Thigmotaxic

Live Music

2011-06-29T19:05:00.000-05:00

It used to be, live albums were nothing more than louder, faster versions of the original album music, with screaming (Cheap Trick at Budokan comes to mind).

There's a new crop of live albums that I'm loving, the latest being "Live Music" by the Joe Jackson Trio.
Jazzed-up versions of classics such as "Sunday Papers" and interesting covers including the Beatles' "Girl" (which I've heard him do in concert) and Ian Dury's "Inbetweenies" (which I haven't). I've got four live Joe albums now, including "Summer in the City" and "Two Rainy Nights" plus the double live album (which is the weakest of the four). Now if we can only get him back in Chicago (he's avoiding the US for its anti-smoking laws).

Artists (at least the ones I'm buying live albums from) seem to be able to take more liberties with their own music on today's live sets. Try Glen Phillips' "Live at Largo" for some stripped-down, pure singing. Try "Katie Todd Live" for some of the best, jammin' versions of her early works (and I was there at Milwaukee Summerfest during the recording). Try "Try" by the John Mayer Trio :)

I should've made him diagram that sentence, a lot. You're darn tootin'.

2011-05-05T16:25:00.000-05:00

OK, since Dave Barry isn't doing it anymore, I hereby nominate myself Mister Language Person.

Today, it's all about typing on the Internet...
...and how most of you out there suck at it.

I'm talking about grown adults who don't know the differences between "your" and "you're." If it's too much work to type "you're" then please type "ur" -- at least then I know you're abbreviating and not pig-ignorant.

A lot of you people seem to think that "alot" is a word. Here's a hint: No, it isn't. "Allot" is a word, but it's a verb. I anticipate I'll have to teach this lesson a lot.

Lately, though, there seems to be a new language epidemic of "of" where it doesn't belong. The English language has these wonderful little contractions that have been around for centuries. They can confound immigrants and androids, but you'd think high school graduates could remember that "should've" is the contraction for "should have" and not "should of." The latter isn't shorter, and makes absolutely no sense. "Should" is what my third-grade teacher called a "helper verb" and needs a verb to help. "Of" isn't that verb. "Of" is a preposition, and needs a prepositional phrase, like "of mice and men."

Is that too much for today? I'll deal with "too" next time.

Turning Pro (Droid)

2010-11-22T15:58:00.000-06:00

I just received a loaner of a Droid Pro (no, they're not available on Verizon's Global Loaner program yet, but I gots connections -- Thanks Alan!). My 1st-gen Droid doesn't have a global roaming capability, and I head for Nice on Saturday.

Switching over was relatively simple: Just called Verizon up and gave them the new hardware ID's on the phone. Activation and logging into Google brought in almost all my apps (except those downloaded outside of the Android Market), and all my files came over on my MicroSD card.

High points: MotoBlur is a little spiffier than vanilla Android 2.2 (Froyo), with 7 home screens instead of 5, and a number of active widgets that put it close to on par with the active blocks in Win7Phone. If I cared more about social media, I'd probably be squee-ing, but, no. The batteries are the same as the Droid, so I may take the other as a spare. There are a number of extra apps, which I haven't had a chance to play with yet: Camcorder, City ID, Dialer (slight changes from the standard Phone app), DLNA, Files (a real file browser built in), Verizon Account Manager, NFS Shift, Social Networking, Task Manager, VZ Navigator (bleah). I was a little disappointed that I had to reconnect to all my other accounts, but that was managed very well by an Accounts tool. Nice point: EasyTether still works (and they've got great support -- got me a new activation key within minutes), so I don't have to shell out $$$ to use Verizon's tethering. It would be nice to have the hotspot feature, but hey, for avoiding a $30 charge, I don't mind having a cable.

Low points: Form factor. It's a little thinner and lighter than the standard Droid (no slide keyboard), but the keyboard is smaller, and there's a BlackBerry-like keyboard at the bottom. Lose it, and I'll use Swype instead. They also moved the order of the four main buttons (Menu, Home, Return, Search instead of Return, Menu, Home, Search) -- but apparently that varies on every phone: my son's EVO has yet a different layout. The case is also a much cheaper-feeling plastic, versus the heavier coated metal back of the Droid. While I didn't like the position of the USB cable in the Droid, it's worse on the Pro -- lower on the left, where I'd hold the phone. The BB-like keyboard doesn't have the cursor keys that the Droid's slider does, and it's harder to click on a particular piece of text on the smaller screen.

Everything is a little different: the email program is significantly different, in the browser bookarks are a list versus a grid, notification icons are all different. Nothing I can't get used to, but it hardly makes Android look like a "platform."

Most likely, I'll just be getting used to the differences around the time I hand it back.

Petty Grievances

2010-06-28T09:19:00.000-05:00

Saw Tom Petty at Summerfest in Milwaukee (link above) Saturday night. Awesome performance, if a little short (about an hour and a half), and shallow. Shallow? Yeah, while Petty may put everything up there on stage, heart on his sleeve, really one of the great rock and roll journeymen... this show was pretty much just the greatest hits. I hadn't realized how many Petty songs were so darn easy to sing along to.

And yet, much of the audience failed at at that. (New Lyrics to "Drunk Girls" lcd soundsystem: "Drunk Girls -- don't care if they're in tune, Drunk girls -- just shout it louder"). Y'know, I paid over $100 for the two of us to hear a professional musician (on the lawn -- Pavilion seats were about three times that), not 10,000 fans. Shut the hell up.

So it was nice to hear the few items that weren't on Top 40 radio: "King's Highway" was about the only deep track we got. A very nice cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well" -- which did get the singalong treatment -- showed off Mike Campbell's awesome guitar chops (he should have been at the Crossroads Festival). That song seemed a perfect Heartbreakers tune... and I realized why: "I Should Have Known Better" off the new album "Mojo" is pretty much the same sort of short-lyric-then-screaming-guitar song. They should have put them up against each other, instead of about 20 minutes apart.

(oh, before I forget: Petty's stage has awesome pillars of plasma screens which show graphics or the band at various times. just terrific)

But really, I liked the peformance. What I want to whine about today is the venue: sound is OK (a little echo-y out on the lawn), sight lines aren't bad... but two major issues: The Marcus Amphitheater is praised for its steep hillside allowing clear view. That's fine except that (a) nobody sits, and standing at a 40-degree angle for several hours isn't much fun, and (b) if you do sit, you're going sledding on your blanket down the hill. The capper to the annoyances though, is that Wisconsin isn't as much of a nanny state as Illinois: you can smoke there. And people do. Constantly. I'm really just about ready to test if spitting on people is just as legal as the actions of those who pour their smoke over me.

My run of great opening acts ran short that night: ZZ Top was pretty unexiting. Just before the performance began, the PA was playing a live ZZ Top performance... I couldn't tell the difference in sound. No spontenaity, no extended jams. The songs were synched to clips from movies and their '80s videos, so there's no room for hanging loose. Except for really bluesing up "Jesus Left Chicago", it was pretty dull.

Swype me one of those!

2010-06-18T10:37:00.001-05:00

Wow, somebody got it right! Swype, in beta for Android phones, is such a quantum leap beyond the Android keyboard -- physical or "soft" -- such a huge step over Blackberry keyboards, worlds better than my old Palm's learn-a-new-alphabet letter recognition.

Rather than typing out letters one at a time, swype has you trace a finger around the soft keyboard to spell out the word. It uses continuous dictionary lookup to figure out what word you're really typing. Something the soft keyboard on Android should do -- and almost does, by showing possible words on the top, none of which are what I'm actually using.

Is it perfect? No. It occasionally comes up with the wrong word, or gives me a choice of eight words none of which are right, but it's accurate much more frequently than the standard soft keyboard, and much, much faster. It may be sucking battery power more than my already-thirsty phone does (something likely to improve with the release version, I'd hope). But I swyped several emails yesterday while waiting for my plane, things I'd only have done with the slider keyboard on my Moto Droid previously.

It looks like support for it within apps depends partly on the app: most of the Android apps integrate with it beautifully. A couple times, I couldn't get it to appear in landscape mode, but I haven't put my finger on it yet. The one app it doesn't seem to support at all is "Twisty" -- an interactive fiction interpreter for playing "Adventure" and the old Infocom-type text adventures.

But this is an app that's staying on my phone, and I'll probably pay for it if I have to when the beta is up.

America Pulled In Its Welcome Mats

2010-06-06T20:19:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Ohio - Really? So where's the welcome center?
Pennsylvania? You too.
Maryland? Nope.
Delaware? Sad, just sad.
West Virginia? Closed, Visitor Info "store" closed at 5PM, Interstate tunnel closed and alternate route down to one lane.
Indiana seems to be the only state between here and DC that's still got its welcome mat out on the turnpikes and interstates. Everywhere else, it was a closed rest area and a sign saying it's 48 miles to the next one.

It's not just for the lack of a pee break, although that's annoying too. A chance to stand and stretch, a little caffeine, and a coupon book for cheap motels is what I need.

And you all (except for the Hoosier state) let me down.

Why I hate autotune

2010-05-12T20:57:00.000-05:00

I am not a gleek.

Yes, I watch the show, but I wouldn't if Sue didn't want to.
Yes, they do a nice job at arrangements -- "One" on tonight's episode was terrific, as was Kurt's solo, but it was forgettable enough that I don't remember it just an hour after hearing it off the DVR.

But get rid of the autotune.
I mean, I love music. I'm actually reading non-fiction to understand what it's all about.
And autotune is exactly what music isn't.
It's turning singing into video-game chiptunes.
It's turning some pretty good voices into robots.
It's eliminating any humanity and variation from the voices, which is where all the emotion and expression is.
A few of the songs they let the real voices come through (Kurt's song, in particular), and it makes it worthwhile, but when they were autotuning Mercedes earlier in the show, it was a tragedy. She's got the pipes, let it out. Odds are the actress playing Santana can't sing -- why did they hire her?

Stocking Up

2010-04-05T21:04:00.002-05:00

The freezer was getting empty, and I had to have more veal stock.

The link above goes to the recipe I use: Michael Ruhlman's "Elements of Cooking". It's not a cookbook, it's not a pictorial... it's a freakin' glossary. In reality, it's a food-nerd's book, an overview of the main components of cooking, and a big fat glossary of cooking terms. It's sort of a crib sheet of the ultimate food-nerd's book, Harold McGee's "Food and Cooking," which I've barely flipped through.

But Ruhlman's right about stock: It's important. It's umami. It's body to sauces, and the base of soups. If a recipe calls for a half-cup of stock, and all you've got is a can, use water instead. I do use some of the boxed stocks (Wolfgang Puck's or Emeril's when they're on sale, Kitchen Basics other times, although it's pretty flavorless). But I don't use their veal -- in fact I don't think I've seen veal stock from Kitchen Basics or Emeril.

I've loved what veal stock -- neutral flavor, gelatine body -- has done for my sauces, especially Chinese cooking. It's worth the time, and really, time is all it takes. Veal bones are pretty cheap, even if they're more than pork or beef.

What takes the most time? Finding the darn bones!
Forget the supermarkets: Jewel and Dominicks' have got nothing that doesn't come out of a box and sell by the dozens. Even my trusty local Garden Fresh let me down -- and they've got a real butcher that actually cuts up meat... but they don't do much veal. So I went to the place I got it from last time: Fresh Farms in Wheeling.

And just like before... they've got 3-4 pounds wrapped up, some "Veal Soup Bones" and some "Veal Neck Bones". So I throw them in the freezer, and next time I'm in the neighborhood, time to get some more... and a third time and I've got the 10 pounds I need, finally.

So I picked a day I was going to be doing a lot of cooking anyway, got up early and started roasting bones before I finish breakfast. Oil some baking sheets, roast the bones at 450F until they're brown and toasty. Drop them in a pot, deglaze the pans with some water to go into the pot, and more water to cover. Simmer in a 200F oven for 8 hours, then add carrots, onions, celery and tomato paste, fresh parsley, thyme and pepper, and a couple more hours.

Ruhlman's book says that it should be down to about two quarts from the original 10-12. No way. I don't know if that's because the oven is sealed too well, and the steam doesn't evaporate? Maybe it's a little cool? I have no idea. So I strained out the bones and veg, put it back in the oven, and left it overnight. Still lots more than 2 quarts, but I can live with that. Chilled overnight so I can skim the little bit of fat off, and I've got about 5 quarts in the freezer of jiggly, tasty stock, apportioned from quarts down to ice cubes.

Mmm... what to make next? Tracks, apparently, I'm off on a business trip for the rest of the week... but when I get back, Sue will be off on a trip, so I'm planning on the Taiwanese steamed fish with black beans and scallions from the latest Sauveur.

Easter Counter-Programming

2010-04-03T15:46:00.002-05:00

Sue was hoping that Netflix had "Jesus Christ Superstar" on their streaming plan -- no dice. I could show "Life of Brian" for her family... but I get the feeling the language and full-frontal nudity may be out of the question for some of my nieces and nephews.

But what I really wanted to talk about is the alternative to Easter food. What's with ham, anyway? Jesus certainly didn't have any. Not at the last supper, nor the one before that.

I've always hated ham (jamon iberico and prosciutto are another thing altogether, but as Alton Brown says, "That's another show."). So since we've started hosting Sue's family Easter, I've come up with alternatives. Last year was an Indian chicken pilaf (made with Kosher chicken for my future daughter-in-law, an no butter *sigh*). This year, it's b'stella, from one of our favorite cookbooks, "Cooking Under Wraps" By Nicole Routhier (ISBN 0688108679, currently out of print, but you find a used copy, snatch it up!). I've made this dish before, and it's one of the most fragrant, rich dishes in the world. Chicken poached with cinnamon and black pepper, then mixed with sauteed onions, garlic, ginger and spices, cream, cilantro and mint; scrambled eggs made with some of the poaching liquid; all enclosed in phyllo with almonds, sugar and cinnamon. Sweet, spicy, wow. But it's a kitchen-killer: I'm on about four pots and pans so far, and I haven't melted butter for the phyllo yet.

I'm betting this will be gone... and the ham will have lots of leftovers. I'd rather it were the other way 'round, though.

Imagine there's no heaven -- at least we've got Terry Gilliam

2010-01-11T11:34:00.002-06:00

We saw The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus last night, and there's no doubt it's a Terry Gilliam film: shattering landscapes, floating hands, and nods to Bodicelli's venus are sure signs that something from that particular mind has made its way to your eyeballs.

It's certainly the most visually stunning film Gilliam's done: the fantasies from Brazil and the storytelling of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen merely hint at what's behind the good doctor's mirror here. And not only is the scenery fabulous, but we've got a stellar cast to chew on it: Christopher Plummer as the doctor, Lily Cole as Valentina (who bears more than a little resemblence to the 9-year-old Sarah Polley of Munchausen), Verne Troyer in a role that should help people think of him as more than just Mini-Me, and especially Tom Waits as Mr. Nick: a devil not so much interested in turning people to evil as the game itself. Did I forget somebody? Heath Ledger you say? It's nice to have a last performance, but it's no Joker. His character is something of a cypher through much of the movie: how much does he remember, how much does he want to forget? Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell do a good job as Fake Shemps, but I would have really liked to have seen what happens when Ledger himself steps behind the mirror.

The core of the movie is all about the wagers between Parnassus and Mr. Nick -- I've never seen Waits having so much fun on screen, even as Renfield in Coppola's Dracula. But it's also the weakest part. What exactly is the bet, the choice that each soul must make? It's really not clear. It's not really good versus evil, it's something more like imagination versus base instincts. There was one mumbled line about it early on, and I'd really like another go at the movie to hear it again. But the choices people make behind the mirror, especially Ledger/Farrell's Tony, are kind of vague.

There's also an interesting twist: the typical "Devil Take Your Soul" plot is a putting off of a eternal torment for a little pleasure now. The Doctor's mirror seems to give that immediate pleasure to those who choose "good" while the sinners get their hell instantly.

Trying to figure out the morals of a filmmaker from his visions is probably a fruitless task anyway. The movie isn't about the choices of good and evil -- it's the playing of games, the quest for immortality and the eternal chance to return from dereliction. It's a fantastic ride, don't miss it.

A pair of punks -- cyber, that is

2010-01-06T10:01:00.003-06:00

Over a recent business trip, I read two books that fit the post-cyberpunk model well, and perhaps even good ol' cyberpunk:

Radio Freefall, by Matthew Jarpe
Implied Spaces, Walter Jon Williams

It's interesting to see how many themes crop up in both books -- I'll try not to give too much away, but definitely put both of these on your short list to read.

Radio Freefall is a first (and only) novel, and it's quite well polished for a first outing. It falls squarely post-cyberpunk if only because it's not a dystopian society, but it carries some important CP items: emergent AI and world-spanning AI, and the ethics of AI ownership, and hackers of computers, societies, brains and bodies... plus good ol' rock 'n' roll! Following the band "Snake Vendor," the book features excerpts of lyrics from that band, plus "Sex Lethal" and a couple others. Jarpe gets rock music and lyrics, the way few bands seem to today. I want to hear some of those songs. There's an interesting McGuffin: A virus so prevalent in every computer (cough) that the world economy depends on its side effects.

Implied Spaces is a bit less groundbreaking, more of an SF comfy old shoe. It opens reading like a heroic fantasy, except the protag is aware he's in a fantasy, making me think perhaps it's a Dream Park-like setting, and it is and it isn't. Where Radio Freefall was more of a Neuromancer-like near future, this is more of a far-future superscience story. Again, we've got AI rights, violation of mind, self and computer, but at a different scale. Worlds held in the balance kind of thing... and a talking cat and a magic sword. Could be trite but ends up far from it. Probably more nods to folks like Lieber than I'm picking up on.

Bottom line? Good to see old-fashioned Cyberpunk still being written. With folks like Bear (Quantico), Sterling (Zenith Angle), and Gibson (Pattern Recognition) getting out of the future and into maybe next week, there's a new guard picking up where the old left off a while ago.

And that applies to music too: Airborne Toxic Event sounds like Psychadelic Furs (if the Furs had clearer singing voices); MGMT's Electric Feel sounds a bit like The Clash's Hitsville UK.

Is everything old new again? Or am I just getting old?

Another Great Opening Act - One Eskimo

2009-08-04T09:27:00.004-05:00

Sue won tix for the Tori Amos concert which was last night at the Chicago Theatre. Can't say I loved the show, although the audience was definitely into her. It didn't help that I only recognized two songs ("Cornflake Girl" and "Big Wheel" which pretty much bookended the show), and a lot of the rest was very avant-garde, almost operatic. Her diction is not in the Natalie Merchant zone, so following the songs -- which didn't have a lot of verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure -- was difficult, even boring at times. Nice light show.

The opening act was One Eskimo. They weren't on the ticket or the marquee, but I'm glad they were there. It consisted of a vocalist who couldn't stand still, bopping up and down even when hunched over the mike, and three musicians who were so laid back, sitting down, almost comatose, that at first I thought it was all coming from a recording (there were some recorded/sequenced synth and samples). The bassist also played horn, the guitarist had nice chops, and the drummer was playing a mostly-electronic kit that looked like he borrowed it from "Rock Band" but really rocked out when he pulled out the mallets and tom.

I'd have to say that influences definitely include Moby, Primitive Radio Gods and that sort of trance/electronica stuff -- I'm probably getting those names wrong, it's outside my usual music comfort zone. But it was fun, engaging and these folks could go far. They've got an album coming out in September, and a 3 song/4 track EP (only $5 at the souvenir stand? You can't get a pin for that price anymore). We listened to the EP on the way home, and it didn't have the immediacy, the emotion of the live show -- but it seldom does (let me tell you about Billy Joel's Storm Front some time).

Give them a listen. Nice stuff.

Flat is right

2009-06-16T09:26:00.003-05:00

Just got finished with Larry Niven's "Flatlander" -- four old stories of Gil "The Arm" Hamilton, plus one new one. I realize it's not new -- the book came out in '95, but I finally picked up a used copy. I'm not shelling out the $6.99 list price for one short story.

The old stories (originally found in "The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton" and an illustrated TPB called "The Patchwork Girl" -- no relation to same in the Oz pantheon) are still a delight. Terse prose, wry jokes, well crafted plot, a techie macguffin per story on top of the SF aspects of a detective with an imaginary arm.

The new story is what left me flat: "The Woman in Del Ray Crater" seems to pick up shortly after "Patchwork" but it's jarring: different language patter, no humor, awkward phrasing (everyone calls Gil by his rank: "Ubersleuth Hamilton" -- where did that come from?). The common thread in the other four stories of the organ bank crisis is dropped here, introducing a new 'impenetrable' device into the Known Space universe -- we already have skrith (Ringworld), Slaver stasis fields (World of Ptavvs and others), GP Hulls (Ringworld and others). It's barely even critical to the plot, and the motive makes most CSI episodes seem truly brilliant.

Niven was an author that used to be tops on my must read list: Ringworld Engineers is the first SF I bought new in hardcover. Mote in God's Eye (with Pournelle) is still one of the best hard SF stories written. But latter stuff just doesn't thrill. "The Gripping Hand" (sequel to Mote) was pathetic, and this new story shows he can't even keep it together for forty pages. I picked up "Crashlander" at the same time (the Beowulf Shaeffer stories) but I'm not putting it too high on my must-read list.

Note: I did find a previously unnoticed link in Flatlander to other stories: In "Patchwork Girl" there's a character named Marion Schaeffer, likely Beowulf's ancestor. But PG came out long after the other Gil the Arm stories, it's more of a retcon than history building.

There's nothing wrong with Cantonese food

2009-05-26T20:53:00.003-05:00

Don't get me wrong, I love spicy food. Give me Tony's Three Chili Chicken (Lao Sze Chuan), fiery Indian curries, spicy salsa, crushed pepper on the pizza, giardinera on my Italian Beef... but there's times when I've forgotten how good the stuff that isn't spicy can be too. Anthony Bourdain wrote in one of his books that one of his Mexican-born chefs said, "Why do Americanos like their food so [deleted] spicy?" I don't know... I like it. But sometimes I need to step away from it.

When I was young, there was a restaurant (long gone) on the west edge of Northbrook called Mandarin Village. It was the first place I ever had Kung Pao chicken (and it's still my memory of the best version of that: lots of peanuts, oily chicken, few veggies), but the dish I remember best was something called Beef with White Onion. I've never been able to find that dish elsewhere, (it might have been labeled "Mandarin"), and it's flavors are mainly sweet onion and sesame oil, but something about it has always eluded my cooking skills. Whatever happened to Shrimp with Lobster Sauce? These days, you order it you get a flavorless white sauce full of egg "rags" and not much else. When I was a kid it was a dark brown sweet and salty sauce, probably amped up with sesame oil.

In recent years, LTHForum.com has reintroduced me to the pleasures of Cantonese: Their namesake "Little" Three Happiness in Chinatown, Sun Wah on Argyle. There's a reverence to slow-cooked meats (roast duck and pork), a simple sauce, and a dedication to umami. The good stuff is oilier, fattier than the "healthy Chinese" that's been all the rage for a decade or more, but the good stuff always is.

So tonight, instead of ordering something with a chile pepper next to it on the menu, I ordered Chow Fun with Roast Pork. For a moment, the flavors of that long-lost Beef with White Onion came through.

They say you can't get your childhood back, but I found it for a moment.

Hugo Nominations

2009-03-25T10:08:00.002-05:00

So, the Hugo nominations for best novel came out. What do I think? Awesome picks, folks.
This is the first time I can think of that I've owned all five novels prior to the nominations, and I don't think I've ever owned them all prior to the awards either (exccept for the year Brad Templeton's ClariNet created a CD, something even harder to do now that the publishers have caught on to eBooks).

Yes, I own them, but I haven't read them all yet (still slogging through Matter by Iain Banks, from last year's list).

Overall Impressions:

Three juveniles (Graveyard Book, Little Brother, Zoe's Tale)! Are people having problems reading grown-up books?
Younger authors are definitely pushing out the old guard: Scalzi, Stross and Doctorow are sort of a posse. The Neil/Neal pair looks like the fogies here, and they're still young authors too.

The books, and the odds:

The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman: Haven't read it yet, but hey, it just won the Newbery Award, and has lots of critical acclaim. Lots of Gaiman fans on the convention memberships. I'd give it about a 5:2.
Anathem, Neal Stephenson: Haven't read this one either. Neal's return to SF after wandering through near-future thriller (Cryptonomicon) and historical SF (Baroque Cycle) also has a lot of critics liking it, but it's big and bloated -- there's some backlash against Stephenson's tendency to digress and 5th-act weakness. Still, a lot of fans going back to Snow Crash will probably vote for this. 3:1
Little Brother, Cory Doctorow: Fun lighthearded but serious anti-Homeland Security cautionary tale. I enjoyed this a lot, but the more you know about crypto the less novel it is, since large chunks of exposition are pretty much cribbed from Bruce Schneier's Beyond Fear -- with permission. There's some great bits on LARPing, practical joke-level stuff, and a lot of "get off your butts and realize how much the nanny state is destroying our lives." This isn't allegory like much SF with a political tone, it's real and now. 3:1
Zoe's Tale, John Scalzi: This is fun, and yes I think he got the teenaged girl protagonist right (not quite "Juno in Space" but close), but it's a parallel tale to The Last Colony, and it's not that far away for most of the story. There are several, "Oh, that's what happened!" moments because of the different point of view, and it fills in a lot of gaps in the Old Man's War background. Frankly, though, the other three novels in the series are better. 5:1
Saturn's Children, Charlie Stross: Stross is probably my favorite author right now, but this isn't his best book. He should have won for Accelerando a few years ago, and there's a chance he might win on a series of noms even through the weaknesses here. Why? It's an homage to Heinlein, specifically Friday (one of the more readable late-period RAH books), but with grown-up sex, in fact rather kinky sex between robots of various sizes and shapes (the heroine has encounters with rather randy hotels and spaceships). That might turn off some readers (not many, but assuredly some), might attract others. 4:1.

In any case, you can't go wrong reading any of these.

The only thing you can do when they're dead is go through their pockets for loose change

2009-02-04T23:35:00.003-06:00

If only mom's computer were all dead it would have been easy. Do the stupid HP system restore which "Nukes it from space, it's the only way to be sure."

But no, it's only almost dead -- the Windows folder was gone, but the Users and other folders were still there. I was a little disturbed to see the "Startup Repair Failed" -- and so was the guy at HP support, he said "Oh, that's bad."

Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, HP only provides a restore-to-factory-conditions method, no way to reinstall Vista, so far as I could tell. So I called up HP, went through the phone tree, and the guy was actually very good. No, he couldn't help me, but he (a) acknowledged that the options were bad, (b) didn't try to walk me through his script once I demonstrated that I was indeed the master, and generally tried to be helpful.
Me: "Can I write to a USB drive from the Command Line mode?"
HP: "Yeah!" (too bad my parents have no thumb drives around, more on that below)
Me: "What about writing a CD or DVD?"
HP: "That should work too."
Me: "Uh, what command line commands work to write to CDs?"
HP: "Oh. I guess you need Windows for that."

I thought I'd have to drive home to get a USB stick, but then I remembered my Crackberry has a 4GB microSD in it... and luckily we found a cable. It looks like Windows' recovery system only has USB 1.1 drivers, 'cause it was slower than molasses would be outside right now.

So dozens of reboots and "Please wait for updates to install" messages, downloading the antivirus from AT&T, getting HP drivers for her printer, restoring the cruft from the Blackberry... four hours at Mom's house, and probably a couple more to come.

It could have been worse... but as I said, "all dead" would have had me out of there in an hour, but them a lot more miserable.

Testify: REPO - The Genetic Opera

2008-11-13T20:26:00.003-06:00

For over a month, my son has been raving about REPO. I figure Sarah Brightman, Anthony Stewart Head, Alexa Vega, Paris Hilton, director of Saw II-IV... what can go wrong? (OK, those last two it could be a lot). It's been compared to Rocky Horror Picture Show, but that's not even close: Camp isn't what it's about (well, maybe a little). Only a little goth lingerie ties them together. If you really want something similar, think Tommy -- child with health problems, very little spoken, awkward pacing, structurally flawed, and you're there.

First off: Paris Hilton didn't suck at all. You want to see Paris waste space, spin Veronica Mars up on your Netflix queue and get Season 2, Episode 18. Urgh. Poster child for vapid. Here, she was completely appropriate, sang OK, and looked sleazy as she was supposed to be. Perfectly appropriate stunt casting.

I wish the other casting was a little more on-target: Alexa Vega can hit the notes, but there was nothing behind it, no emotion, no acting. For the lead character, she was kind of whiny and weak. The Rotti brothers were awful.

The movie mostly comes down to a confrontation between Paul Sorvino's organ transplant firm CEO and Head's repo man, based on a 17-year grudge over a stolen love. There are some fantastic visuals, most of them around Sarah Brightman's character Blind Mag's replaced eyes which project as well as see.

The music is hit or miss: a few songs such as Zydrate Anatomy work well, but are a little bit on the Broadway hokey side, others are atonal and arrythmic, just moans and grumbles. The story is a bit hard to follow (who poisoned Shiloh?), and the story is held together with comic book panels drawn by the writer/composer/Graverobber (looks like influences by Mignola, and maybe Howard Chaykin's American Flagg!), that would be better with a song.

Will you love it? I didn't, but I don't want my time and money back (hello, "Sex and the City?" -- you've been beaten). See it now on the road show, or in one of the eight (Eight? When crap like Indy IV opened on like 3000?) screens around the US, with a live audience that'll cheer and boo.

Knocking Opportunists

2008-09-19T19:50:00.003-05:00

To the young woman who walked out of my house with my wallet:
You suck, lady.

I don't think you were scamming when your car had trouble -- your car didn't start, still didn't start with a gallon of gas (which you'd offered to pay for and never did), and it was left there for a couple hours. So when I invited you into my house, and you sincerely thanked me, why did you grab my wallet? It's a crime of opportunity. Now I like opportunity. I'll take advantage of something presented to me if it doesn't hurt anybody. This doesn't fit that model. You suck.

Yeah, I lost probably in the neighborhood of $80, and some photos, and a lot of my time getting ID and credit cards back. Those hotdog stand buy-six-get-one-free cards were no loss, but that photo of my wife from her college graduation was one of my prized posessions. You suck.

So you dropped my wallet on my neighbor's lawn, and he's just found it 11 days later, wet, kinda fermented-smelling (we did get a foot of rain last weekend), and all that's missing is the cash and strangely that photo of Sue. I want those two days back of calling credit card companies, insurance companies and others, the soul-destroying hours at the DMV (Luckily I had a passport which makes replacing a driver's license easy. Think about it -- what picture ID do you have, and by you I mean my miniscule audience, not the lady who sucks). You could have put it into my mailbox, into any mailbox, and I'd've gotten most of my stuff back. If you really needed the cash, I'd have given it to you to avoid this annoyance. But no, you suck.

And on top of it, you're an idiot: There were two Visa gift cards in there. You obviously found them, because they were other than where I put them. That's $100 you passed up. But wait -- I think you took the Starbucks card (not sure, I may have killed it myself). That had all of, what $2.47 on it?

Have you destroyed my faith in the general good of people? No.
Will I be more reluctant to assist my fellow human being? No.
But I don't classify you as human anymore. If I see you, I'll probably spit on you. You've been warned, even though you suck.

Too long in the waste (of time) land -- Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained

2008-08-08T16:25:00.003-05:00

2000+ pages...
Cast of thousands, no, billions...
A first-book non-ending that pissed the hell out of me...

How did I end up enjoying the ending of Peter F. Hamilton's weighty dualogy, "Pandora's Star" and "Judas Unchained"?

Well, I have to admire the sheer gall of a story with this kind of scope. I could call it a 300+ year tale, but only the prologue occurs in the 21st century, the rest more than 300 years later. The sheer number of characters and worlds created is pretty astounding too. There's a lot of irons in the fire, balls in the air, and a couple dozen other metaphors too.

But the seams show, way too much. Worldbuilding should be about what the author knows, to make the story better. It seems sometimes like Hamilton felt that because he put the work into it, he had to write it all down in the final story, there's just too much there. Upon introducing a person, we don't need to know what they're wearing, maybe just the class of dress. When we get to a planet, we don't need to know about the foliage, only that it's a jungle.

There are at least a half dozen alien intelligent lifeforms (counting an AI) in this story, that's a strength, that they fit (although I was hoping for one of them to have a bigger role in the finale). There are at least a half-dozen major narratives, including a mechanic disatisfied with his factory-world life, a murder mystery, a political thriller, a world-spanning adventure, a war story, and they interact only tangentially initially. In fact the first nearly 1000 pages of "Pandora's Star" really doesn't get very many of the characters together, and it ends in a literal cliffhanger, no major conflicts resolved at all.

Personally, I'd have rather seen three or so mostly-unrelated novels, with each story being told linearly, rather than taking 100-page vacations to hit the other threads. By the third or fourth books, it could all start coming together with a smash, finishing up at maybe 1400 pages total. It's really way, way too long. For instance: he tells us every single gosh-darned time that it's "enzyme-bonded concrete" -- whatever the hell that is. After the first time, call it "concrete" and I'll be pretty sure that's the enzyme-bonded stuff unless I'm told it's the "old-fashioned, not even enzyme-bonded" type. Same with "plyplastic" and "malmetal." There's just no need for that.

But he comes up with a solution to the story that works, and the characters find their proper place in the universe in a rather deft fashion. That's impressive. Is it enough to get me to start another over-500-page book by PFH? Not sure. A friend recommends "Neutronium Alchemist" but I need to read two other books before getting to those two.

I doubt he's getting paid by the word, so what he really needs is an editor. Remember Blaise Pascal:

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.”

(I had thought that quote from Mark Twain, the closest from him was “If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”)

*#!% Blinking Lights

2008-07-15T15:47:00.003-05:00

Why should a light blink? To get your attention. Flashing signs, countdown timers, warning signs, answering machines with unanswered messages.

So why are there so damned many lights that blink when they're working just right?

My most hated is the Verizon Broadband Access card, which sticks out of my laptop at a bad angle to begin with, and then has to have a bright flash of light every couple of seconds. Extremely distracting, and redundant: If it stopped working, there are a couple of indicators on my laptop which would tell me already. And if my laptop isn't open, I don't care. I've taken to taping over the thing, but I need more opaque tape.

My Dell Lattitude D830 blinks sometimes when it's charging. Like I care. I plugged it in after having it untethered because I want it to charge. Turn the light on steady and stay that way.

The last hotel I was at in Boston was full of blinkies: the fire alarm blinks brightly once every couple of seconds (again, why?), the LG flat panel TV had a red LED that blinked half the night, and the telphone would occasionally blink the Line 1 light for no apparent reason (no, I didn't have a message).

It's just LEDs, you say, what's the big deal? Well, I'm profoundly nearsighted, and with my contacts out, a single LED blows up to the size of a dinner plate at arm's length, and if my eyes are open at all, it's distracting from falling asleep.

If you've got to have an indicator light, leave it on! Make it dim if you have to save power, or get rid of it all together (Kudos to DirecTV's otherwise mediocre HR21 in that it has no "standby" light. I know it's always on, in order to record things, thank you for having it go dark when I tell it to). Blink when there's a problem.

Here's another stupid blinker in my living room: A 2-line answering machine. It's got a big LED button on the left and right to tell me there are messages on each line, and a couple-digit display that alternates "L1 0 L2 0" all day and night. Does the blinking mean something? No, just that it can't tell me everything it wants to tell me at once.

Bored with this subject. Back to work.

Hopelessly TiVoted

2008-06-21T13:59:00.006-05:00

I've been a long-term TiVo fan (and definitely not a Grease fan, so no love of the OLJ singing here, just the pun). I have a first-gen TiVo, with a lifetime subscription, and an HD DirecTiVo which I bought off eBay last year (prices have fallen by 75% since) when I finally bought a JVC HDTV. I knew I wasn't getting all the HD channels I could get, but I wanted my TiVo.

Then lightning struck two weeks ago. Killed the TV ($461 repair), the doorbell ($10 repair DIY), the Sony VCR (no big loss, if I ever need to watch something, I'll go out and buy one), the DirecTiVo (a $70 power supply didn't fix it), and the old TiVo (which the kids were still using in the other room).

(The old TiVo isn't even quite dead, but its modem died in an interesting way that no only can't it dial out, it caused a short on my phone line that if you didn't pick up on the first ring, it would go to a busy signal)

Anyway, DirecTV offered to replace my DirecTiVo with an HR21 DVR for no cost, and for $5/month, put a second DVR in the family room (they had no sat receiver previously). I was told by friends that I would hate the DirecTV DVR, but in the words of Monty Burns, "I know what I hate, and I don't hate this."

There are some things the TiVo did better: I think it changed channels faster; the searching for titles was nice because you could filter it by show type, and "Suggestions" were useful, because unless you fed your TiVo the wrong info, you'd usually have something worth watching that it "thought" you'd like. It also shows more shows and channels one one screen when browsing (on an HDTV, more rows should have been easier on the HR21)

But the HR21 has some benefits. Aside from a slightly more modern menu scheme, that doesn't look like you're playing "You Don't Know Jack", it has a Picture-In-Picture of what's playing while you're fiddling with menus, or a mini-menu over the show. It has 30-second skip built in instead of a key hack (it's not instant, but it's acceptable), and it's got oodles of more HD channels. So yes, I can live with this, but I still wish DirecTV and TiVo would kiss and make up.

The big loss, though, is that the HR21 does not have an Over-The-Air antenna. I see no reason to pay $3/month for 5 HD local channels, when I get about two dozen in Chicago OTA for free. Sure I never watch 3/4ths of them, but it's the principle of the thing. I complained about this, hoping DirecTV would give them to me free. Instead, they're shipping me an AM21, which integrates an OTA receiver into the HR21 through the USB. Innnnnteresting. We'll see what it's like when I get it.

That reminds me of one more gripe: Food Network in Stretch-O-Vision. Food Network broadcasts everything in HD, even if it isn't, by applying a variable stretch filter to fill the screen. Wacky. Ugly. No point to it. I'm perfectly happy to 'pillar-box' my SD shows on the HD set when you'll let me. Watching Emeril's face swell to twice its width when he goes to the right or left of the screen is pretty nasty.

More HD is a Good Thing. But it will fill my DVR faster, sadly.

p.s. The TV and DirecTV DVR are now connected through a UPS, instead of a cheap-ass surge supressor.

p.p.s How did I find out the modem died on the TiVo? I called AT&T again complaining about the busy signal problem -- they said to check inside, which seemed unlikely, but unplugging the TiVo fixed the problem.

That's Right, [We're] Not From Texas

2008-03-03T14:54:00.003-06:00

So we just got back from a whirlwind, 1000-mile tour of the eastern half of Texas: Dallas -> Houston -> Galveston -> San Antonio -> Austin -> Fort Worth. A friend of mine warned me it would be terrible (practically a Thelma-and-Louise "You know how I feel about Texas"), but I had a great time. Linked to Lyle Lovett above, in case you're wondering.

Some notes about Texas:

Whoever paves their roads needs a good lynchin'. Loudest interstate highways in the world, they make a ton of noise driving over them. I'm not talking potholes or anything, just the pavement
Eat great barbecue in Lockhart, Luling or Elgin; don't believe anyone that the Salt Lick in Driftwood comes close (actually, their smoked sausage rocked my world, but their brisket is just merely very good)
Texas sure isn't all desert and cactus -- most of where we were it looked like Wisconsin: bare-leafed trees, rolling hills and the occasional cow.
They've got their primary in a week, and I only saw campaigning for Obama and Paul. Not a McCain sign in sight, and the only Hillary sign was being carried by someone in DFW airport.
If you're going to Austin for the music, don't do it two weeks before SXSW -- they're saving up the good stuff for then. Heard a lot of Hendrix-by-way-of-Stevie-Ray-Vaughan (Little Wing, Voodoo Child, etc.). And the bars with no cover serve very inexpensive soft drinks, surprisingly ($1 Coca Cola? unheard of! I'm no teetotaler, just don't like beer, and won't risk my life ordering wine or fruit+rum or tequila drinks in a Texas bar)
See the "Lucy" exhibit in Houston, or when it comes to your town. Nice history of Ethiopia, and seeing 3 million year old hominid bones is extremely cool. The staff was extremely knowledgable and enthusiastic, especially the guy carrying a well-thumbed National Geographic of the dig.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do?

2008-02-23T20:12:00.005-06:00

I'm a little late to the game to Dynamite Entertainment's The Boys -- I read volume one a while ago, and enjoyed some of it, but I think they're finding their stride in the 7th to 14th issues that make up the second volume.

The proprietor of the comic shop I patronize said he's enjoying it, but finds it a little too over-the-top. Nah, Garth Ennis' Preacher skewered more sacred cows and got more gruesomely violent, deviantly sexual and just plain gross. I loved it, but there was also a great plot running through that story that made it worthwhile -- what is religion, god, faith, etc?

The Boys is (are? am? no, "is" will do), so far, a bit less far-reaching. Billy the Butcher (who speaks like Bullet-Tooth Tony from Snatch), Wee Hughie (visually based on Simon Pegg), Mother's Milk (not as blaxplotiation-like as Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction, but on that path), The Frenchman (insane, keen sense of smell), The Female (doesn't talk, doesn't like to be touched, very destructive) and The Terror (very cartoony bulldog), are CIA black ops to keep tabs on, blackmail and extort superheroes to keep them in line, and when they don't, take them down. But it draws the question of who watches the watchers? These guys are enhanced the same way as the superheroes in this universe. Hopefully, this will get addressed. As nasty as the boys can be, why are they the ones that are being used to reign in rogue heroes?

This second volume covers two stories: The first is a search for a killer of a young gay man, and it may be the Tek-Knight or his ex-sidekick Swingwing. I was a little disappointed by this, because it rehashes stuff as old as 1992's Brat Pack, and alluded to in the hoary old Seduction of the Innocent (1954). Not enough funny, and shows the Boys will beat the face in of any suspect out there. Call me a bleeding heart, but even vigilantes need some due process.

The second story is a lot more fun. The Boys go to Russia to track down what's going on with two supervillain's heads blowing up spontaneously... and leads to the possibility of a supervillain coup in Russia, and the involvment of corporations and gangsters. A lot funnier, and a lot more over the top without teeth and blood spraying. When a Soviet-era super team features "The Tractor", "Collective" -- OK I get it... but the fifth and surviving member, a huge bear of a man is called "Love Sausage", there's a game afoot. I was a little disappointed by a major change in the art in the middle of the second story. It wasn't clear in the credits what this change was, but it got a lot more cartoony.

Not anxious enough to pick up every issue, I'll keep grabbing the trades, because, after all, comic books are for Boys. (No, there's good stuff for girls too, I'll write about some of that some day)

Local talent: Kristine Smith's "Code of Conduct"

2008-02-05T22:45:00.001-06:00

I just got finished reading Kristine C. Smith's Code of Conduct, the first of her Jani Killian novels. They were originally recommended to me on John Scalzi's blog, and I've got to say, I'm fascinated.

Smith's a Chicago area SF writer, and her day job (pharmaceutical product development) crosses paths with mine (software for the pharma industry), so there's an interest there too (I'd thought perhaps I'd worked with her in the past, but no, different company).

Code of Conduct follows Jani Killian who's been hiding out for 18 years after nasty fallout of a political situation with an alien race, the Idomeni. They're prehaps not as fleshed out as some of CJ Cherryh's, but they are at least truly alien, and it's impressive. The main idomeni character, Tsecha, doesn't think like we do. He thinks in different idioms, struggles with "humanish" concepts (toward the end of the book, his aversion to bodily contact makes him uncomfortable when the prime minister says he's "pulling her leg"), and has goals and influences that cross the human characters' objectives, but at different angles.

The characters are interesting: broken, on edge, stressed to their limits (another similarity with Cherryh), and the fact that there are a couple more books leads me to hope I"ll learn a lot more about the idomeni. But it's not perfect. Smith gets a little obsessive with a few "futurisms" in the language such as "trash-zaps" in every room which dispose of waste, "dispos" which are disposable containers, and "skimmers" that cover everything from gurneys to coffee carts to cars and trucks in various sizes and shapes. I'm hopeful her writing matures -- there's more books I want to read. I'd also hoped for more biotech in the story given her day job -- I'd expected a bio-oriented resolution to the story which may yet come in a subsequent book. More reading to come -- book 2 is in my suitcase. That reminds me -- I need to write more about Len Deighton too.

Alone, In the Dark

2007-09-28T23:09:00.001-05:00

Nope, nothing about the video game here. Musing on two books: The link goes to a Froogle search for Elizabeth Moon's The Speed of Dark, the 2002 Nebula winner, but I also want to talk about "Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto"

I don't remember where I first read about Party of One (called PO1 from now on or else I'd end up calling it POO, that's just not right). It's less of a manifesto than a rant in places, but it's an interesting read. I've always called myself a loner, but I'm not as far off the social path as Anneli Rufus, the author. I've belonged to clubs, a sports team (well, fencing is a solo sport, so I barely count that), and was an avid role-playing gamer, which requires social interaction (but see below). PO1 is adamant about the differences between Loners, who seek solitude, and Outcasts, who are thrown into solitude. Loners aren't the serial killers, terrorists, etc. -- they (we?) just don't care enough about other people to want to hurt them. It takes a broken social structure to cause that kind of pain. But I want to give this book to my mother, who keeps thinking that I need to be more social, that I need to change. Well, to paraphrase Ms Rufus, I no more need to be a social person than a bird needs lips.

Thinking about the role-playing: It's a social interaction that lets me be not myself, to interact with people in a way that doesn't reflect people's perceptions of me, but of my character. It's a way to be other than my loner self. A similar concept is often mentioned about the Japanese fascination with karaoke -- it permits a salaryman to socialize with a boss, to escape class and social structrure. Kinda nifty.

PO1 also talks a bit about autism - which translates to self-ism, of course. Which brings me back to The Speed of Dark, a novel following the life of an autistic man -- high functioning, near-genius, given the chance to change. Now I know I'm not autistic, or even Aspergers, but I'm enough of a loner, and sharing some characteristics of those classed as "gifted" to understand some of the situations: intolerant of noises, sometimes socially inappropriate, not liking changes in routine or being touched -- this character touched me. It's more than that, though, the book is outstanding. Unlike, say Flowers for Algernon, Lou, the main character, isn't mentally impaired. His viewpoint is quite different from mine (evoking such SF themes as C.J. Cherryh's alien minds or her vat-grown Azi), and his quite-different viewpoints of life and the universe are poetic in places.

It's a strange book, Lou's speech is stilted, the tech is uneven for an SF book (things such as "personality chips" for criminals are dropped in suddenly). But I have no doubt it's one of the best of its year, or the decade. There's a desperation to the character, to know himself, to try to understand the world that's full of metaphors that don't fit his mind. It's a book that sat on my shelf for quite a long timne, I'm glad I finally got around to it.

The title is the character's puzzle: Is dark faster than light, since darkness, ignorance, are always there first, before light gets there? It becomes a recurring theme in the book, explring what's out there:

The light rushes into the pupil of my eye, carrying with it the information
that is within range of my vision, carrying with it the world, but what I see
when I look at where the light goes in is blackness, deep and velvety.
Light goes in and darkness looks back at me. The image is in my eye and in my
brain, as well as in the mirror.

This gap between knowledge and un-knowing, light and dark, returns again and again, to a most satisfying conclusion I won't give away.

Nothing like DIY to Simplify Your World

2007-08-25T08:28:00.001-05:00

The (cough) New AT&T's new motto is "Simplify Your World".
Nothing simpler to motivate you than lack of service.

I had a very loud hum show up on my two land lines the other day out of the blue. AT&T's customer support was friendly and courteous... but said it could be two weeks before they got out to look at my line, and if it did turn out to be internal, it would be a $70 charge.

Tha's motivation for ya -- I could barely hear her due to the 60-cycle hum, didn't want to deal with it for two weeks, didn't want to pay $70, so I took one of the few non-cordless phones out to the interface box. Darn -- it's on my side, no hum when I plug straight in.

So it's time to do the usual crap -- unplug phones one at a time until I find the one that's causing the hum. It's the living room one with the cordless and the answering machine. Not good, I don't want to buy a new one. Also, is it the phone or the wires? Plugging another phone in showed no problem... good. Now it's the cable or the phone. Plugging a different cable into the same phone and I'm OK. But it's only a short cable, I need another one. I've got dozens of phone cords in the house of two varieties: short ones with four or six wires (just fine for the two-line phone), and longer ones with two wires (only good for a single-line phone), which probably all came with various phones and other devices that connect to phones like TiVo etc.

C'mon, guys, four wires on phones has been a standard for decades -- why get so cheap over two more strands of copper?

Anyway, back in business.

Daywatch

2007-06-14T13:55:00.001-05:00

My wife and I caught Daywatch on Tueday night. The Tribune had an ad on Friday for a free screening if you send them an email with a description of what "superpower" you'd want -- as if this was a Heroes rip-off, and not a deathly cool Russian mythic Matrix, the sequel to 2004's Nightwatch. If you haven't seen Nightwatch, there's a 10-second recap, but really, go out and rent or buy the DVD (and watch it subtitled -- it's worth it for the animated titles).

As a sequel, it pays off very nicely, and wraps up the story started in Nightwatch -- which is strange in itself, since they're supposed to be making a third movie, in English, filmed in the US. While some of the Eastern European myth-feel is missing (Nightwatch's magic felt like folktales transported to grimy Moscow), the action and special effects are amped up, without losing a rich complex story with vibrant characters. The leaders of the Light and Dark, Gesser and Zevulon, are bitter enemies that most of the time behave like two guys that have been playing chess in the park together for 1000 years. The Dark is sometimes warmer and friendlier than the Light (and generally better dressed, Zevulon's fuzzy blue housecoat and track pants notwithstanding).
In this movie, Svetlana (or Sveta) and Yegor are being trained to be the next "Great Others" of the light and dark, respectively, meanwhile mysterious murders are occurring, killing a couple of Dark Others and framing the weary hero of both films, Anton. To hide him from prosecution by the Daywatch (the Dark Others that police the actions of the Light), he switches bodies with Olga (the woman who was trapped as an owl from the first flick). This provides a nice bit of humor, but ultimately doesn't contribute much to the plot (see below for how this relates to the original book). Meanwhile, there's an ongoing quest for the Chalk of Fate which Tamerlane used to rewrite any mistakes he made throughout his life.

The flim climaxes at a birthday party in the Kosmos Hotel, where Yegor's power comes into play destroying most of Moscow in some amazing effects work -- and I'm not giving much away here, because the resolution, while you can see it coming, is elegant and smoothly done.
That's not to say everything's smooth. It looks like some bits of script or film didn't make it to our eyes: a tearful character trying to bring back to life someone she barely knows makes no sense without what I'm guessing is an excised very steamy scene, and an aborted trip to Samarkand seems like the director didn't know where he wanted the story to go.
And what of that book I mentioned? This film covers much of the second half of the book called "Nightwatch" (although there is also a book for Daywatch, it covers further stories). The general plot of this movie is very different, mainly because of how the first film diverged. As I said before, the body switching was originally done to hide Anton, but the Dark Others see through that immediately in the flick. Other elements come through perfectly, such as mysterious murders with a wooden knife, training of the Great Others, second levels of Gloom... but this is a very separate story. The director and actors have put together a terrific film with deep characters you wouldn't expect from an action flick. Go see it.

Cyberpunk old and new

2007-04-03T20:08:00.001-05:00

Just got finished reading the reprinted John Shirley's City Come a Walkin'.
The intro by William Gibson makes it sound like this is the germ of cyberpunk, the real deal, the font from which the whole Movement came.

I'm not buying it. I enjoyed the book, but to me, it read more like splatterpunk than cyberpunk. The cyber element is laughable -- it's an ATM network run by the mob. That's it. Oh, and it's got a character with mirrorshades. Truly, it's just a horror story with some SF elements (that ATM network making cash obsolete, autopiloted cars, and some out-of-nowhere telepathy).

It's definitely punk: one of the common features between Cyberpunk and Splatterpunk is violation of the self, transformation or transgressive action. We've certainly got that. And "angst rock" features strongly, another hallmark of the punk movements.

On the other hand, I read C.J. Cherryh's Hammerfall recently... and I think she got the point of Cyberpunk. Sure, it's a Cherryh book, with its tone and attitude, but it's got some truly cyberpunk elements: most of the main characters have a "tap" -- a nanotech implant to communicate directly mind to mind. The main character, Procyon, has the defining violation and transformation. Fashion plays a major role for a number of characters (there was a bit of fashion in Shirley's book too, mostly involving bare breasts). It was refreshing to read an author with a take on the cyber sub-genre, and quite a twist on its predecessor, Forge of God. I'm hoping there's a third book in this sequence, most likely hundreds of years later, just like this one was versus FoG.

Passion? Passion! and Creation!!!!

2007-03-27T19:41:00.001-05:00

I don't normally blog about blogging... I barely blog at all on the grand scheme of things. But if anybody is reading this who doesn't read blogs all over the place, follow the link, and make sure to read some of the other posts on Creating Passionate Users.

Everything I know about marketing, I learned from Kathy's posts.
She's brilliant, and can communicate her brilliance to others. That's rare, special and we need people like her writing free stuff for us to read.

And somebody threatens her violence? I can't imagine a reason why. I've never read anything on her site that disparages anyone in particular (certainly bad ways of doing things, but never anything singled out). So what's to hate? Just because you can sit at a keyboard? Just for the sake of allegedly free speech? This is terrorism. Homeland security should be after this scum.

If they can catch this piece of garbage that claims to be human, with luck whoever locks him up will drop a note that he (I'm picking a gender statistically here) prefers little girls. That might be justice.

Come back Kathy! Keep writing. Or the terrorists win.

Singularity Sky - Charles Stross

2007-03-07T20:06:00.002-06:00

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted about what I've read.

Latest is Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. I've read a few things by him now (Accelerando, Glasshouse, The Family Trade) and he's got quite a range. Accelerando may be a bit of a tough read for some -- the wonky stuff comes fast and hard, but Singularity Sky is more approachable, its subversion hidden in a very Weber-ish mil-SF/space opera frame.

A couple of spies (working as a diplomat and an engineer) at not-cross purposes aboard a baroque starship en route to rescue a planet turned post-industrial overnight makes for a fun read. Art critics, Marxists, aged Admirals, and ultra-high tech crisscross nicely. Oh yeah, and a love story.

I wonder whether the space opera is homage or parody with his subversive streak (self-propelling luggage may be another homage to Pratchett, dunno).

So go read already... while I see if I can get a cheap copy of the sequel, Iron Sunrise.

Thank you, Jehova's Witnesses

2006-12-09T10:25:00.001-06:00

A father and son team of Jehova's Witnesses came to my door this morning, asking if they could speak to me. I held my tongue, and politely said "I'm sorry, I'm not interested."

But at least they gave me the opportunity to think about saying, "By all means, please come in. Could you give me a hand in the basement? I'm about to sacrifice two virgins and they're squiriming something awful."

And even though I have no intention of sacrificing virgins or offending the devout (in person at least, I'm sure I've honked someone off with this missive), the glee about the chaos I could have caused is fun enough.

Three Days to Never, Tim Powers

2006-09-16T19:59:00.001-05:00

I've been a big fan of Powers' work for a long time (more than my wife -- she couldn't make it through Expiration Date), and I have to say with this book and especially Declare, his previous offering, Tim Powers owns the Supernatural Spy Thriller sub-genre. OK, there aren't a lot of other people writing in that niche, perhaps Brian Lumley's Necroscope series, although that's more horrific than just supernatural, and perhaps a few of Koontz's early works... hmm... pair this with Lightning, perhaps, for a reading double feature?

TDTN deals with a hidden legacy of Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin movies, a supernatural branch of Israel's Mossad, a talking head in a box, a blind woman who sees through others' eyes and a thoroughly engaging story.

But it seems he's gone back to the same well a couple too many times. A lot of this book seems to rehash things he's written before: the legacy of a scientist and encounters with ghosts (Expiration Date), the whole middle-eastern spy stuff (Declare), time travel (Anubis Gates). But this is good. Really good. It's just that Declare was magnificent. The weaving of demonic forces, spies, bits of now and bits of then just worked so much better there than here.

If I had to pick two Powers books, I'd say Declare and Last Call, the others are all worth reading too (although Epitaph in Rust and The Scies Discrowned are an expensive two-pack hardcover for what were originally -- though now rare -- cheap paperbacks).

OK, now READ Nightwatch Tonight

2006-09-16T19:29:00.000-05:00

I finished the paperback of the translated Nightwatch by Sergei Lukyanenko, on which the movie (look down) was based. The link goes to Froogle by the way -- I don't shill for anyone.

The movie was a non-stop WOW -- heavy duty action, flash, and outright weirdness. The book is a little more mundane, more talky, but still full of wonder.
A big difference is that the book makes it pretty obvious the author is a role-playing game fan -- "levels" of sorcery, references to Jedi, and such, but that's not a problem, certainly.

The movie covers only the first part of the book, although there are some major differences in how things are set up, and the relationships between Anton (the lead), Egor (the young boy) and Svetlana (the woman under a curse) -- I won't spoil it, but the resolution in the movie is actually a little stronger, although it burns some of the later stories in the book. Some of the things are explained a little better: Licensing vampires to hunt has a balance -- the Light are permitted to heal, to help to cure. Everything is perfectly balanced in the Truce between light and dark. The morality of this -- why can't light just do good? -- is the primary struggle for Anton.

A few of the scenes from the movie are straight out of the book and make a bit more sense: Zabulon/Zavulon sitting in the apartment where the Light are trying to figure out what to do about Svetlana's curse is nearly letter-for-letter, and makes more sense when they describe that the Daywatch is always permitted to have an observer when the Nightwatch has a field operation. Anton's sad, exhausted mood is very well captured from book to movie.

It's an entertaining read, good beach/plane reading. I'm looking forward to the second volume (due translated in January), and the second movie (which has been out since the first of the year in Russia, no word on the subtitled version for us here).

Glasshouse, Charles Stross

2006-09-03T23:13:00.000-05:00

So, another book review.

Darn good book. Set apparently in the same universe as Accelerando, but not so much as you'd have to read that first, it covers the life of Robin, recently recovering from memory editing and deciding to take place in a psychological experiment/LARP in a 'dark ages' (our time) simulation.

The book has suggestions of Phillip K Dick-ian "am I real?" psychoses (if your memory has been edited, how do you know what is real and what isn't), plus it gives a nice reflection of our Antivirus-dependent computing society (Consider it an update of the network situation of Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep). There's some good laughs at what the future "us" thinks might have been going on in the century from 1950 forward (nuclear families, gender segregation of jobs and household), and some great tech concepts, such as: if you have instantaneous wormhole teleportation, a blaster can be nothing more than a gateway to a star's surface.

I've come lately into Stross' work (having read Accelerando free online), and he and John Scalzi (Old Man's War) got robbed at the Hugos this year. This book has a great chance at next year's Rocketship-shaped award, if Scalzi's Ghost Brigades don't beat him to it.

The Carpet Makers, Andreas Eschbach

2006-08-20T09:24:00.000-05:00

My wife bought me this book on several reccommendations, including Orson Scot Card's introduction.

This is an interesting book, translated from the German, but not what I would call great SF. First off, the novel is a series of connected chapters, with no character appearing in more than two or three chapters, chasing down the mystery of the "hair carpets" across galaxies of a recently-fallen empire.

I can see how Card would enjoy it: it has a lot of the tragic irony for which Card is famous (particularly his earlier books such as Songmaster, Planet Called Treason, etc.).

But what I found this resonating with is Somtow Sucharichtul's High Inquestor series, especially The Utopia Hunters: A far-flung empire, amazing powers of longevity and technology, and a series of Kipling-like just-so stories.

Ultimately, the mystery is resolved (unlike pretty much anything by Robert Charles Wilson), but without characters in which we've invested anything in, the book feels cold and disconnected.

Luckily I've got a stack of books recently released to wade through: Dzur by Steven Brust, Night watch by Sergei Lukyanenko (the basis for the outstanding movie of the same name), Glasshouse by Charles Stross, and Three Days to Never by Tim Powers. So expect more reviews soon.

Another tasty appetizer: Raul Midon

2006-06-16T10:12:00.000-05:00

Caught Joe Jackson at the Vic last night (same venue as the Ditty Bops/Nickel Creek I blogged on a few months ago -- one of the best houses in Chicago for music).

I don't know where Joe finds his opening acts, probably just some agent somewhere, but I'm hoping he's active on the NYC music scene. A previous show he brought Mary Lee's Corvette, a folkish rocker, and this time Raul Midon (sorry, I'm too lazy for accents). A blind jazz-blues-pop guitar god with a playing style I've never seen before -- I'm glad I saw him, because I'd never believe that his act is solo if I just heard it. His slap/pluck/strum style of playing makes it sound like several instruments, plus his vocal trumpeting (can't describe it, gotta hear it) is amazing. Bought the CD at the show -- gotta give these small acts some green.

Joe was having a bit of an off night, flubbed a few lines and just seemed not quite there. I've been catching him almost every tour since 1979, and he's certainly changed. Ten years ago, he'd have been fuming and swearing (like he did over a malfunctioning synth at the Park West), last night he just laughed it off. I will admit that even I would have a tough time singing Zappa's "Dirty Love" with a straight face, but he just wasn't "on". Still, a great time. The Joe Jackson Trio is the original band, less guitar. Graham Maby is still the best bassist alive, and Dave Houghton, for being off the scene for 20 years, can sure kick up the rhythm on the drums -- all electronic pads this time instead of a standard kit.

Highlights: A rollicking boogie piano version of "Dirty Martini", the above "Dirty Love", "On Your Radio" and probably the most album-like version of "Steppin' Out" he's done since Night and Day was issued.

Links:
Raul Midon :: The Official Site :: Welcome!
Joe Jackson

Books by John Scalzi: The Ghost Brigades

2006-06-16T09:59:00.000-05:00

I didn't realize that I hadn't posted since the last Scalzi book I read. Of course I've read other stuff in between (it's been a good month: 3 Repairman Jack books, Varley's "Red Lightning" (meh)... I'm on a tear.

Anyway, "Ghost Brigades"...
Excellent follow-on to "Old Man's War" but you don't need to read one for the other. Some carryover characters, but no John Perry.
My only gripe is that he is a little too clear that he's standing on the shoulders of giants. OMW was described as a modern take on "Starship Troopers" and "Forever War" and that certainly fit.
In GB, he name-checks several SF writers, both in character names (a group of Ghost Brigade troops took names after writers), and in one character's research into artificial beings, from Frankenstein's monster on up through Asimov's robots and Heinlein's Friday. He specifically mentions "uplift" a concept coined by David Brin. It gets a little tiring to see things that obvious, but it's only his third novel... he'll get better and better.

GB talks a lot about the ethics of artificial beings and imposing memories on another head, but missed some of what I consider exemplars on the subject: Brin's "Kil'n People" -- those people are temporaries, and there's no compunction in killing off duplicates, as you can re-incorporate their knowledge. C.J. Cherry's Azi in the Alliance/Union stories, especially "Cyteen" are probably the closest equivalent: The Azi are generally interchangable slaves, tape-trained. Cyteen's main character has some of the same characteristics as Scalzi's Jared Dirac: designed to be -- or become -- someone else, where does one person's individuality and rights come from?

There are some nice unexplored concepts that could be part of another book, or just round-table discussion: Where do the Special Forces personalities come from? They are 'born' fully formed, with software serving as a crutch for developing conciousness and self. Some are lazy, some sarcastic, some enthusiastic about blowing stuff up... Is it genetic, or subtle interactions -- we're back to nature vs nurture. Some of the smae came up in another recent book whose name I've forgotten, where one of the major characters is of the "Russ" geneline, thousands of introverted expert security officers, with common genetics, but each raised from childhood individually (but at a Russ school).

One other cross-book concept: The "integration" of Special Forces soldiers, through their "BrainPal" computer links, brings back Haldeman: "Forever Peace" posited that if you get in anothers' head, you'll empathize enough that war is impossible. That's not the case in GB -- although integration is key to the function and efficiency of the Special Forces -- but it's interesting that the first in this series touched Haldeman's "War" and this touched "Peace".

Read "Ghost Brigades" then go read some more stuff.
Books by John Scalzi: The Ghost Brigades

Old Man's War

2006-05-14T20:49:00.000-05:00

I just finished John Scalzi's Old Man's War, Hugo nominee, blah blah blah. Great book, buy it, read it. Now I gotta get a copy of the next book in the universe, "The Ghost Brigades."

There's a lot of interesting stuff there, ethics of war, cloning, fighting, etc.
Usually, it's compared to Heinlein's Starship Troopers but that's a simplistic view. Occasionally, Joe Haldeman's Forever War is invoked, but that's a bit of a stretch.

If you liked this book, please read:

Cyteen, by C.J. Cherryh -- a long-term war, colonies against each other, and one side using cloned troops. OMW's cloning is different, and similar, and gives a nice alternate view. Cyteen is a core book in Cherry's Merchanter/Alliance universe, including great books such as Merchanter's Luck, 40,000 in Gehenna, and many more.
The Retief books by Keith Laumer and the Uplift books by David Brin. Only in that they deal with lots of strange aliens who don't think like we do.
On that note, Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card, for how we deal with aliens that we can not comprehend, what OSC calls the varelse.
Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. I'm not a big fan of Clarke's writing, which is long on travelogue, and short on plot, but this does a great job of showing us that our minds are not recognizable to our parents, and our children's are not recognizable to us. There's some great moments in OMW between John and Jane that made me think of this.

Scalzi's relatively new to fiction... let's hope he keeps up this level of quality.

It's the VCR (uh, pronounced Viccar)

2006-04-18T13:03:00.000-05:00

Yeah, lame title, old Monty Python joke, or possibly Babylon 5.

My old Sony VCR is dying. It'll play, it'll record, but it won't keep timer settings for longer than a day, it seems.

So... you can get a progressive-scan, digital audio, DVD player that plays ever disc type ever made for $30... or a mono VCR for $45 at Wal-Mart. The cheapest Hi-Fi VCR I can find is $70, on sale at Sears Appliances.

And why do I need this sucker? Stoopid networks, scheduling all the good stuff at once. Veronica Mars + House + The Unit + Scrubs tonight. One for the TiVo, one for live watching, one for a VCR and I'll still miss something, and languish through crap the rest of the week. Sometimes its only two things on at once, but I'd like to have a relaxing night out somewhere not tied to my glass teat.

The cable nets (USA, FX, HBO, etc) have got it right: They run "The Shield", "Dead Zone" and "Sopranos" (not respectively) several times throughout the week, I can time shift it to whenever I care, and never miss an episode. And in fact, sometimes the main networks get it right, but only long enough to get you hooked: Fox used to run 24 on FX the same week as the first showing, and even recently NBC ran Heist's first ep on USA and Bravo... then cut the cord.

Yes, if I'm timeshifting, I'm more likely to fast-forward or 30-second-skip my TiVo... but I'm timeshifting everything typically anyway.

Hmmm... I need a rant soon on commercials worth watching.

Watch Nightwatch Tonight

2006-02-25T17:00:00.000-06:00

What a movie!

I haven't been this thrilled watching a movie in ages. From the start, I'm hooked.

Don't believe the hype machine, this isn't this year's Matrix -- The Matrix was a sterile, popcorn movie with one philosophical gimmick about whether the world is real. And dull acting by Keanu.
This is a messy, chaotic whirlwind where it looks like nothing is under control, but it all just hangs together perfectly. The hero is not the one and only hope, he's just another gifted Other -- people with special abilities, either on the Light or Dark side of the eternal struggle, now in a long-term uneasy truce. OK, like Matrix, it makes it possible that you could have another life, a different world out there (this will spawn roleplaying games, video games, etc. almost guaranteed), and that's going to be a big draw for the young moviegoing audience.

This movie is as rich as one of Hayao Miyazaki's fantasies such as Spirited Away, and draws on myths as well as Neil Gaiman, with nods to pop culture (a video game played by one of the villains is intercut into the climax to great effect, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is shown on the TV), and respect for the viewer -- you never feel cheated anywhere.

Little touches: the spider-legged doll, the rose in the crystal ball gearshift knob, a pop diva wearing a dress that seems to defy structural engineering, the psychic surgery methods used by the Light's healer... and did I mention the subtitles?

Yup, it's in Russian, subtitled in English, which adds a dimension to the film rather than just a distraction. A vampire's seduction which manifests in her voice appearing in floating wisps of blood morphs into Come to me..., subtitles during conversations with characters moving through a room may have the words come out from behind the wall the character passes by, and data read by a character off a screen scrolls on like an old computer terminal.

Kudos to Fox Searchlight for bringing this to the US, daring to take Russia's biggest film series (now in their second of three, Daywatch), and not dubbing it with Hollywood stars. The subtitling shows respect for the film - it fits, it works and it entertains.

You're still reading this? Click the link and find where it's playing by you. Take your friends.
And no, they're not paying me for this.

Spanish flu wasn't from Spain

2006-01-12T08:46:00.001-06:00

WHO warns on bird flu pandemic risk - Yahoo! News

Now that it looks like the Bird Flu could actually break out... it needs a more formal name. H5N1 sounds like a chess move.

And really it's obvious:

Turkey Flu

It keeps the bird moniker, and the location moniker.
Even if it doesn't come from turkeys, and doesn't break out from Turkey, we need this name.

Last Name First First Name Middle Name Last

2005-12-30T11:35:00.000-06:00

Whose big idea was it to file all the music on the internet by first freakin' name? I don't know if it's Gracenote's fault, but they're the database that virtually everybody uses to fetch the data when you plug a CD into your computer.

I've just spent the last three days fixing the 60GB of music transfered from my CD collection to my in-house server, and I know I'm going to be continually frustrated by nearly every album I add.

You'd think some librarian's association would have had a fit over the Last Name/First Name crap, and for that matter, articles (A, An, The, Le, Los, Las, etc.) shouldn't be in front of titles and band names either (actually, I'm not so sure about some of those -- I still have Los Lobos and Los Lonely Boys with the "Los" first).

At least give us a choice, please, perhaps add another set of tags, called "Album Artist The Right Way" or "Fileable Title."

My suggestion is, pick an album, and go to Gracenote (link above), and submit corrections. If everybody does a couple, we'll fix it all in a couple of weeks.

Spicoli gets some respect!

2005-12-28T10:45:00.001-06:00

The national film registry listed its annual set of films to be preserved.
Some well-justified items (Cool Hand Luke - it rules!, Giant, Hoop Dreams, French Connection, Miracle on 34th Street, The Sting), but a few surprises.

Rocky Horror Picture Show?!? Yeah, it's a counter-culture icon, and gave us our current King Arthur, but worth preserving? I dunno.

Toy Story is only ten years old, and it's 100% digital. Does it really need preserving?

Fast Times at Ridgemont High - Sean Penn's major debut. Who'dathunk that he'd be Oscar bait, a director, considered this generation's De Niro? It's still shlock, and always will be. How many other films on the Library of Congress' film registry feature bouncing breasts, anyway?

What should be preserved? The 1977 version of Star Wars of course. Greedo didn't freakin' shoot first!

Rating the Personal Portals

2005-11-05T11:53:00.001-06:00

I've been thinking about changing my home page, and it's traumatic.
For at least five years, My Yahoo! http://my.yahoo.com has been home to me, and served reasonably well.

But this Web 2.0 stuff is starting to grow on me, and there are three strong candidates for best DIY portal:

So what's wrong with good ol' My Yahoo!? It's gotten better. You're free to add RSS feeds, pages, it has lots and lots of content providers for things such as Weather, TV, Movies, more news feeds than you can shake a stick at... it's just old fashioned. It doesn't have that nifty flavor-of-the-day drag and drop stuff the new guys have. It's UI takes page after page of clicks to make a change. So time to look at the others:

Microsoft Live is the one to beat, so far as I can tell, and for one big reason: Gadgets. Microsoft has defined a simple way to place these gadgets on-screen, with minimal JavaScript, CSS and an XML wrapper. I'm trying to think of what I'd like it to show next, so I can start hacking one. They also are the only one that handles the back button nicely after popping up a feed. However, their feed-read screen doesn't show the history of a feed, you can't easily mark a whole feed as read, and you can't read more than one story. It's also very fond of finding ways to take you to the page rather than just opening a story.

Google's Personal Home Page has good news feeds, movies, but is very thin on gadget-y things. There's no way to collapse a feed, that I've seen, and it just looks like a quick hack to match the other guys. No OPML, no pop-up stories. Give them a few weeks, and it could be powerful.

Netvibes is sweet. Lots of nice UI, and a very responsive author, who I wish would just open up the source a bit, or at least a MS-Gadgets-like API. It doesn't have news feeds built in, so I may have to go find some. Collapseable feeds, a few nice gadgets (Writely, Google Mail) and the nicest search pane: includes Wikipedia among others. Control of the back button would be the #1 thing I'd add, and maybe multiple screens or panels of feeds. UI is very friendly, with lots of controls over refresh, collapse, etc. Its feed directory has more than Google and MS, although you quickly start adding your own.

Summary: Try out Netvibes. Hmm. It seems to be unresponsive right this minute, but I still love it.

Opening acts are like ethnic appetizers

2005-10-27T08:43:00.000-05:00

Saw The Ditty Bops last night opening for Nickel Creek.

And while the Bops don't rule the Vic with the rapture that is music (more below), they were an act that's tough to follow: Amanda and Abby are carried onstage like mannikins, "activated" by a stiltwalker's confetti. Part vaudeville, part skiffle, part bluegrass, with juggling, pantomime, and ironic humor, they were a lot of fun. In some ways, their album is sort of just the soundtrack to their performances -- see them live if you can. You've probably heard them in the background of Grey's Anatomy, they've been used there more than once, and their song Ooh la la is a bluegrass-rocker that will disappoint nobody that's gotten some airplay at XRT in Chicago.

I've had a really good track record for finding great opening acts for music shows. I discovered Nickel Creek opening for Lyle Lovett about five years ago, where they blew the roof off the Chicago Theater. Lovett's finely-crafted country-swing-pop seemed sterile after that. The next time I saw Nickel Creek, Glen Phillips opened for them. In past years, I've been lucky enough to see the Neville Brothers open for Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Clegg open for Tracy Chapman (boy was that a mismatch), and Katie Todd open for Pat MacDonald (who actually never showed up that night at the coffeehouse).

So I've got this theory: opening acts at a concert are the appetizers at ethnic restaurants, or bar-n-grills: the satay, spring rolls, beef negimaki, nachos, etc. have got more flavor, and more excitement than the pad thai, kung pao chicken, beef teriyaki or enchiladas suizas that follow. The difference? They don't break the budget, they're a gimme at the concert you're going to. So show up early, don't talk through the openers, you may catch something cool.

Oh yeah, I promised a review of Nickel Creek. As usual, they smoked. Chris Thile's mandolin playing is superhuman (he so tries to look cool, but playing a teeny weeny guitar-like instrument still looks geeky, sorry). Riffs that flow effortlessly with hands that really seemed to blur. The vocal combinations with Sarah Watkins and Sean Watkins meet and exceed the bar set by Crosby Stills Nash and Young, and their instrumental jams blow past the Grateful Dead's telepathic synchronicity.

Compared to past shows, Sean Watkins guitar and songwriting was not overshadowed by Chris' grandstanding. This Side and Somebody More Like You are great pop songs that are sometimes hidden behind the hits such as Smoothie Song.

Part of the fun of a NC show is what cool songs they'll cover. Past shows have included Taxman and a frenetic version of Subterranean Homesick Blues. This time, we were treated to a beautiful and faithful version of The Band's Cripple Creek, and a smoking, ironic interpretation of Britney Spears Toxic of all things.

I'll go see them every time I can -- an act not to be missed. For people who've been playing together for 2/3rds of their lives -- as big a fraction as the Rolling Stones in their scant 25 years of life -- there's nothing old or tired here. This is the future of music.

Why the new iPod can't Fast Forward Video

2005-10-18T17:47:00.000-05:00

When I read that the new iPod's video capabilities were limited so that you can only use a few formats, I yawned. What did you expect from the company that still only allows two music formats on its media players (their own and MP3)?

When I read that they had ABC-owned shows available for download but not burning to media I raised an eyebrow, and then yawned. I still have never paid for a download -- nor have I downloaded copyrighted songs illegally. I've got 45GB ripped from my own CD's ready for play in the living room on the GoVideo networked DVD player, on a plane on my Cowon iAudio M3, in my bedroom office on my laptop. The only downloads I have are mash-ups, copyright flaunters such as The Evolution Control Committee's Rocked by Rape and the ever-popular Grey Album, and permissible stuff from the Live archive such as those by Mutual Admiration Society. It's clever, and they'll make money off the "We're going to have to watch that again!" diehards of Lost, but I'm not shelling anything out for that.

When I read about the fact that you can't rewind or fast forward, I completely dismissed the device as reasonable for video (my better half is probably getting a Cowon M5 for XMas, but there's months of new products and price drops between now and then), and figured they're not going to pick up any of the video player market share. I put this up there with the level of idiocy that gets people to buy UMD media for their PSPs that they can only watch on a handheld screen.

But here's the catch: would you be willing to watch ads on your pocket video player if, instead of $1.99 for last night's Desperate Housewives, you could get it for $0.25? You have to watch the ads because you can't fast forward.

The link below talks how advertisers are worried that people will pony up $2 the morning after instead of watching through ads. Heck, I don't watch the ads now (see Creating Passionate Users' rant about paying attention to ads) because of TiVo (but I need another one because on average, if there's one good show on, that's when the other good show of the evening runs too), but if you downloaded an ad-laden show from iTunes, you'd have to.

I don't know if they've contracted for any media to be prepared that way, but I can just see it: "Download this 500MB file for $1.99 or Download this 600MB file with ads for $0.25".

Scary. And Halloween's still two weeks away.

Numbers

2005-10-14T22:01:00.000-05:00

Lost's numbers have been bugging me.
4 8 15 16 23 42

4 = 2**2
8 = 2**3
15 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 - an odd number
16 = 2**4
23 = Michael Jordan's number, considered mystical by erisians, Masons, etc.
42 = the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything
Total = 108 - the number of minutes for each reset

Hmm... maybe the differences between them... 3, 7, 1, 7, 19. Nah. No better.

Hmm some more... 108 minutes = 6480 seconds. Still not getting anywhere.

Probably Milo Rambaldi's birthday is 4/8/1516 or something like that, eh? Nope, according to this he was born in 1444, died 1496. Woulda' been nice.

Velvet Salmon and Nikko

2005-10-11T22:13:00.000-05:00

As long as I was on the Lou Reed quoting kick, I figured I'd pay homage some more with tonight's title.

A very late night at the office (telecon with the far east until 9PM) had dinner with my boss at Nikko on Rt 10 in Parsipanny. At least there's a restaurant in NJ that doesn't tick me off to no end (but the radio stations still suck).

Fuyu roll is salmon, scallion and ginger paste (didn't taste much ginger, but didn't need to either). Wonderful fish -- salmon is the world's perfect food, good cooked any way or not at all. And ooh, I should get more on Thursday, smoked at the family Yom Kippur meal. Note to readers: I'm born into the culture, but haven't a religious bone in my body -- hey I just ate pork!

Tonkatsu was crisp and hot, lots of hot mustard in the bowl of tonkatsu sauce (which has always struck me as thick Worcestershire). Miso soup was fragrant. My boss's Yose Nage looked good, but I wasn't in the mood for cooked fish.

At least (at last) I go home tomorrow.

No this won't always be about food, but between eating at restaurants while I'm traveling for business, reading Julie & Julia and watching Iron Chef... yeah, I'm a little obsessed.

Iced tea

2005-10-10T20:15:00.000-05:00

Iced tea. Just about the cheapest soft drink in the world - usually cheaper than bottled water.
Just about the only drink that was traditionally refilled.

So tonight I'm steamed over iced tea. Three 8oz. glasses. $2.00 each (plus tax and tip).

This was at a nice restaurant in Parsippany, NJ. I didn't expect them to continuously refill a 32oz. tumbler of Mountain Dew for me, but this is iced freakin' tea. In a little bitty glass.

At a buck twenty-five, I probably would have grumbled, but not complained. For $2.00, I was upset. The line the waitress used was, "Can I get you another iced tea?" Which of course gets a nod. Then she disappeared and I had to ask one of the busboys. Same line the next time, with a quicker return, at least.

I'll try to be less whiny in the future. The spaghetti bolognese was tasty, if oversauced, and Julie & Julia continues to entertain. She had lobster while I ate pasta.

Books: Julie & Julia, Lunar Park

2005-10-10T06:18:00.000-05:00

He's gone soft! He's reading mainstream fiction again.

Actually, since i've only been blogging for a short time, nobody's ssaying that at all, but I'm sure thinking that. In the last month, the books I've read on business trips are:

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Lunar Park, by Bret Easton Ellis
Bridge of Ashes by Roger Zelazny
Julie & Julia by Julie Powell

Note: No Amazon links here -- my wife owns a children's bookstore, and she'd kill me to link to the competition.

So 50% of my recent reading isn't genre fiction. A case can be made for Anansi Boys to be mainstream, since it is selling like it's mainstream. The Zelazny hardly counts since it's under 150 pages.

But let's examine those other two:

I picked up Lunar Park, an Advance Reading Copy of which had been sitting in the stack since the beginning of June when we brought it back from BookExpoAmerica. I picked it up for the title, not remembering who Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, Less Than Zero) is. But Stephen King recommended it in Entertainment Weekly, and Ellis has said that he was inspired by King. And it is a horror storry in the King-ian mode, with what appears to be characters from his own books haunting him. It's a fun read, and perhaps I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd read LTZ or AS but it's a page-turner, and not too self-indulgent, I'd say, since the "self" the book describes is not the real Bret Easton Ellis. But why Lunar Park? The phrase only is mentioned in the book, what, 3 times? And those are all in reference to the book itself. I did think that he lost a bit of opportunity to speak to some of the father/son issues, especially the sort of "I'm becoming my father" dread that new parents go through. But since he isn't really a father, perhaps those things didn't occur to him. I'll ask him, if I ever get the chance (hey, it could happen at a future BookExpo).

Julie & Julia is different for me. Though I own hundreds of cookbooks, this isn't one, but it is about cooking (although not as much as her blog, linked below, is). And though she isn't a computer expert, she certainly fits in the society. She geeks out over Buffy the Vampire Slayer, considers an alternate universe where French cooking is still relevant to the US, and comes across as a cross between, say, Candace Bushnell (I've got her book on the stack too, but it's not likely to get read anytime soon) and, oh, Xeni Jardin on BoingBoing. The fact that the book is full of sex, food porn (no, not food as sex -- food as an object of desire in itself), and loads of sarcastic humor makes it worthwhile. I'm not done with it yet, but I thought I'd get this mini-review out of the way. Go read it, it's a lot of fun.

And what of the stack? Is there any SF in there at all? Sadly, not much, no big-name authors, those were read as soon as they came out (one of the hazards/benefits of owning a bookstore -- buying at wholesale). What happens to all those books, then? A lot of them get read by Sue, they're kids books for her to review for the site, and what's left gets given out at our annual holiday party. I'll let you know if you're invited, or even if it happens this year. The Remodeling Project is probably one of the next entries here.

Rock & Roll

2005-10-09T21:45:00.000-05:00

Whatever happened to the decent rock radio station? I don't want death metal, I don't want bubblegum pop, I can tolerate an alt-country (Ryan Adams, Nickel Creek), or the occasional venture in the better rap/hip-hop (Outkast, but Citizen Cope is a current fave)... but the classic rock format leaves me cold, the lite stations make me nauseated (just left a chinese place in Parsippany, NJ -- first song on the station they were playing was the Phil Collins version of "Can't Hurry Love" -- not even the Supremes, or the very retro-cool Stray Cats version (isn't there some other 80's Brit who did it too?). They did redeem themselves with "Let's get it on" later though).

My home town station is WXRT, 93.1 FM in Chicago. The Bay Area has KFOG with a very similar theme to it. It used to be called "Progressive Rock" or "Album-Oriented Rock" but they'll play almost anything good, outside of the abovementioned bubblegum and death metal. I've been able to find stations in Philadelphia with little trouble, but NYC/NJ area I seem to be wearing out the SCAN buttons on my rentacar looking for something I can listen to even one song on (I'm on WPLJ for now, but I can't say I'm sticking there).

I mean, what ever happened to,

Then, one fine mornin', she puts on a New York station

You know, she couldn't believe what she heard at all

She started shakin' to that fine, fine music

You know, her life was saved by rock'n'roll

(Velvet Underground, Rock & Roll Lyrics)

Really, now, why does NY area radio suck? It's supposed to be this cultural mecca (and I have dined and been entertained there at the highest heights), but I still haven't found a decent radio station or had a decent chinese meal in Jersey.

Serenity Now!... or rather last Friday

2005-10-04T13:48:00.000-05:00

You haven't seen Serenity yet? What are you doing reading this blog? Get out in the big blue room with the evil day star (heh - been meaning to insert those trite little things somewhere) and go blow a few bucks on celluloid. It's big action, romance, comedy, political, science fiction.

It's certainly not a summer big-n-stupid opens-before-memorial-day blockbuster such as Deep Impact (Flight Plan beat it in the weekend box office, for Jeebus' sake), but it's not a make-you-think science fictioner such as Gattaca or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Now mind you, I occasionally enjoy them big and stupid. Matrix almost fell out of that category until you saw the sequels and realized they had no idea what they were doing. The Core is very, very, very stupid, but very, very, very, very fun and never takes itself seriously. Stanley Tucci's pompousness alone makes it worth a watch. Unobtanium? Sure, why not.

If you've seen Joss Whedon's other recent works, Angel and Buffy, you know he likes to do nasty things to his characters, and they certainly don't have an easy time of it here. Far too little is used of characters outside of Mal and River. The best lines by Jayne and Wash are in the previews ("I don't want to explode" and "Define interesting." - "Oh god, oh god, we're all gonna die?" respectively) but certainly not all the funny stuff, and certainly not all the action.

Reavers! Reavers and more Reavers! Mr. Universe (no, not Ahnuld).
If you don't believe me, read Orson Scot Card's review.

Beaches in October

2005-10-03T17:15:00.000-05:00

Illinois Beach State Park in Zion is my escape. Over 6 miles of beaches, many of them empty even on a summer weekend, and definitely peaceful on a rare 80+ degree day in October.

Check the place out, and if you like it, tell your Illinois representative about how lousy they're maintaining the place. I'm willing to pay to get in, if that would spruce things up. The north unit of the park has been mostly closed for 2 years because of repaving, and now a broken water pipe supplying the drinking fountains -- of all the lame excuses.

It's a wildflower wonderland, including prickly pear cactus, yes cactus in Illinois.

Today was only OK, as it was much cooler by the lake, and the water was too chilly for a swim. The sun kept ducking behind thin clouds.

Plus, cheap gas in Lake County (about 17 cents cheaper than near home), and some good food in the area including Captain Porky's, with excellent fried fish, BBQ pork and homemade goat cheese.

Everybody's got one

2005-10-03T16:39:00.000-05:00

It's about time I start blogging, darn it!

What you will find here is what I care about in pop culture, not-so-pop culture, occasional forays into gadgets, anime models, cooking and eating.

Nothing cute, probably nothing pornographic, although I can't promise it won't be offensive.