Monochromatic Outlook

It’s Novem­ber and I’m only halfway through my goal of fifty books for the year, so yes, I’m look­ing at the slimmest vol­umes on the shelf. I tore through this last night before bed and this morn­ing before break­fast. I’m left with bit­ter feel­ings about it and almost wish I had­n’t read it. I feel good for hav­ing bought it and help­ing to sup­port Ianthe Brauti­gan, but the psy­chic act of read­ing this book which Richard Brauti­gan nev­er chose to … Read the rest

When­ev­er I read Orwell, I have hope. For this rea­son I con­sid­er him to be, if there can be any such thing, the best Eng­lish writer to ever have published.

In these essays, he nev­er lets me for­get. Where is his clar­i­ty – both styl­is­tic and moral – in today’s world? I real­ly mean this. Today’s George Orwell is … who? Michael Moore? Come on now. Moore has made him­self so ridicu­lous as to lead me to won­der if he … Read the rest

I picked this to pad my total. I did­n’t think I’d like it much, and I was right. The Logan books are pulp at their corniest.

It’s kind of sad that Nolan got so des­per­ate for sto­ry ideas that he resort­ed to an “trapped on an alter­nate Earth” plot, but the amus­ing part is read­ing the intro­duc­tion where he wax­es ver­bose (not call­ing it elo­quent) about how impor­tant the Logan Tril­o­gy is for the ideas contained.

Well, Logan is always … Read the rest

http://home3.inet.tele.dk/stadil/spe_kc.htm

Bill Wat­ter­son has just bro­ken my back and shown me the bars to my cage, the edge of the matrix. OK, those words are actu­al­ly from a decade and a half ago. God, I wish I’d heard those words then. But they prob­a­bly would­n’t have meant any­thing to me then. It’s a chal­lenge to keep the demons of my own denial from forc­ing the truth from my brain.

It’s so much eas­i­er to live in Thore­au’s “qui­et des­per­a­tion.” … Read the rest

It’s weird being home on a Fri­day night. Weird because it does­n’t seem like that long ago that it would have been weird for me to be out on a Fri­day night.

I’ve had two sec­ond dates recent­ly. Not sure if there will be any third dates, although I think there’s a good like­li­hood of see­ing at least one of them again. Maybe both, who knows? Either way it’s time for me to start look­ing for first dates again.

So what on … Read the rest

http://web.media.mit.edu/~kimiko/iobrush/

I/O Brush looks like a reg­u­lar phys­i­cal paint­brush but has a small video cam­era with lights and touch sen­sors embed­ded inside. Out­side of the draw­ing can­vas, the brush can pick up col­or, tex­ture, and move­ment of a brushed sur­face. On the can­vas, artists can draw with the spe­cial “ink” they just picked up from their imme­di­ate environment.

I’m quick­ly becom­ing a Ver­nor Vinge fan. One author has sin­gle­hand­ed­ly brought me back to read­ing sci­ence fic­tion. This is great stuff.

This col­lec­tion of short sto­ries is a mixed bag. Some of Vinge’s ear­ly work is a bit forced and awk­ward, but on the whole the sto­ries here were thought-pro­vok­ing, smart, and entertaining.

In par­tic­u­lar, two sto­ries each would have made it worth the pur­chase price: The Blab­ber, and Fast Times at Fair­mont High. The Blab­ber takes place … Read the rest

Joel Spol­sky is the Joel of joelonsoftware.com, who writes that his com­pa­ny has a pol­i­cy that any pro­gram­mer work­ing for him must be able to write Eng­lish well. How­ev­er, he notes that there are pre­cious few good writ­ers writ­ing about soft­ware and a good many ter­ri­ble ones. So he decid­ed to col­lect the best soft­ware writ­ing he could find to show­case it and encour­age the writ­ing of bet­ter arti­cles and books about soft­ware in general.

I’m inter­est­ed, of course, because … Read the rest

One would think that the car­ful of injured rid­ers who went to Big Sur with us would have served as a sober reminder to slow it down and take it easy. Our chase vehi­cle for the trip con­tained two bro­ken ankles, one bro­ken wrist, was dri­ven by a rid­er whose bike is in the shop after a crash that for­tu­nate­ly left her uninjured.

Sat­ur­day’s ride was sur­pris­ing­ly short: 150 miles from San Fran­cis­co to a camp­ground with cab­ins in the … Read the rest

It was a great morn­ing to take the detour off of 280 and take Sky­line to Page Mill to work. Nor­mal­ly I hate stop­ping to take pic­tures, but I just felt the need to make every­one jeal­ous, so here:

	Bay from Page Mill View from Page Mill Road		South Bay from Page Mill Anoth­er view from Page Mill Road
	Page Mill Page Mill Road		Page Mill Guzzi Moto Guzzi parked at the side of Page Mill

In oth­er news, I picked up my jack­et and new wind­screen yes­ter­day. … Read the rest