The book I read to research this post was The AA Pocket Guide to Madrid which is a very good book which I bought from a local bookshop. I haven’t been to Madrid but read this book because I thought it would make an interesting post. It’s best not to visit Madrid in the winter as the temperature can drop to freezing point even during the day. Equally at the height of summer it gets uncomfortably hot. The best times to visit are early summer, spring & autumn. Madrid is the highest capital in Europe at 2,200 ft above sea level. It only became the capital of Spain in 1561, before that Toledo was capital. As you probably know at one stage the muslims invaded Spain & also Napolean invaded and made his brother the king of Spain. The people of Madrid rose up against him and the anniversary is called Madrid Day. In 1981 some soldiers stage an attempted coup in which they went into the Parliament & fired some shots and would only surrender when the King ordered them to. They do guided tours around the Parliament and the bullet holes are quite eagerly viewed by tourists. There is a royal palace in Madrid which is quite popular with tourists although the Royal Family stay at another palace on the outskirts. There’s a famous convent that belongs to a closed order of nuns. Now almost anyone can join but at one time you had to provide a dowry which usually took the form of a famous picture. Many of these are on display. There is a massive 295 acres park which is open to the public. At one time it was only for the use of the Royal Family and their friends. There is a Museum of the Americas which contains many of the treasures from the New World. Salamanca is the suburb where the most wealthy people live and the shops there are very exclusive. Another famous attraction is the Bernabeu Stadium which is the home to the Real Madrid football stadium. Real means Royal in Spanish. They have won the European Championship 9 times and were declared the greatest football club of all time by FIFA. In addition they have won the national title 17 times. There is a high speed rail link to Barcelona, Spain’s second city. Finally if you fancy a day out visit Toledo.

The book I read to research this post was Profile of the Class 50s by JAM Vaughan which is an excellent book which I bought from a secondhand bookshop. From the time when the Deltics were retired to the time when the InterCity 125s were introduced the Class 50s were the fastest trains British Rail had. The Deltics had a top speed of 105 mph and the 125s would have a top speed of 125 mph. By comparison the Class 50s had a top speed of 100 mph although later they were limited to 95 mph. Actually considering what the railway lines especially at that time were like that’s more than fast enough. They had a 2,700 hp diesel electric engine. They tended to be used on a lot of the routes in the West Country but were used generally on the InterCity routes. They are often called Warships because British Rail named each locomotive after a naval craft or naval establishment. The Superb for example was a 4,500 ton submarine that was nuclear powered. A lot of the reason for this was they wanted to show some patriotism for the navy who were fighting the Falklands War at that time. Above the nameplate on the locomotive was a crest. 

The book I am reviewing in this post is Siege by Karen Miller which is an excellent book which I borrowed from the library. This is the second book and concluding part of the Clone Wars Gambit duology. It’s also a Star Wars book. This book continues where Stealth left off. lok Durd a renegade republican lord is trying to annihilate the planet Lanteeb with a bioweapon a kidnapped scientist has developed. Luckily the Jedi have developed an antidote but need to locate the source of the infection. Also they are trying to jam Durd’s communications. This book has a happy ending and I really enjoyed it. There are plenty of battles between the jedis and the droids. The droids of course belong to Durd. Durd is a jedi who has gone over to the dark side but is no match for Annekin & Obi Wan. I would like to do more Star Wars books. 

The book I am reviewing in this post is Stealth by Karen Miller which is an excellent book which I borrowed from the library. This is a Star Wars books and is the first of the Clone Wars Gambit series it’s also science fiction and space opera. It’s a bit of a soap opera in space but keeps your interest throughout. At one stage I planned on reading all the Star Wars books but there is just too many. This book is set a little bit after Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones. Annakin who will eventually become Darth Vader is still a good guy in this book. Obi Wan Kenobi is also still quite young. Anyway at the beginning they are in a battle with separatist droids and their pilot suffers broken ribs and Akhsok who is a female jedi is badly injured. Annakin & Obi Wan fight bravely and save the day. The then have to rescue someone who is being held prisoner. Later Akhsok recovers from her injuries and they have to rescue someone else. The book ends on a cliffhangar which I won’t spoil and it’s continued in Siege which is also written by Karen Miller. Not very surprisingly it’s quite an honour among sci-fi writers to be asked to write a Star Wars novel. Some big names have received the honour like Kevin J Anderson who nowadays co writes the Dune series of novels. 

The book I read to research this post was Article Marketing Made Simple by Michael Fleischner which is an excellent book which I think I downloaded for free from kindle. I could have done this book on my computing blog but thought I do about writing on this blog so thought it’s appropriate. Michael has been doing search engine optimization since before it became an accepted thing. He also has some interesting ideas. A lot of his book is about affiliate marketing or selling products that people order from a website on commission. I’m more interested in what he has to say about promoting your blog. One of his ideas is you should do a blog and then prepare 3 slightly different articles that more or less say the same thing. These articles are then put on 3 article promotion sites like http://ezinearticles.com . These articles need to be 4-600 words as that allows the search engines to have something to index and you aren’t spending hours doing it. If you put a link it should be within the article as search engines like that. Also search engines like original content. He suggests that you do an outline prior to doing an article. It just helps you include everything you want to write. You also should decide what search terms you want the article to be linked with and make sure those words are included in the article.

I have done a post at http://oldscratbag.blogspot.com on the book China by William A Callahan.

The book I read to research this post was Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Dickens was born in Portsmouth & the house he was born in still stands. His mother married a few years after he was born and he took her partners surname. He grew up amidst much poverty which was to provide inspiration for many of his novels. Even when he was wealthy he never forgot about the working class and helped a lot of poor people. His early novels were serialized in the newspaper and he invented the cliffhanger. Before Dickens books were something only the wealthy collected. Dickens with his serialized stories made books affordable to the masses. With the money he made from Pickwick he bought Broughton Place in London. Several of his books were written there. Among the places he visited on his travels were the USA & Italy. In those days wealthy men would often seek companionship of their own sex & often had dinner parties that were men only. David Copperfield was his favourite out of the books he had written. Interestingly it was only a moderate success at the time it was written. He got a job as editor of The Times and it was very successful especially with his serialized stories. He gave his dad who was a bit of a scoundrel the job of head of the reporters. Surprisingly his dad turned over a new leaf and was good in the job. His dad had been running up debts and leaving his son to pay them off to avoid a scandal. His dad came to work at 8 o clock every morning. 

The book I read to research this post was Rough Guide to Pink Floyd by Toby Manning which is an excellent book which I borrowed from the library. Pink Floyd’s name comes from the names of 2 blues singers and originally they were a blues band and then skiffle. They were unusual in that they were middle class and they didn’t hide it as ie in the case of John Lennon who also had middle class roots. In the mid to late sixties many people compared their music to the beatles. By that time they were playing beat and progressive rock that was certainly inspired by drugs like the beatles. Unlike the beatles they were definitely an album band whose tracks were often too long to be singles. They were very popular with people who took music very seriously like students unions. They had a number one single with The Wall & Learning to Fly was the first single released on cd only. Probably their best album is Dark Side of the Moon with its cover which is a drawing of a prism separating light. Notice indigo is missing from the separated colours because they thought it gave it a psychedelic quality. It’s one of the most recognised album covers in the world. Other outstanding albums they did are Division Bell & The Wall. Roger Waters who was instrumental in writing a lot of their songs also did an outstanding solo album called Amused to Death. It was produced by Patrick Leonard who had produced a lot of stuff for Madonna.

The book I read to research this post was Last of the Few by Max Hastings which is an excellent book which I bought from a carboot sale. The book contains lots of extracts of interviews with aircrew of military aircraft from the second world war. There’s a few from the Luftwaffe. These pilots are in their 80′s or 90′s by now. One pilot from the Luftwaffe told Goerring that he wanted a squadron of spitfires. Spitfires weren’t as fast as Me109s but were much more manouvrable. Another story is that often when the pilots were on a mission, there wives or fiancees were working in air traffic control and if they were shot down there would be screams in the background. The germans didn’t know it but the english had radar that told them the height of incoming aircraft. At the beginning of the war soundwalls were used before the invention of radar. These had a microphone and a special wall with acoustic properties that reflected the sound of aircraft. A few still exist to this day. The battle of britain lasted for 13 weeks and changed the course of the war at the beginning the RAF were far fewer than the Luftwaffe. Hitler knew he must get control of the skies if he was to invade Britain. If a plane was shot down you had just 10 seconds to get out on average before it exploded. Also stukas used to catch fire if they were shot at really easily. 

The book I read to research this post was Inside Sellafield by Harold Bolter which is a very good book which I bought from a local charity shop. Sellafield is a very important nuclear power station which also helps in the manufacture of nuclear weapons and reprocessing waste fissionable material. I went on a tour around Sellafield when I was at school at the time there was free admission and also they had a visitor centre. If you ever get the chance I highly recommend it. Anyway Harold was the longest serving director on the board of British Nuclear Fuels. He has seen it being privatised which he thinks helped make it more competitive. He started out as a business correspondent for the Financial Times. Later he got a job with BNFL dealing with public relations. He reckons Sellafield has had problems but the nuclear industry in Britain stands comparison to almost any other industry. Certain people do want Sellafield shut down and one problem they had was some greenpeace demonstrators were diving by where the waste pipe comes out and thought they’d been contaminated. They thought falsely that more waste had come out than usual. Obviously it’s ill advised to go anywhere near the waste pipe. In another incident the government had to close some of the beaches because too much waste had been produced. At one time they used to dump nuclear waste deep in the Atlantic. Obviously the containers are going to corrode eventually causing problems.