![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
I just finished the last book of the Night Watch trilogy by Sergei Lukyanenko and wanted to dispense some thoughts. I'll start by paraphrasing one of the back cover quotes by saying that the books are part typical modern hidden group of supernatural others stories, part hardboiled detective stories, but it also must be noted that the three books of short story collections are written by a Russian and set in Russia, giving a light, glossed-over view of that culture. Some of the "Russian-isms," like characters using the full name of another character they are speaking with much more frequently than Americans would, jarred me until I got used to it, and lyrics of (I assume) modern Russian music that the text quotes deal with themes that are much more thought-provoking than most I've heard in English. The cross-cultural immersion reminds me of some parts of the movie "Lost in Translation". Fortunately, there aren't any parts where a lack of familiarity with the Russian culture hinders understanding the plot, but the stories are definitely more interesting with these added cultural tidbits.
The tales are fairly classic noir detective pieces in structure, with some variation thrown for good measure, but magic and the epic Cold War-esque battle between Light and Dark form the setting instead of fedoras and a dark cityscape. Like any good noir, Lukyanenko explores varying moralities fairly deeply, but the stories are about equally split between psychological exploration, maneuvering/discovery, and physical (and metaphysical) action. The pacing is pretty good, with a bit of a lull at the beginning of the second book that picks up tremendously before that book ends. Some of the dueling conversations between the various factions throughout the trilogy are fascinating, and some of the characterization is excellent.
Additionally, while the trilogy hinges on the evolving worldview of one main character as well as his triumphs and failures, each of the three books highlights interactions with one of the three main underground factions in the setting. As a whole, it's a fun, not too dark, but not too light, exploration of Good vs. Evil that I highly recommend. Although they are much more gritty than Harry Potter books, and not as well written, I think most people who liked HP would enjoy these, as well as anyone playing horror roleplaying games.
The tales are fairly classic noir detective pieces in structure, with some variation thrown for good measure, but magic and the epic Cold War-esque battle between Light and Dark form the setting instead of fedoras and a dark cityscape. Like any good noir, Lukyanenko explores varying moralities fairly deeply, but the stories are about equally split between psychological exploration, maneuvering/discovery, and physical (and metaphysical) action. The pacing is pretty good, with a bit of a lull at the beginning of the second book that picks up tremendously before that book ends. Some of the dueling conversations between the various factions throughout the trilogy are fascinating, and some of the characterization is excellent.
Additionally, while the trilogy hinges on the evolving worldview of one main character as well as his triumphs and failures, each of the three books highlights interactions with one of the three main underground factions in the setting. As a whole, it's a fun, not too dark, but not too light, exploration of Good vs. Evil that I highly recommend. Although they are much more gritty than Harry Potter books, and not as well written, I think most people who liked HP would enjoy these, as well as anyone playing horror roleplaying games.
Yep, another little theme shuffle here. I got tired of having slow scrolling on the old theme, though I loved it so.
I finished up Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself and have to say it's climbed to number two on my favorite Bryson books list, closely following In a Sunburned Country. After I wrote my previous review, the next few episodes in Stranger were simply sublime pieces of humor, some of Bryson's most humorous work. Serves me right for reviewing a partially-read book.
I followed that up with Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle which, as many Dick novels, has a somewhat cryptic ending. The novel is about the movements of the I Ching and its relationship to a novel that all of the major characters are reading. Man in the High Castle is an alternate history, but so is the novel that the characters are reading as they go about their various activities. Reading or interacting with this fictional book is a minor glue that holds together the characters, becoming more and more important as the novel proceeds. The conclusion has some fascinating psychological gyrations that I won't spill. Suffice it to say that this mental twist of an alternate history inside of an alternate history takes a spectacular dive off a cliff by the story's close. Additionally, there is a strong theme of cultural interaction as Eastern, European (German, actually), and American cultures collide and intermingle in the book. Dick stereotypes and humanizes these various cultures, commenting with deft strokes, and leaving no clear winner in the comparisons. As you can probably tell, I dug it muchly.
A friend's loaned me Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and its sequel. So far I like the setting, the characterizations, and how the plot's flowing, but I'm starting to see a religion vs. science theme that might get a bit irritable to me. Hopefully it's not drummed up too much.
I finished up Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself and have to say it's climbed to number two on my favorite Bryson books list, closely following In a Sunburned Country. After I wrote my previous review, the next few episodes in Stranger were simply sublime pieces of humor, some of Bryson's most humorous work. Serves me right for reviewing a partially-read book.
I followed that up with Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle which, as many Dick novels, has a somewhat cryptic ending. The novel is about the movements of the I Ching and its relationship to a novel that all of the major characters are reading. Man in the High Castle is an alternate history, but so is the novel that the characters are reading as they go about their various activities. Reading or interacting with this fictional book is a minor glue that holds together the characters, becoming more and more important as the novel proceeds. The conclusion has some fascinating psychological gyrations that I won't spill. Suffice it to say that this mental twist of an alternate history inside of an alternate history takes a spectacular dive off a cliff by the story's close. Additionally, there is a strong theme of cultural interaction as Eastern, European (German, actually), and American cultures collide and intermingle in the book. Dick stereotypes and humanizes these various cultures, commenting with deft strokes, and leaving no clear winner in the comparisons. As you can probably tell, I dug it muchly.
A friend's loaned me Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and its sequel. So far I like the setting, the characterizations, and how the plot's flowing, but I'm starting to see a religion vs. science theme that might get a bit irritable to me. Hopefully it's not drummed up too much.
I'm still reading through Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself and enjoying it very much, but the similar format of each entry is weighing slightly on that enjoyment. They're too short, unfortunately. While the content is still very good, Bryson's unable to go into enough depth on some topics in these three- to four-page essays to really cover them as effectively and hilariously as he does in his longer works. Maybe part of it is also that he didn't have much time to put each of these together before it needed to be published originally. Some bits are convulsively funny, absolutely classic must-reads for any middle-aged American, and the rest is good examples of short humorous prose, so I still highly recommend the book to any Bryson fans and also to anyone interested in the works of Dave Barry and Garrison Keilor, but it's probably number three on my favorite Bryson books list.
I so lied when I said content would pick up last post ... Just had a bunch of other stuff going on in meatspace, but I'm back. I think I'll just blorp out a mish-mash and let you poor folks slog through it rather than splitting into separate tech and "-lish" posts, so hold on tight.
Neil Gaiman recently made some headlines by releasing his masterwork American Gods for free. If you haven't read this book, I can't recommend it enough. Gaiman is unsurpassed at creating modern mythology that dips deeply into prior mythological work, and American Gods and the Sandman graphic novels are not only Gaiman's best, but the best literary works of the genre, and definitely among the best works of modern fictional storytelling. It's free now, so go git it!
I've begun reading Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself, a collection of short articles that Bryson wrote for a British readership after moving back to America. They are absolutely hilarious diatribes about various oddities of American life delivered with Bryson's brilliant blend of razor wit and deep reverence. This may be his best, narrowly beating out In a Sunburned Land as my top Bill Bryson book. Bryson's neck and neck right now with Dave Barry as my top literary humorist.
Moving on through the "-lish", here's an unbelievably cool tropes wiki. What's a trope? From the front page of TV Tropes, they are "devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations." This means tropes are important to writers, critics, and anyone else interested in modern story-telling, including roleplaying gamers. It also means absolutely fascinating reading because the entries are just about everything but dry.
I found some gems of awfulness on the TV Tropes "So Bad It's Horrible" entry to share. Beware, these are toxic. First, The Eye of Argon, one of the most terrible fantasy epics ever. (This is "terrible" in the senses of both really bad and terribly violent at the same time) Next, widely regarded as the worst poem in English, I present the short horror of Theophilus Marzials's "A Tragedy".
Finally, in the roleplaying game category are two stinky examples of So Bad It's Horrible that I have to spotlight. The second is near and dear to my heart, as you'll see. Read this review of FATAL. FATAL was an RPG that I got maybe a page and a half into before I completely wiped my freely-obtained copy online somewhere. There's a link to the FATAL PDF at the top of the review if you're really desperate. I'd rather say I'm not linking to it than linking to it. Then there's the Wraeththu roleplaying game. As some of you may recall, I subjected myself to the first Wraeththu novel and started on the second before tossing the whole series out as utter rubbish, so this review of how terrible the RPG is strikes a sympathetic chord with me. The review's more oriented toward gameworld and setting analysis than system mechanics, and it's hi-lariously harsh. Shockingly, people are evidently paying money for the Wraeththu game.
I'm done with purely literary topics for this post. As a bridge to tech topics, here's an interesting article about "cultural" aspects of free operating system users (i.e. Linux). Especially interesting are items 5 and 6 in the list: "Free software users explore" and "Free software users expect to help themselves". In other words, free software users tend to be more confident and technically savvy with technological tools, something I find to be generally true. Linux nerds, ho!
Speaking of Linux, Anyone mounting FUSE filesystems under Linux should check this article out about setting up afuse, a FUSE filesystem automounter. I'm using FUSE to ssh into my iPod Touch, but I have a pair of scripts I run manually to do the mount and unmount of the FUSE filesystem that are working fine for me. Still, automation is good, right? So I might look into this on down the road.
Finally, I present InfoWorld's all-time top 25 flops list. I disagree heartily with some of these, such as iPod imitators, and wanted to link this up to air my strong ongoing opinion that money flows from sources to media makers to promote their products. I don't have any evidence to back this up on this particular article, but just from the iPod imitators entry I have to wonder how much InfoWorld and/or the author of this article benefits from Apple. My iRiver media player beats the shizzle out of my iPod Touch in one major area: media compatibility. I like Ogg Vorbis audio much more than MP3, so thanks to Apple's unwillingness to allow their media players to play this totally free compressed audio format, I'm highly inconvenienced. Dicks. There are workarounds, but why should I have to go there? Just open it up, Apple! Sorry, started ranting a little there. I also disagree with other entries in the list, such as the PS/2. The PS/2 wasn't popular with consumers, but it was an important interim step in the evolution of PC hardware that shouldn't just be discounted as an outright failure, for example. So this is thought-provoking on a couple levels for people who've been teching for a while.
Adam Boeglin, the excellent porter of various apps to the iRex iLiad, generated a new FBReader version a month or two ago. I plopped it excitedly onto my iLiad and found that I have almost no use for the new version unless I can get it to be the default reader for .txt files and I can access the options to change the font and alter text formatting for different files. This bums me out, because otherwise, it looks to be a nice update. Adam's now beating on a usable browser for the iLiad that looks hawt, but I'm browsing via my iPod Touch these days if I need a portable browser.
One more note about the iLiad and then this post's toast. I have read bunches of formats of ebooks on my iLiad and I have to say that the iLiad-formatted PDF offerings at Feedbooks are the finest. You download a book, move it to the iLiad, find it in the iLiad's hierarchy, pop it open, and stop thinking you're reading something in an electronic format. No resizing, fine legibility, and the flexibility of the iLiad's built-in PDF reader all combine into an excellent, seamless reading experience. Bravo, Feedbooks!
Neil Gaiman recently made some headlines by releasing his masterwork American Gods for free. If you haven't read this book, I can't recommend it enough. Gaiman is unsurpassed at creating modern mythology that dips deeply into prior mythological work, and American Gods and the Sandman graphic novels are not only Gaiman's best, but the best literary works of the genre, and definitely among the best works of modern fictional storytelling. It's free now, so go git it!
I've begun reading Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself, a collection of short articles that Bryson wrote for a British readership after moving back to America. They are absolutely hilarious diatribes about various oddities of American life delivered with Bryson's brilliant blend of razor wit and deep reverence. This may be his best, narrowly beating out In a Sunburned Land as my top Bill Bryson book. Bryson's neck and neck right now with Dave Barry as my top literary humorist.
Moving on through the "-lish", here's an unbelievably cool tropes wiki. What's a trope? From the front page of TV Tropes, they are "devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations." This means tropes are important to writers, critics, and anyone else interested in modern story-telling, including roleplaying gamers. It also means absolutely fascinating reading because the entries are just about everything but dry.
I found some gems of awfulness on the TV Tropes "So Bad It's Horrible" entry to share. Beware, these are toxic. First, The Eye of Argon, one of the most terrible fantasy epics ever. (This is "terrible" in the senses of both really bad and terribly violent at the same time) Next, widely regarded as the worst poem in English, I present the short horror of Theophilus Marzials's "A Tragedy".
Finally, in the roleplaying game category are two stinky examples of So Bad It's Horrible that I have to spotlight. The second is near and dear to my heart, as you'll see. Read this review of FATAL. FATAL was an RPG that I got maybe a page and a half into before I completely wiped my freely-obtained copy online somewhere. There's a link to the FATAL PDF at the top of the review if you're really desperate. I'd rather say I'm not linking to it than linking to it. Then there's the Wraeththu roleplaying game. As some of you may recall, I subjected myself to the first Wraeththu novel and started on the second before tossing the whole series out as utter rubbish, so this review of how terrible the RPG is strikes a sympathetic chord with me. The review's more oriented toward gameworld and setting analysis than system mechanics, and it's hi-lariously harsh. Shockingly, people are evidently paying money for the Wraeththu game.
I'm done with purely literary topics for this post. As a bridge to tech topics, here's an interesting article about "cultural" aspects of free operating system users (i.e. Linux). Especially interesting are items 5 and 6 in the list: "Free software users explore" and "Free software users expect to help themselves". In other words, free software users tend to be more confident and technically savvy with technological tools, something I find to be generally true. Linux nerds, ho!
Speaking of Linux, Anyone mounting FUSE filesystems under Linux should check this article out about setting up afuse, a FUSE filesystem automounter. I'm using FUSE to ssh into my iPod Touch, but I have a pair of scripts I run manually to do the mount and unmount of the FUSE filesystem that are working fine for me. Still, automation is good, right? So I might look into this on down the road.
Finally, I present InfoWorld's all-time top 25 flops list. I disagree heartily with some of these, such as iPod imitators, and wanted to link this up to air my strong ongoing opinion that money flows from sources to media makers to promote their products. I don't have any evidence to back this up on this particular article, but just from the iPod imitators entry I have to wonder how much InfoWorld and/or the author of this article benefits from Apple. My iRiver media player beats the shizzle out of my iPod Touch in one major area: media compatibility. I like Ogg Vorbis audio much more than MP3, so thanks to Apple's unwillingness to allow their media players to play this totally free compressed audio format, I'm highly inconvenienced. Dicks. There are workarounds, but why should I have to go there? Just open it up, Apple! Sorry, started ranting a little there. I also disagree with other entries in the list, such as the PS/2. The PS/2 wasn't popular with consumers, but it was an important interim step in the evolution of PC hardware that shouldn't just be discounted as an outright failure, for example. So this is thought-provoking on a couple levels for people who've been teching for a while.
Adam Boeglin, the excellent porter of various apps to the iRex iLiad, generated a new FBReader version a month or two ago. I plopped it excitedly onto my iLiad and found that I have almost no use for the new version unless I can get it to be the default reader for .txt files and I can access the options to change the font and alter text formatting for different files. This bums me out, because otherwise, it looks to be a nice update. Adam's now beating on a usable browser for the iLiad that looks hawt, but I'm browsing via my iPod Touch these days if I need a portable browser.
One more note about the iLiad and then this post's toast. I have read bunches of formats of ebooks on my iLiad and I have to say that the iLiad-formatted PDF offerings at Feedbooks are the finest. You download a book, move it to the iLiad, find it in the iLiad's hierarchy, pop it open, and stop thinking you're reading something in an electronic format. No resizing, fine legibility, and the flexibility of the iLiad's built-in PDF reader all combine into an excellent, seamless reading experience. Bravo, Feedbooks!
I've now got a jailbroken 1.1.3 firmware iPod Touch. Some of the apps I was using didn't quite work right with the new firmware but that seems to have been resolved with a bit of upgrading. I learned some things about how ssh works to get the iPod Touch syncing back up with Ubuntu again, too. What good is a toy if it's not edjikayshunal? The deeds are done and I'm good to go, back to using it as my primary in-car music source. Aw yeah.
Best of all, no iTunes was involved, though I find myself browsing through the podcasts once in a while.
I dove into the three Sandman graphic novels that one of my stepdaughters gave me for Christmas last week and utterly devoured them. There's unbelievably good stuff in there, and now I have GOT to get the last graphic novel to finish up the story because the ending of the last book I have leaves a gigantic change that needs resolution. Mr. Gaiman, I salute you and thank you again for this amazing literary journey.
I'm still cruising through The Secret Adversary and enjoying its breathless sensational pace and the whole English society setting. One of the protagonists calls a friendly young man a brick in one sentence, and while I thought at first that she was berating him unjustly for dimwittedness, I learned from context that she meant he was rock solid and dependable, as one example. Another fun difference from current usage is that "cute" is used to mean "smart". It's fun.
I haven't started Battle Royale or any of my new Bill Bryson books as my wife's tasked me with reading some of the baby-related books that she's been going through. I may have to give Battle Royale back to its owner unread.
Not that interesting this post, there's been a lot going on in meatspace these past couple of weeks. Content here will pick up, though.
Best of all, no iTunes was involved, though I find myself browsing through the podcasts once in a while.
I dove into the three Sandman graphic novels that one of my stepdaughters gave me for Christmas last week and utterly devoured them. There's unbelievably good stuff in there, and now I have GOT to get the last graphic novel to finish up the story because the ending of the last book I have leaves a gigantic change that needs resolution. Mr. Gaiman, I salute you and thank you again for this amazing literary journey.
I'm still cruising through The Secret Adversary and enjoying its breathless sensational pace and the whole English society setting. One of the protagonists calls a friendly young man a brick in one sentence, and while I thought at first that she was berating him unjustly for dimwittedness, I learned from context that she meant he was rock solid and dependable, as one example. Another fun difference from current usage is that "cute" is used to mean "smart". It's fun.
I haven't started Battle Royale or any of my new Bill Bryson books as my wife's tasked me with reading some of the baby-related books that she's been going through. I may have to give Battle Royale back to its owner unread.
Not that interesting this post, there's been a lot going on in meatspace these past couple of weeks. Content here will pick up, though.
I did a quick review of this blog just for grins and was surprised to see that it's been going for almost two years now. So I survived all of 2007 without running some version of BBS or forum, the longest lapse in doing so in a couple of decades. I miss it sometimes. Other times I think about the amount of time I spent on it vs. the amount of time I have to do such things now. Still, it was a great social thing for me, and I don't regret much of the time spent at all. I wouldn't be nearly as good at figuring out how to do things on computers without that experience, wouldn't have my excellent stepdaughters because I wouldn't have met my first wife, and just wouldn't be me without having run The Place of Magic.
I know it's cliche to look back on the past at the beginning of a new year, but I think it's important to see where you've been to try to keep the journey so far in perspective so it's easier to focus on what's ahead. Unfortunately for me, there's a lot of regret involved in some of my past decisions. I was young for too long... heheh. But again, I wouldn't be me if I hadn't done things the way I have, and I'm pretty happy with me right now. Overall.
But enough about that, I've been considering some system upgrades lately that are much more interesting. I made the mistake of buying Unreal Tournament 3 recently and while it's playable on my system, my nearly two-year-old video card's just not up to the task of displaying sci-fi violence with Unreal Engine 3. The NVidia 6800GS-based card's treated me extremely well, even better than my last ATi card did for its "lifetime". I have my eyes on an NVidia 8800GTS video card with 320 megs of RAM, but other than playing this one game, I don't have a reason to upgrade. Really, I don't. Compiz Fusion is fine under Gnome with a considerable amount of visual bling, I just have the ol' hardware lust thing going again. I should put the money toward credit card payments. Dilemmas, dilemmas.
So the next day after writing the above I got a new video card in NVidia's 8800 line. While Windows XP installation was a breeze, Ubuntu seemed to fight every step of the way, first by blanking the screen out and turning my monitor off while the opening splash screen was going, and then by beating down just about every attempt I made to get the video drivers installed. I even installed links, the text Web browser, so I could search the Web because I couldn't get X to come up consistently.
Many thanks to the Ubuntu support forums and posts from the developers of Envy for helping me to resolve these two issues. The last issue I ran into was that the currently-released NVidia driver for this card pegs the fan speed at 100% and sounding like yet another jet engine of dooooom. The latest beta of nvclock has the option to force this particular card into auto fan speed mode, which is very quiet, but getting nvclock set up was a bit problematic as well, including a brief trip through dependency hell. I Learned Stuff Overall.
How's the video card? It's so fast I hardly even see it. Unbelievable. Unnecessary. But awesome. Half-Life 2 with everything turned all the way up is smooth as silk. Unreal Tournament 3, too. And everything else I have on here.
So back to reading things. I have trouble reading non-nerdiness and nerding at the same time.
This post saved without links so you guys can give Google a bit more of a workout.
I know it's cliche to look back on the past at the beginning of a new year, but I think it's important to see where you've been to try to keep the journey so far in perspective so it's easier to focus on what's ahead. Unfortunately for me, there's a lot of regret involved in some of my past decisions. I was young for too long... heheh. But again, I wouldn't be me if I hadn't done things the way I have, and I'm pretty happy with me right now. Overall.
But enough about that, I've been considering some system upgrades lately that are much more interesting. I made the mistake of buying Unreal Tournament 3 recently and while it's playable on my system, my nearly two-year-old video card's just not up to the task of displaying sci-fi violence with Unreal Engine 3. The NVidia 6800GS-based card's treated me extremely well, even better than my last ATi card did for its "lifetime". I have my eyes on an NVidia 8800GTS video card with 320 megs of RAM, but other than playing this one game, I don't have a reason to upgrade. Really, I don't. Compiz Fusion is fine under Gnome with a considerable amount of visual bling, I just have the ol' hardware lust thing going again. I should put the money toward credit card payments. Dilemmas, dilemmas.
So the next day after writing the above I got a new video card in NVidia's 8800 line. While Windows XP installation was a breeze, Ubuntu seemed to fight every step of the way, first by blanking the screen out and turning my monitor off while the opening splash screen was going, and then by beating down just about every attempt I made to get the video drivers installed. I even installed links, the text Web browser, so I could search the Web because I couldn't get X to come up consistently.
Many thanks to the Ubuntu support forums and posts from the developers of Envy for helping me to resolve these two issues. The last issue I ran into was that the currently-released NVidia driver for this card pegs the fan speed at 100% and sounding like yet another jet engine of dooooom. The latest beta of nvclock has the option to force this particular card into auto fan speed mode, which is very quiet, but getting nvclock set up was a bit problematic as well, including a brief trip through dependency hell. I Learned Stuff Overall.
How's the video card? It's so fast I hardly even see it. Unbelievable. Unnecessary. But awesome. Half-Life 2 with everything turned all the way up is smooth as silk. Unreal Tournament 3, too. And everything else I have on here.
So back to reading things. I have trouble reading non-nerdiness and nerding at the same time.
This post saved without links so you guys can give Google a bit more of a workout.
HowTo Convert a Friend to Linux starts out hilarious and proceeds into thoughtful and helpful advice on this nerdtastic topic. One thing I thought was most interesting was the lack of dual booting or usage of a secondary system for Linux immersion. Both of these things have proven invaluable for me, a PC gamer who needs Windows to play many games on, and those fallback measures should prove at least useful for others.
In other news, IPv6 may be coming to a root DNS server near you on February 4 of this year. What does this mean? It means that full end to end IPv6 over the Internet will become possible without the use of any IPv4 (aka "The Way TCP-IP Is Now") hardware. It also means that sysadmins should check their DNS servers and firewalls for compatibility, though not IPv6 compatibility but with the ability to send and receive packets over 512 bytes in size. See the article for more details.
IPv6 is definitely coming, folks, and while IPv4's still going to be going strong for years, IPv6 is eventually going to beat it down. My prediction is that in five years IPv6 will be the predominant protocol used in new networks. Late this year I plan to look at my network hardware and nodes and see what I'd need to upgrade to IPv6. I probably won't make the switch, even partially, until 2009 at the very earliest, but we'll see.
Feedbooks.com, one of my favorite online book sources, has a rough beta of their iNewsStand software available for the iRex iLiad. I haven't tried it yet, but this service is poised to be a killer app for any ebook reader that supports it, able to bring in RSS feeds, Web-based news, books, Sudoku puzzles, and possibly other information and interactivity right onto the ereading device. It appears that FeedBooks already has a working Kindle version of this application. Bravo!
In other iLiad news, I find that browsing on the thing is just too slow. But reading a lot of text or PDFs on the iLiad is like night and day vs. the iPod Touch. There's no comparison at all. One funny side effect of the iPod Touch's touch screen is that the more you use it with your finger, the more finger grease ends up making reading a little tougher. It's never enough to seriously affect usability, but it's there. The screen's too small for serious text reading, but it's fine for interactive fiction and general Web browsing. Decent for Google Reader, too, with Google's special mobile device formatting. But for anything of decent size, the iLiad's the way to go. I like it more than regular paper books now.
I've been exchanging paper books with a friend lately and recently finished up her copy of Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. I liked it a lot as a variation on the usual "world of dark scariness" type of story. There are vampires and shapeshifters and other Others in it and all of this works in the context of the stories, with explanations given as needed while the plot unfolds in each of the three parts like a chess game. Readers may be able to guess what's going on before the end of each story, which is also extremely fun. The absolutes of morality figure strongly into the novel's overarching plot and themes, and by the end of the final part, readers have a full understanding not only of the main character, but the nature of the epic struggle between the Light and the Darkness. There is also a hint of information about a third group, the Inquisition, which oversees the actions of the two more active groups, leaving plenty of space open for more exploration. Night Watch is an English translation of a Russian book, and so some Russian mannerisms, such as stating a person's full name fairly frequently during conversation, show through, but these don't detract from the book so much as ensure that the reader knows the action happens in a non-English-speaking part of the world. I'm looking forward to reading the next books in the series.
My friend seems to be into dark sorts of stories, having also loaned me a modern Japanese Lord of the Flies tale called Battle Royale and another book called Wraeththu. Battle Royale is almost unreadable for me, basically looking more like a gratuitous slaughterfest than a revisitation of the morality play that Lord of the Flies presents. I'm going to plow through Battle despite the occasional survivor count notices plastered throughout the text because it's supposedly much more subtle than it seems. Wraeththu, written by Storm Constantine, is about Young Hermaphroditic Mutants In Love, and after reading the first novel of the trilogy between this book's covers, I can't stomach more. I don't understand why there are so many weird names for places, people, and things, or why most members of this astoundingly powerful new race have such gigantic, sappy relationship hangups. Constantine has generated a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting pregnant with interesting story possibilities, but it seems as if he's using it as an outlet for Anne Rice-esque passionate vampire stories that are dissimilar enough to Rice's tales to avoid being lumped wholesale into the same cauldron with Poppy Z. Brite and others of that genre. I guess I'm not into "standard" romance genre fare, even with mutants and magic.
I'm definitely more picky about literature than I thought I was a few months ago. Maybe it's that I have so much to read now via my iLiad and my threshold for what I want to spend time on has risen as a result. I also got three Sandman graphic novels and some Bill Bryson books from one of my stepdaughters for Christmas and dammit, they're calling to me, so maybe that impatience is a factor right now... I'll post something more about Battle Royale after I finish it.
And finally, I started in on an Agatha Christie public domain novel called The Secret Adversary. So far I'm enjoying it as a variation on my usual fare and as a fine introduction to Christie's general writing style. I see why her work's so popular, with its engaging dialog and characterizations. I've been warned, though, that I shouldn't try to figure out who's done what until the very end, as Christie's notorious for bringing in extra characters and such during the final exposition scene, making correct deduction extremely difficult if not impossible in her stories. It's fun light reading, making a fine contrast with my other recent reading.
In other news, IPv6 may be coming to a root DNS server near you on February 4 of this year. What does this mean? It means that full end to end IPv6 over the Internet will become possible without the use of any IPv4 (aka "The Way TCP-IP Is Now") hardware. It also means that sysadmins should check their DNS servers and firewalls for compatibility, though not IPv6 compatibility but with the ability to send and receive packets over 512 bytes in size. See the article for more details.
IPv6 is definitely coming, folks, and while IPv4's still going to be going strong for years, IPv6 is eventually going to beat it down. My prediction is that in five years IPv6 will be the predominant protocol used in new networks. Late this year I plan to look at my network hardware and nodes and see what I'd need to upgrade to IPv6. I probably won't make the switch, even partially, until 2009 at the very earliest, but we'll see.
Feedbooks.com, one of my favorite online book sources, has a rough beta of their iNewsStand software available for the iRex iLiad. I haven't tried it yet, but this service is poised to be a killer app for any ebook reader that supports it, able to bring in RSS feeds, Web-based news, books, Sudoku puzzles, and possibly other information and interactivity right onto the ereading device. It appears that FeedBooks already has a working Kindle version of this application. Bravo!
In other iLiad news, I find that browsing on the thing is just too slow. But reading a lot of text or PDFs on the iLiad is like night and day vs. the iPod Touch. There's no comparison at all. One funny side effect of the iPod Touch's touch screen is that the more you use it with your finger, the more finger grease ends up making reading a little tougher. It's never enough to seriously affect usability, but it's there. The screen's too small for serious text reading, but it's fine for interactive fiction and general Web browsing. Decent for Google Reader, too, with Google's special mobile device formatting. But for anything of decent size, the iLiad's the way to go. I like it more than regular paper books now.
I've been exchanging paper books with a friend lately and recently finished up her copy of Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. I liked it a lot as a variation on the usual "world of dark scariness" type of story. There are vampires and shapeshifters and other Others in it and all of this works in the context of the stories, with explanations given as needed while the plot unfolds in each of the three parts like a chess game. Readers may be able to guess what's going on before the end of each story, which is also extremely fun. The absolutes of morality figure strongly into the novel's overarching plot and themes, and by the end of the final part, readers have a full understanding not only of the main character, but the nature of the epic struggle between the Light and the Darkness. There is also a hint of information about a third group, the Inquisition, which oversees the actions of the two more active groups, leaving plenty of space open for more exploration. Night Watch is an English translation of a Russian book, and so some Russian mannerisms, such as stating a person's full name fairly frequently during conversation, show through, but these don't detract from the book so much as ensure that the reader knows the action happens in a non-English-speaking part of the world. I'm looking forward to reading the next books in the series.
My friend seems to be into dark sorts of stories, having also loaned me a modern Japanese Lord of the Flies tale called Battle Royale and another book called Wraeththu. Battle Royale is almost unreadable for me, basically looking more like a gratuitous slaughterfest than a revisitation of the morality play that Lord of the Flies presents. I'm going to plow through Battle despite the occasional survivor count notices plastered throughout the text because it's supposedly much more subtle than it seems. Wraeththu, written by Storm Constantine, is about Young Hermaphroditic Mutants In Love, and after reading the first novel of the trilogy between this book's covers, I can't stomach more. I don't understand why there are so many weird names for places, people, and things, or why most members of this astoundingly powerful new race have such gigantic, sappy relationship hangups. Constantine has generated a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting pregnant with interesting story possibilities, but it seems as if he's using it as an outlet for Anne Rice-esque passionate vampire stories that are dissimilar enough to Rice's tales to avoid being lumped wholesale into the same cauldron with Poppy Z. Brite and others of that genre. I guess I'm not into "standard" romance genre fare, even with mutants and magic.
I'm definitely more picky about literature than I thought I was a few months ago. Maybe it's that I have so much to read now via my iLiad and my threshold for what I want to spend time on has risen as a result. I also got three Sandman graphic novels and some Bill Bryson books from one of my stepdaughters for Christmas and dammit, they're calling to me, so maybe that impatience is a factor right now... I'll post something more about Battle Royale after I finish it.
And finally, I started in on an Agatha Christie public domain novel called The Secret Adversary. So far I'm enjoying it as a variation on my usual fare and as a fine introduction to Christie's general writing style. I see why her work's so popular, with its engaging dialog and characterizations. I've been warned, though, that I shouldn't try to figure out who's done what until the very end, as Christie's notorious for bringing in extra characters and such during the final exposition scene, making correct deduction extremely difficult if not impossible in her stories. It's fun light reading, making a fine contrast with my other recent reading.
Wow, what a hefty few weeks. As some of you may already know, one of my stepdaughters died on November 10th. The funeral was last week in Oregon, and there's another memorial here in San Diego coming up on the 8th. After the wildfires at the end of October and my multiple-hernia repair surgery, this last month has been a most memorable bunch of crazy time.
While handling the madness, I finished up Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South. Turtledove's research is excellent, and the novel feels more authentic for it. The plot is a good one, with a few threads that follow a fairly straightforward trail and others that are quite surprising. The first quarter of the book starts to grind a bit, looking like the introduction to a long series of grinding battle depictions, but then the war ends and the much more interesting aftermath begins. Guns of the South is an excellent presentation of real US Civil War information couched in science fiction. I learned quite a bit and enjoyed the trip considerably. Anyone interested in US history or alternate history novels will probably like this book.
Speaking of reading, my iLiad has been indispensible in the last few weeks, always handy with reading material or potential for geeking around. I'm considering starting to use the thing for note-taking at work, too. Not that I take a lot of notes, but when I go to meetings, I can save bringing a notepad. Really I only have one gripe about the iLiad: it still takes too long to start up. Hopefully startup time gets reduced in upcoming firmware releases.
Much hype is being made about another ereader that's just been released: Amazon's Kindle ereader. As an ereader owner/fan, I just have to weigh in. I think my wife put it best when I was describing the Kindle to her: "So you can get on the Internet anywhere you have cell coverage so that you can buy books from Amazon.com? That doesn't seem terribly useful." It's butt-ugly, too, with its keypad taking up a huge chunk of potential screen real estate. The idea with an ereader is to read displayed information, not to type, so chewing up screen space is an awful usability tradeoff. This is assuming, of course, that the Kindle's not able to chat or run word processing software. If it can do those things, maybe a keyboard's useful on it, but I don't see either of those tasks available on the Kindle, making the keyboard a serious waste of space. Give me a virtual keyboard on a bigger screen, I can still type with it. Or have an external USB port like the iLiad so you can run a bit of software and plug in a USB keyboard.
My biggest complaint with the Kindle is that it appears to be unable to simply read documents. You can email documents to the Kindle, but Amazon.com charges for converting the documents to a Kindle format for you. This locks out the ability to grab some of the excellent free text on the Web and read it on your Kindle. If I'd paid $400 for one of these things, I sure wouldn't want to pay more to read a free classic novel from Project Gutenberg or one of the other free book sites, thanks.
Even though it's being bagged by ereading groups and many techies, the Kindle brings much more interest to ereading, and that's a very good thing. One thing that it gets very right is its EVDO Internet connectivity. My iLiad can do Wi-Fi, but the no-usage-payment EVDO connectivity on the Kindle sounds like it'll be extremely nice. The free connectivity appears to have a price, though, in book costs and potential document conversion costs. Even though I think it's crippled most heinously, the Kindle could be just right for some folks. Anyone have any real world Kindle usage to relate?
In even more nerdy news, I've started running BOINC and have attached myself to the ABC@Home project. I read about the project on my favorite nerd news site, Ars Technica, and decided to switch from distributed.net to it. I'm part of Team Ars Technica, of course, user name Powdertoast if anyone wants to see how I'm doing.
I like distributed computing when a client is able to run 50-75% of full CPU power so there's not nearly as much impact to a system's temperature as running 100% full blast, and the BOINC client allows for this kind of configuration and more. Check out the BOINC client if you have an extra system laying around or you just want to do something good for mankind with some of your system's extra CPU cycles. There are plenty of interesting projects including SETI@Home running on BOINC.
I've been watching various gift lists as the end-of-year holidays, and it seems like they show 2007 as the year of usable small computing devices, but I'll talk more about that another time. Nerd up, yo.
While handling the madness, I finished up Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South. Turtledove's research is excellent, and the novel feels more authentic for it. The plot is a good one, with a few threads that follow a fairly straightforward trail and others that are quite surprising. The first quarter of the book starts to grind a bit, looking like the introduction to a long series of grinding battle depictions, but then the war ends and the much more interesting aftermath begins. Guns of the South is an excellent presentation of real US Civil War information couched in science fiction. I learned quite a bit and enjoyed the trip considerably. Anyone interested in US history or alternate history novels will probably like this book.
Speaking of reading, my iLiad has been indispensible in the last few weeks, always handy with reading material or potential for geeking around. I'm considering starting to use the thing for note-taking at work, too. Not that I take a lot of notes, but when I go to meetings, I can save bringing a notepad. Really I only have one gripe about the iLiad: it still takes too long to start up. Hopefully startup time gets reduced in upcoming firmware releases.
Much hype is being made about another ereader that's just been released: Amazon's Kindle ereader. As an ereader owner/fan, I just have to weigh in. I think my wife put it best when I was describing the Kindle to her: "So you can get on the Internet anywhere you have cell coverage so that you can buy books from Amazon.com? That doesn't seem terribly useful." It's butt-ugly, too, with its keypad taking up a huge chunk of potential screen real estate. The idea with an ereader is to read displayed information, not to type, so chewing up screen space is an awful usability tradeoff. This is assuming, of course, that the Kindle's not able to chat or run word processing software. If it can do those things, maybe a keyboard's useful on it, but I don't see either of those tasks available on the Kindle, making the keyboard a serious waste of space. Give me a virtual keyboard on a bigger screen, I can still type with it. Or have an external USB port like the iLiad so you can run a bit of software and plug in a USB keyboard.
My biggest complaint with the Kindle is that it appears to be unable to simply read documents. You can email documents to the Kindle, but Amazon.com charges for converting the documents to a Kindle format for you. This locks out the ability to grab some of the excellent free text on the Web and read it on your Kindle. If I'd paid $400 for one of these things, I sure wouldn't want to pay more to read a free classic novel from Project Gutenberg or one of the other free book sites, thanks.
Even though it's being bagged by ereading groups and many techies, the Kindle brings much more interest to ereading, and that's a very good thing. One thing that it gets very right is its EVDO Internet connectivity. My iLiad can do Wi-Fi, but the no-usage-payment EVDO connectivity on the Kindle sounds like it'll be extremely nice. The free connectivity appears to have a price, though, in book costs and potential document conversion costs. Even though I think it's crippled most heinously, the Kindle could be just right for some folks. Anyone have any real world Kindle usage to relate?
In even more nerdy news, I've started running BOINC and have attached myself to the ABC@Home project. I read about the project on my favorite nerd news site, Ars Technica, and decided to switch from distributed.net to it. I'm part of Team Ars Technica, of course, user name Powdertoast if anyone wants to see how I'm doing.
I like distributed computing when a client is able to run 50-75% of full CPU power so there's not nearly as much impact to a system's temperature as running 100% full blast, and the BOINC client allows for this kind of configuration and more. Check out the BOINC client if you have an extra system laying around or you just want to do something good for mankind with some of your system's extra CPU cycles. There are plenty of interesting projects including SETI@Home running on BOINC.
I've been watching various gift lists as the end-of-year holidays, and it seems like they show 2007 as the year of usable small computing devices, but I'll talk more about that another time. Nerd up, yo.
Aha! I've reached the point where Pip's fortunes .. shift. Now I'm hooked into Great Expectations again. Well done, Mr. Dickens, well done.
Side note about the iRex iLiad: It recharges pretty quickly for how much usage time you get per charge. They're evidently working on yet another big update that will improve default readability for letter-sized PDFs and other things. I'm looking forward to using it a ton while I recover from surgery.
Side note about the iRex iLiad: It recharges pretty quickly for how much usage time you get per charge. They're evidently working on yet another big update that will improve default readability for letter-sized PDFs and other things. I'm looking forward to using it a ton while I recover from surgery.
With a bit of wire snipping and reconnecting, I've managed to get the 12- to 10-volt adapter and the Evercool fan into the NS4300N much more effectively, blocking MUCH less airflow and so far, appearing to work so good. Noise is reduced tremendously, to the point where the drives are what I hear rather than fan noise, though there is a small power supply fan that is barely audible. Temperatures seem to be hovering in the low 40C range, most spiffily chilly for a piece of electronica. If you have the means, I highly recommend doing this.
In other news, I'm still enjoying Great Expectations, coming up to the 1/4 way through mark. Seems like Pip's a fairly miserable young man so far, with plenty of interesting experiences, but still quite unhappy overall. I'm looking forward to a change, if one comes, and some tying together of what appear to be fairly disparate pieces of the tale. I find myself wondering why this is a classic. Maybe I'm looking too hard :(
In other news, I'm still enjoying Great Expectations, coming up to the 1/4 way through mark. Seems like Pip's a fairly miserable young man so far, with plenty of interesting experiences, but still quite unhappy overall. I'm looking forward to a change, if one comes, and some tying together of what appear to be fairly disparate pieces of the tale. I find myself wondering why this is a classic. Maybe I'm looking too hard :(
All you Ubuntu zombies out there, Gutsy Gibbon, Ubuntu's 7.10 release, has been finally unleashed upon the world! I'm downloading the amd64 desktop torrent right now, though I'm still debating waiting on the installation.
Big updates include flashy desktop effects, printer installation goodness, and evidently some Firefox goodness in the form of Ubuntu-specific plugin management. There's gotta be some more under the hood for me to upgrade, but I have that technophile bug. My current Feisty Fawn install's running oh so well, though. Anyone do an upgrade from Feisty to Gutsy yet?
Wait, I have a laptop that's pretty much a crash and burn unit. MUA HAAAA! More details later after the upgrade completes on it... hee. Cool note: The Update Manager has an "Upgrade Tool" available in it, so I may not have to deal with a cold iso install. Again Ubuntu beats the shiznit out of the big OS's in customer ease of use... Hmm, the Ubuntu web site appears to be getting completely hammered right now. Might wait a few more days to download the update tool. The amd64 iso torrent's coming in strong, but the laptop's not an amd64.
In other news, my migration from the NAS Lite file server to the new Promise NS4300N is complete. It's awesome to just have a couple of systems to migrate over, I must say. I'm still stoked with the little thing, aside from the noise factor. I've ordered a set of tamper-resistant star ratchet bits so I can open the tamper-resistant star screws on the unit and tamper with the fan. While I applaud Promise's use of what seems to be a good airflow configuration, please PLEASE give us bozos who spent money on equipment the option of throttling the fan down or better yet the ability to set the unit into a smart cooling mode where low heat slows the fan down and high heat speeds it up.
And Great Expectations is enjoyful. I'm four chapters in and still trying to get a good feel for Pip's character, but the similarities between he and Huckleberry Finn are already intriguing. Dickens does some good dark humor, 'e does.
Big updates include flashy desktop effects, printer installation goodness, and evidently some Firefox goodness in the form of Ubuntu-specific plugin management. There's gotta be some more under the hood for me to upgrade, but I have that technophile bug. My current Feisty Fawn install's running oh so well, though. Anyone do an upgrade from Feisty to Gutsy yet?
Wait, I have a laptop that's pretty much a crash and burn unit. MUA HAAAA! More details later after the upgrade completes on it... hee. Cool note: The Update Manager has an "Upgrade Tool" available in it, so I may not have to deal with a cold iso install. Again Ubuntu beats the shiznit out of the big OS's in customer ease of use... Hmm, the Ubuntu web site appears to be getting completely hammered right now. Might wait a few more days to download the update tool. The amd64 iso torrent's coming in strong, but the laptop's not an amd64.
In other news, my migration from the NAS Lite file server to the new Promise NS4300N is complete. It's awesome to just have a couple of systems to migrate over, I must say. I'm still stoked with the little thing, aside from the noise factor. I've ordered a set of tamper-resistant star ratchet bits so I can open the tamper-resistant star screws on the unit and tamper with the fan. While I applaud Promise's use of what seems to be a good airflow configuration, please PLEASE give us bozos who spent money on equipment the option of throttling the fan down or better yet the ability to set the unit into a smart cooling mode where low heat slows the fan down and high heat speeds it up.
And Great Expectations is enjoyful. I'm four chapters in and still trying to get a good feel for Pip's character, but the similarities between he and Huckleberry Finn are already intriguing. Dickens does some good dark humor, 'e does.
Aight, gangstas, I've been spending much of my not-working time readin' shit on my iLiad, yo. I'm not sure why I wanted to start this fresh in in yo' face. Just don't ask. But my iLiad saga continues! I've been reading a bunch of gaming literature, including items that are formatted with big ol' pages. The type on these large size books, as I mentioned in a comment earlier, is small on the iLiad's screen, but definitely readable. If the type isn't formatted in multiple columns on the page, I blow it up and read about a half a page at a time with the bigger type. Even with columns using the stylus to move the viewing area around on a page to read it all in order is becoming second nature to me.
Small remaining gripes like bookmarks in PDFs and ability to change the default text file font are being worked on, there's a lot of stuff out on the Internet to pull down onto the thing, and FeedBooks gets a shout out for working on an iLiad app that will bring down RSS feeds live from the IntarWeb. They're working with an iLiad enthusiast to get their existing app running and evidently it's going well. I should probably check on that.
I've had a hankerin' to get my NAS file server to have more data redundancy, less noise, and less power usage. While I love NAS Lite and have had it working stably for quite some time, I think I'm ready to snap up a dedicated NAS box, and Promise appears to have an offering that's looking like it's going to be the one. I'll document as I move along in the process.
Small remaining gripes like bookmarks in PDFs and ability to change the default text file font are being worked on, there's a lot of stuff out on the Internet to pull down onto the thing, and FeedBooks gets a shout out for working on an iLiad app that will bring down RSS feeds live from the IntarWeb. They're working with an iLiad enthusiast to get their existing app running and evidently it's going well. I should probably check on that.
I've had a hankerin' to get my NAS file server to have more data redundancy, less noise, and less power usage. While I love NAS Lite and have had it working stably for quite some time, I think I'm ready to snap up a dedicated NAS box, and Promise appears to have an offering that's looking like it's going to be the one. I'll document as I move along in the process.
I've been playing with my new iRex iLiad some more and have decided that I love it.
Physically, it's excellent for using as a reading device. The screen resolution, e-ink display, and size of the display area are great. It has very good controls for managing text/document display sizes, and it's easy to get used to as far as document navigation, which leads to existing and future functionality.
Right now, the iLiad is mighty usable, but users can extend that functionality, and iRex is building more into the firmware as well. The iLiad is a Linux-based device, and users can get to the command line through a "patch" that can be downloaded from iRex's web site. Once you have a command line, the virtual world is your oyster. iRex also makes a VMWare image of the iRex available for developers to work with in order to ease development. There are already a few applications that have been ported to the iRex such as improved PDF reading, a Web browser, and other fun, making the iRex into a sort of tablet PC device. It's not going to play action games thanks to the low refresh rate, but I can see someone porting Nethack to it. I think there's already some Solitaire action going on. iRex is also adding further functionality to the existing suite, making the iLiad usable in more environments and with more types of documents. This isn't the kind of situation where you get a tech toy that's never going to change, there have already been some significant feature additions and improvements, and it's only going to get better in the future.
Back to usability: I like how the iLiad feels in my hand enough that I started focusing on content rather than the fact that I'm reading on a flat panel within a few minutes. The thing just works well for me, though I have to admit that I seem to get used to new ways of interacting with physical objects fairly quickly. I like that I don't have to apply pressure to the unread side of a book to keep it flat. There's no shifting back and forth from one side of the book to the other as I finish a page. Going to the next page on the iLiad is almost the same as flipping a page in a book because iRex built a "flip bar" into the left side of the device. Reading on the iLiad is conveniently do-able instead of being alien, and I'm all about comfort and usability in technology these days.
I've read through several roleplaying PDFs and have gotten more out of these sessions than I recall getting out of reading them on my PC. Maybe it's that working with the iLiad feels more natural, maybe it's the fact that I can curl up with the thing on my comfy sofa instead of sitting in my computer chair.
Is it worth over $700 to get an iLiad? Almost definitely not for everyone. But we vote with our money, and I think that iRex is headed in exactly the right direction. Do I want to remove books? Hell no, but I have enough of the things taking up space in my room already. If I read a few hundred novels on the iLiad instead of buying the books, I break even. Browsing through Project Gutenberg and other free e-book locations on the Web over the last few years has left me with well over that number of etexts. I've also been getting cheaper PDF versions of roleplaying games for the past few years instead of books, probably saving a couple of hundred dollars just in those purchases alone. The iLiad's already paid for itself in my somewhat abnormal case.
In short, I'm diggin' my iRex iLiad. And I'm calling it a very early Christmas present to offset the cost. Heheh.
Physically, it's excellent for using as a reading device. The screen resolution, e-ink display, and size of the display area are great. It has very good controls for managing text/document display sizes, and it's easy to get used to as far as document navigation, which leads to existing and future functionality.
Right now, the iLiad is mighty usable, but users can extend that functionality, and iRex is building more into the firmware as well. The iLiad is a Linux-based device, and users can get to the command line through a "patch" that can be downloaded from iRex's web site. Once you have a command line, the virtual world is your oyster. iRex also makes a VMWare image of the iRex available for developers to work with in order to ease development. There are already a few applications that have been ported to the iRex such as improved PDF reading, a Web browser, and other fun, making the iRex into a sort of tablet PC device. It's not going to play action games thanks to the low refresh rate, but I can see someone porting Nethack to it. I think there's already some Solitaire action going on. iRex is also adding further functionality to the existing suite, making the iLiad usable in more environments and with more types of documents. This isn't the kind of situation where you get a tech toy that's never going to change, there have already been some significant feature additions and improvements, and it's only going to get better in the future.
Back to usability: I like how the iLiad feels in my hand enough that I started focusing on content rather than the fact that I'm reading on a flat panel within a few minutes. The thing just works well for me, though I have to admit that I seem to get used to new ways of interacting with physical objects fairly quickly. I like that I don't have to apply pressure to the unread side of a book to keep it flat. There's no shifting back and forth from one side of the book to the other as I finish a page. Going to the next page on the iLiad is almost the same as flipping a page in a book because iRex built a "flip bar" into the left side of the device. Reading on the iLiad is conveniently do-able instead of being alien, and I'm all about comfort and usability in technology these days.
I've read through several roleplaying PDFs and have gotten more out of these sessions than I recall getting out of reading them on my PC. Maybe it's that working with the iLiad feels more natural, maybe it's the fact that I can curl up with the thing on my comfy sofa instead of sitting in my computer chair.
Is it worth over $700 to get an iLiad? Almost definitely not for everyone. But we vote with our money, and I think that iRex is headed in exactly the right direction. Do I want to remove books? Hell no, but I have enough of the things taking up space in my room already. If I read a few hundred novels on the iLiad instead of buying the books, I break even. Browsing through Project Gutenberg and other free e-book locations on the Web over the last few years has left me with well over that number of etexts. I've also been getting cheaper PDF versions of roleplaying games for the past few years instead of books, probably saving a couple of hundred dollars just in those purchases alone. The iLiad's already paid for itself in my somewhat abnormal case.
In short, I'm diggin' my iRex iLiad. And I'm calling it a very early Christmas present to offset the cost. Heheh.
Just found a tip that Lifehacker linked up. Evidently, the Linux kernel has a special method for restarting frozen systems. I'll have to try it out sometime just to see what it does... hee.
I got my iRex Iliad today in the mail and got to work it for a bit. I slapped in an extra 1 gig SD card after copying a bunch of PDFs and text books to it, set up the wired network without a hitch, noted that the latest update allows for WPA wireless security and set that up without any trouble at all (YAAAY!). Text is clear, the text manipulation controls of the thing (such as zooming in on a PDF) seem to be great... All in all, the beastie's exceeding my expectations. I don't see a single thing wrong with it at the moment.
Obviously I haven't used it enough to find any problems! Well, I do have to say that the boot time is pretty long and the screen refresh time is slow, but those are both issues that I knew about well before I made my final acquisition decision.
I haven't tried sketching or note-taking, but I'm pretty sure that the slow screen refresh is going to hamper those actions somewhat. I don't have high expectations there, mainly because I can't see the Iliad becoming as fast to use as a piece of paper and a pen for me when I need to take notes. Not a big deal there.
I'll get back to y'all in a while to give a longer review, but right now, being able to read electronic books while away from my computer is giving me wood. Maybe that was too much information. I'll be reading Great Expectations first, after a couple of roleplaying manuals. No, I haven't read this Dickens classic yet, and I'm looking forward to it.
My last book read was the ominously-titled Naked in Death by Nora Roberts, writing as J.D. Robb. My wife absolutely loves this series, so I had to try it out. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at it. Though it was definitely an early Nora Roberts book with its awkward shifts of point of view, the story ran well, and the usage of "sex" in such phrases as "smelled like sex" and "mouth built for sex" didn't bug me after a few chapters. My wife asked if I was going to read any more of these books and I have to say that I most likely will. They're fast murder/romance books from probably the most thinky of modern romance authors.
I have one last techy thing to round out this overdue post: I just got back in touch with an amigo of mine who said he's also making the switch to Ubuntu. Bravo, man! Soon, we'll get our friends and families to convert... mua haaaa!
I got my iRex Iliad today in the mail and got to work it for a bit. I slapped in an extra 1 gig SD card after copying a bunch of PDFs and text books to it, set up the wired network without a hitch, noted that the latest update allows for WPA wireless security and set that up without any trouble at all (YAAAY!). Text is clear, the text manipulation controls of the thing (such as zooming in on a PDF) seem to be great... All in all, the beastie's exceeding my expectations. I don't see a single thing wrong with it at the moment.
Obviously I haven't used it enough to find any problems! Well, I do have to say that the boot time is pretty long and the screen refresh time is slow, but those are both issues that I knew about well before I made my final acquisition decision.
I haven't tried sketching or note-taking, but I'm pretty sure that the slow screen refresh is going to hamper those actions somewhat. I don't have high expectations there, mainly because I can't see the Iliad becoming as fast to use as a piece of paper and a pen for me when I need to take notes. Not a big deal there.
I'll get back to y'all in a while to give a longer review, but right now, being able to read electronic books while away from my computer is giving me wood. Maybe that was too much information. I'll be reading Great Expectations first, after a couple of roleplaying manuals. No, I haven't read this Dickens classic yet, and I'm looking forward to it.
My last book read was the ominously-titled Naked in Death by Nora Roberts, writing as J.D. Robb. My wife absolutely loves this series, so I had to try it out. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised at it. Though it was definitely an early Nora Roberts book with its awkward shifts of point of view, the story ran well, and the usage of "sex" in such phrases as "smelled like sex" and "mouth built for sex" didn't bug me after a few chapters. My wife asked if I was going to read any more of these books and I have to say that I most likely will. They're fast murder/romance books from probably the most thinky of modern romance authors.
I have one last techy thing to round out this overdue post: I just got back in touch with an amigo of mine who said he's also making the switch to Ubuntu. Bravo, man! Soon, we'll get our friends and families to convert... mua haaaa!
I had some printing issues in Ubuntu the other day. Seems that some applications don't much care for the HP printing system interfacing with CUPS, wanting instead to use the regular stuff that's built into Ubuntu. Not a big deal, but it was weird to me that some apps seemed to be fine printing to the HP drivers while others weren't. No, unfortunately I don't have a good list at all, but neither evince nor OpenOffice.org wanted to print until I switched back to the normal drivers. Go figger.
I've been reading through roleplaying supplements lately, along with some more serious reading (notably A Child Called "It", a very good book), and have found my English training going to work on the roleplaying supplements, finding logic holes, overall themes, grammar issues, and generally doing a rapid edit.
Finally, I've been playing more with vi and discovered an abbreviation system built into it. Ooh ahh, I've been looking for a way to replace this functionality from NoteTab Pro for a while because NoteTab Pro plus Wine under Linux has a bit of an issue with the cursor location not updating correctly visually when it changes. vi's impressing me more and more as I play with it, to the point where I've switched to using gvim, the graphical version of vi, as my main text editor on my Ubuntu installation. I'm such a nerd.
I've been reading through roleplaying supplements lately, along with some more serious reading (notably A Child Called "It", a very good book), and have found my English training going to work on the roleplaying supplements, finding logic holes, overall themes, grammar issues, and generally doing a rapid edit.
Finally, I've been playing more with vi and discovered an abbreviation system built into it. Ooh ahh, I've been looking for a way to replace this functionality from NoteTab Pro for a while because NoteTab Pro plus Wine under Linux has a bit of an issue with the cursor location not updating correctly visually when it changes. vi's impressing me more and more as I play with it, to the point where I've switched to using gvim, the graphical version of vi, as my main text editor on my Ubuntu installation. I'm such a nerd.
Someone please come up with a better scanning interface than XSane or figure out how the hell I can get an ICM (color management file) for my HP 3500c. The version of XSane that's currently in Feisty doesn't have a configuration for scanners, only negatives and slides. WTF?
I can't manipulate the colors on an XSane preview in realtime and can't seem to figure out what color settings to use to get a decent scan out of it. I can get a grayscale scan just fine, but color management and the trial and error involved are killing me off.
If I really need a scan, I drop into Windows XP and resulting in a great scan in a couple of minutes. It Just Works. This is the only reason I still need Windows on here except for games. I hate that.
I've tried the Gimp plugin and because the output from XSane is so far off, the Gimp doesn't get enough to work with to get a good result. I've tried QuiteInsane, which errors out when I try to preview or scan, though it finds the scanner.
GRUH!
Oh, and the new Harry Potter book is the best of the series. I'm still fairly speechless about it. Rowling has blown her imitators out of the water, 'cept for the somewhat unnecessary but still kind of charming epilogue. I don't know where my HP book 6 is, which bugs me greatly. I felt like that book was spent mostly setting up book 7, and yet Deathly Hallows brings not only Half-Blood Prince's loose ends to a satisfying conclusion, but also a huge number of issues from previous books in the series. It's unbelievable. But I wanted to reread Half-Blood Prince again. I'll find it. In the meantime, I hereby present a virtual one-person standing ovation to J.K. Rowling for the entire Harry Potter series!
I can't manipulate the colors on an XSane preview in realtime and can't seem to figure out what color settings to use to get a decent scan out of it. I can get a grayscale scan just fine, but color management and the trial and error involved are killing me off.
If I really need a scan, I drop into Windows XP and resulting in a great scan in a couple of minutes. It Just Works. This is the only reason I still need Windows on here except for games. I hate that.
I've tried the Gimp plugin and because the output from XSane is so far off, the Gimp doesn't get enough to work with to get a good result. I've tried QuiteInsane, which errors out when I try to preview or scan, though it finds the scanner.
GRUH!
Oh, and the new Harry Potter book is the best of the series. I'm still fairly speechless about it. Rowling has blown her imitators out of the water, 'cept for the somewhat unnecessary but still kind of charming epilogue. I don't know where my HP book 6 is, which bugs me greatly. I felt like that book was spent mostly setting up book 7, and yet Deathly Hallows brings not only Half-Blood Prince's loose ends to a satisfying conclusion, but also a huge number of issues from previous books in the series. It's unbelievable. But I wanted to reread Half-Blood Prince again. I'll find it. In the meantime, I hereby present a virtual one-person standing ovation to J.K. Rowling for the entire Harry Potter series!
Ars Technica reviews the iPhone, including a stress test to determine what it takes to kill one off. Impressive. I still don't want one yet, though. I can't see a reason to web surf or check my email with my phone.
Here's an interesting piece on whether or not emptying your inbox is worth the time. My thoughts? I delete stuff from my inbox that's not important, filing other emails into other folders, but I leave quite a bit in my inbox as a short term information storage, dumping emails more than a couple of weeks old by deleting or filing them into the aforementioned other folders. How do you folks manage your inboxes?
I finished up Snow Crash, loving it as usual. I think it may be time to revisit The Book of the New Sun again to see how it reads for me the second time through. On the other hand, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows should be in my hands in the next week or so, so maybe I should reread the previous HP books... Tough call there. Anyone else looking forward to reading the new HP book? And I find that I'm missing information about the third Eragon book. Have to look that one up.
As a final thing this time around, here's a link to a long visual rant by Chris Pirillo, who "upgraded" from Vista to XP as his main operating system. It's a long look at Vista's shortcomings six months after its release. He loves Microsoft, but doesn't care much for Vista in its current form. Interesting.
Here's an interesting piece on whether or not emptying your inbox is worth the time. My thoughts? I delete stuff from my inbox that's not important, filing other emails into other folders, but I leave quite a bit in my inbox as a short term information storage, dumping emails more than a couple of weeks old by deleting or filing them into the aforementioned other folders. How do you folks manage your inboxes?
I finished up Snow Crash, loving it as usual. I think it may be time to revisit The Book of the New Sun again to see how it reads for me the second time through. On the other hand, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows should be in my hands in the next week or so, so maybe I should reread the previous HP books... Tough call there. Anyone else looking forward to reading the new HP book? And I find that I'm missing information about the third Eragon book. Have to look that one up.
As a final thing this time around, here's a link to a long visual rant by Chris Pirillo, who "upgraded" from Vista to XP as his main operating system. It's a long look at Vista's shortcomings six months after its release. He loves Microsoft, but doesn't care much for Vista in its current form. Interesting.
So I switched my main system mouse back to my beloved Microsoft Trackball Explorer and remapped a coupla buttons. Mmm, button mapping. The major reason I went with a Logitech mouse months ago was that the Windows driver (yes, Microsoft's) kinda sucks. Lost button mappings and occasional tracking twitchiness were my symptoms, and I verified the driver's culpability by hooking up the Trackball Explorer in Linux for a while. The cordless Logitech trackball was good, with plenty of buttons, but it's not as ergonomically comfy as the Trackball Explorer. Since I'm using Ubuntu primarily now, Microsoft's crappy Trackball Explorer driver doesn't matter, so there ya go.
I finished up Line by Line and found it thoroughly helpful with getting myself through those weird sticky grammar questions that I occasionally get myself into while writing. I highly recommend it for anyone doing any serious literary authoring.
I'm rereading my favorite book in the world, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and for whatever reason, I'm picking up more details out of it and enjoying the ride a bit more. The cohesion is mo' better. If you haven't read Snow Crash, it's a cyberpunk lite book with a serious philosophical history angle reminiscent of the premises of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. There's a lot of humor also, which is a difference with "standard" gritty cyberpunk noir, but it's not contrived or just funny for funny's sake, though there are exceptions. For example, the book begins by documenting Hiroaki Protagonist's last job as The Deliverator, a pizza courier for the Mafia. Yes, that name shortens to "Hiro Protagonist". It's a really fun read, and very much a thought-provoker at the same time. Gimme dat.
I was going through some of my old directories the other day and stumbled on my huge stash of electronic books, mainly stuff from Project Gutenberg, and felt the tug to get some kind of electronic reader again. I'll have to do some more research to see what's out there now.
I finished up Line by Line and found it thoroughly helpful with getting myself through those weird sticky grammar questions that I occasionally get myself into while writing. I highly recommend it for anyone doing any serious literary authoring.
I'm rereading my favorite book in the world, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and for whatever reason, I'm picking up more details out of it and enjoying the ride a bit more. The cohesion is mo' better. If you haven't read Snow Crash, it's a cyberpunk lite book with a serious philosophical history angle reminiscent of the premises of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. There's a lot of humor also, which is a difference with "standard" gritty cyberpunk noir, but it's not contrived or just funny for funny's sake, though there are exceptions. For example, the book begins by documenting Hiroaki Protagonist's last job as The Deliverator, a pizza courier for the Mafia. Yes, that name shortens to "Hiro Protagonist". It's a really fun read, and very much a thought-provoker at the same time. Gimme dat.
I was going through some of my old directories the other day and stumbled on my huge stash of electronic books, mainly stuff from Project Gutenberg, and felt the tug to get some kind of electronic reader again. I'll have to do some more research to see what's out there now.
I have a lot of book reviewing for this post, thanks to the amount of time since my last one... Sorry about that. I'll follow up with a technical post a little later, but for now, I have to relate my experiences with some of the best literature I've read in years.
I've absorbed Neil Gaiman's masterful American Gods and liked it very, very much. Like Gaiman's "Sandman" graphic novels, American Gods masterfully blends modern "mythology" with classic mythology around the world, resulting in a view of the world and the things in it that seems plausible and yet fanciful at the same time. One of the things I liked most about this book is Gaiman's modernization of old gods and goddesses. Gaiman is probably the foremost author on the planet at that kind of thing, and since I'm a big sucker for that kind of stuff, that makes Gaiman one of my favorite storytellers. I also enjoyed the character progression and the pace of the thing. American Gods has a similar action speed to Tim Powers's novels (and it might be said that the two authors somewhat overlap in their generation of modern mythology), but not as breakneck-fast as, say, Dan Brown's works. We start with what seems like an ordinary person who is contacted by a strange man who knows too much, then as the story continues, the immense web of intrigue surrounding our hero slowly becomes apparent, ending in his making a choice that changes the world, or at least America. Sort of. You'll have to read the book to find out. By the way, Gaiman's Anansi Boys is a "spiritual" (heheh) sequel to Gods with a smaller scope. Boys is more humorous, but resonates with Gods as a tale of mythological evolution. I don't recommend reading one without the other closely following.
The Bluest Eye is another marvelously-written tale about a young black girl growing up with a highly damaged image of self-beauty. The author, Toni Morrison, won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and her mastery of writing-craft shows eloquently in this book. As readers find out more about Pecola, the primary character, the shocking conclusion becomes inevitable, but even though I saw it coming, I still nearly wept. Eye treads ground somewhere near Flannery O'Connor's realm of dark American prose, but Morrison's novel takes its time drawing the reader in, resulting in a more devastating psychological blow than O'Connor's short stories. Much more cannot really be revealed about the novel's contents without damaging the experience for other readers. However, I will say that this is an outstanding piece of American semi-historical fiction, nearly on par with To Kill a Mockingbird for its importance in discussing American social issues, but Eye is much more focused on the more global topic of perception of personal beauty. The setting is America, but the major themes are applicable to just about any modern society. Any serious literature fan should dive into The Bluest Eye, but be warned that it may leave a permanent mark. Here's a link to more about the book.
I finished Me Talk Pretty One Day, too, and loved it. David Sedaris's blunt candor figures into the wonderful humor of the book as much as his cutting wit. His humor and style are not as positive as Bill Bryson's, and people who don't care for sarcasm should just say no to Sedaris, but for those who like to watch his brand of intelligence in action, this set of essay-like pieces about Sedaris's past is an impressive source of grins and wry chuckles.
One last epic fell to a voracious reading orgy while on my honeymoon cruise and the week after. Perhaps this one requires a separate post to describe, but I'll set down my thoughts about it here. I read all four parts of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. This monumental work is a chronicle of Severian's rise from torturer to pretty much in charge of humanity on the planet Urth. The story is set on an Earth of the far, far future, where the Sun is in decline, the Moon has been terraformed such that its reflected light is green, and a fairly structured society that incorporates ancient technology, mutation, and mythology into a cohesive whole. Time travel eventually figures into the plot, as do aliens, as may be expected, but the technology is presented as scientific but semi-magical concepts by the narrator... It's a bit hard to describe. Most importantly, it works to create one of the most immersive fantasy settings I've encountered.
Probably the best starting point for reading these is Neil Gaiman's "How to Read Gene Wolfe", and perhaps trying out one or more of the stories from Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" series before diving in. New Sun is dense stuff, and while it's complete in and of itself, some prep work may be required for casual readers to enjoy the ride. This is probably the reason that this Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement author hasn't been more widely recognized: his work isn't aimed at the average reader.
I thought that some of New Sun's prose was meandering crap for a while, but suddenly, like complex poetry, the whole snapped into my mental view. I discovered that the work is highly structured and that while the narrator is unreliable, Wolfe isn't: readers are given all of the information they need to determine what actually happens in every situation in the book. Everything hangs together to form a coherent whole. For example, the occasional "historical" divergences from a brown book that Severian, the protagonist and narrator, carries with him hold clues to understanding other parts of the story rather than just being frivolous meanderings. A set of seemingly unrelated stories from many different social classes and peoples toward the end of the last quarter of the novel adds important details to the canvas that Wolfe paints Severian's story onto. The question of who Severian's parents are, a topic touched on lightly but persistently, is answered obliquely but definitively by the end of the novel. I am still somewhat stunned by the scope, the complexity, the breadth, and the depth of The Book of the New Sun and will definitely be rereading it at least a couple more times to pick up more from it.
Lovers of grim epic fantasies who don't mind a bit of extra thinking will probably enjoy The Book of the New Sun. It's not for the faint of heart and doesn't have the same simple grandeur of The Lord of the Rings, but I found its huge, thorough scope, deep and complex themes, and towering majesty extremely enjoyable once I got used to it. I'm looking forward to future rereadings, something unusual for me.
As I said at the beginning of this massive missive, these books have comprised some of the best reading I've done in years. I'm almost at a loss as to what to follow up with, but fortunately there are sequels and other excellent works from other authors to read.
In the meantime, I'm zipping through Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing, a book that has taught me more about grammar in its first twenty pages than years of English. It's a great self-help book for authors and would-be authors from a copy editor's perspective.
I've absorbed Neil Gaiman's masterful American Gods and liked it very, very much. Like Gaiman's "Sandman" graphic novels, American Gods masterfully blends modern "mythology" with classic mythology around the world, resulting in a view of the world and the things in it that seems plausible and yet fanciful at the same time. One of the things I liked most about this book is Gaiman's modernization of old gods and goddesses. Gaiman is probably the foremost author on the planet at that kind of thing, and since I'm a big sucker for that kind of stuff, that makes Gaiman one of my favorite storytellers. I also enjoyed the character progression and the pace of the thing. American Gods has a similar action speed to Tim Powers's novels (and it might be said that the two authors somewhat overlap in their generation of modern mythology), but not as breakneck-fast as, say, Dan Brown's works. We start with what seems like an ordinary person who is contacted by a strange man who knows too much, then as the story continues, the immense web of intrigue surrounding our hero slowly becomes apparent, ending in his making a choice that changes the world, or at least America. Sort of. You'll have to read the book to find out. By the way, Gaiman's Anansi Boys is a "spiritual" (heheh) sequel to Gods with a smaller scope. Boys is more humorous, but resonates with Gods as a tale of mythological evolution. I don't recommend reading one without the other closely following.
The Bluest Eye is another marvelously-written tale about a young black girl growing up with a highly damaged image of self-beauty. The author, Toni Morrison, won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and her mastery of writing-craft shows eloquently in this book. As readers find out more about Pecola, the primary character, the shocking conclusion becomes inevitable, but even though I saw it coming, I still nearly wept. Eye treads ground somewhere near Flannery O'Connor's realm of dark American prose, but Morrison's novel takes its time drawing the reader in, resulting in a more devastating psychological blow than O'Connor's short stories. Much more cannot really be revealed about the novel's contents without damaging the experience for other readers. However, I will say that this is an outstanding piece of American semi-historical fiction, nearly on par with To Kill a Mockingbird for its importance in discussing American social issues, but Eye is much more focused on the more global topic of perception of personal beauty. The setting is America, but the major themes are applicable to just about any modern society. Any serious literature fan should dive into The Bluest Eye, but be warned that it may leave a permanent mark. Here's a link to more about the book.
I finished Me Talk Pretty One Day, too, and loved it. David Sedaris's blunt candor figures into the wonderful humor of the book as much as his cutting wit. His humor and style are not as positive as Bill Bryson's, and people who don't care for sarcasm should just say no to Sedaris, but for those who like to watch his brand of intelligence in action, this set of essay-like pieces about Sedaris's past is an impressive source of grins and wry chuckles.
One last epic fell to a voracious reading orgy while on my honeymoon cruise and the week after. Perhaps this one requires a separate post to describe, but I'll set down my thoughts about it here. I read all four parts of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. This monumental work is a chronicle of Severian's rise from torturer to pretty much in charge of humanity on the planet Urth. The story is set on an Earth of the far, far future, where the Sun is in decline, the Moon has been terraformed such that its reflected light is green, and a fairly structured society that incorporates ancient technology, mutation, and mythology into a cohesive whole. Time travel eventually figures into the plot, as do aliens, as may be expected, but the technology is presented as scientific but semi-magical concepts by the narrator... It's a bit hard to describe. Most importantly, it works to create one of the most immersive fantasy settings I've encountered.
Probably the best starting point for reading these is Neil Gaiman's "How to Read Gene Wolfe", and perhaps trying out one or more of the stories from Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" series before diving in. New Sun is dense stuff, and while it's complete in and of itself, some prep work may be required for casual readers to enjoy the ride. This is probably the reason that this Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement author hasn't been more widely recognized: his work isn't aimed at the average reader.
I thought that some of New Sun's prose was meandering crap for a while, but suddenly, like complex poetry, the whole snapped into my mental view. I discovered that the work is highly structured and that while the narrator is unreliable, Wolfe isn't: readers are given all of the information they need to determine what actually happens in every situation in the book. Everything hangs together to form a coherent whole. For example, the occasional "historical" divergences from a brown book that Severian, the protagonist and narrator, carries with him hold clues to understanding other parts of the story rather than just being frivolous meanderings. A set of seemingly unrelated stories from many different social classes and peoples toward the end of the last quarter of the novel adds important details to the canvas that Wolfe paints Severian's story onto. The question of who Severian's parents are, a topic touched on lightly but persistently, is answered obliquely but definitively by the end of the novel. I am still somewhat stunned by the scope, the complexity, the breadth, and the depth of The Book of the New Sun and will definitely be rereading it at least a couple more times to pick up more from it.
Lovers of grim epic fantasies who don't mind a bit of extra thinking will probably enjoy The Book of the New Sun. It's not for the faint of heart and doesn't have the same simple grandeur of The Lord of the Rings, but I found its huge, thorough scope, deep and complex themes, and towering majesty extremely enjoyable once I got used to it. I'm looking forward to future rereadings, something unusual for me.
As I said at the beginning of this massive missive, these books have comprised some of the best reading I've done in years. I'm almost at a loss as to what to follow up with, but fortunately there are sequels and other excellent works from other authors to read.
In the meantime, I'm zipping through Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing, a book that has taught me more about grammar in its first twenty pages than years of English. It's a great self-help book for authors and would-be authors from a copy editor's perspective.
I now have my NAS-Lite 2 server exporting an NFS share that my main desktop's mounting at startup, which means that my music library is available to Windows apps running under Wine, which means that I now have foobar 2000 cranking out 4-speaker audio. Ahhhhhh yessss.
Automatix allowed me to get DTS sound working for DVDs playing in MPlayer.
I got Flash Player working under 64-bit Firefox. That was interesting, but searching around on the Intarweb got that issue resolved.
Nearly at the other end of the spectrum for painful conversions from Windows to Linux, my Windows Thunderbird repository has been ported over to Ubuntu. It was just a matter of copying the profile folder over to the right directory in Ubuntu and then editing the .ini file. Bada boom bada bing. I chose to stick with Thunderbird because I'm going to tackle getting Time & Chaos 6 working under Ubuntu some more soon, so I didn't need the calendar stuff.
Scanning is still troublesome with XSane, so I'm going to hit Le Web further on that later.
I have my NTFS partition now mounted up read-write and have moved my documents over from Windows to Ubuntu. My external hard drive has a backup of my current Linux configuration already. By the way, being able to just back up my home directory and get everything of mine rather than having to track stuff down all over the drive (Documents and Settings, Program Files, etc.) is awesome.
I'm just about done porting things over, and right now am having an easy time staying in Ubuntu without having to go into Windows. Gotta try out some games sometime, though I don't expect much success ... heheh.
I'll post about The Bluest Eye later. What a sad, beautiful story.
Automatix allowed me to get DTS sound working for DVDs playing in MPlayer.
I got Flash Player working under 64-bit Firefox. That was interesting, but searching around on the Intarweb got that issue resolved.
Nearly at the other end of the spectrum for painful conversions from Windows to Linux, my Windows Thunderbird repository has been ported over to Ubuntu. It was just a matter of copying the profile folder over to the right directory in Ubuntu and then editing the .ini file. Bada boom bada bing. I chose to stick with Thunderbird because I'm going to tackle getting Time & Chaos 6 working under Ubuntu some more soon, so I didn't need the calendar stuff.
Scanning is still troublesome with XSane, so I'm going to hit Le Web further on that later.
I have my NTFS partition now mounted up read-write and have moved my documents over from Windows to Ubuntu. My external hard drive has a backup of my current Linux configuration already. By the way, being able to just back up my home directory and get everything of mine rather than having to track stuff down all over the drive (Documents and Settings, Program Files, etc.) is awesome.
I'm just about done porting things over, and right now am having an easy time staying in Ubuntu without having to go into Windows. Gotta try out some games sometime, though I don't expect much success ... heheh.
I'll post about The Bluest Eye later. What a sad, beautiful story.
Syndicate
