Making your iPad a laptop with the Incase Origami Workstation

I’ve previously blogged about my frustration when trying to use a iPad for much in the way of text input, even when using an external keyboard. The problem is that even though the pairing of the iPad with the keyboard through Bluetooth works really well, you still need to physically interact with the iPad. (A wireless trackpad will not work.) I have the standard folding iPad cover, so this means that I either have to lie it down, which is not very useful/practical, or stand it up and press the screen very gently so as not to topple it. What I really needed was something that would give some back support to the iPad whilst using the keyboard.

This week I got myself an Incase Origami Workstation, having seen it used successfully on a iPad training course. Like all the best ideas, this is a really simple but well executed piece of kit. As the name suggests, it folds out from a flat, lightweight keyboard cover to a stand that keeps the iPad and keyboard securely in place. The velcro makes the switch quick, easy and painless.

Perhaps surprisingly, it actually does a pretty decent job at turning your iPad into a literal laptop. Although the hinge of the Origami Workstation is too flexible to move it about much whilst the iPad is slotted in, once in place it is pretty stable; when using it on a table it is very sturdy and does the job superbly.

Thoroughly recommended! (Cheaper in the Apple Store than Amazon at the moment too!)

Science blogging is hard!

My last post was number 400, which has caused me have a reflective moment about my blogging. (And the 87 drafts in various states of incompleteness!) One of my New Year’s aspirations was to blog more original science papers. Half a year on, I’ve not really done that well, to be honest. (Nor on my other aspirations, to be honest: Mystic Mog and the Exploding Tortoise has been on hold since Jaunary!)

Part of the reason is the impending move to Australia and all the organisation and house-selling that goes with it. A bigger part of the reason, though, is that (for me, at least) science blogging is hard! I have a lot of respect for those who can do it well, like Jacquelyn Gill and her ecology & climate change blog, The Contemplative Mammoth. (Her most recent post, The many scales of climate change, part 1: Tectonic timescales is well worth a read and I am looking forward to the parts to come.)

I consider science communication to be an important part of my job and I really want to get better at it. Happily, it is not too late. We are about half-way through 2013 and so there are 25(ish) weeks left. The only way to improve is to practice and rather than risk upsetting anyone by getting their science wrong, I have therefore decided to aim to blog one of my own papers each week to see how that goes. It may not happen but by making a public declaration of sorts, I am hoping I will get the extra motivation boost needed to make it happen. (Embracing Markdown should help too!)

New Year's Aspirations for 2013

I'm not a great believer in New Year's Resolutions. After all, if there's something you should change in your life, do it when you realise it, don't wait until the end of the year. There is also the potential issue of self-recrimination etc. if you fail to keep them.

At the same time, it is useful to reflect on stuff from time to time and New Year provides a good time for this and plenty of time sitting around to think about it too! I can't say I've given it a lot of thought but I did think it would be worth penning a few New Year's aspirations. (Not because its anyone else's business, of course, but I do think I am more likely to do something if I've publicly stated it - not that it worked with the gym!)

☑ Make more time for reading. I made a quite long Christmas reading list of interesting papers and stuff but did not do a very good job at getting through it and it's back to work tomorrow. I also got a few books for Christmas, which all look good. I'm also behind with work-related reading. Must. Read. More.

☑ Make more time for writing. I've got a few papers and a book chapter that need writing. Episodes of Mystic Mog and the Exploding Tortoise have also been decreasing in frequency down to a disappointing 4 in December. There are a number of contributing factors to this but one is clearly not setting aside time to write.

☑ Blog more papers. Although this is not specifically a science blog per se, one of the motivations behind blogging was to try and get better at science communication. The number of science-related posts is not too bad (about 1 in 3) but I could definitely do with blogging a few more original papers, which will hopefully also help with the reading and writing.

☑ Cook more meat. I don't intend to eat more meat. I'm never going to be vegetarian for a number of reasons but nor do I see the need to eat meat every day and tend to cook quite a lot of vegetarian meals. When I do cook meat, however, it tends to be safe recipes erring on the side of boring. This is largely because I lack experience and the confidence that comes with it. One of this year's Christmas presents was The River Cottage Meat Book and I intend to make good use of it!

☑ Budget. I don't consider myself particularly irresponsible with money but there is always room for improvement. I've got reasonably good of keeping track of my expenses in 2012 but 2013 is time to convert that knowledge into some proper budget planning. Maybe.

☑ Gain control of my inboxes. I had a bit of a purge a while back but my email is still swamped by loads of junk mail. Time for another purge, I think. I think it's also time to try and make Facebook more active and less passive - it's actually easier to keep track of messages in FB than email sometimes. Unless I really get my inbox in shape, that is.

Not the most inspiring list (or interesting post!) in the world but it will be interesting (for me) to revisit these in a few months and see what progress I am making. It doesn't hurt to have aspirations.

Experiments with the iPhone Blogger App

My recent revisiting of the iPad BlogPress App has made me curious about the Blogger App for the iPhone. Like BlogPress, I have not used this for a long time - I may have abandoned it when I first discovered BlogPress - but also not deleted it. I therefore thought I'd try a quick post with it to see how it works.

The interface is very clean and uncluttered and might be a good way of editing text for posts on the go. At the moment, I generally email the text (and pictures) when on the go and then tidy and publish later. I also have a bunch of (notes for) part-written posts in various text editors. If the Blogger App proves reliable, it might be a better solution for both.

One weakness does seem to be how pictures are handled. As far as I can tell, you can either upload images full size or as a number of smaller sizes up to 640x480. I'd prefer something in between. I'm also not sure how much control over placement there is. Out of curiosity, therefore, added the two pictures above to this post and just published it straight from the App to see where they will go. The result is visible to the left and it's not that pretty, so I think a bit of online editing is definitely required. I'd also be a bit worried about the resolution of the pictures if they weren't just iPhone screen grabs, as in this example. (The abundance of white in the first image does not help, it is true.)

As well as the image issues, it's also easier to edit the post in order to add links and formatting to the text, although these can be added manually using raw HTML. The final risk is the tagging: Blogger will add tags but does not suggest existing ones like the Blogger website. Overall, though, I am keen to use it a bit more for the basic text content, until it let's me down. (I had one problem uploading a draft this morning but it was fine when I tried it later.)

Revisiting the BlogPress App for iPad

The BlogPress App fell out of favour with me some time ago around the time that iOS 5 came out. (Yes, that long ago!) BlogPress had ceased accessing my online posts (draft or published) and then, once I updated to iOS5, it has stopped working altogether. I never deleted it, however, as I always retained the hope that it would get sorted out. As 2012 draws to a close and future blogging in 2013 is on my mind, I therefore thought I would try it out again and see.

I'm not entirely sure whether I trust it enough to publish from it directly - although this post is a test in that respect. I am also worried about the pictures disappearing, as seems to have happened with some of my earlier blog posts. Despite this, however, it does have some nice features including common HTML options (including fonts) and could be useful for drafting posts for subsequent tidying and publishing on a proper computer. (It's more of an oPad after all!)

Indeed, having just looked at the preview for this post, I decided that a bit of extra editing was definitely needed. In particular, the pictures are not embedded that well. I have left the basic code alone but was not happy that the resolution of the image shown was almost half the actual size. (The pane width and image width is 568 pixels but the actual image resolution set by the "/sXXX/" part of the src path is only 288 pixels. Why?!) The Preview itself also looks decidedly odd - squished horizontally and missing the flanking parts of the page. Hopefully, following this quick edit in Safari, it will come out fine...

The Cabbages of Doom 2.2

A new edition of The Cabbages of Doom is now available on the Kindle for only 99p (or $1.59). Thanks to some editorial advice (thanks, Karen!), a few grammatical errors and typos have been fixed here and there. It also features a new cover. Following some changes at Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, it can be lent too. (Though only in America, I think.) The iBooks and Lulu versions will be updated when time and energy allows. (Unless I discontinue them and enrol in "KDP Select".)

If you are curious, visit Amazon to download a free sample, read the blurb or view the sample chapter (PDF). If you need more encouragement, here it's one review so far (for the Lulu PDF version, which is yet to be updated):

★★★★★

This exciting and entertaining first novel exceeded all of my expectations. The story itself is a very imaginative chase across the English country side involving inter-dimensional travellers culminating in an entirely unpredictable hilarious and action packed final confrontation. The story had me laughing out loud and genuinely invested in routing for the good guys (okay, cabbage and small animals). Unlike most self-published first novels in this price range this one was very well spell-checked and surprisingly grammatically correct. If you are in the mood for a smile, a fun story and groan or two for some amazing puns and references to classic films, then this is the best 99p you can spend.

Go on. You'll make my day.

20% off The Cabbages of Doom!

Blogging has taken a back seat over the past few days because I have been in Lucca for a family wedding, where there was considerably better access to wine than wifi! More on Lucca later but for now just a quick plug: 20% off The Cabbages of Doom (and everything else at Lulu.com)!

Mystic Mog and the Exploding Tortoise: The Plan

My recent posts have been a bit dominated by the great National Trust YEC fiasco of late, so now for something completely different and altogether not-so-serious. Observant ones among you may have spotted a new "page" appear in the side-bar, linking to a new blog: Mystic Mog and the Exploding Tortoise. This is cross-post from that new blog, explaining what's going on - or hopefully will be going on, at least...

I was chatting to a friend recently about writing fiction and he asked me how I controlled the characters as they had a tendency, in his experience, to go off and do their own thing. Well, in the case of The Cabbages of Doom, I guess the answer is that I didn't! The whole thing started life as a random email to a friend as a bit of light relief, which was followed up the next day by another that picked up where it left off, and then another and another... until I found myself writing a novella. (Too long to be a short story but too short to be a proper novel!) I don't think it was until about half-way through that I really knew how it was going to end and, even then, it took the characters rather longer than expected to get themselves to that end!

The sequel started life almost as randomly, as a title: "Mystic Mog and the Exploding Tortoise". I can't remember how or why that title became fixed - it happened when I was a PhD student before the first story was even finished - but now it has become quite established and the story has grown (or continues to grow) around it. Finishing Cabbages gave me a bit more time to dwell on the plot of the sequel, so I have an approximate plan this time of where it is going, although some things - such as the end - are still lacking. What is really lacking, though, is the writing! Things were a bit slow with my iPad because it's not that great for heavy text input but now I have a MacBook Air, I am hoping this will improve.

I am still finding it a bit hard to make the time, though, particularly as I am stuck in a bit of tricky spot - over 44,000 words are already written but not for quite a long time, so I need to try and refresh my memory (and edit) somewhat before really launching back into it. With so much of the story still to go, however, I have this "will I ever finish it?" feeling that keeps clawing me back.

Time to take action, and that action is to serialise it in the Mystic Mog blog! I've never blogged a story before, so I am not entirely sure how, or even if, this is going to work but the rough plan is essentially to follow the original genesis of The Cabbages of Doom, releasing one "episode" (snippet) each day or so until completion. I have fifty or so such snippets largely ready to go (with a bit of neatening and editing) and a whole 'nother bunch planned, so I should have enough to keep going for a while. The hope is that, in the meantime, I can write some more and keep ahead of myself. (I probably won't post every day.) If nothing else, the commitment will hopefully keep me going!

Once it's "finished", much like with The Cabbages of Doom, I imagine I will go back over it and edit out the bits that don't work, fix a few continuity errors, flesh out some weak bits and whack it out as another eBook. So, if you liked the first one, or just want to help be a "muse" (and, with luck, amused), do sign up and join me on my journey to more madness. I hope to post the first snippet in a day or so.

When it comes to writing, it's more of an oPad than an iPad

This is my 200th blog post and I've had my iPad for around a year now, so it seemed like a good time to reflect on using the iPad for writing in general, and blogging in particular.

I'll start by saying that I really love my iPad and it's great for the main things that I had in mind when I bought it. It's handy for conferences, makes email feel like fun rather than a chore, and is a joy for web surfing - as long as you don't need flash of course! Reading PDFs is good with iBooks and better still if you need to annotate them and invest in the iAnnotate App. With ArtStudio and a stylus, it's great for drawing too. I love the way it's so easy to share and access files between my iPad and other devices using Dropbox, and the way that pictures taken with my iPhone are almost instantly available on my iPad through Photostream.

But... there are situations in which the iPad is not great, which are basically any situations in which a lot of typing is needed. For text-rich output, the iPad is fantastic but text-rich input just isn't its thing.

The problem is not a software issue. The OfficeHD App that I invested in early on is rather rubbish and buggy, to be honest, but the later Apple offering, Pages, works really well (even if it is one of the more expensive Apps out there). The problem is just that, even with the big touchscreen keyboard, you just can't type so quickly and instinctively as with a "real" keyboard.

I did invest in a wireless keyboard when I bought my iPad and, as a piece of kit, it works really well. It pairs cleanly and easily via bluetooth and has the usual delightful Apple keyboard feel that makes it a pleasure to type with. The problem is that it is just not that practical to use it with a iPad. You cannot easily, for example, balance both the iPad and the keyboard on your lap, as you can with a laptop. (It's called a laptop for a reason!) Although you can set up the iPad on a desk and sit the keyboard in front of it, this solution only really works if you only want to type. Without a mouse as well, it is a real pain whenever you want to use any of the functions that require touching the screen.

This is a particular problem when blogging, possibly due to my choice of blogger as host. In my hands, the WYSIWYG "Compose" mode does not really work on an iP* device and, even on Windows, it tends to add lots of unwanted HTML. (Too many divs!) For this reason, and being a bit of an HTML purest (hence my (X)HTML ASCII code cribsheet), I do my blog writing through the "HTML" mode. Writing HTML is especially bad on an iPad because of the need to toggle between letters, numbers and symbols. For blogging, my current solution is therefore to email blogger the subject and photos for a blog post from my iPad (or iPhone), and often the core text (if it's short) without any links or formatting, and then use a laptop (or my little netbook, on which I put Linux after Windows 7 killed it), to tidy up, format and/or add to the text/images.

It works but it's a bit clunky. And progess on "Mystic Mog and the Exploding Tortoise" has slowed to, well, tortoise pace. Happily, the answer might be in hand. Having stalked Mac Rumors for several months awaiting the new MacBook Air - and saving up my pennies - the new version was released last week and mine should be winging its way to me before the end of the month. My website might get some much-needed attention too! ☺

The Cabbages of Doom: now only 99p!

Perhaps somewhat predictably, copies of The Cabbages of Doom are not exactly flying off the virtual shelves. This could, of course, be that's it's rubbish and no one likes the sample chapter enough to cough up the price of McFlurry to read the rest. My web sleuthing (and ego), however, suggest that it's a lack of reviews that is the issue: why would someone invest their precious time on something with only the author's recommendation?

This is therefore an unabashed plea for some kind folks out there to write some nice words on Amazon, Lulu or iBooks - assuming you have read and liked the book, of course! It's not that long, should you want to find out! What better way to spend a lazy Sunday than in the company of homicidal vegetables and vegicidal animals on a whirlwind adventure of carnage, romance and silliness. (Mostly silliness.)

As an extra motivator, the PDF Edition of The Cabbages of Doom is now only 99p, in line with the iBookstore price - and you can try before you buy! If you read the sample chapter and are sitting on the fence, I'll even send you a copy - as long as you agree to write a review if you have anything nice to say! If you do buy it, I might even share my McFlurry with you.

(Don't mind Frankie, there. He is just trying to use his mind-control powers to convince you.)

Short-cited VII: does Open Access publishing encourage bad science?

The argument about Open Access publishing is one that is going to run for some time, I am sure. (See yesterday's piece in The Economist, for example. One spectre that raise its ugly head from time to time, though, is the notion that Open Access is bad because it encourages bad science. In essence, the argument goes: Open Access is cheap for the publishers, therefore they are willing to publish anything. In support of this, I have seen people cite the high acceptance rates at PLoS and BioMedCentral of (apparently) 50-70% as an indicator that they will publish pretty much anything. I've even seen this used in favour of removing pre-publication peer-review altogether in favour of post-publication peer-review, as in the case of WebmedCentral - the implication being that, in the Open Access world, pre-publication peer-review is useless.

I think this is all rather unfair on Open Acess journals, especially the likes of PLoS and BMC. The latter have just done away with the need for the science to be deemed "interesting" as long as the science is sound. (And this for only some of their titles.) This is a far cry from publishing anything and peer-review being worthless.

The peer-review process involves highlighting things that need to be changed to meet the "scientific soundness" criterion. Most authors then go ahead and make the required changes, usually improving the paper as a result. I would argue that this is the single biggest utility of peer-review; as an author, I want to go through this process myself, even if it is sometimes irritating. The fact that PLoS and BMC publish 50-70% of papers just indicates that scientists are capable of producing scientifically sound work (following revisions) 50-70% of the time. The higher rejection rate at Science and Nature is more to do with what science is perceived as being of general interest, rather than the soundness or quality of the work. (I also suspect the acceptance rate for the flagship PLoS and BMC journals that do stipulate a need for impact is considerably lower than across the whole series.)

The peer-review process and quality of reviewers is not always perfect but it is still better than none at all. I am very reluctant to ever publish in a journal that does not have pre-publication peer review and it is not just about the journal's "Impact Factor"; the quality of the papers is going to be lower without the opportunity for revisions in the face of peer-review and at least the threat of being in that 30-50% that aren't deemed scientifically sound enough to publish.

The biggest problem in the modern scientific literature is the pressure on scientists to publish too soon and too often, not the presence of journals that are willing to publish boring science. Until we get rewarded for the quality of our science and not the quantity or impact of our papers (first is not always best), I cannot see this changing, sadly.

A short-cited look at bibliometrics with Web of Knowledge

A few things have got me thinking more about citations recently. First, the dreaded "Research Excellence Framework" is looming, for which each academic in the UK has to submit their four "best" papers. "Best", of course, is a rather subjective issue. Although journal Impact Factors and citation data are not meant to be taken into account for REF, the number of times that a paper has been cited is one indicator that can help determine how your papers are received. The second thing was that I was recently looking through a bunch of CVs as part of a recruitment process and the importance of maximising your perceived impact was clear.

I've had one eye on these issues for a while, so I have had both my ResearcherID and Google Scholar publication metrics linked from my website (and this blog) but never really thought too hard about either. My assumption was that the ResearcherID metrics, provided through Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge, would be the better metric provider, as it's an "official" supplier of citations and is manually curated. Google Scholar, on the other hand, is more automated and has a tendency to over-inflate citations by including stuff that might be weeded out by more careful citation monitors.

Looking into things a bit more, though, the ResearcherID metrics do not appear to be as trustworthy as I had assumed. The problem with Web of Knowledge is that (a) they only include stuff that's indexed in ISI, and (b) for a manually curated citation index there seem to be a lot of mistakes that cause citations to be lost. As a result, although libraries seem to prefer Web of Knowledge, the citation metric calculator "Publish or Perish" uses Google Scholar. The publications of mine that I've looked at certainly back this up. One, for example, has ZERO citations on Web of Knowledge but Google Scholar lists three perfectly acceptable (in my mind) peer-reviewed citations.

It's not all positive for Google Scholar, though, as the criticisms levelled at it are also valid. Although Google are the kings of automated searches and returning relevant data, they are not flawless and I have noticed the odd duplication here and there. I have not checked yet (as the numbers I've checked are bigger) but I would not be surprised if there were also some citations missing; I know this has been an issue for some colleagues. The other problem is that, unlike ISI, there is little or no filtering of the types of citations returned. Going to the other end of the spectrum, and looking at my most highly cited paper, Google Scholar had added 15 citations, including the PDF manual of one my software packages. (There's a lesson in citation-inflation there, I think!)

This issue of over- and under-reporting of citations is not new and has been reported but I had never realised the extent of the under-reporting before. Furthermore, a couple of the other extras returned by Google are less cut-and-dried with respect to their "inflation" status. One was a doctoral thesis, which is a genuine peer-reviewed publication and I would consider a real citation. Indeed, including theses could be one of the biggest assets of Google Scholar, for it is normally hard (or impossible) to find out about theses that cite your work unless it is followed up by a paper. As a result, not only is the citation a useful discovery but potentially the thesis itself. Another two were foreign language (i.e. not English) publications, which again might well be perfectly valid. (Not speaking Polish, I cannot tell in this instance.)

Then, there is Microsoft Academic Research, although this seems to inflate things even more as it includes extra publications belonging to other people - at the moment, anyway. I've created a LiveID account and done a bit of cleaning up of my publication list, so it will be interesting to see what it says after that. (I now have a couple of publication missing but I am not sure which ones.)

So, which to use?! Currently, my feeling is that none of them are perfect. For me, ResearcherID is a definite underestimate but, at the same time, the extra 96(!) citations from Google Scholar are not all valid. It makes a difference - my h-index goes up by 2 with Google versus ISI - but it would be just as bad to be perceived as inflating my citation metrics as it would be to under-sell myself. The only real solution at the moment is to provide both metrics (and maybe Microsoft too, if that is different again) and keep an eye for one that allows editing of both publications and citations. (I don't think any of them currently have this function.) In the long run, though, I have a horrible feeling that I'll have to compile the genuine citations from the different sources myself. If nothing else, it will settle the question of which is best - for me, at least.

The Cabbages of Doom: only 99p from iBooks!

At some point, I am going to have to get to the bottom of the slightly wayward pricing of the different formats for The Cabbages of Doom. The good news is that it's only 99p from the Apple iBooks store. (Free sample chapter PDF here.)

21st Century Referencing

One of the new issues that I am beginning to see in undergraduate project work is uncertainty regarding how to cite various atypical sources. In my day [gets out pipe and smoking jacket], the most tricky source was a book section or occasional website. Now, though, it seems that podcasts and Youtube videos etc. are being added to list of legitimate and useful sources of information and opinion. Fortunately, help is at hand. The library staff at Anglia Ruskin University have made a really useful Harvard System of Referencing Guide [1] containing all manner of source types and the required information for citations thereof. This is the best website of this kind I have seen and well worth bookmarking if you have to deal with this stuff regularly.

1. Anglia Ruskin University, 2011. Harvard System of Referencing Guide. [online] Available at: <http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm> [Accessed 14 January 2012].

The Cabbages of Doom: Kindle Edition out now!

My fictional folly is complete (for now) and The Cabbages of Doom is now available in a Kindle Edition too.

I thought it was going to be priced at £1.49 for the UK market but there seems to have been a glitch somewhere. I did find it a bit odd that the cheapest UK price allowed was lower than the USD or EUR prices. Oh well. If the extra 22p puts you off, the PDF and ePub versions are still only £1.44.

Over Christmas, I shall hopefully blog the full e-publishing experience. It's been interesting and I am sure I could do it better next time! (Content aside, that is.)

The Cabbages of Doom, PDF version and free sample now available!

I am happy to report that a PDF edition of The Cabbages of Doom is now available along with a free sample chapter (PDF). Try before you (maybe) buy!

The Cabbages of Doom has an ISBN!

The blogging has been light of late to due excessive busyness. One of the contributing factors to this has been the e-publication of The Cabbages of Doom through Lulu. I think the book itself will take a bit of time to filter through the system but it has an ISBN number now and everything!

I've also worked on a bit of cover art for the new edition. It's not a masterpiece but is certainly better than the previous, blank cover.

The story itself is essentially unchanged, but I have modified the text here and there, both to correct a few typos and remove a few bits that might not go down so well with a more general audience. (Or made me cringe at my ten-years-younger self!) There was also some reformatting for e-Readers to be done. Overall, though, I am happy.

It will be on sale for the princely sum of £1.44, which works out at 16p a chapter (or about 3p per 1000 words). Should you buy it and hate it, let me know and I will donate the portion that goes to me to a charity of your choice. If, on the other hand, you think it's a bargain, please make a donation to Cancer Research UK or the World Wildlife Fund. (I'm not endorsed by either, in case it's not obvious!)

HTML ASCII code

For those of you, like me, who have to write posts in HTML from time to time, a good reference of HTML coded for special ASCII characters is invaluable. The best I have found so far, is on the website of Ed Lazor (www.edlazorvfx.com). No frills, no fuss, just lots of useful HTML codes. (Although he did neglect the interrobang, "‽" - &#8253;.)

Bring back the interrobang!

Why did they ever get rid of such a useful punctuation mark‽

The Cabbages of Doom: one decade on

As the end of September looms, so does an important (and slightly scary) milestone for me. A week today will be the tenth anniversary of the submission of my PhD thesis. Eek!

To celebrate the event, I have decided that my first ever peer-reviewed publication deserved another airing. Admittedly, the peer in question was my mate Matt, and the manuscript in question was self-published with a very limited print run. Of course, I am referring to The Cabbages of Doom. You can read the PDF here, or if you need more enticing, here's the blurb:

For Cyril the Squirrel it was just another day. His main concern was the location of his nuts and the daily battle to avoid being eaten by something with nasty sharp bits and a taste for rodent. And then came The Cabbages of Doom.

Suddenly, Cyril found himself the key player in a struggle over time and space for his survival and the safety of those around him. Plus, if he's lucky, a bit of lovin' on the side. Take some marauding vegetables, add a menagerie of talking animals, then chuck in an army of chrome-plated midgets for good measure, and you have a story that will keep you amused and entertained* for, well, a few minutes. Maybe more.

*The author accepts no responsbility for readers that are neither amused nor entertained.

Location:Nottingham, UK