Funk Babblings

I don't take much time for reading anymore, but I do occasionally like to read a bit before going to sleep. At some point I decided to read Dangerous Visions, the famous 1967 collection of short stories edited by Harlan Ellison.

I got mired somewhere in the middle of the longest story in the book (also Ellison's favorite), and I'm stubborn about not skipping ahead. (I think I'm being reminded that I'm not into mixing science fiction with politics, though.) Throwing in a novella early in a short story collection just isn't fair. :-)


Then a couple months ago I was at a library book sale, and picked up a couple of biographical books that seemed like the kind of thing every geek should (or would want to) read: Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges, and iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It by Steve Wozniak.


I started with the Turing book. Only problem was that that book started by describing where in the British class system Turing's ancestors came from, starting somewhere in the 1600s and going on down the generations with what everybody did for a living. Even when we finally got to Turing's life, the writing about his childhood was not much more compelling. Good for sleep, but not for wanting to continue reading.


Then I tried the Wozniak book, which at least starts with his parents (and having little knowledge of his father's job) rather than his distant ancestry. It's written as an autobiography, but with a credited ghostco-writer, and the more I read the more I imagined tortured interview sessions where his collaborator struggled to get coherent stories out of him. At one point early on, Wozniak mentions his philosophy that all technological development is a good thing, a common idea among geeks and techies, but one that I long ago rejected as naive.

I finally had to throw the book down when I got frustrated with his (their?) simplistic short sentences. It was like reading the writing of a ten-year-old sometimes (possibly related to writing about his childhood?), or a bad imitation of Hemingway. And, ironically, quite the opposite of the Turing book.


Maybe it's time to try tackling Dangerous Visions again....

A decade after finishing college, where I took most of a computer science track before finishing with an electrical & computer engineering degree, I'm now picking up some books on topics I feel like didn't I learn enough about back then, or topics I learned but feel like I should review in a new light. I figure having a decade of experience (and O'Reilly books) should give me a perspective I didn't have back in school. I'm trying to pick the classic or canonical books on the topics.

So far I've ordered these, via Abe Books:
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (Abelson & Sussman)
Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (Aho, Sethi, & Ullman)
Database Management Systems (Ramakrishnan & Gehrke)

Of course, I'm also feeling like I should catch up with the kids who went to school after the age of Java began, so Learning Java is in the pile too. That's in addition to other books that are more directly relevant to what I do every day.

Not that I'll have time to really study all this, especially now that spring is here and I want to go out and play, but it can't hurt to occasionally read bits here and there.

I first heard of Arthur C. Clarke as the author of the books on which the movies 2001 and 2010 were based (and yes, heretic that I am, I still enjoy the second one much more than the first). But his novel Rendezvous With Rama was my earliest introduction to "real" science fiction writing (unless you count Daniel Pinkwater's Fat Men From Space).

Starting from Rama, I read as much of Clarke's writing as I could get my hands on. I soon realized that the structures were somewhat formulaic, but the ideas were always fascinating. I even read all the later Rama sequels co-written (and later taken over completely) by Gentry Lee, with interest (ooh, detailed character development!) but gradually increasing disappointment. I especially noticed the later works to lack the optimistic sense of discovery that I'd enjoyed in Clarke's earlier novels.

I think of myself as someone who grew up reading science fiction, but really I grew up reading lots of Clarke, Carl Sagan's lone novel (Contact, which was quite influential on me), and Douglas Adams. In high school I started tracking down Adams' influences (such as Robert Sheckley and Kurt Vonnegut) and reading their books. But Clarke was always the dominant sci-fi writer for me, partly because he was so prolific, and partly because his books were so full of out-of-this-world ideas that ended up so influential.

Clarke lived in Sri Lanka for the past half-century, and in recent years every time I heard about the political unrest there I would immediately think of him. Of course, I also think of him whenever geostationary satellites and space elevators are mentioned.

OK, I'll play.

As quoted by featherynscale:
"Below the cut are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users at the time the first person to post this meme posted it (I have no idea when that was).
As usual, bold what you have read, italicize those you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. Add an *asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list."

( A list of books, which I'm taking on faith numbers 106 )
The trend seems to be that high school made me read lots of Great Literature that I promptly forgot. But if it's a big sci-fi or fantasy book then I remember it, partly because it takes me so long to read it.

From nicosomething:

"This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved."

( Read more... )

This weekend we'll be heading to Columbus for Marcon. Every year at Marcon I end up buying a pile of books, usually stuff that's hard to find locally, and often rare or out of print stuff. Last year's take included my first real effort to get into graphic novels beyond Sandman.

( And also Elric... )

( My fictional influences )

I keep intending to write about all the books I've been reading, but it's inching closer to a year's worth of books, and sadly I don't think I could do any of them justice at this point. I may still try (wading through an 845-page book means the read-books-pile isn't growing so quickly), but it's still getting less likely.

But what I can talk about is comics.

( Read more... )

Two weeks ago I started writing about a busy weekend, and got about halfway through it before putting it down. When I thought about continuing, I realized that my writeup was way too long and boring. Meanwhile, I had another (much quieter) weekend, and then a weekend together with my wife. But I still felt like I had unfinished business.

So, trashing the long writeup I attempted before, here's a quick rundown of the past three weekends....


( Busy )

( Quiet )

( Together )

Ah, now I feel better.... all is right in this part of the world again. :-)

Last Friday night I was number 30 in line to get the new Harry Potter book at Borders.... but because I was just standing in for a friend who'd had to leave, I didn't get my own copy until the next day at the grocery store. Over the past week nontacitare and I have been leapfrogging through the book, with her usually stopping exactly a chapter ahead of me -- without knowing where I'd stopped. (I often just remember the chapter or page number rather than marking the page.) However, she had started out with a list of spoilers, and first skimmed the book verifying them all, while I struggled all week to avoid any hint of spoilers.

I finally finished the book tonight. Some of my thoughts along the way....

( Here be spoilers.... )

I hope to write soon about some other books I've been reading lately.

In the first episode of this season, Alias was apparently trying to reinvent itself by poorly imitating the first season.
Tonight Alias decided to try reinventing itself by taking a plot device from Kurt Vonnegut and weakening it so that it's not quite so potent, literally or literarily.

In this episode of Alias, we had bad guys developing and testing a substance called Ice-5 to use as a weapon. Oddly enough, we see Ice-5 only as a liquid. This substance "freeze-dries" a person it comes into contact with, so that the person can shatter. Apparently it takes direct contact with Ice-5 to be affected. Of course Sydney saves the day and gets the Ice-5 away from the bad guys. (But what happens to it now?)

In Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle, a scientist (who also worked on the atomic bomb) develops a substance called Ice-9, with no intent but the pursuit of science. Ice-9 is a form of water that (a) is solid at room temperature, and (b) instantly turns solid any water it comes into contact with. Let's just say irrevocable disaster results, the atomic-age point being that the world cannot afford for the scientific community to ignore the potential negative consequences of what it does.

Vonnegut's point was, of course, completely lost in Alias.

I suppose we can assume that Ice-5 is five ninths as potent as Ice-9, but the story of Ice-5 is far less potent than the story of Ice-9.