Stocking Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.