I finally upgraded to the latest Ubuntu release. I was hesitant because A) I had everything the way I liked it, and B) Canonical's new desktop vision seemed weird and scary. The new Unity Desktop replacement for Gnome is an attempt to distinguish and differentiate Ubuntu from the other similar distros, which isn't necessarily bad, but the effect of the Unity panel bar thing is pretty Apple Too (there is one icon for any open app, and menus are in the top panel), and it lacks customization options. I disliked it at first for those reasons and because it really changes the way one works (I've been using a taskbar since Windows 95) but by day two it has grown on me. I've decided to try to give it a trial week. Worse than the panel is the new "overlay-scrollbar" concept: scrollbars don't appear until you mouse over the side where they should be, and you can't click in the scrollbar gutter to move the page. I hated this and quickly killed it. Screenshot.

This one finally watched HBO's Game of Thrones series, and would have enjoyed it more without knowing the plot beforehand yet enjoyed it very much anyway. Often the screen was affected by budget limitations: Khal Drogo's khalasar of 100,000 fierce Dothraki bloodriders seemed reduced to about twelve guys on horses; and the vast, beautiful metropolis of King's Landing was mostly hidden behind a few brown walls or looming in the direction the camera wasn't pointing. The casting was good though: most of the actors appeared much the way I imagined them, although certain characters were made older than in the books (mainly in consideration of nude scenes I expect). The costumes were excellent. Peter Dinklage was great as Tyrion. And just as in the books, the segments featuring Bran were a boring distraction, so a job well done!

I now feel sufficiently intrepid to read through the subsequent volumes in preparation for Dances With Dragons, although I fear another decade-long gap between that book and the next. It might be quicker to just wait for season six.