I’ll fess up to it. I’ve been meaning to read some Robert E. Howard for a long time, but it wasn’t until I saw the trailer for the new Solomon Kane movie that I took the plunge and picked up a copy of the most recent collection of Howard’s stories about the sword-slinging puritan.

It was surprisingly readable. The fiction holds up over time, even better than some of Howard’s contemporaries.  The language is crisp and descriptive without filling in every last detail; Howard is a master at leaving enough room for the reader’s imagination to fill in the details. For me, that makes for an intensely visual experience, as the story will play out like a movie in my mind.

At first, it was tough to get used to the lack of continuity. We are so used to reading novels these days that some readers might be frustrated by the nature of these stories. They were all written as serials; short stories for magazines of the time, so concepts like character development are lacking. However, the stories themselves are engrossing, and Howard managed to surprise me more than once with the way he ended some of his tales.

Fans of Stephen King’s Gunslinger will find Kane familiar…there’s more than a little Kane in Roland. Similarly, if you grew up reading science fiction of the sixties as I did, you’ll find Kane an ancestor to many characters. For me, that heightened my appreciation for the stories.

All in all, it was good read, and I recommend it.

As it turns out, our android librarian is equipped with neither a sense of irony nor any compulsion toward forgiveness. Nor the slightest inclination to waive a replacement fee, for that matter. However, the whole unpleasant mess has been resolved and we are now prepared to discuss Lamb, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore.

Also in this episode:

• Chief Medical Officer’s Progress Report #2: The Bad Doctor returns to blame yet another new strain of yet another virus on our meddling—we prefer “fiddling”, really—with equine-primate hybridization. As a side note, bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) really are very cute; it should have worked, dammit!
• From the Ministry of Crackpot Schemes and Unfortunate Synergies: Jay is in Hong Kong attempting to procure a wolf-child, but important details seem to have been lost in translation somewhere.

Lair Keeping

• Our theme music is “Skullcrusher Mountain” by Jonathan Coulton.
• Our Secretary of Artistic Propaganda is Natalie Metzger.
• Our Minister of Crackpot Schemes and Unfortunate Synergies is Jay “The Kingfish” Lynn.
• Our Chief Medical Officer is Dr. John Cmar.
• Our Airborne Legions are led by Commandante David Moore.
• Our Minister of Suspicious Substitutions and Unreasonable Facimiles often operates under the pseudonym The Cynical Optimist.
• Our Minister of Secrets and Subterfuge is classified.

Listen and learn more at The Secret Lair!

This will keep me busy for a while…cannot wait to get started.

SPOILERS AHEAD

If you wanted answers, prepare to get them, but they will be wholly unsatisfying.  The fact that the writers used “God did it.” as the wrap-up pissed me off so much that it colored the rest for the series. I was going to buy the series because it was so strong, but at the end, the writing staff TOTALLY blew it. Completely. Angels? Really?

And WTF was Head Baltar alluding to when he said of God, “He doesn’t like to be called that.” Was this supposed to be clever? And WHAT WAS STARBUCK??? It just pissed me off.

For a while, I was truly hoping they were going to make Anders, somehow, the architect of everything. I would have been perfectly satisfied with a geeky Time Loop, something that at least, in the terms of Science Fiction, made some sort of sense.

Instead, we have platitudes, moralizing, and no satisfying climax.

If one of my author friends had done this, I’d have completely jumped on them for it.  Maybe the Battlestar Galactica  writers were trying to make some sort of statement. If so, well…I feel totally let down.  It was disappointing, pointless, and gave NOTHING that was promised. It was a total cop out.

Update: I completely agree with this post. Totally and utterly.

Update #2: And Mur nails it as well. My god. This ending breaks every rule of good fiction.  AARGGGHH!

If there’s any one songwriter able to transfix me with his work, it’s Richard Shindell. I’ve got most of the albums he’s put out, and I never tire of them,. He’s got that most rare of talents, a poetic bent and a sense for the supporting melody that can hold you still and command you to listen.

He’s a folk singer in the best sense of the word, sticking to common themes that draw forth emotion and spur contemplation. And just when contemplation is turning a bit maudlin, he’ll draw you back out with something upbeat and lighthearted.

If you enjoy guitar-driven folk with a strong lyrical component, I strongly recommend any of his albums, though I think Somewhere Near Patterson is probably my favorite. Additionally, the collaboration between him, Dar Williams and Lucy Kaplanski on Cry Cry Cry is one of the favorite CDs in the Miller household.

I’ll leave you with a Seeqpod playlist of a few songs…hope you like what you hear.

SeeqPod – Playable Search

photo credit: dalelane

About a month ago, I got a G1 from my local T-Mobile dealer. I’d like to bore you with the details.

• I like the style of the phone. At it’s most basic, the G1 is a Sidekick with a better OS and rounded corners. Since my last phone was also a Sidekick, I’m right at home.  I do wish the G1 had the translucent trackball, which you could program to light up in different colors in different situations¹.
• I also love having a physical keyboard. The iPhone keyboard sucked when I used it. This one is perfect for me.
• I like the size of the screen and the apps that come with the phone.  Linking things in to my Google accounts has made my life one hell of a lot easier.
• Everything you’ve heard about the battery life is true…if you’re an idiot.  Yes, if you leave every service on all the time², the battery will be dead in two hours.  It just so happens that there is a great app called Locale which fixes this little problem. Developed by a group of MIT students, this app tracks where you are using both Wifi and GPS and will switch off services when you are in a certain location automatically. With will also change your ringer volume and make decisions based on system status, such as low battery life. It completely rocks.
• The App market is still underdeveloped, but it’s a new platform, and that’s to be expected. There are some great apps in the Android Market, such as Park Mark, Wikitude, Shop Savvy.
• The only downside I’ve found is that sometimes the memory gets pegged and the whole phone slows or pauses  When apps stop responding, the system handles it gracefully, asking if you want to force the app to close, or wait for it to finish.  I’ve never had a full-out crash or needed to reset the phone.

Would I recommended it?  I already have, several times. The most common criticism of the G1 is that it’s not an iPhone. That’s just fin with me. I love the openness of the Android system, and I cannot wait to see what people find to do with it.

1. for instance, blue if you have voice mail, red if your boss called and you missed it, etc
2. GPS, Wifi, and Bluetooth

photo credit: MMMMichelle

On the second day of Penguicon, the furries came out. Luckily, they weren’t drawn to the technical track, so for the most part, we were safe.



Most of the morning, Rick and I hung out. There weren’t any sessions that we wanted to attend, so we headed out for a few hours and wandered the local mall, which was roughly the size of the UCLA campus. It was two massive structures connected by a skyway over West Big Beaver Road¹. Astonishingly, it was filled with…nothing. Well…nothing for two computer geeks on the prowl. To be fair, there was an Apple Store, but even that felt half-assed.



Heading back, we met back up with Cmdln for his afternoon sessions. The poor guy looked like something out of Infected, his head cold threatening burst out of his skull and wreak havoc over the con. He held the beast at bay with liberal application of Dayquil. He and I headed off to his three panels.



I have to say, his Third Wave Power² was sorely tested by the panels he had that day:

• Avoiding Obsolescence: How to insure technology does not leave you behind, both personally and professionally.
• Beyond Silicon: Exploring alternatives to using silicon-based computer systems. Examples: Quantum computing, data storage at the atomic level, etc.
• Secure Computing: This was originally supposed to be about trusted computing and hardware security, I believe, but Vernor Vinge took it in a whole new direction, pointing out the single point of failure that transistors will become within the next 20 years. The example was that, if something wiped out all the transistors³ today, it would be Very Bad. People would die, vehicles would cease to function, etc. Imagine how bad it would be in 20 years, when computers are small and even more integrated with our lives.

We headed back to the room, caught the Tesla Coil concert, played a little Arkham Horror, and called it a day.

Sunday morning was pretty laid back. Bagels and coffee, conversation, then Rick headed off to hit some sessions he was interested in. The best session of the whole con, The Future of Programming Languages, was at 11am, followed by the OLPC roundtable and Math and Elections.

Following that, time to head home.

On the whole, it was a decent con. I enjoyed myself, and learned some interesting things. My one disappointment was that, for an Open Source conference, there was no discussion the philosophy of Open Source, methods of working in teams on Open Source projects, no talks on specific pieces of software or code. Other than waving the Linux flag, there was no real discussion of the core of the movement: The Source.

Penguicon 7.0 is moving to a larger venue next year, and I’ll be watching their progress. There is tremendous potential for a truly interesting and engaging con there, for both the younger geek set and the older geeks, the professionals who want to help carry Open Source forward. The Guest of Honor is Wil Wheaton and that should prove to be quite a draw. There is discussion of an expanded podcasting track, as well. All in all, it sounds promising. If all goes well, I’ll be returning next year.

1. No joke. I’m not making that up.
2. Cmdln’s Third Wave power is the ability to as intelligent on the last day of a con, after having little sleep, as he sounds on the first day. Personally, I think this definition needs to be refined thusly: he has the ability to sound intelligent no matter how tired he is.
3. With an EMP, etc

photo credit: paulgorman

There may be no place quieter than a con on a Saturday morning.

Still, I’m up. And this is the Penguicon Update: Day 1.

The con itself is good size…it’s pretty much taken over the Troy Hilton, which is not a small hotel. Like all Sci-Fi/Tech conventions, the glasses to non-glasses ratio is pretty high, and most of the other usual stereotypes about the population of geekdom also apply. I’ve seen all ages here, it does not skew young or old, and so far, there are no furries.

Cmdln and I arrived around 2:30pm on Friday to find Rick Stringer of the Variant Frequencies podcast waiting for us. We checked in, and after seeing the line of folks waiting for registration to open, decided to hit Charlie’s Crab for lunch. Although we all met at Dragon*Con last year, we were able to get to know one another a bit better over lunch. It was good to take the voices that you hear in your headphones and learn about their family, day job, why they do what they do…you know…the important stuff. It’s not a surprise, but we got along famously.

After about an hour, we headed back to find that registration was still closed. Our clever plan of waiting out the line hadn’t worked out, so we queued up and studied the massive schedule that had been taped to the wall.

The schedule wall is worth a little detail. Rather than print a single large sheet with the various track and times listings, they created a grid of 8 x 11 sheets of paper, printed landscape, and laid it out like a massive spreadsheet. This allows them to change the locations, times, etc of the sessions quickly without having to rely on crossing things out in heavy black marker. This was actually fairly novel, though, as several of folks in line with us observed, very hackable. So far, no one has altered the schedule on their own.

After getting our badges¹, we hung out in the room for a bit, then headed out to dinner.

Dinner was P.F. Chang’s with Chris Lester of Metamor City fame, and Michael Ireland of the Scotchcast and . Drinks were had, conversation was excellent, and a good time was had by all.

Our second panel was Computer Geeks and Science Fiction, a freeform discussion about the use of computers as a device in science fiction. The panel was myself, Rick, Cmdln, and Eric S. Raymond, who buried us with his encyclopedic knowledge of SF. It was a great discussion, and I learned a lot more than I taught, which is never a bad thing.

Afterwards, we took in a showing A Shoggoth On The Roof, a puppet show² which used H.P. Lovecraft to parody Fidder on the Roof. Or is that the other way around? It was pretty funny, and the puppeteers were definitely skilled.

That was the wrap up on the night.

Today, more panels, and perhaps some time to write and check out the dealer room. Looking forward to meeting some of the organizers as well. Might check in to attending the Barfleet or Linux User Group party tonight. We shall see.

And now, I am off to the Coffee Ritual. Have a good day, everyone. Catch you tomorrow.

1. The badges were a little disappointing: Small pieces of paper, not preprinted clearly, stuck in cellophane name-badges holders. Was hoping for something laminated goodness to put on my wall o’ badges. Aw, well. First world problem.
2. Based on the filk version put on on CD years ago

You have to learn why things work on a starship.

- James T. Kirk to Savik in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn

photo credit: ejhogbin

I attended Notacon 2008 this weekend. I’d like to tell you about it.



I learned a lot. See…I’m not much of a hacker. I’ve never played with Ham Radio for my own wifi, I’ve never attended a demoparty, and I know just enough about networking to get by. Notacon was an educational experience, one of the sort I don’t get often in day-to-day life. I don’t have much occasion to reflect on the necessity of editing information, but thank goodness Jason Scott does. I have not mulled over the current state of election technologies, but Smoke and Phreak had. Bruce Potter taught me more about the challenges of router monitoring than I’d learn in a year of working at my desk.

I attended Notacon the first year it ran and I felt like a stranger in a stranger land. I felt the same way this year. This is not the staff’s fault in any way, mind you. When I go to a developer convention, I know I’m going to have a lot in common with the folks there. This is a world where I’m a babe in the woods. Believe it or not, this is a very good thing. I have a lot to learn, and thankfully, the staff and speakers this year had a lot to teach.



This is not a “web development” conference, but web developers should attend it. Notacon will introduce you to new concepts and new ways of looking at problems. It will remind you of the complexity of the systems that you take for granted every day. It may even rekindle an interest, as it did with my friend Sean, who is unpacking his old sampling and mixing equipment as we speak.



Looking at the Notacon media archive, it seems like it gets more eclectic each year. Admittedly I’d love to see a web development track develop in the coming years. But even if one did not, I’d definitely go back, and I’d encourage friends to go with me. Too often there’s a wall between the folks who handle the nuts and bolts of servers/networking and those who upload their work to those servers/networks. Next year…instead of worrying about what “Web 3.0″ might hold, step back and dig into what Notacon is offering. You won’t be sorry.