A big thank you to the Arch user who bought me a book from my Amazon Wishlist. Hopefully this will get me past the steep learning curve for Autotools and let me actually understand that changes I make rather than the “adjust and hope” approach I currently use…

No, I have not been dropped off in the middle of nowhere and made my way back to civilization by jumping into every river and exploring every cave I come across. But I have finished reading the “SAS Survival Handbook, Revised Edition: For Any Climate, in Any Situation”, which was generously bought for me off my Amazon Wishlist by an Arch Linux user.

Am I now prepared to survive in any climate and in any situation? Not really! The lists of safe and poisonous plants have merged together in my head, so that is not particularly helpful to any future survival endeavour. But, if I ever get stuck in the Arctic and manage to kill a polar bear, I now know not to eat its liver due to potentially dangerous levels of vitamin A. That seems an important factoid to store away…

Finally, George R. R. Martin has announced a release date for A Dance With Dragons! Tuesday, July 12, 2011. Yay! What is even more impressive is that Amazon knows how many pages it will be even though the author has not finished the book yet.

Now I have to rack my brain back four or five years and try and remember what happened in the last book of his A Song of Ice and Fire series….