account we've got of a truly fascinating time, place and group of people. 4/5.

For this concert on the 26th April, I was lucky enough to have a front row seat. There was no support act and about ten minutes after the scheduled start time of 19:45, a slightly nervous man came to the microphone and announced that the performance was being filmed for a forthcoming DVD (the group's first). The audience were excited by this announcement when the orchestra walked on stage and began playing the instrumental Laika's Theme. Then a slightly pallid looking—it was probably the lighting—and suited Neil Hannon appeared and launched into the song Absent Friends, from the new album of the same name.

In Search Of Happiness followed, which contains an instrumental passage that British readers may recognise from the BBC television series Tomorrow's World. Neil introduced those on stage with him during this part. The rest of the first half consisted of old favourites such as Becoming More Like Alfie interwoven with tracks from Absent Friends, all performed flawlessly. The songs were punctuated by the occasional comic interlude, including a quip about an annual leaf collecting holiday in Bavaria! Neil confessed to being nervous about telling jokes in London, because there are always professional comedians in the audience—and this night was no exception.

After the intermission, Neil returned to the stage wearing a different suit and a pair of sunglasses, and treated us to an electrifying National Express. There was even audience participation at this point, with Neil jumping down from the stage and getting various embarrased people to sing “National Express” during the song's coda. It was all good fun. For a fairly small guy Mr Hannon can certainly belt out the songs.

Divine Comedy classics Generation Sex and a lovely jazz version of Songs of Love enthralled the audience, as did my personal highlight of the evening, the dark, brooding and hypnotic Mutual Friend. Neil managed to forget some of the words to old song Neptune's Daughter, but the band played on and as he said, seven albums is a lot of material to remember.

This grandiose affair could have been expected to have been a showcase for the new album, but it was also a vehicle for the “shit-load of songs” (Neil's words) in the group's back catalogue. At the end of the show everyone on stage got a richly-deserved standing ovation. This was one of the best gigs I've ever been to and my hands were raw from clapping. I commend you to buy the DVD when it comes out and will say the same even if it turns out that I've been edited out! 5/5.

This book is a tongue-in-cheek journey through the usage and history of punctuation, where amongst the protagonists are the comma, the apostrophe, the semi-colon and the exclamation mark. The introduction explains why correct punctuation is important in an Internet age that devalues it, and it encourages us punctuation vigilantes to stick to our guns. It teaches us that punctuation is a valuable tool that enriches communication. Thereafter, each chapter goes into detail about a single punctuation mark, although the later chapters deal with lesser used punctuation as a group. Examples of correct usage are given and the story is illustrated with anecdotes throughout. For example, did you know that the 2001 Booker Prize winner was a book that contained no commas at all?

Eats, Shoots & Leaves is a well-researched, educational but above all, entertaining book. It would seem that there are plenty who agree with me, for it tops the bestseller chart at the time of writing. Being a stickler, I had to deduct one mark from this review because the author consistently fails to capitalise the letter i in Internet, thus implying that there is more than one. 4/5.

In Search Of Stupidity is made all the more interesting because the author had first-hand experience of many of the companies that he writes about, having worked for MicroPro, Ashton-Tate, IBM, Novell and others. Many of the stories are underlined with anecdotes in the footnotes.

I found that the book lost a bit of momentum during the last chapter, which was about the dot com boom and application service providers. Or maybe that just reflects the fact that I don't find those topics as interesting as reading about how (for example) Paramount refused to let IBM use a Star Trek theme for marketing their OS/2 Warp operating system, leaving Big Blue with no choice but to adopt a rather strange slant for the campaign!

If there's a consistent theme throughout all these tales of corporate craziness, it's this: a key factor in Microsoft being in the position they are in today is the fact that on the whole they haven't made the stupid mistakes that their competitors have. I once read a quote that said Microsoft aren't the largest fish in the ocean, they are the ocean.

As a bonus there's a foreword by Joel Spolsky and also a reprint of an online interview with Joel at the end in which he talks about stupid development tricks, such as throwing all your code away and rewriting your product from scratch, thus chucking out all the accumulated experience that has ended up in the code. The book is rounded off nicely with a tongue–in–cheek glossary. An easy and enlightening read, with a sequel planned and eagerly awaited. 5/5.

Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II sees you piloting a number of familiar craft on ten missions at various locations in the Star Wars universe. Some locations are from the films, a few are new for this game. You start off on a training mission flying around Tatooine with various objectives to complete. Naturally I skipped this mission and went straight into the first level proper, which sees you at the end of A New Hope, flying an X–Wing fighter over the surface of the Death Star. This is a nice level because it's not hard and it showcases the amazing graphics in the game.

Once you've blown up the first Death Star, you're confronted by the full range of enemy machinery from the original film trilogy. The range of craft available for you to pilot is amazing and each ship is very well detailed and rendered. You can use a snowspeeder to take on AT–AT walkers on the ice planet Hoth, a B–Wing bomber to attack an Imperial Star Destroyer and you even get to fly the Millenium Falcon! Later on in the game, you also get the chance to fly the odd Imperial spaceship.

The game missions are sufficiently varied to maintain interest and there are lots of upgrades to your ship to be sought out. Sometimes I find myself flying around just looking at the scenary because it's so beautifully done. My favourite mission is probably Vengence on Kothlis because it opens with a really enjoyable dogfight against lots of TIE fighters and because it requires you to switch ships a few times.

The disc includes some really nice extras such as a documentary on the making of the game, as well as galleries of the artwork and in–game music. This game really showcases the GameCube's abilities and apparently the follow–up game will include this game in its entirety but playable by two players. Bring it on! 5/5.

Broken Angels rejoins our hero Takeshi Kovacs (that's “kovach”) whilst he is fighting as a mercenary in a war on the distant planet Sanction IV. He's been re–sleeved in a custom combat body. He is offered a way out of the war in return for leading an archaelogical expedition through a hyperspatial gateway left behind by the Martians, who feature quite heavily in this book, after being hinted at in Altered Carbon. Kovacs assembles a “dirty dozen”–esque collection of renegades as well as archaelogist and central character Tanya Wardini. The book follows their quest, with plenty of back–stabbing—both metaphorical and literal—along the way.

In many ways I found this novel to be quite distinct from Morgan's first book. It can be read as a sequel (there's some interesting back story filled in) but also stands alone in its own right. I found the plot to be more straightforward than Altered Carbon. It's worth pointing out that there's a fair amount of stylised, ultra–violence to contend with but I haven't found it to detract from either novel, quite the opposite in fact. Judging by the reviews on Amazon, some people have difficulty with this aspect of Morgan's creations, but it didn't bother me and I consider myself quite squeamish.

The back cover of Altered Carbon says that Morgan is a tutor at Strathclyde University; as Broken Angels doesn't mention this I assume that he's left to concentrate full–time on his writing. On the strength of his two novels to date I'd say that's a good thing for sci–fi fans. I'm certainly looking forward to Kovacs' next outing. 4/5.

First up is new song Time on my hands, which although unlikely to win any greatest PSB song prizes, gets things moving nicely and features the extensive use of vocoders which appear throughout the album. The Barry White sampling Positive role model will be familiar to fans, having first made an appearance in a different form at Glastonbury, then as a bootleg MP3 on the Internet and most recently, as a song from the musical Closer to Heaven. A great lost single. Try it (I'm in love with a married man) is a cover version of an old song by former disco producer and early PSB collaborator Bobby Orlando. The song makes me think of Giorgio Moroder with its minimalist electro production.

New song Somebody else's business is a classic PSB pop song of the sort which many fans thought lost forever after the guitar–dominated sound of the Release album. The boys close the song by cleverly sampling one of their own earlier records. The new PSB extended mix of the song Here at last turns the song into the four–on–the–floor stomper that it should have been all along.

If looks could kill was featured in a different form when the boys did a John Peel session. It's an old song that features a simple repeating hook typical of Tennant and Lowe's early songwriting together.

The album closes with my favourite track, a Genuine Piano mix of stillborn British single London, which gives the song a totally different feel, evocative of late nights in the city with its descending chord change. I think this treatment really makes the song shine.

The album features a stunning cover photograph of London at night by Wolfgang Tillmans. It also features copy protection which means that the CD isn't allowed to feature the Compact Disc Digital Audio logo because the copy protection method actually introduces deliberate errors into the disc. I've had occasional difficulty playing the disc on my hi-fi and have been unable to create MP3s of the songs for my personal stereo. Unfortunately Parlophone don't presently allow me to buy MP3s from them, so Disco 3 on the move is a no go for me. It's a thumbs up for Disco 3 and a thumbs down for their record company. 4/5.

Each chapter is split into a number of items, with each item having a straightforward title such as Avoid creating duplicate objects. The item is then explained and illustrated with numerous code examples throughout. The code sections are just long enough to get the point across concisely, without labouring it. The book is well-written, which means that it's a very easy read; something you can't always say about technical books.

There are 240-odd pages of Java lore in the book and it is obvious from reading it that much of it has been formulated through extensive practical experience. Many subtleties of the language and its libraries are revealed.

No serious Java programmer should be without this definitive book. To quote James Gosling (the originator of Java) from the back cover: “Some might think that I don't need any Java books, but I need this one.” 5/5.