January 26, 2005

geoduckawake?

file under: thoughts about things

i got a piece of spam today with an initially broken image (that loaded only the second time i looked at the email), an unsubscribe link, and the following text:

crucible guernseyconfusion contributor geoduckawake amity documentthesaurus shaggy directorateadditional egan arcturussceptic vegetate appriseclinch effectuate chairmannightgown visual whomevernguyen waterside cradlemagna

i know i've said this before, but who falls for this stuff? i mean, could your spam be much less effective? actually, they could. i got another one today, with the subject line "vacuum pumps – cause deformed pen1s." the content of the email was for cheap prescription drugs. maybe the only way they get anywhere is by people clicking the unsubscribe link (which unfortuantely then verifies that their email address is valid and has a human being at the other end, which then causes them to send even more spam).

for some reason, it all reminds me of an exchange between Beavis and Butthead, where Beavis experiences a moment of deep reflection:

• Beavis: "uhhhh....hey butthead, if it's dark inside your butt, how do the turds find their way out?"
• Butthead: "uhhhh....i think they can like, see in the dark....like bats."
• Beavis: "Ohhh....yeah...yeah...that makes a lotta sense...yeah."

if this kind of logic obtains for spammers, then their tactics make a whole lot of sense.

Posted: 01.26.05 at 6:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

good, bad, ugly

file under: movies

i have a weakness for the old spaghetti westerns by sergio leone. as luck would have it, so does Target. last time elaine and i visited the big red bullseye, they had a bunch of spaghetti DVDs on sale for $9 a shot. who could resist? i bought everything on the shelf.

...

elaine had never seen any of the spaghetti westerns, so i decided the good, the bad, and the ugly (GBU) would be a good place to start. with the ultra–extended–edition DVD, it also turns out to be a very long place to start (161 minutes, to be precise).

it was great to see the film again after so many years — it remains a classic. elaine loved it, too. the first thing out of her mouth was, " damn...tarantino ripped this guy off!" indeed. it's a hard act to follow: sergio leone in the director's chair, eastwood, lee van cleef, and eli wallach shooting it out, and all of it set to a score by ennio morricone.

as i watched GBU this time, a few things jumped out at me:

• the cinematography — for lack of a better word, wow. the composition of each scene has been handled with care and grace, and it shows.
• there are no good guys; they're all mean, nihilistic, solipsistic, money–grubbing bastards — the world is their oyster. some of them, though, are more mean than others. Blondie (as Tuco calls him) is the perfect anti-hero. he's a bad guy that seems like he might have a good guy hiding inside (but you're not totally sure). on the other hand, the real bad guy (lee van cleef) is just the quintessential rotten apple.
• GBU is really, really violent. torture, hangings, mass murder, war, gratuitous drinking...it's all part of the spectacle.
• some parts of the movie draaaaaaag. the scene at the bridge with the drunk general? leone got a little self-indulgent there (you could fall asleep for 15 minutes and miss nothing). one suspects that he really just wanted to blow up that bridge, so he created all of this blood–soaked window–dressing around it to feel justified when the TNT finally makes its appearance. either that, or he just wanted to exploit his first big budget as much as possible.
• eastwood is good. very good. so are wallach and van cleef. i'm not sure the film would have had the same appeal without them.

what is it about the spaghettis, and westerns in general, that still captivate people?

there is an undying fascination the american west during this time period; western movies are just one way this time of expansion and chaos has been documented...the "wild west," complete with shootouts and vigilantes, actually spanned very little time — no more than 40 years (from 1860–1900), with the truly violent period probably spanning a lot less (1875–1885). by comparison, the roman empire was in power for 500 years. the egyptians? about 3000 years. sure, we've made a few movies about romans and pharaohs, but nowhere near the number of westerns that have been cranked out by Hollywood.

the wikipedia has an interesting discussion of the way americans (and others) romanticize the wild west. in a nutshell, they (it?) suggest there might be a few things behind this attraction, two of which are:

1. people like the simplicity of the wild west (clothes on your back, gun, horse (optional) vs. everything and everybody); things today are too complicated — it's hard to be reductionist about modern society in the same way.
2. american pop culture prefers a culture of honor to a culture of law, and the wild west was more the former than the latter (not sure if i agree with this, but it's an interesting idea).

at some point, client eastwood said,"As far as I'm concerned, Americans don't have any original art except Western movies and jazz." if you're willing to buy his idea, then it's ironic that one of the best examples of the american western was made by an italian and filmed in italy.

Posted: 01.26.05 at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

January 23, 2005

newspaper pile-up

file under: thoughts about things

the wreckage is strewn across the house — a two–month pile–up involving late–model Wall Street Journals and San Francisco Chronicles. the yellowing pages, piled here and there, are a testament to my laziness, my inability to follow the simplest of modern morning rituals.

...

it could be worse: i could keep everything. instead, i am selective in my garbage–collecting. every few days, i scan the stack of papers on the dining room table, looking for articles of interest, things worth a visit at some indeterminate point in the future. those go into one or more piles, and the rest goes into the recycling bin.

i usually scan the front page, but i just can't seem to sit down for the rest of it. there always seems to be so much to do during the day (not to mention the fact that i usually sleep as late as possible, thus leaving precious little time for lollygagging in front of the newspaper in the morning). so i save a section here, a section there, and promise myself that in that next block of free time i have, i'll sit down and catch all those culturally enriching tidbits, those insights about technology, the political analysis that helps me to pretend i'm informed.

but the next block of free time comes, and goes, and the papers sit there waiting patiently.

eventually it gets so bad that elaine starts to notice all of my little piles. each corresponds, more or less, to a certain period of time. dining room table is probably sometime this week. unused dining room chairs (above or below) are probably a week or two ago. living room table? last month. once the magazine rack in the living room fills up, i know there's a problem, since that's the more–than–a–month–old holding pen.

when i reach that container saturation point, like today, i have to make the tough call: sit down and actually read the stuff that i've set aside, or pitch it. if i decide to catch up, it's always a mixed bag, because i can only scan the wreckage, as it were, looking for survivors worth saving. an article about bittorrent? heck yeah...a tremendous coincidence, since i've been reading a lot about it in the past few days. articles about planning for my financial future? hmmm....probably worth a read, but it seems like there might be too much thinking involved. bush's inaugural speech? a few paragraphs ought to be sufficient to create a feeling of uneasy vertigo.

i know it will never change. it's like a new year's resolution: you can keep it for awhile, but old habits die hard. and so i suspect the rest of my life will be spent dealing with occasional newspaper pile–ups, unless of course, i just stop having them delivered...

nah. where's the fun in that?

Posted: 01.23.05 at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 21, 2005

apple apologists

file under: design

i've noticed there is a certain class of people out there who love Apple, and are willing to accept (and defend) just about any product Apple releases, without question. if Steve Jobs released a machine without a CPU, saying that he didn't want to bog people down with the whole central processing thing, the Apple apologists would say, "yeah, i guess i could just use it as a beautiful paperweight; who needs a CPU?"

this has come up several times in the last week, specifically in relation to the iPod shuffle. it's a really neat piece of industrial design, and has a lot over the competition, but it's got no display. it seems that in reviews i read, and with people i talk to, there is some measure of acceptance regarding screen omission: "i really want a screen on my portable music player, and can't really imagine not having one, but this is Apple, people...it must be fine without it. let's get on with the shuffle!"

if someone else released a music player without a (coupled) user interface, i suspect it would languish on the shelves and then wind up being sold as a portable disk drive instead. but with Apple, there seems to be some sort of tacit belief that they know best when it comes to industrial and user–centered design. maybe they do, but i don't think i'll be shuffling anytime soon.

ps: just in case there was confusion, i really love most apple products. i'm a believer, just not an apologist.

Posted: 01.21.05 at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

those sticky labels on stuff you buy

file under: thoughts about things

we went to IKEA last weekend (again). even though we went to look at a chaise lounge extension for our karlanda sofa, we wound up buying dishes. this always happens to me at IKEA. it's like the whole store is one big impulse buy; i rarely buy what i go there to get.

we got home with our IKEA365 dishes, and realized that our snazzy new glasses all had white sticky labels on them, each with a bar code and a product identifier. of course, these stickers had to be removed before use, but it's always a crap shoot with these things. they seem to fall into two categories:

1. "quick release" stickers that peel right off, leaving none of their gummy poo behind
2. "engineered–by–NASA" stickers (EBNS) that seem like they're holdovers from the space program, engineered to withstand re–entry through earth's atmosphere without showing the slightest hint of coming off

i've got no issues with labels in the first category. that's the way things should be. it's the EBNS labels that make my blood boil. of course, you can't look at a sticker and tell in which category it belongs. one needs to proceed as if they're all of the EBNS variety, and then be pleasantly surprised if they turn out to be quick–release.

for me, the sticker removal process usually goes something like this:

• sneak up to the sticky labels in question, preferably when they're not looking; act nonchalant — they can smell fear
• start at one corner, digging a nail underneath to get a starter edge; i dig up enough of an edge so i can get a good grip, thus avoiding immediate tear–away (a rookie maneuver)
• i gently tug at my starter edge and slowly start peeling; i'm going after the holy grail of label peeling at this point – the perfect, intact–label peel, where you get it all in one pull without leaving anything behind
• as i gain confidence that this is a quick–release peel, i speed up the pull a bit, or start acting like i'm the boss (clearly not the case)
• as the label comes up, i hear a slight tearing noise as the paper begins to separate from the adhesive
• the paper part of the label (or a small fraction of it) tears away, and i'm left with a mix of adhesive goo and paper left behind (along with the rest of the sticker)
• i scream
• elaine tells me to calm down, it's just a sticker
• i spend the next five minutes manually scraping at the remnants of the sticky label and the goo it's left behind
• the sticky label laughs at me from the grave — a nice gummy film is left behind as monument to its memory

at this point, i usually drag out either the cotton balls and nail polish remover, or i crank up the hot water in the sink, and scrub the adhesive scum off with soap. i probably should have done these things from the outset, but because there's always the possibility that the label is a quick–release, i try to take the easy way out.

now, i realize the label makers are in a bind. they have to engineer labels with the perfect balance of stickiness: sticky enough to stay attached under normal operating conditions, but not so sticky that you can't pull them off. it doesn't seem like it should be that hard. i mean, engineers at 3M solved this years ago with the Post–It note, right? we put an unmanned probe on Titan, for heaven's sake, why can't we make the perfect label? is it that there's just too much variation in the stuff we stick things to, or are people just being lazy with their adhesive label engineering?

i suspect the best course of action at this point is to follow elaine's advice — calm down, it's just a sticker.

Posted: 01.21.05 at 12:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

January 20, 2005

in the wayback machine with bill

file under: thoughts about things

check this out: bill gates strikes a pose for teen beat magazine (1983)

this is funny on many levels. the thing that i like most is the hacker– cred points he gets for the eye luggage. i can just hear the girls: "did you see the bags under his eyes? i bet he slept under his desk all week. he is HOT!"

Posted: 01.20.05 at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 15, 2005

hooray for Huygens!

file under: thoughts about things

the Huygens probe landed successfully on the surface of Titan yesterday — hooray for Huygens! from 750 million miles away, it transmitted data with all its heart for almost four hours, and then went silent as its batteries died. here's the first color image of the surface of this magnificent moon:

view large image

it took 15+ years (planning + flight–time), $3.26 billion, and the cooperation of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the Italian Space Agency, and people from 17 nations. it's one of the most amazing things done in the history of human space endeavors, and it's just one part of the larger Cassini–Huygens mission to study Saturn and some of its moons. check out the following for the complete 411 and lots of cool stuff:

• NASA Cassini-Huygens site
• ESA Cassini-Huygens site
• Wikipedia: Cassini-Huygens mission
• Wikipedia: Huygens probe
• listen to the sounds of an alien world

i don't remember the last time my geek buttons got pushed this hard. i basically spent most of this afternoon reading, learning everything i could about the mission. during my wanderings on the Web, i collected a few facts and some random observations. read on for more...

...

here's what you'll find below:

• images from huygens
• about titan
• about cassini–huygens (mission + craft)
• stuff that went wrong
• mission challenges and devilish details
• deep thoughts

images from huygens
scientists will be poring over the data from Huygens for a long time. right now, there are a few cool images, a few surprises, and lots of speculation. the images below show two aerial views (top: drainage channels leading to ???; bottom: 360 degree panorama showing what appears to be a coastline)

  

view large image

a great composite of the Huygens images above can be found at spaceflightnow.com, where they've annotated the images to show where Huygens' landing spot is relative to the images.

about titan
Titan was discovered in 1655 by Christiaan Huygens. it's one of the more amazing moons in the entire solar system, which is no doubt why it was chosen as worthy of observation. just a few facts:

• It is one of 33 Saturnian moons and is bigger than the planet Mercury
• Titan is the only moon in the solar system massive enough to have a dense, planet–like atmosphere with clouds
• Titan's surface temperature: -290 degrees Fahrenheit
• Titan's atmosphere is composed of nitrogen, methane, and other organic compounds

about cassini-huygens (mission + craft)
the Cassini–Huygens mission is massive in scope and duration. a complete description of the mission can be found on the ESA web site. a few interesting facts:

• Project initiation: ~1982 (discussions began at NASA)
• Launch date: 15 Oct 1997
• Cassini mission duration (around Saturn): 4+ years
• DIstance of journey: 3.2 billion miles
• Huygens mission duration (on Titan): ~4 hours (2.5 in atmosphere + 1.5 on surface)
• Cassini-Huygens is the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built (5650 kg = 12430 lbs)
• Gravity assisted maneuvers (2 x Venus, 1 x Earth) provided the equivalent of 68000 kg of rocket fuel; this was required because there was no way to impart enough energy to send it directly to Saturn
• Cassini uses Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) for power (heat generated by decaying plutonium); solar arrays would have been too large (based on power requirements)
• No other human-made craft have landed on celestial bodies as far away as Titan

stuff that went wrong
the mission is an incredible success. however, a few things went wrong...fortunately, they didn't damage the success of the mission:

• Cassini telemetry firmware used to communicate with Huygens had a critical design flaw; it couldn't handle the Doppler-shifted signals that would result from Huygens' descent through the atmosphere of Titan, and thus would be unable to relay Huygens' communications (Huygens could not communicate directly with Earth; it had to relay all communications through its parent). mission control altered the trajectory of Huygens' landing to compensate; they were successful, but it was close...there was almost no margin for error.
• Cassini had two redundant communication channels to capture Huygens' image data; one of these channels failed due to a missing computer command (human error). half of all Huygens' image data was lost, but 350 high–quality images still made it home, along with all other scientific data and additional observations from ground–based radio telescopes.

mission challenges and devilish details
as i read about the mission, and how Huygens made its successful landing yesterday, it started to dawn on me all of the little details the mission scientists had to consider to be successful. some of them seem pretty obvious when you think about it, but i'm sure there are thousands more:

• Huygens had to land on the sunny side of Titan (otherwise the images would have been pretty boring, yeah?); come to think of it, the atmosphere on Titan has a layer of smog 300+ kilometers thick ...how did they even know it was going to be light at the surface?
• scientists weren't sure whether Huygens would land on a mountain, in a sea, or on a spire of methane ice. they had to design the craft to work regardless of its landing spot.
• Huygens was crammed with lots of gizmos to measure conditions on Titan; but think of it — if you were going to another world, what experiments would you want to perform? how did they decide they wanted acoustical measurements to see what Titan sounded like?
• Huygens entry trajectory had to be precise (within 3 degrees), otherwise it would not be able to communicate with its parent (see stuff that went wrong above).

deep thoughts
the news these days is filled with too many examples of human ugliness: war, murder, rape, torture, corruption. it seems no depth is too deep — we can sink there. at the same time, we do things like Cassini–Huygens: we work together to explore our solar system, to try to fathom the mysteries of time and space, to find our place in it together.

if a team of three space agencies, working for 15+ years with people from 17 nations, can land a probe on another world, it seems there might be hope for us yet...

Posted: 01.15.05 at 2:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 12, 2005

it's official - no WMDs!

file under: thoughts about things

the US has announced, officially, conclusively, finally, on–the–recordly, that no weapons of mass destruction were located in iraq. they're calling off the search and reassigning the 1700 people who've been scouring the desert for the past 112 years with magnifying glasses and specially designed bioweapon dowsing rods.

it's nobody's fault, mind you, that we didn't find anything. i'm happy our president is above going around assigning blame or admitting we made a mistake or doing any of that accountability stuff. that's just stinkin' thinkin', and this administration is more about gettin' things done; there's lots of hard work out there to be done, after all.

i will sleep better knowing for sure, with absolute certainty, that there are no WMDs out there in iraq. it was keeping me awake, really. i'd lie there thinking, "we went to war because there were WMDs...where did that sneaky saddam hide them?! are they stashed in bunker–buster– proof caves in the mountains of afghanistan? did he ship them to libya disguised as funny red hats, and now khadafy is gonna lay waste to our freedoms after gaining our trust?"

but no.

i don't have to think these things any more, because there are really, truly, no WMDs in iraq. never had 'em (after 1991), never had a workable plan to get 'em — wanted 'em, hell yeah — but just couldn't get their sunni salami together to build 'em or buy 'em.

so, i'd like to take this opportunity to say, "thank you george bush, for making the world a safer place for democracy. we look forward to the result of the upcoming iraqi elections with great, great anticipation. since you have stated with certainty that the elections will be held and they will forge a democracy in that poor country, i can sleep well about that issue, too."

PS: for those worrying simultaneously about rathergate and WMDs in iraq, the Poor Man has put together a nice quantitative comparison of the two searches.

PPS: i'm not finding fault here with the dedicated legions of people in the ISG who conducted the search, nor am i saying that there was never a possibility that iraq had WMDs after 1991. i'm finding fault with our president's complete inability to admit having made a mistake of grand proportions (something that David Kay admitted openly before the senate armed services committee). i'm finding fault with an administration that has taken this long to admit something that everyone has pretty much known for a long, long time.

don't take my word for it; take the word of David Kay (quoted by AP). he knows a lot more about it than i do:

"It is like dropping a shoe a little late. Quite frankly, I don't think anyone who follows it very closely has suspected anything else over the last year. It was a matter of when the obvious would be done."
  — David Kay, former head of the Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) charged with finding WMDs

NOTE (01.18.05): an astute reader suggested that i would be wise to read david kay's report, that it in fact showed that iraq had WMD programs that were in violation of various UN resolutions. while i think it's clear that iraq was in violation of numerous UN resolutions, it is not at all clear that iraq had ongoing and viable chemical or biological weapons programs. the open-ended language of kay's report showed that no clear conclusions could be drawn (cf., intentions of the iraqi government and possibilities that things could have happened had UN sanctions been withdrawn). my primary conclusion from reading the kay report is that UN sanctions after 1991 worked, for the most part — saddam hussein's regime was thwarted in its desire to obtain WMDs. for addition analysis, you can read slate's commentary on the kay report and kay's final testimony before the senate armed services committee.

and one final PS: the thing that burns me even more about this is that clinton, for his frisky sins, got impeached, whereas bush will probably be remembered warmly as a proactive, no–nonsense president.

Posted: 01.12.05 at 9:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

docrpm.com outage

file under: about this blog

docrpm.com experienced a service outage due to the unfortunate fact that i let my domain expire. as a result, the site went down for anywhere between 24-72 hours (depending on your ISP).

in a previous entry (digital dead letters), i announced the demise of my old email address, and mused about the consequences of its death. the temporary death of my domain was one of them — my account profile at my registrar had the old email address as my contact point. so, when they sent me a bunch of emails about the fact that my domain was about to expire, those letters went into the digital ether, the equivalent of the digital dead letter office...oops.

anybody know what this will do to my stature with google's bots?

Posted: 01.12.05 at 6:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

natural disasters as an engine for social change

file under: thoughts about things

NPR ran an interesting piece on All Things Considered today about disasters and how the changes they wreak go beyond physical devastation. in particular, they examined the 1976 Tangshan earthquake (north-east of Beijing, China), an 8.3 temblor that killed at least 240,000 (this is the official chinese estimate; outsiders estimated the number could have been as high as 750,000).

...

china refused outside aid, insisting that they could deal with it themselves. indeed, the Red Flag journal is quoted as saying:

"Any grave natural disaster can be overcome with the guidance of Chairman Mao."
 — Spokesman for the Red Flag journal

as it turns out, charmain mao was not up to the task (he was on his deathbed at the time). the disaster was one big domino that helped end the cultural revolution and pushed china to move away from mao's vision of a world without the influence of bourgeois intellectuals (seismologists among them). chinese earthquake experts (those that weren't in re-education camps) had apparently warned the government that a quake was likely, but their warnings went unheeded...

this type of social change as the result of disaster doesn't seem unique, and is even understandable. religious figures can turn disaster into a catalyst for change – "God is angry with us...we must cast out the [insert scapegoat for social problems here]!!" i've heard several stories after the tsunami that this is the message some muslim imams are bringing to their flocks...this is not to say that christians or people of any other religious persuasion would act differently. in the face of incomprehensible tragedy, it's easy to point to the unhappiness of your local deity, and to incite change as a result.

what changes will come about in Asia as a result of the tsunami? it's too early to tell. apparently, after almost 30 years, people still comb through the rubble in Tangshan, looking for baubles amidst the wreckage of people's lives. the echoes of disaster can be heard for generations...

Posted: 01.12.05 at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 11, 2005

stray cards

file under: thoughts about things

you might have received a few stray cards in the mail lately...you know, those envelopes from friends postmarked between dec. 25 and jan. 4; people writing to wish you a "happy new year!"

please.

we're wise to that game, people.

...

when you go to the card store, you rarely see shelves lined with 'happy new year' cards. there's a reason: no one sends them. at least, not intentionally...it's really a big cover-up. a cover-up for the lazy, the busy, and the guilty.

didn't send your christmas cards out in time? no problem! just plop a generic card in the mail, call it a 'happy new year' card, and move on to bigger and brighter things. someone sent you a card but you didn't send them one? don't feel guilty!! send out that 'happy new year' card and you'll be right as rain!

...

guilt. it's what makes the american christmas holidays go 'round. in case you didn't feel enough for not getting friends and family their "fair share" of presents, xmas–card guilt is there to save the day. i sent a few cards this year to folks that aren't normally on my list, mostly because they were a nice part of my year, and i wanted to wish them well. i got (unexpected) cards from them after xmas in response; it seemed odd, but i guess everybody wins: i get to hear from people and they get to use up those extra cards. the same happened to elaine.

i'm not trying to make anyone feel bad here. in fact, quite the opposite. i wish people felt ok if they didn't send cards to people who sent them something (card, Caddy, or otherwise). communications, like gifts, should be offered with no strings attached.

instead, it seems like every action we take around the holidays is imbued with so much meaning...every card, every call, every fruitcake.

it's all a big social game (or at least, it seems so to me). it's not about one-upmanship – it's about reciprocity (or the appearance of it). as long as you maintain card–sending parity with your friends and family, everything is ok. you may have off years, but re–establish things the next year, and life goes on. slip too much and risk dropping off someone's card list: "steve didn't send me a card last year! humph! we'll see if he gets one next year, by gum!!!"

but there i go being cynical again.

i guess a part of me just wishes that christmas cards weren't the only time i made the effort to get in touch with certain people. it's a far too infrequent dialog to have with friends and family, especially considering that none of us knows the arrival time of that bus with our name on it. at the same time, there's a subset of my acquaintances who would probably think it weird if we talked more than that – there's the christmas card expectation, and to go beyond that might seem odd or perhaps even needy, in a holiday sort of way.

christmas cards are definitely an issue for me (see holiday hostage for previous thoughts). it seems like such an insignifcant worry in the grand scheme of things, and yet every year, the ghost of christmas past rises up again, and says, "did you send a card to uncle snerd? after all, he wrote you last year!"

Posted: 01.11.05 at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

January 8, 2005

movable type link integrity

file under: about this blog

i noticed one small problem with my movable type upgrade: internal link integrity. in other words, links from blog entries to other blog entries got corrupted. this seems to be a consequence of several things, some within my control, some not:

• paths changed to top-level blog directories (my issue)
• entry numbers changed within MT database (not sure who owns this one, since i did delete a few old entries that were in draft form)
• movable type seems to have changed the directory structure for date-based archives between versions 2.x and 3.x (definitely not my issue)

if you find any entries that appear to have issues with internal links, please let me know, and i'll fix them asap. as before, thanks for your patience with the upgrade.

Posted: 01.08.05 at 1:33 PM | Permalink

January 7, 2005

docrpm.com v2.0

file under: about this blog

welcome to the upgraded version of docrpm.com! it's been a long time coming.

new features include the following:

• categories for blog entries
• what i'm reading, watching and listening to at any given time
• completely revamped templates with a totally new look and feel
• other technical stuff that will hopefully let me control comment spam

over the next week or two, there will probably be some bugs or minor issues. let me know if you have any problems, and thanks for your patience. please let me know if you have any problems, especially with comment submission (which i haven't tested thoroughly yet).

NOTE (01.08.05): i have already fixed a number of errors related to links (anchor and otherwise), most notably all the links in the right column. category headers have been fixed, and an image rotation script has been added for the banner.

Posted: 01.07.05 at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

January 3, 2005

use of weapons

file under: books

ryan hoguet and i are starting on an odyssey through iain banks' culture novels. this is the first we chose to read.

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not many (sane) people can say they've created universes. a certain class of science fiction (and fantasy) authors can; iain banks is one of them (gene wolfe, frank herbert, and jrr tolkien are others). not only can mr. banks claim to have created a universe; he can also point to a shelf of critically-acclaimed literary fiction. no small feat.

banks' science fiction universe focuses on The Culture and the exploits of various beings within it (human, tentacled, and otherwise). imagine human society in the far, far future, throw in a few assumptions about social, political, and philosophical systems, add some AI and alien civilizations, mix, and presto – The Culture. i've just done mr. banks a horrible disservice by simplifying his richly imagined society in this way; please read his description for a more complete perspective (see A Few Notes on the Culture, rec.arts.sf.written, 1994).

as far as i know, banks has written the following novels that involve The Culture:

• the state of the art
• consider phlebas
• use of wepons
• the player of games
• feersum endjinn
• against a dark background
• excessions
• look to windward

at present, i've only read excessions and use of weapons. each is entertaining in its own right, but they're quite different. consider phlebas and player of games are next (although elaine seems to think i should "take a break" from reading so much sci-fi; this is akin to telling a crack addict to just put down the pipe, please, and have some food).

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i won't go into a detailed review of use of weapons, you can find lots of reviews on amazon.co.uk if you're interested. i did want to share a few things, however.

use of weapons (UOW) is one of the more unusual science fiction novels i've read. the book unfolds across multiple timelines with occasionally confusing transitions, all of which come together at the end in a coherent way (for me, at least – your mileage may vary). the writing style is closer to that of his literary fiction than it is to what i would call traditional sci-fi narrative (i.e., plot-driven writing that's fairly devoid of figurative prose).

banks, like the best science fiction authors, writes great stories with complex characters immune to quick description. cheradenine zakalwe, the protagonist (?) of UOW, is a man with so much history (both remembered and forgotten) that neither he nor we know who he is or what he'll do. his many pasts, made possible by The Culture, have almost allowed him to lead multiple lives in a sense, each of which he tries to rationalize with his fractured sense of self. by the end of the book, his actions seem self-consistent, though, in a maddeningly human way. or do they? i'll leave that to you to discover. :-)

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in the novels of The Culture, science and technological advancement are the pistons and gasoline for the cars that banks' characters drive. his far-future universe is an important device for setting context, and for composing operas on scales to baffle our tiny minds. at the end, though, what i like about his books is that humanity, and the dirty, exciting, chaotic lives we lead, never seem to play second fiddle to FTL travel and energy grids.

NOTE: apparently, there is some thought that the mythology of Halo (yes, the game) is inspired by The Culture novels. check out this collection of Halo / Culture connections.

Posted: 01.03.05 at 5:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)