Arthur C Clarke is an excellent author and the Rama series is one of my all-time favourites. I’d recommend anything by Philip K Dick, though honestly I think a good reference would be to pick works listed in the SF Masterworks collection, it’s how I found many of my favourite SF novels.
If you fancy venturing into modern SF classics, my favourites are by Peter F Hamilton, Iain M Banks and William Gibson; though does Gibson count? He doesn’t even have a middle initial 😄
Stone cold classic.
Ghost in the Machine: Stand Alone Complex
I have started to do this and I’m using Docker to host Kiwix. I’m currently using it to provide offline versions of Wikipedia, medical guides and tutorials for various programming languages. My plan is to put essential apps and information on an RPi and provide a broadcast hotspot where anyone can access the info.
I also live on top of a hill, so I’m saving up to put together a solar powered Meshtastic repeater that I can mount to my aerial pole.
Wireless Application Protocol. I can no longer say on my CV that I ‘worked on WAP in the early 2000s’.
To be fair, your username kind of suggests you want to look inside everything anyway
I don’t know where you live, but if you have a Hado arena nearby, then a taster session might be a good gift. It’s an augmented reality sport which can be played casually or professionally. There are arenas all over the world.
Unfortunately their world site is a little out of date. I know quite a few kids in my area of the UK, at around that age, who are getting into it.
Upskill. I’m not ‘upskilling’ someone, I’m training them.
Would you settle for a single clergyman?
I’ve consistently enjoyed and come back to the following for years:
I also like to boot up and listen to the Amiga title music for SWIV and the Mega Drive/Genesis soundtrack of Revenge of Shinobi.
The culture novels, such a good pick!
I played the game back when it originally came out. Like any media based on a book, it was slightly frustrating for a while that the graphics didn’t match the visuals I had imagined whole reading the book. I still have the discs somewhere, might see if I can get it running somehow. I suspect I’ll find the game mechanics to be clunky but today’s standards.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been a movie made yet.
Other people who’ve read it and who I’ve talked with seem to be split over whether the first book is better than the sequels, or the other way around. I prefer the sequels, my wife prefers the original. Do you have a preference?
Game: Super Mario Galaxy Book: The Rama series, Arthur C Clarke TV: The West Wing Movie: The 5th Element
A bucket of dehydrated water, which you have to reconstitute by adding water, in order to put out an invisible fire. No idea what kind of game you’re making, could be a very odd addition to something like a racing sim.
You’ve set me on a path now, I’m listening to '90s and '00s Ibiza club classics
I guess I’m old since it reminds me of the original Chris Rea track
Not a big one. In my 20s, asleep in bedroom, girlfriend asleep next to me. I wake up and see dancing, glowing blue filaments, about 20cm long, moving through the bedroom. No sound, bedroom is otherwise completely dark. It was a similar glow to Cherenkov Radiation, but at a much smaller scale, and clearly defined, glowing threads.
Wake girlfriend who grumpily agrees they exist before falling asleep again.
5 minutes later they just stop and I never see them again.
We were the only people in the house, in a room with blackout curtains and with all electrical items turned off at the wall (UK plugs rule).
Still no explanation to this day.
Vibe math. No thank you