Hopelessly TiVoted

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

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?

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"

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

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

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

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

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!!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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.