I have been a fan of  Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy” since I was about 12. I remember lying in bed listening to the radio plays on a crappy old transistor radio and I’ve read the books more times than I should probably admit.  So when I heard that Eoin Colfer had been asked to write a sequel to Douglas’ books, I wasn’t sure if liked the idea or not. I certainly wasn’t going to rush out and buy it.

Yesterday I was in Waterstones in Brighton helping my eldest daughter spend a book token she got for her birthday & I remembered that I had a voucher to spend too. I wandered in to the science fiction section, saw the Douglas Adams books & tried to rememeber the name of the guy that had written the sequel. I couldn’t think of it, so I spoke to a member of staff who said “oh that’s Eoin Colfer”. They didn’t have any of the hardbacks in stock & the paperback isn’t due out until the end of may. What the did have however was a few copies of the a numbered limited edition version of the hardback.
This little beauty had previously been on sale for £100 but was now reduced to a mere £10! As soon as I saw it I new I was going to be buying it. It’s a heavy card box with fake faulty “neon” lights  built in to the front that spell out the title of the book. Inside there’s a hardback copy of the book covered in a duck egg blue towel with “Don’t Panic!” embroidered on it in large friendly letters.

This is a must have item for any Douglas Adams fan’s bookshelf & there’s only a few left, so if you’re near a waterstones I suggest you go and grab one now. I doubt they’ll hang around for long at that price.

When I get around to reading the book I’ll try to do a post & let you know what I think of it.

I was using a social network 18+ years ago!

OK so I wasn’t on Twitter or facebook or bebo or whatever, but still:

• we invited our friends (on Channel 19)
• we arranged events
• we had handles, back then I wasn’t fordie – I was “Nemesis” (Rawr!!!!1!one)
• we made new connections
• we shared geo location data (what’s your twenty?)
• we pimped our profiles (or our rigs, with echos and fancy roger beeps)
• we even occasionally swapped songs (even though it pissed other breakers off a bit)

So in the last 18 or more years the technology has changed, but our use of it hasn’t all that much. Looking back with my rose tinted specs it seems that CB will always be better than FB.

I wonder what’ll be next?