Skyring

The obvious solution

Megaupload king Kim Dotcom and the movie copyright barons are closer to each other than they think.

A time of war

Something's going wrong with time. Historians are sent back to World War Two on assignment, but somehow become stranded as events conspire to make their return to the future difficult. Is the gun emplacement freshly built on the portal site a coincidence or is it the continuum trying to protect itself from fatal damage?

Futures past

Sausalito, open your golden gate!

Soon enough, the towers of the bridge were rising up. I pulled off into the visitors centre, where I knew there was a parking area, a shop, and some fantastic views. Been this way before, you see.

Legends of the Fall

David Friend has told the story of the photographs, the videos, the webcams that awed, angered, horrified and inspired. Watching the World Change is 434 pages that not only tells the stories, but traces the way news gathering and reporting has evolved. The 9/11 attacks occurred just as digital cameras and cellphones were starting to become ubiquitous. Still pricey, but out there and involved. Nowadays, we watch news unfold on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, but in 2001, they were still to come.

The dark side of the road

Far too many times, I've turned a corner and discovered a cyclist jaunting along, all but invisible until the light from my headlights hits them at a range of about five metres. Last night I turned into Melba Street in Downer, and there was some galoot in a big black coat on a totally unlit bike. He was a black hole, and the only reason we knew he was there was that he was silhouetted against the lights on the roundabout beyond.

O. M. G.

She had actually been to a couple of Amanda Palmer concerts in New Zealand. Dragged her mother along to one, as well. DL's Mum is one cool lady, I must say, having met and hugged her once or twice, and they must have had a ball together. My mother would never have taken any of her children to a show where the lead act is introduced as "Amanda Fucking Palmer!"

Killing your own

That's what is so hard to understand about this Norwegian massacre. How can anybody get their priorities so completely arse about? If family and folk are important, then where is the sense in turning against them? Is some stupid notion so vitally precious that you shun and shoot your own siblings?

Witness Number Five?

I love a good legal thriller, and Michael Connelly has produced a ripper with this one. We meet Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, again as he ploughs through a new world of legal practice, the humdrum but topical world of mortgage foreclosures. Happily we don't spend the book rummaging through deeds and banks and loans - there's a murder case popped up, one which will grab our hero by the nuts and turn him right around.

A Route 66 icon

The cars are covered in layer upon layer of paint. Apart from the graffiti, there are enough periodic repaintings that the paint sometimes sloughs off in sheets a centimetre thick, and such fragments litter the nearby field. Chunks of car have been removed – in one case an entire roof panel has been taken away for illicit display – and the whole installation is gradually deteriorating.