No, not in that way[1]. And I hope you now have the Beach Boys tune stuck in your head for the next 24 hours. Ha hah! - my middle name is Spite[2].

What I mean is that, despite being resolutely silent here, I’ve been cropping up elsewhere.

• See me ask Iain M Banks about literary manifestos!
• Observe my curmudgeonly fizzog manifesting on Warren Ellis’ site[2]!

I know, I know - it’s all too much, isn’t it?

Talking about things being a bit all-too-much, it looks like an old friend colleague fellow blogger has resurfaced from the past. At the moment he seems to be retreading a familiar path to the one I met him on; as such, I shall be observing from a safe distance. Twice shy and all that, y’know.

Other me news (because it’s all about me, after all) - my holiday is totally freakin’ booked!

Your “cool [stuff/people/places] to [see/drink/eat/kill/dance with] in Berlin” tips will be much appreciated.

Oh, look - bedtime! Nighty-night, blogosphere.

[ 1 - Pure as driven snow, me. Driven down a London gutter in front of a snowplow, that is.]

[ 2 - Yeah, I know it's not - but once the deed poll paperwork clears... ]

[ 3 - Looks like a certain Shaun C Green made the cut, too, and a few people who I think I recognised but couldn't be sure of. ]

I don’t like to think of myself as the boastful gloating type. But today, I shall wilfully be exactly that.

Because I have an ARC of the new Iain M. Banks ‘Culture’ novel, Matter.

Nothing else matters, indeed.

[I was pipped to the post with my boast by the good Mr Bloomer of Big Dumb Object ... but I retain top rank among jammy bastards, because I have the privilege of doing an interview with Banks for an Interzone feature. I believe the appropriate phrase is "get in"!]

Peer-to-peer book sharing

There’s an awful lot of people who’d very much like to be able to read that book rightf*ckingnow. That hunger for fresh material has driven the P2P distribution systems, at least as far as the music industry is concerned, but as yet there’s no easy way to ‘rip’ a book.

Or is there?

Well, obviously there is, or I wouldn’t have laid that obvious bait. Observe! The Atiz BookSnap:

Atiz are calling it the first consumer book-ripper, but that’s a bit of a stretch at over US$1500. But it is the Model-T of things to come; a device that will (with some assistance from you, at least in this instance) convert a book into a digitally scanned PDF file.

I have my own set of opinions about this, which regular readers will doubtless be able to predict quite effectively. But I’d be fascinated to hear the opinions of library staff, publishing staff, bibliophiles and writers about what this will mean to them (and everyone else) in the long term.

First one to mention DRM is a rotten apple.