SteveThaiBinh

It was 50 C, 122 F here last week. It's like walking through a furnace.

Yes, you could almost hear the massive hissed intake of breath. The fans of first past the post (and I am not one) insist that one of its best features is that the public is very good at using it to get the result they really want. By that standard, the public seems to want a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition, as that's the only combination that produces a working majority. A very interesting result. Hopefully the last FPTP election, if Clegg plays it skillfully.

Unless you replace the House of Lords with an elected Senate, like we should have done half a century ago. It is true that the House of Lords has, for some years, been the most successful and effective part of our Parliamentary system, but that's not really saying a whole lot. Thanks to Radio 4 I now hear the emperor's music from Star Wars every time I see Mandelson on TV.

I guess the debates are here to stay, and on balance I think they're a good thing. It can be frightening how much appearance and presentation skills can exert an influence on the viewing public, myself included. On the other hand, they weren't as policy-lite as I'd feared, and they enabled me (viewing from abroad) to keep as in touch with the campaign as most people in the UK. Still not sure who to vote for, though.

AGD Interactive's remakes of King's Quest I and II, and Quest for Glory II, are here.

You'll sail through the writing, I should think! Best of luck with the whole test.

This isn't the right forum for this - perhaps you might mention it in the 'What I did today' thread in WOT?

My IELTS is on the 8th and 9th of May What score do you need?

I trained to be an examiner for the KET and PET English exams. I must get round to doing IELTS as well at some point.

It's a talent, and one we work hard to nurture. Hopefully this will be a good test of David Cameron's commitment to personal freedom - assuming he becomes PM - and it'll be repealed or revised very soon.

Did you find Syberia 2 as much of a disappointment as I did? It was okay while I was playing it, but it lacked the spirit of the first and the ending was, in its own way, even less satisfying that Syberia's.

Excellent news. Now I'll be able to play it without having to keep swapping CDs at moments of high drama. Steve

That's quite a surprise, eh? I guess the books must still be selling fairly well - they used to top lots of sales lists, though I didn't notice how well the latest one did. I enjoyed it - much more action and progress in the storylines than the two or three before. I wonder if Brandon Sanderson will be involved in the writing. I wonder how it will work in terms of timing. The second-to-last book is due out in Oct/Nov this year, and the last one around the same time in 2011, and Sanderson seems confident of keeping to that schedule (a very big difference to Jordan himself). I guess a release date coinciding with the last book would make sense commercially - I wonder how far along the project is.

This is just speculation and I have no evidence that it's true for any of the schools mentioned, but it does occur to me that there are more schools than there used to be - universal primary and secondary education are major development goals and have been a high priority of the World Bank and other agencies in the last few years. This might have led to opening schools in more unstable areas, perhaps? If so, it raises even more questions about seeing development sectors in isolation and the very targets-driven approach of the Millennium Development Goals.

I tend to think standalone episodes are better in most shows I watch, this one included. Plus less need for the 'Previously on [insert series name here]...' bit at the beginning whose length is often in inverse proportion to the quality of the coming episode.

Dragon Age was a clear winner for me. After that, I really enjoyed Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis, Drakensang, Risen and The Sims 3.

Only a handful of the world's 200+ countries have nuclear weapons or are seeking to acquire them, most of those do their best to stop other countries from acquiring them, a number of countries have given up nuclear weapons or weapons programmes. Iran doesn't make all that meaningless - and I was careful to say that there were problems and exceptions, but the overall effort has been quite successful, don't you think? I put it to you that if nuclear non-proliferation had been a failure, we would be living in a very different kind of world than the one we have. The same for diseases. Great progress against polio and Guinea worm - held back because some local populations fear vaccines are harmful, but nevertheless a qualified success and tremendous achievement for humanity.

Oh, I have seriously got to try that! The only thing worse than a short crappy add-on to the main campaign would be an insubstantial alternative campaign. If the coming expansion pack doesn't enhance the Grey Warden's story, then what's the point of it? Mask of the Betrayer would be a good model, also Tales of the Sword Coast, but not Shadows of Wossname.

I believe humans can and have co-operated many times to solve collective problems, albeit with lots of squabbling and self-imposed obstacles - and exceptions. The near-elimination of certain diseases, or nuclear non-proliferation, migh serve as examples - I'm sure you can think of others. Climate change does seem to present the greatest challenge, though, because the effects are delayed and its harder to galvanise public opinion against a less immediate threat. I'm still optimistic, though, particularly about technological solutions. I've heard that China, far from being the great villain of Copenhagen, is actually one of the world's biggest investors in low-carbon technological research - does anyone know any details about this?

If education is your interest (as it is mine), then I'd recommend Book Aid and One Laptop Per Child as worthwhile projects you could support. Volunteering is fantastic, fun and tremendously rewarding - I spent three years in Viet Nam as a VSO volunteer and enjoyed it greatly.

Dragon Age was great fun. I just completed three full runs. All this discussion about Alistair is fascinating - and it's the first I've heard of it because . And of course, as always with a Bioware game, I've really been enjoying Aimo's artwork.

They should turn this house into a capsule hotel. I would love to live near London, and have all the theatres and opera houses within a manageable travelling distance, but I wouldn't like to live in the city itself. Almost every time I go to London, someone walks into me in the street because they're not watching where they're going, and then swears at me like it's my fault. I've never been to another city where that happens as often.

No scorn at all! There's a lot to be said for seeing it that way, and perhaps once the series is complete it will be easier to look back on books 7-11 more favourably than I do at the moment. It's possible that the much quicker pace of The Gathering Storm is due to Robert Jordan's design as kirottu says, but I also suspect that Brandon Sanderson, because he doesn't 'own' this story, is less prone to getting sidetracked on minor characters and storylines than Robert Jordan would have been. I really enjoyed The Gathering Storm, and perhaps it was more to my tastes than it would have been if Robert Jordan had completed it alone, though of course we can never know that for sure.

For any game in particular? I've got my eye on Heavy Rain, but would need a PS3 to play that.

Yes, I guess that was the clearest indication that Jordan himself wasn't writing it. If, like me, you're only continuing to read this series because you want to find out what happens to these characters (and in the past four books or so, what happens to these characters is "not very much at all", then you'll enjoy this book. The story actually moves forward, and an ending does seem to be in sight. I also got the audiobook (from iTunes) since the books themselves are not available here, and was impressed by the narration.