Book Review: Ian Fleming's "Octopussy"

Rating: 3 out of 5

The fourteenth, and final, novel in Ian Flemming's James Bond canon, Octopussy (or Octopussy and The Living Daylights), is another short story collection (like For Your Eyes Only). The original publication only contained two stories: Octopussy and The Living Daylights; while later editions added The Property of a Lady and 007 in New York.

Octopussy

James Bond is just a background character in Octopussy, much like he was in "Quantum of Solace" from For Your Eyes Only. This story focuses on a retired member of the Royal Marines, Major Dexter Smythe. During the war, Major Smythe happened across a top secret document identifying the location of buried gold from the Reichsbank. In the process of acquiring the gold, Major Smythe had kidnapped and killed a former ski instructor of James Bond, named Oberhauser. After the war, Major Smythe had moved to southern Jamaica to spend the rest of his days in a life of luxury with his new wife. But, after her suicide, Smythe moved to the northern portion of Jamaica and spent most of his time drinking alone or observing the native aquatic life. At this point in his life is when James Bond appears. Bond, recovering from his latest assignment, was sent in to pick up Major Smythe on the Oberhauser murder charges and withholding the information of the Nazi gold from the service. (Octopussy is just the pet name he gave to a local octopus he had been observing)

The Living Daylights

James Bond works on his snipping in The Living Daylights, something we haven't seen Bond do in the entire series (briefly mentioned before he gained his double-oh status). Bond has to provide cover for Number 272, an operative out of Novaya Zemlya, as he crosses East Berlin with highly sensitive information. At one location in particular, there is a few hundred yards where 272 will be out in the open, and with the KGB on his tail, it is Bond's job to kill the KGB's number one sniper, Trigger.

The Property of a Lady

In The Property of a Lady, James Bond goes undercover at a jewelry auction where a rare piece of work by Carl Fabregé is going to be auctioned off. This "Terrestrial Globe" had found its way to the hands of a known double-agent in the Secret Service, and Bond's job is to sniff out a Resident Director of the KGB that would no doubt be in attendance to inflate the value of said item.

007 in New York

Ian Flemming was not a big fan of New York, this short story depicts James Bond traveling to New York to inform a former member of the Secret Service that her new boyfriend is a member of the KGB. But, because of New York, this simple assignment goes astray.

Book Review: Ian Fleming's "The Man with the Golden Gun"

Rating: 4 out of 5

After losing his memory during his escape from Blofeld's castle, Bond had been living the life of a Japanese fisherman. One day, many months later, the name of a Russian town sparked a trigger in Bond's mind. At the end of You Only Live Twice, Bond started his journey to Russia to try and piece together the fragments of his past. Bond was eventually picked up by the KGB and sent through a rigorous rehabilitation program to regain his memory. In the process, they brainwashed Bond, and sent him back to Her Majesty's Secret Service to kill his old chief, M. In failing to do so, M had Bond reverse-brainwashed and in order to prove his recovery and settle the past, M sent Bond to Jamaica to kill the most deadly hitman in the business, "Pistols" Scaramanga.

After hopping from island to island just hours behind Scaramanga, Bond catches a lucky break and finds an letter written to Scaramanga in an airport mailroom describing Scaramanga's whereabouts the next day. Bond meets up with Scaramanga in a pub attached to an old whore house, and through a course of events, becomes employed as Scaramanga's assistant for the next few days as he entertains business guests at a hotel/casino he is building. Those guests turn out to be top criminals from across the world and Bond must join forces with an old acquaintance to stop, among other things, a major drug traffic line from forming.

The Man with the Golden Gun is the thirteenth novel in the James Bond series. While I did not like the way Bond was brought back into the service, the rest of the story greatly made up for it. Bond is re-united with Felix Leiter and Mary Goodnight in this gangster enthralled novel.

Paint.NET - Effects Plugin Template - Updated

After a few months, I have received some feedback on my Visual Studio 2005 Paint.NET Effect Plugin Template and have made a few updates:

BoltBait wrote:

Sepcot, I would recommend the following changes to your template:

1. Add the code from my project listed above to your template for adding the effect to a submenu. There is some code and the reference to it.
2. The OK and Cancel buttons should be anchored bottom & right instead of top & left.
3. Add a "// place your public variables here" and "// set your default values here" to the token file.
4. Add a few "using" lines to open up access to various controls (like I did in the project linked above.)

Nice template, by the way! Thanks!

-- http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?p=24136#24136

Add Submenu Option

To add the submenu option, I have altered the EffectPlugin.cs file as follows:

public static string StaticSubMenuName
{
  get
  {
    return null;
  }
}

public EffectPlugin()
  : base(EffectPlugin.StaticName, EffectPlugin.StaticIcon, EffectPlugin.StaticSubMenuName, true)
{

}

If you do not want to place your effect in a submenu leave as is. If you want to add to a submenu, change null to the name of the submenu you want to add your effect to: i.e. "Blurs"

Other Changes

The other changes are straight forward. I updated the OK and Cancel buttons to anchor to the bottom/right, added comments to EffectPluginToken.cs to identify where to place/set your variables, and added using PaintDotNet; to EffectPluginConfigDialog.cs to provide access to various Paint.NET controls (such asAngleChooserControl).

Note: the code contained in the template can be built as is, but it won’t yield you any interesting effects. In fact, it will just render a configuration dialog box with “OK” and “Cancel” buttons that do nothing to alter the canvas.

Effects Plugin Template Files

• Effects Plugin Template – zip files and save into your Visual Studio 2005 “Project Templates” directory (typically: My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Templates\ProjectTemplates\)

Book Review: Ian Fleming's "You Only Live Twice"

Rating: 4 out of 5

Almost a year after his wife's death, James Bond is still suffering. His last two missions have ended badly with Bond narrowly escaping death. While M contemplates letting him go, a meeting with Sir James Molony, a nerve specialist in the Secret Service, convinces M to give Bond one more chance on an impossible mission. That mission: convince the Japanese Secret Service to release decrypted Soviet Union information to the British government.

To work on this mission, James Bond is given an acting promotion to the Diplomatic Section of the Secret Service (in which he is re-numbered to 7777). Bond is flown to Japan and meets up with Dikko Henderson of Section J, who is able to arrange Bond a meeting with Tiger Tanaka, the head of the Japanese Secret Service. Tiger tells Bond about a gaijin, a foreigner, Doctor Shatterhand, who has set up a Castle of Death full of exotic plants and animals that kill. The Castle of Death has become a favored spot among suicide victims, claiming over 500 lives, but the whole setup is legal and the Japanese government can take no action against this Doctor Shatterhand. So, in exchange for Magic 44, the Soviet Union intelligence, Tiger asks Bond to "enter this Castle of Death and slay the Dragon within."

You Only Live Twice is the twelfth novel in the James Bond series and the concluding chapter of the Blofeld trilogy. It has been about a month since I have read one of the James Bond novels, and it felt good to get back into the series. Ian Flemming's story of a broken man who must confront his personal enemy to regain a lost part of his life was a fitting conclusion to the Blofeld trilogy. One thing I have always liked about the Ian Flemming novels that you don't really get in the movies is the more human side to James Bond, a man who is beat up emotionally and physically and overcomes all odds to save the day. That is one characteristic that is prevalent in this novel. An excellent read of a fan of the series.

You only live twice:
Once when you are born,
And once when you look death in the face.

-- epigraph - After Basho, Japanese poet, 1643-94

Book Review: Douglas Adams' "Mostly Harmless"

Rating: 4 out of 5

Part five of my review of Douglas Adams' The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide focuses on the fifth and final book in the series: Mostly Harmless.

Perfectly Normal Beasts

Mostly Harmless starts out on Earth in a parallel universe where Tricia McMillan never left the planet with Zaphod and became a television reporter. She gets a second chance at seeing the universe when a spacecraft lands in her front yard and takes her to the edge of solar system, to a newly discovered planet called Rupert. Being a reporter, she brings along a camera to document the event, but the lighting conditions, mail-order furniture, and burgers from McDonald's made the whole event look like it was faked with about three minutes notice.

Meanwhile, the other Tricia McMillan, Trillian, also became a reporter, covering galactic wars and whatnot. Wanting a child, Trillian was forced to visit a fertility clinic to find a homo sapiens DNA match. There was one, Arthur Dent. Arthur, who had lost Fenchurch when she blinked out of existence during a hyperspace hop, had been traveling the galaxy trying to find a place where he would fit in, and paid his way by making semen deposits in DNA banks. Trillian tracked down Arthur in a remote planet called Lamuella where for the last few years he had become the Sandwich Maker for a small village. Trillian dumps their daughter, Random, on Arthur then leaves to cover the next galactic war.

Ford Prefect, during all of this, finds out the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was bought out by a company called InfiniDim Enterprises and the fun loving nature at the Guide is completely gone. The new owner, Vann Harl, has commissioned the Guide Mark II. Ford steals the Guide Mark II and mails it to himself in care of Arthur Dent, because Ford believes Arthur to be too boring to open the package himself.

Arthur is to boring to open the package, but his daughter, Random, is not...

What will Random do with the Guide Mark II? Will anyone believe Tricia McMillan's second alien encounter? Why does Ford keep jumping out of windows? Read the final chapter in the Hitchhiker's Guide Series to find out!

Overall Impressions

Rating: 4 out of 5

Overall, I enjoyed the series. I could have done without Life, the Universe and Everything and while I understand the ending to Mostly Harmless it did leave loose ends in the series. From looking at the Wikipedia entry, it looks like the radio series did a better job of wrapping everything up in the end. Still, a good piece of Science Fiction.