Entries by TML

I see what you did there, Mr. Belichick.

I don’t normally go in for Abstruse Goose (I’m more of an XKCD man myself), but I really enjoyed this comic I found in his archives:

If you listen to the TrekWest5 podcast, you know we’ve been promoting the podiobook trilogy "7th Son" for some time now. I’m really glad to announce that as of Oct. 27th, you’ll be able to buy this book in print (in fact, you can preorder it now). To quote the email JC sent me:

This is huge news for me (the trilogy was also optioned for film development by Warner Bros.), and for podcasting. Considering that 7th Son was rejected by dozens of publishing pros before I released it as a podcast, we have accomplished something extraordinary with its publication.

To celebrate the release, he’s announcing a number of new promotions that I wanted to make all of you aware of:

- A brand-new podcast recording of the "print edition" of the novel (with new scenes, twists, and character tweaks)

- A prequel audio short story anthology called 7th Son: 7 Days. (I am currently listening my way through this and am really enjoying it)

- Serialization of the novel in PDF and and the text at Cory Doctorow’s BoingBoing.net

There’s a lot to like about the 7th Son series of podiobooks, and for those of you not inclined to partake of them in the audio format, I hope you’ll pick up a copy of the deadtree edition.

Came across this meme on a friend’s blog, and it sounded kind of interesting, so I thought I’d give it a try.

The rules, as I got them, are as follows:

1. Put your music player on shuffle
2. Press forward for each question
3. Use the song title as the answer
4. NO CHEATING!!! What you get is what you get!

I’m more than a little bit disturbed by the pattern that began to develop as the experiment wound on…fortunately, I can point it all to the fact that I didn’t have very much music loaded on my ipod when I did this, so maybe I can try it again later with a broader selection of my music and it will end up feeling a bit less like my ipod is trying to question my sexual orientation.

I don’t think I’ve kept secret my admiration for what Jeff Atwood does over at codinghorror.com. One of his most recent entries really appealed to me.

One of the (many) unfortunate side effects of choosing a career in software development is that, over time, you learn to hate software. I mean really hate it. With a passion. Take the angriest user you’ve ever met, multiply that by a thousand, and you still haven’t come close to how we programmers feel about software. Nobody hates software more than software developers. Even now, writing about the stuff is making me physically angry.

He quotes an interview where someone suggests that “One bad programmer can easily create two new jobs a year.” Having recently discussed a tangential subject with my TrekWest5 co-host, Peter, and given my on-going involvement in Freenode’s ##PHP channel I’ve been thinking a lot about this issue. Once upon a time (in the early 90’s), there was an attempt by a group known as advogato to provide web-of-tust like metrics to certify a programmer’s skill. Given the explosion of social networking in the intervening period, I’m wondering if any of you have ideas on how we can really bring some muscle to bear on this?

Reading this article on “rootkits” for Javascript has really got me thinking about the kind of evil you could do by poisoning the base datatype Prototypes in a javascript environment. I recommend you read it if you do a lot of work with Javascript.

What is CouchDB?
CouchDB is a new kind of database system. Instead of tables, columns, and rows, it’s just a collection of JavaScript (JSON) documents.

Design your own Kindle (and win it) with Engadget, Amazon, and Adafruit Industries!
The Amazon Kindle is an awesome “Electronic Book” device. We’re getting closer to having a PADD.

Upgrade Rules for Windows 7 RC Users
If you’ve been using a Windows 7 Release Candidate, you need to be aware of these.

Survey says most companies won’t deploy Windows 7
Not really news, but good information to have in your pocket.

The ‘R’ Programming Language
‘R’ is a programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics.

Build a 10 Terabyte Storage Solution for ~$1000USD
The guys Tom’s Hardware are always looking for the next edge – I certainly could put 10TB of space to use!

1TB Hard Drive for <$80 USD @ TigerDirect
The Tom’s Hardware article sent me looking for this – this is really good news!

Google Releases ‘Remote Desktop’ Software Based on NX
NX is an attempt to make the Unix X Windows system a more viable solution for remote desktop display. When Google announced their upcoming Chrome OS operating system, a lot of people were trying to figure out what their new display system would be – the common thinking now is that it will probably be this NX implementation.

Video interview with author of O’Reilly and Associates book: Programming Collective Intelligence
Examples of Collective intelligence might be Amazon’s or Netflix’s “Recommendations” services, or the all-powerful Wikipedia – where the body of knowledge becomes something more than the sum of its parts. If you’re not sure why Collective Intelligence is important, I urge you to read the excellent book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.

I saw Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris back in 2005, and thought it looked interesting – especially because he was a local – but never bothered to pick it up. I didn’t hear the name again until he was selected by James Rigney’s widow to finish The Wheel of Time, a fantasy series I’ve long held dear. When I heard that Harriet selected him based on his Mistborn series, I decided to get them on audiobook and listen to them.

Six hours into the audiobook, I was crushed. THIS was the style of writer Harriet chose to finish my beloved Wheel of Time? The story is disjointed, with great swaths of time passing between pages. The dialog is overly-simplistic, as if the author were writing to the Harry Potter crowd – which, OK, I have no proof that he WASN’T, but it’s certainly not a style of writing I find enjoyable. I never even finished the Harry Potter books, having put down Book 6 and realized “I’m not enjoying this, why do I keep reading it?”. The quality of characterization is uneven, with secondary characters like Hammond or Breeze being far more entertaining and vibrant than the “main” characters of Kelsier and Vin. All hope for a pleasant ending to the Wheel of Time faded from me, and I became a bitter and angry fan.

Then, my good friend Peter suggested I read a book called The Name of the Wind – perhaps the best new work of fantasy I’ve read in the past 5 years. I started following the author’s blog, which eventually led me back to Brandon Sanderson’s blog, which – to my astonishment – I found I thoroughly enjoyed.

So, it is with no little trepidation that I bring you links to the free, online copies of Brandon’s upcoming work, Warbreaker. I have not yet read it myself, but here’s the piece of Brandon’s entry on the book that really caught my attention:

How would [being transformed into a deity] affect a person? What if they, themselves, didn’t believe that their powers made them a god—yet everyone else did believe it? Could you have a god who didn’t believe in his own religion?

I’m willing to give him another shot, and maybe even go back and finally read Elantris, which some people have told me is quite good – of course, they also really liked Mistborn…sigh

I’m often accused of being “too serious”, so when I have something that proves I have a sense of humour, I like to share it. This snippet of a conversation thread from this post on proggit really made me laugh – it mixes incredibly obscure geek humour with a long-dead internet meme regarding some strange creatures chasing a kitten through a field – you know what I’m referring to.

It’s been a while since I posted a “Monday Break”, so I’d like to get back into the swing by bringing you Every Extend – a free, fun, single-button game with what appears to be a Japanese origin. I could easily see something like this doing well on the Blackberry or iPhone.

I’m sitting here, waiting for our European offices to get back to me on an issue, and the only thing I could think of to do with my time was watch Season 2 of 30 Rock – and the only thing I can tell you about it is that someone has bottled pure ‘funny’ and unleashed it in concentrated, 20-minute doses.

Well, my share of the meta game has gone live. I have to say, I’m more anxious about this than I’ve EVER been before. Will people understand what I’m trying to say? Will it be as moving for them as it was for me? I don’t think I’ll handle it very well if they don’t like it, and it’s incredibly unusual for me to pin my own emotions that much on the reactions of other people. I’d guess it’s because writing the last few paragraphs of that story were so important to me that any rejection of it will feel like a rejection of me. Bleh, I’m starting to make myself sick…but if you don’t like it, do me a favor and keep it to yourself?

This week’s batch of ST:TNG episodes includes one titled ‘The Ensigns of Command’, which Memory Alpha cites as coming from this poem by John Quincy Adams, which I found to be…not horrible. For those not inclined to read the entire poem, here’s the relevant section.

[Edited on 2009-07-13 to include link to Radar’s original article, as I just noticed I never linked to it directly]

[If you don’t know how Watchmen ends, stop reading now. This is a good rule of thumb for my blog: I have no qualms about “spoiling” – if you’re reading an article discussing a subject, you’d darn well be familiar with the material.]

Let me start here by pointing out something I don’t know that I’ve ever mentioned. I owe The Mad Giggler a deep debt – back when The Homestarmy looked like this, asked me if I would be interested in writing a Guest Post on his blog/web site, thehomestarmy.com. To that point, I didn’t get it – the whole concept of blogs escaped me – and frankly, pissed me off a little bit. (Hmm…sort like Facebook and Twitter do today – no, no; don’t chase that particular dragon right now, Joey, you’re going somewhere with this post…). If it weren’t for him encouraging me, I might have missed out on a number of incredible things, including the two blogs I write on, as well as my podcast with The One Named Peter. Thank you, MG.

Last night, or early this morning, over at The Homestarmy (as it is TODAY), Radar posted what I believe is his longest entry to date

[
    wait, let’s just check that…

    select title from blog_entries where authorid = 8 order by length(body)+length(extended) desc;
    16305: Where I Boldly Went
    11273: The Watchmen: Novel or just Graphic?

...discussing graphic novels in general, but focused mostly on Watchmen. Radar made a lot of apologies for the quality of his writing (which turned out to be entirely unnecessary, man), so I’ll follow his pattern – the main body of this article was written between the time Radar posted his article (around 01:00 on Thursday) and the time I went to bed. In between putting my thoughts down here, I was also working, and so wasn’t giving the care I usually prefer to give to my writing. However, at this point, I’m so late in publishing this response, I’m more interested in getting it out than in quality-checking it, so I’m sorry if there’s anything wrong, rude, offensive, or dumb.

ProggIt had this amusing gem today, but it’s pretty obscure, so I put it here instead of the Homestarmy

So where can this argument possibly go?
I don’t have to tell you; I’m sure you must know.
By reductio, there cannot possibly be
a procedure that acts like the mythical P.

Great stuff.