The Blog for Rob

WriteRoom on iPad: Search Done Wrong

2011-12-30T23:40:00.000+11:00

Updates.
- Tuesday 3 January 2012, 02:06:50 PM: WriteRoom actually does have margin tapping virtual cursor keys.

I use WriteRoom on my iPad and iPhone every day. As a straight text editor (as opposed to say a rich text editor or code editor), it is excellent. It syncs with Dropbox in the background. It has TextExpander support. It has a simple and functional UI that intelligently uses the iPad's larger screen real estate. Also on the iPad, it has a great strip of helper keys on top of the keyboard; this strip can be customised and includes cursor left/right by default.

But now that I have 20+ relatively LARGE files that I use regularly for different purposes, search is becoming more important. I am going to switch editors if Hog Bay Software do not get a decent search function into WriteRoom.

Search currently does nothing except narrow down the file list to show only those files whose text includes the search term. For every day use, this is almost USELESS. Search should highlight matching terms in the current file and give you next/previous buttons. It should also offer you the ability to use regular expressions.

Don't get me wrong: searching across multiple files is good - as a secondary function. Rarely do I need that, and if I do, it should still offer the same functionality as regular search: regex, highlight, next/previous buttons.

For a different view (that doesn't mention my qualms about search but does criticise handling of folders), here is an excellent review of this app: WriteRoom: Getting iPad Writing Right by William Deal.

As a side note, I was reading Charlie Sorrel's review of Scribe (another text editor for iOS): Scribe, an iPad Text Editor With HTML, Markdown for the iPad on Wired.com. Charlie mentions another cool feature that WriteRoom has (which Scribe, doesn't have). Quote: a single tap in the margin to move the cursor one character at a time. It’s like virtual cursor keys, and works way better than Apple’s way to move the cursor (tap, hold, drag, pray). WriteRoom's cursor left/right keys are great - but this mechanism is greater still.

Skyrim Déjà vu

2011-11-30T10:17:00.001+11:00

I had just killed a giant frostbite spider in a dank, smelly, cobweb filled room deep underneath the long abandoned Bleak Falls Temple - long abandoned except for monsters and bandits! Panting from the effort, the tingle of spark and frostbite energy still in my fingertips, blood dripped down my right arm from a particularly bad gash. The pain was there, immense, but I was beyond it - still caught in the rush. I had killed the thing by myself; I used no weapons, just the combination of burning and freezing energy pouring from my hands. I had real power!

But adrenalin can only last so long when the hurly-burly is completed, and shortly the distant burning in my arm become an overbearing agony. I stumbled and half fell against a boulder nearby, gasping raggedly as my vision swam. I tried to focus, to examine the pain and gaping flesh. The wound was bad, but I could not feel the blackness of poison - it was only pain. Only pain. I forced myself to still, to relax, to breath deeply and let the pain run through me but not override me. I clenched my left fist, remembered the patterns I had learned for healing and visualised those patterns as white lines blossoming open in my left fist. The energy came, expanded to fill all the places taken by pain. I watched as the torn flesh of my arm knitted closed. I touched the skin, still wet with blood but now whole. I wiped it away with a ragged sleeve. My bloodied robe does not bother me.

Now that I can breathe easily again, I look at the huge corpse, and an idea comes to me. I want to try a new spell, something dangerous, something that still worries at my conscience: can I raise this corpse as a zombie? I have not tried such a thing before, and the idea seems sacrilegious. I studied the book back in town, chill creeping through me as I mouthed the words to myself. Dare I take this step? Will I have the strength to keep my honour intact, or will this be an irreversible act of depravity that damns my soul? Necromancy is dark magic; I have heard many stories of its practitioners, old before their time and twisted by unnatural desires. I do not want to be one one of those ghouls that obsesses over the realm of death.

No, I will not become that. I am more practical. I remember very well the spider getting close enough to rip at my flesh. I made a mistake: I let the enemy get close enough to use its formidable attack. I am no fighter, who can go toe to toe with an enemy. I need something in my way. What better something than the risen corpse of an enemy? My mother always said: "re-use, recycle."

So I began the spell, dark words dripping from my lips, a ball of energy forming in my clenched fist and visions of moist earth and midnight in my mind. I opened my fist. The energy shot towards the corpse. Immediately the inanimate thing began shaking, streams of blue energy circled the corpse, lifting it into the air. I took a frightened step back, but it was too late now: whatever infernal process was taking place could not be halted. The corpse turned over in mid-air. Sickeningly, the limbs of the spider un-curled, straightened. Then it came down, dead limbs taking weight once more. Multi faceted eyes stared at me, as un-readable in death as they were before. I could still smell burnt spider hair, still see the scorch marks and deep cold burns scored deep into its flesh. It swayed... waiting?

I took a step away - and with horror saw the thing lurch after me, it's movements essentially the same, but somewhat jerky. Mechanical almost. I took another step, then another. Like a thing tethered to my ankle it followed me. Spider bristles rubbed together making an eerie sound in the silence now that the form had no will of its own. My skin prickled with goosebumps, but the elation was in me again as I bore witness to my own power manifest.

The spell would only animate this corpse for a short time. I was sure that in this part of the mouldering temple, no other enemies would be present near the nest of such a creature. With no enemies to test my undead guardian, I determined to find out for myself what punishment it could take. Sparks and frost leapt from my hands again, striking the spider who just stood there. It swayed with the impact but did not resist, even as its carapace was further scorched and frozen.

I cannot describe the feeling of power that leapt in my veins, chords of an unearthly music deep in my soul. The thing was still standing after my short burst. I closed my eyes and grinned with the memory playing against the backs of my eyelids. And then heard it move. Shocked, I opened my eyes and watched as it lurched, and then again - towards me! Sick dread coursed through my gut. Whatever energy animates the thing and binds it to my movements, there is obviously a greater imperative. I circled away from the beast, I wondered if its animating energy would run out before my own... and readied myself to face the creature again.

Skyrim Déjà vu.

Birthright by Rick Partlow

2011-11-09T19:17:00.001+11:00

Birthright [Kindle Edition]

Rick Partlow (Author)

Amazon page.

7/10

Ripping yarn, with lots of sci-fi action: guns, fisticuffs, space combat, some huggin' 'n' kissin', intrigue and some great bad guys and better good guys! There is plenty of rumination over legitimate moral issues, but this story isn't about that. In the end all the morality amounted to was this: loyalty, family and friendship wins the day. It's escapism, but really pulled me in.

This book needs a good edit: there were plenty of spelling and grammar mistakes here that distracted me just a little bit.

What I like most about this story is all the military sci-fi, weapons and enhanced humans - some great kick-ass characters. I would like to read more of Caleb.

Missed!

2011-10-21T15:14:00.001+11:00

I am walking along the street right now, headed towards the train station when from above and barely fifty centimeters in front of me comes the wet sloppy splatter of a distressingly large (pile? collection? load?) load of bird poop, white and steaming on the wet pavement. I crane my neck and see two crows staring down at me. "You missed!" I call and then move on. I swear I heard their returning cackle. "This time.."

How do you decide whether to dictate, type out or hand-write a piece of writing?

2011-10-13T13:24:00.000+11:00

How do you decide whether to dictate, type out or hand-write a piece of writing?

I have always had a minor passion for writing, and I enjoy the process of settings ideas out and slowly filling them out, trimming them down or deleting them altogether. This is easiest to do on a computer - so easy to cut, copy paste, organise, Google and re-write. Being able to touch type makes this process an almost organic extension of my consciousness.

Hand writing is a different sort of pleasure. I used to get lost in handwriting in a similar way, but often I felt like my thinking slows down to match my hand-writing speed. I would re-write and draw lines to indicate which bit is meant to go in between which other bits. It was hard to transcribe my writing, but fulfilling because it was a conscious editing step.

In the last decade, the only hand-writing I do now is writing meeting notes at work - but even then I love organising the notes as I go, and doodling! Building up small doodles to fill a page feels good too.

Now I have an iPad with a keyboard case that feels comfortable to use for short periods; I can almost thumb-touch type on my iPhone without looking at the keys.. I can easily spend the entire train trip home just writing out a message or blog post. And drawing apps make me feel like an artist, even though I blanch at every creation. :)

And then I discovered Dragon Dictation on my iPhone - and how it gets about 70% of my words correct.. mangling names but getting the bulk of it right. I find myself stopping and starting a lot - both when I type and when I dictate into my phone. But during dictation, the pauses seem more pregnant, more expectant and I find myself stressing out at being unable to immediately go back and change a word or fix up a capitalisation. I can get out short bursts a lot faster only if I am "on track".

And with Dragon Dictation on the phone - every time you hit "stop" you have to wait while it sends the audio up to the server for translation before giving you back the text, which I feel compelled to edit before going on. But at the same time I wouldn't like to use a recorder, because I find the process of transcribing audio to be far too odious, and lacking the potential of being a true editing step because you have to focus on just typing out what you are hearing.

They have such different characteristics. I love hand-writing but prefer typing.. I feel that dictation should be the fastest but can't get into the flow. Which do you find better?

I posted this first on \writers.stackexchange.com as Handwriting vs typing vs speaking, but I enjoyed writing it so much that I posted it here too!

Scammers watching gumtree.com

2011-09-01T09:01:00.001+10:00

Recently, I put up a few ads on Gumtree, listing my phone number. The first three responses I got were SMSs from scammers that included a short message that didn't reference any particular item. Being new to Gumtree and not having received any other response, I was suspicious but willing to at least reply and find out for sure. Well, now I am sure. I am showing these messages here so you can be sure too.

SMS text: Is the price of your funiture ad on gumtree.au negotiable ? please email me at peterson191live.com.
Naïvely, I responded via email with a list of URLs for all of my postings. the response is below.

Thanks for the response,i will take the hotpoint conditional and refrigerator for $800 including PayPal surcharges since i am interested in the immediate purchase.I just moved to the United Kingdom,where this is needed and i will be making use of a shipping company to have this picked up from you .Further arrangements will be made with you in regards to the pick up once i have paid you.I would appreciate if you email me with more pictures (if available) too since i won't be be able to see this in person,what's the PayPal email to send funds to in order for me to pay you ASAP.
Thanks
Chris

The next SMS was even more abrupt: kleverhjay@hotmail.com condition of your posted items please. I responded via email with: Please specify what items you are interested in. Thanks. The response is below.

Thanks for the swift response...I am willing to know the lowest price
of it.due to the nature of my job and location...i will not be able to
come for inspection,am a very busy type as i work long hours
everyday,i have gone through your advertisement and i am satisfied
with it.
As for the payment..i will be paying you via the fastest and secure
way to pay online(PayPal).
I have a private courier agent that will come for the pick up after
the payment have been made ...so no shipping included.
You can now send me your PayPal email so i can pay in right away and
also include your address in your reply.If you don't have a paypal
account, you can easily set up one...log on to www.paypal.com.au and
sign up. its very easy.I await your reply asap

I have had a couple of others since, but I think they all share a couple of key factors to make them recognisable. Broken English and obvious lack of written communication skills is a good sign, but not definitive. A stronger sign is that they don't reference a particular item by name, since the email is probably generic and sent to as many targets without modification as they can reach. The best sign is an offer to buy without inspection. How this all works as a scam is beyond me: perhaps they would eventually ask for a bank account number.

Gumtree has a FAQ section that is worth paying close attention to: How do I stay safe while using Gumtree? To me, the most important key points are:

Meet in-person to see the item and exchange money.
If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

People around me on the train

2011-08-29T08:42:00.002+10:00

People around me on the train. A woman reads a chemistry paper, printed copy. A man reads from an Android phone. Two men looking at iPhones with earphones in their ears. Another man reads a Kindle book on an iPad 2. A woman scrolls through happy weekend photos on her iPhone. A man with a big pair of headphones on and cool shades bops his head while scrolling something on an Android phone. Another man two finger iPhone types descriptions of people be sees around him on the train.

Location:St Kilda Rd,Southbank,Australia

Crippleware on the iPhone

2011-08-16T15:04:00.000+10:00

Many apps have a free and paid version. If you pay money, you get the advanced and uber-cool features, while basic features are free. Software creators have every right to set whatever price they wish for their work and the line between what features should be free or paid is wherever the software creator says it is. It is then up to users to decide whether the software is worth the cost.

Some apps claim to be free while putting very basic functions behind a pay wall, making real use of the basic version either impossible or extremely frustrating (see crippleware). The most benign form of crippleware are trial versions or apps that at least tell you in advance what you can expect. Note that benign here just means "really frustrating, but at least you know what you are getting."

Kilojoule & Calorie Counter by ShapeUp Club for the iPhone is, in my opinion, crippleware. From what I can see it is the only app that lets me use kilojoules rather than calories - I live in a metric country thank you! To find a food, you can drill down through their database or perform an in-app search that hits the internet. There is also a tab in the app for "recent" food items, so you don't have to repeat the process over and over to find the same food again.

Except that in this app, when you hit that tab it says you have to pay. And not just pay $5 or $10 for the Pro version of the app. They want you to subscribe to the ShapeUp Club for $38 per year. I don't want to subscribe to a club: I don't want to participate in anything their website has to offer. I only want to use the app. Given the nature of this app is about choosing food items several times a day, I consider the "recent" tab to be a basic function.

I would have been prepared to pay $5 or $10 for a full version. When I contacted ShapeUp Club and asked if they would provide a Pro version without the subscription, they replied:

Most part of ShapeUp Club is free to use, but we also offer a gold membership for more advanced features. I'm sorry that you think this is expensive, but you can try to buy one month subscription if you want to test the features and see if you like it.

I hope you will enjoy our service!

What a shame. So now I use MyFitnessPal on the iPhone, which I thoroughly recommend to anyone - it doesn't have kilojoules, which is a big shame. But it is free, and has the "recent" foods option available.

While I am on the topic, UNO Free! is the most blatant and repugnant version of crippleware I have ever seen on the iPhone: it lets you play one card and then quits, telling you to buy the paid version.

I have become the vessel for the mote in my eye

2011-04-30T01:59:00.001+10:00

They did not come in an armada of outer space ships whose energy drives obliterated the horizon and global communications. Instead, they came in an onrush of colour that occluded my vision and subsumed my consciousness. I have become the vessel for the mote in my eye.

Wishlist for iPhone/iOS/iTunes

2011-04-27T16:06:00.001+10:00

These are all things I wish I could do without jailbreaking my device. I don't want to jailbreak my device, mainly because I want to keep up with the latest updates and not worry about continually jailbreaking my device after each update.

I wish the Apple cloud would remember what I have paid for.

Having had an Android phone for a while, the most consistently annoying thing about iTunes is that your app purchases aren't remembered "by the cloud". On an Android phone, the Android Marketplace remembers what apps you have purchased and lets you download them again without paying - even if they are not currently on your device.

This is important because after a few years of owning iTunes based devices, I have around a thousand apps on my PC - only a small part of which I can even fit on my iPhone at once. When I am at work (or anywhere away from home) and see a review for an amazing iPhone game or app, I often first wonder "do I have it already?" Most times I won't get the app because I can't remember if I already paid for it; I don't want to risk paying for it again, so I usually just forget about it altogether.

iTunes can really learn a thing or five hundred from the Android Marketplace - you can see all the apps you have purchased, you can register multiple phones and install apps to a given device from the web. Amazing.

I wish there was a quick settings app.

I wish there was an app that would quickly let me change basic settings like toggle wi-fi, bluetooth, 3G etc - like My Settigns Pro on Android.

I wish I could do more with folders.

I wish iOS had a better folder model - one that lets me change how many icons it can store, nest folders, rename icons, handle scrolling within folders etc.

I wish there were better camera controls.

Perhaps this is a hardware issue, but I wish I could control ISO settings, shutter speed etc on the camera.

I wish there were alternative soft keyboards

I want to have a choice between the built in keyboard or Swype or Shapewriter. There was a small number of keyboard apps, but they have all disappeared from iTunes.

Goodbye Nebulous. I love you. I will miss you.

2011-01-07T02:31:00.001+11:00

Update: 9th of January, 2011. Recieved a letter from the Vet we took Nebulous to.

She died today, Thursday the 6th of January 2011. I had to put her down because of a hyperthyroid condition and cardiomyopathy; she spent her last day gasping for breath, unable even to miaow, disoriented and perhaps in growing pain. Süheyla watched over her, the last day; she gave her the best care. But Nebulous was unable to walk, her left hind leg failing from a blood clot that separated from her heart; she wouldn't eat and couldn't drink at the end. She had been struggling for a week. I took her to the Glenvale Vet on Tuesday when I noticed her go into wheezing fits any time she was picked up. (And she was so skinny, her ribs poking out, too clearly delineated.) Rohan - the veterinarian - gave me two sets of tablets for her, but within two days she would not even eat.

On Tuesday, Rohan had a grave manner, soft spoken; it was the first time I had come to him, being the local vet in a new neighbourhood. He explained that he heard fluid in her lungs and her heart beat at twice the expected rate for a cat. He was 99% sure her heart was "too big" but that there was no way to be sure without performing exactly the kind of invasive tests that might kill her anyway - especially given my description of how she reacted last time we tried to deal with an ingrown claw.

Today I came home from work ready for a swim in the pool, but it soon became obvious that Nebulous was at the end. She could not walk, but lay on her side without seeming to know where she was. She was breathing through her mouth in short, sharp gasps, and Süheyla explained that she had seen Nebulous twist suddenly during the day; thereafter being unable to use her left hind leg. At first I hoped she would make it through the night at least. I petted her, and realised that it was a death watch. I rang Rohan - and he stayed open long enough for me to bring Nebulous in.

Now I can only remember you Nebulous; my companion for so long. She was with me in primary school, high school, university; she lived in my first house away from Mum and Dad and my first house with my new family, Süheyla and Talya.

Nebulous showed up in late November or early December of 1984. I met a school chum Tim, who was carrying around a box with two kittens; a beautiful white one and an ugly grey one. I wanted the white one but needed permission first. I went home and asked Mum: "ok, but Dad's the sticking point. Tell you what, bring home the kitten and we will make it Dad's birthday present!" I found Tim again, with the asking price of $5, but he only had the ugly grey one left. Oh well. I took her home and lay on Mum and Dad's bed with her nestled on my chest. I remember almost falling asleep until - what, she just piddled on me!

When I was away, studying on campus at Monash Uni, Churchill, Nebulous would fret until I returned each weekend. As if in punishment she would occasionally vomit on my keyboard at home and - when I returned each weekend - would give me the cold shoulder for an hour or so before letting me pet her again.

When I first moved into a house with Süheyla, she had a beautiful pair of dogs: a German Shepherd named Shiela who would bark whenever we kissed, and a dopey but oh so cute Terrier named Foxy (who was so unbalanced that she would fall over any time she shook herself). I brought Nebulous over after a few days to see if she was OK with the whole situation; as soon as I let her loose in the lounge room, Shiela leapt after her (in my mind all I heard was "LUNCH!") and Nebulous (who I swear heard the same thing) raced up the curtains and taught me just how well cats can ignore gravity when they need to. Nebulous went back to Mum's place after that, even though Süheyla swore "Shiela was only playing - she is good with cats!"

She broke her arm in 2009 and - despite having an unwieldy cast - would still jump up and down from my bed. Indominable; I thought... hoped... she would live forever.

Nebulous was not a playful cat. She liked to sit in odd places; drink water from plants; give and get snuggles. She would lick my arm clean when needed, and lay on my chest purring and dribbling, the perfect massage device for the soul.

Goodbye Nebulous. I love you. I will miss you.

Update: 9th of January, 2011. Recieved this letter from the Vet we took Nebulous to. Form letter or not, the thought and effort is deeply appreciated.

Dear Robert,

On behalf of the nurses and myself we wish to convey to you, our sincere sympathy over your loss of "Nebulous".

We realise what a difficult time this must be losing a wonderful friend and we can only express to you our deepest regret that you can no longer enjoy her company.

Our thoughts are with you.

Yours sincerely,
Dr M.R. Nicholls
B.V.Sc.(Hons)

Now on Digg!

2010-11-24T11:30:00.001+11:00

This post should now be on Digg!

Shatnerquake

2010-10-27T10:06:00.000+11:00

This is a Bizarro novel, where the intent is to write shockingly silly stories, funny because they are so preposterous. At first I was like OMG how cool is that: Shatner battling TJ Hooker and Kirk and Denny Crane! Tell all my friends! And it brought a chuckle and silly grin a few times, like any fairly well written piece of fan fiction. But that's all this is - fan fiction that needs a lot more editing and drafting. It coulda been a contender, a grin that breaks out every time I watch Denny Crane fart inappropriately, kiss inappropriately, or sniff his friend Alan Shore because he has the lingering scent of a woman about him... inappropriately. Instead, it's a piece of gum that you enjoy only for the extraordinarily short time during which the flavor lovingly caresses your taste buds and fills your mind with the joyous sounds of a light saber singing as it decapitates versions of William Shatner left, right and centre, over and over again. At least Shatner didn't sue: he even gave it his seal of approval at the end. :)

Check it out Jeff Burk's own Shatnerquake page or on Amazon.

Smart Playlists in iTunes

2010-09-26T02:23:00.000+10:00

Smart Playlists are one of the main reasons I like iTunes so much. Below is just such a favoured Smart Playlist.

This controls the music I listen to day to day. It defines the following rules:

Give me music from my general music collection.
Add items from a separate Smart Playlist that contains un-played podcasts that I consider to be music e.g. ABC Radio National's In the Night Air, KEXP's Music That Matters, Mixtape Show Hip-Hop, The 20min Mixtape Show, IndieFeed: Hip Hop and Alpa Pup's sadly defunct Alternative Hip-Hop Lounge.
Don't include items I have rated 1 or 2 stars.

I delete items rated 1 star. I never want to listen to them again!
Generally I want to keep items rated 2 stars, but don't want to listen to them again on my device. Usually they are part of some collection I want to keep as a whole.

Don't include items that I have listened to two or more times.
Don't include items that I have listened to in the last eight weeks.
Don't include items that I have skipped over previously (usually means I didn't want to listen to them and was not prepared to actually take the device out of my pocket and rate the item).
And lastly, out of the 30GB or so that match these conditions, choose a random 5GB to put on my device.

Some useful links for Smart Playlists:

iTunes: How to create a Smart Playlist
Smart Playlists, for creating, sharing, and chatting about iTunes Smart Playlists.
Top 10 iTunes Smart Playlists by the inestimable LifeHacker.

Know when you are using WiFI vs 3G on your iPhone

2010-09-25T15:59:00.001+10:00

I first got a data plan with my Nokia N95 8GB - just $5 for 50MB a month because frankly it isn't a good "Internet" machine. YouTube never worked over 3G and browsing the web on the N95's tiny screen and navigating with "physical" buttons was slow, clunky and painful. When I was given an iPhone 4 last week (thank you Süheyla and Talya!) I wanted to test just how much of a 3G Internet hog I could become, so I upped the plan to $15 for 1GB a month, to kick in during the next billing period (a couple of weeks or so from now).

In the mean-time, I found a couple of cool Internet radio applications and began using them at work and home - where I have access to Wi-FI. Today I checked my 3G Internet usage and found I have a bill for $256.97 for 125.48MB excess beyond my 50MB per month (excess Usage 0.20¢ per KB). I rang my supplier to explain the situation and asked to be forgiven for the debt. Politely enough I was refused and given a $20 discount instead.

It was explained to me that the iPhone has a feature: if the Wi-FI gets disconnected, it automatically switches over to 3G. I was horrified; under normal situations I would think this a cool feature, but not while I have only 50MB a month!

So here is my lesson; maybe you can learn it too.

How do i know if my iPhone is using Wi-FI or my Data Plan? On the top left of the screen, to the right of your supplier's name is an icon. This symbol means you are currently using your 3G data plan:

This symbol means you are currently using a Wi-FI network:

See page 21-22 of the iPhone User Guide to see what all of the possible icons mean - including EDGE and GPRS, which are other forms of Internet connectivity offered by certain suppliers.

Great - but it didn't save me, since obviously my Wi-FI disconnected at some point and automatically switched over to my 3G data plan. I have since found that you can stop that from happening too (iOS 4, iPhone 4): go to Settings > General Network > turn off Mobile Data. This will ensure that from now on, I will only be able to use Wi-FI for Internet - at least until my 1GB plan kicks in.

Test slideshow

2010-09-20T19:23:00.001+10:00

Text above the slideshow.

Text below the slideshow.

Human Landscapes from My Country

2010-09-20T00:22:00.000+10:00

For Süheyla, with love.

Haydar Pasha Station,
spring 1941,
   3pm.
On the steps, sun
   fatigue
   and confusion.

A man
   stops on the steps,
   thinking about something.
Thin.
Scared.
His nose is long and pointed,
and his cheeks are pockmarked.
The man on the steps,
   Master Galip,
   is famous for thinking strange thoughts:
"If I could eat sugar wafers every day," he thought
   when he was 5.
"If I could go to school," he thought
   at 10.
"If I could leave Father's knife shop
before the evening prayers," he thought
   at 11.
"If I could buy a pair of yellow shoes
so the girls will look at me," he thought
   at 15
"Why did Father close his knife shop?
And the factory is nothing like this shop,"
   he thought
   at 16.
"Will my pay go up?" he thought
   at 20
"Father died at fifty -
will I die early too?" he thought
   when he was 21.
"What if I get laid off?" he thought
   at 22.

"What if I get laid off?" he thought

at 23.

"What if I get laid off?" he thought

at 24.

And out of work from time to time,
he thought "What if I get laid off?"
   till he was 50.
At 51 he thought: "I'm old -
   I've lived one year longer than my father."
Now he's 52.
He's out of work.
Stopped on the steps now,
   he' lost
   in the strangest of thoughts:
"When will I die?
Will I have a bed to die in?
   he thinks.
His nose is long and pointed.
His cheeks are pockmarked.

Spring comes to Haydar Pasha Station
wih the smell of fish in the sea
   and bedbugs on the floor.

Excerpt from the very beginning of Human Landscapes from My Country, an Epic Novel in Verse, by Nazim Hikmet, translated from the Turkish by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk.

ISBN 0-89255-273-5, Published 2002, Persea Books.

Pictures from Carol Guillaume' album Railway Stations and Marco's Gallery.

iPod 2nd Gen and flip covers with magnet

2010-08-14T15:06:00.000+10:00

It's true - Magnets MAY harm Ipod Touch. I bought myself a swish looking suede flip cover secured with magnets. My iPod started acting up like crazy: crashing twice a day or more. Sometimes I could bring it back just by powering it up again for a bit. Other times I had to hard reset, after which the iPod needed to be restored for goodness sake! Thankfully, I read this article, discarded the case last week and haven't had a single problem since.

The Bromeliad Trilogy by Terry Pratchett

2010-07-29T12:03:00.001+10:00

The Bromeliad Trilogy by Terry Pratchett (ISBN:0060094931)

I listened to the audio of this trilogy on my iPod. It is a very
different style of humor from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. The
humor can almost be called quaint.

The story revolves around a group of nomes (gnomes) - whom it turns
out are highly advanced aliens who landed on Earth when we were still
Neanderthals. They got stuck on Earth without any electricity or a way
to communicate with their ship or rebuild anything technical (no
metal) and over the preceding thousands of years somewhat devolved
themselves.

Nomes are very short lived (10 years makes for an old nome) and
experience time around 10 times faster than humans. The humor in this
book mainly revolves around the idea that the nomes are so literal
that they cannot understand anything about humans (and too fast to
understand our speech). Terry Pratchett works this angle very well as
you would expect since he has such a wry wit. But their "literalness"
also annoyed me consistently throughout the whole experience: how can
they ever have become so advanced if they are so stupid? How can you
create things like spaceships without mastery over abstraction? Surely
over the thousands of years they have been here, they would have
advanced further, discovered new things or at the very least worked
out how to communicate with humans?

Having said that, the books are still very funny, filled with
Pratchett's insightful observations on humanity and some typically
heart warming relationship building.

Overall, well worth a listen or read if you get the whole trilogy
together and treat them as one book (because they really do read as
one piece in three chapters).

Mostly Fiction book review of The Bromeliad Trilogy:
http://www.mostlyfiction.com/scifi/pratchett2.htm.

The Bromeliad Trilogy on weRead: http://bit.ly/avONCm

Dr Who and Me

2010-06-22T16:08:00.001+10:00

I have been a big fan of Dr Who ever since primary school when I could watch a couple of episodes back to back on Channel Two on a Sunday morning - before, after or instead of my chores, depending on how sneaky I was. Tom Baker was brilliant and I fondly remember Adric, Romana and K9. In high school I would devour a Dr Who book in a single night and watched Sylvester McCoy with the indomitable Ace.

Then there was a period of void, where I forgot about the Doctor.

Sometime later I rediscovered him in the new, more adult oriented books brought out by BBC and Virgin. They introduced an edge to the Doctor and his companions I had never experienced before. I was enthralled by the drama and introspection that resulted in the now common-place "super-hero" tension: the "I can't save everyone" effect (TM). Sacrifices are consciously made, if not willingly; companions die, friends are removed from the time-line.

Later, glory of glories, BBC began making the TV series again. Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith. I was over-joyed that the Doctor was back with relatively good special effects, high quality acting and even a spin-off (Torchwood). But something was wrong... the stories didn't seem to make as much sense as I remembered - and the sonic screwdriver became Harry Potter's wand. It was being used for every thing from opening mechanical locks, stunning creatures, cutting rope and being an all purpose interface to any electronic system (or biological even). The Doctor didn't have to think his way out of every scrap or scrape. The stories began to feel implausible, I began to get annoyed.

But just recently I had an epiphany. It occurred while I was watching a re-run of The Satan Pit, where the Doctor confronts "The Devil". He says something along the lines of "I don't deny your existence but I don't have to believe you are who you say you are" and it is suggested that the creature survived from an earlier time (literally): that it existed before the Big Bang and survived through it into our time, still imprisoned.

Just at that moment it occurred to me that this is what the Doctor is really about: huge ideas! Science fiction, stretching the imagination just to see what happens. It doesn't have to be internally consistent (it isn't) or eternally plausible (it ain't). The stories are just trying to be enjoyable and wild.

And so they are.

The Call of Cthulhu

2010-06-22T15:01:00.000+10:00

H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu is available on WikiSource.

H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu horror is both powerful and inaccessible because it is visceral. Cthulhu is a monster of indescribable horror that is being described. We are used to monsters in films, books and pictures so we can conjure up images of foul beasts easily enough, but it is decidedly harder to adjust our mental image when Lovecraft writes that "The Thing cannot be described".

Thus, the essence of Cthulhu horror is emotional rather than visual. Lovecraft tries to evoke the sense that the monster and the reality it belongs to is so morbidly incomprehensible that just bearing witness to it will bring insanity and inevitable death! This notion is not friendly to intellectual inquiry: we understand "monster" as something concrete but the Cthulhu monster is imbued with a fear of something abstract.

I see this abstract horror in stories that leave things unexplained: in the movies Cloverfield and The Mist we never find out where the monsters came from, how they got here or what they wanted. What Lovecraft adds on top of that is a sense of incomprehension; like a person from a two dimensional universe trying to comprehend our three dimensional universe. In the 90's Sam Neill starred in what I think are two horror movies that are very close to Cthulhu horror: In the Mouth of Madness and Event Horizon. Both movies involve a somewhat hapless curiosity that descends into an incomprehensible, inescapable and abominable fate.

I enjoyed reading Call of Cthulhu because it was challenging to me; trying to comprehend what Lovecraft wanted to portray by writing a story about incomprehensible horror.

3.5 out of 5

Read this on my iPod Touch.

Why I am not using Facebook anymore

2009-12-17T11:31:00.000+11:00

The reason I am not using Facebook anymore is because they have removed too many privacy settings.
- Your friends list is visible to everyone.
- Your group and page memberships are visible to everyone.
- You cannot block Facebook activity from appearing on your wall.
- You cannot prevent strangers from friending you.

These things would be ok in Twitter - because things have always been public, but not in Facebook.

This Valleywag article gives a good explanation of it.

Our Little Secret by Duncan Fairhurst

2009-11-15T16:55:00.000+11:00

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd (March 8, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0340932686
ISBN-13: 978-0340932681

This was a challenging book to read: both confronting and explicit. It is an autobiographical account of the sexual abuse the author suffered at the hands of his father and how it affected his life growing up and becoming a man. It concludes in 2005 with his father finally being given a prison sentence.

Writing this account was obviously a major catharsis for the author. Duncan goes into great detail about the ambivalence he felt for his father: hating the abuse, but loving his father. For much of his youth, the author did not even realise that it was abuse and not something loving fathers did with their sons. It is a gripping story. It felt good to witness Duncan "growing up", learning about himself and finally reaching a point where he understood that he was actually abused and felt ready to seek justice.

I wonder what his mother and sister thought about the book? Duncan's writing shows compassion for them in hindsight, but also a deep reservoir of animosity. He did not feel loved by his mother or sister, and details many spiteful moments he had with them. Every unkindness at the hands of his mother and sister exacerbated the suffering he felt from his father, because it drove him closer to his father; the only one who seemed understand and love him.

In this book, Duncan is defined by the misery of his past. As much as he is a survivor, he explains his every anguish and self pitying moment in terms of the abuse he lived through. He is a victim still in pain, trying to become a better person.

In his book, Duncan is very critical of the police officers who handled his case. Essentially he wrote that they were inattentive and did not show enough care towards the case, the victims and his family. The police officers sued Duncan and the publishers for libel and won an apology and an undisclosed amount of money.

Read about Duncan's disappointment with the police that handled his case in the Guardian article: Unfinished business.

Read about how Duncan was forced to apologise to the police he criticised when the same officers brought a libel case against Duncan and the publishers: Sex abuse victim's apology to police on thisislincolnshire.co.uk (Duncan is from Lincolnshire).

See this book (and my review) on amazon.com.

When Nebulous (my 25 year old cat) broke her arm

2009-11-02T11:10:00.000+11:00

(Click to view larger image.)This happened on a very stressful weekend, Saturday August 15th 2009. It was the beginning of a fortnight full of bad news.

On that Saturday, Süheyla was out working and I was at home, trying to clean up because the owners of our house were coming on the Sunday. It was such a windy day; I was taking paper rubbish out and Nebulous tried to follow me. The wind slammed the door on her arm and she screeched.

(Click to view larger image.)When I turned around, she was twitching her arm, trying to lick it. I swore loudly and started to panic. It quickly became obvious from Neb's movement that it was serious. Talya was there and calmed me down. We rang the emergency vet and took a taxi there.

The X-rays clearly showed both bones in her foreleg snapped. The vet seemed such a hard woman. She was outlining the options (including putting her down) and kept reiterating that Neb was so old (25) and could die from the shock, pain, anaesthetic, infection.. and that her bones might not heal at all. After a while I asked her "Are you suggesting we put Nebulous down?" I was feeling pressured to make an awful decision. At this, the vet huffed up and became visibly annoyed. "I am not suggesting that - just trying to make sure you understand there are so many risks". She didn't seem so hard after that.

(Click to view larger image.)They put a heavy splint on her leg and wrapped it in a light synthetic substance that set a bit like plaster. Six weeks she would have it on before her leg was to be reviewed.

For six weeks after breaking her arm, Nebulous walked around with this heavy splint. It was so bulky and heavy that she literally dragged her arm between her back legs as she walked.

Can you just
pat me now? Please?
(Click to view larger image.)Somehow it didn't stop her from climbing up (and down) from our bed and couch. This is one tough cat! She even ventured outside a couple of times. I was horrified when I came home one day to find her peering up at me from the porch.

I could tell she was uncomfortable though - she couldn't even keep it clear when she went to the litter. Frequently we cleaned her splint as best we could. I tried out various things to wrap around it: a plastic bag fastened with rubber bands or sticky tape didn't work; glad wrap was a really terrible idea - try getting a cat to sit still while you do that! Eventually we settled on socks, changed almost every day. Süheyla's suggestion (which came too late) was to use a condom! Not sure how I was going to explain that to the vet (or chemist).

She needed lots of pats during this time..

(Click to view larger image.)After the six weeks were up, the vet removed the splint and X-rayed her leg again. The bones were still broken - no healing whatsoever! I felt so bad for her, trying to imagine what her options were.

Amputation.. putting her down.. or put a metal plate in her arm to hold the bones together. This is what we did.

(Click to view larger image.)Her leg was so tender when she first came home. She was purring a lot and I couldn't bear to touch her for fear of bumping her leg. It freaks me out that her leg is still broken, just held together.

Nebulous tried to sleep without disturbing her still broken arm, after the vet put a plate in to hold the bones together.

(Click to view larger image.)This was a very uncomfortable week for her and I was (still am) cringing each time I watch her walk on that broken leg

She seems much better now. She walks ok, no running anymore. And she still climbs up and down from the bed, but very slowly and carefully. If she sees me on the bed, she will miaow patiently until I pick her up and drape her over my chest, where she can pur and, well, dribble.

I am glad she can still do that.

Update. Friday 5th of August, 2010. This is what happened when we took Nebulous to the vet to have an ingrown nail cut on her bad arm: Paid the Cost to be the Boss.

Reach Access Flosser

2009-11-02T07:56:00.000+11:00

Updates.
25/05/2010 12:20:39 PM - Amazon seller charges $AUD649.10 shipping and handling? But Ritchies stock these now.

Reach Access Flosser Refill Pack, Fresh Mint, 28 Disposable Heads

These are the indivdual Reach floss tips that are placed on the tip of the Reach Floss Holder Reach Access Flosser - there is a powered one available, but I only use the plastic "pick", a bit like a very tooth brush that these heads snap into.

I have tried and despised every flossing product my supermarket and dentist and chemist sells, until now.

Ordinary floss is terrible to use: I stretch open my mouth as wide as possible while forcing both fists down my gullet to floss the back teeth. Yuch and painful.

Toothpics? Come on! Even the plastic toothpicks with bristles and curvy bits. Come on to the power to 2!

For a while I was using a floss device my dentist sold, Xylifloss which featured floss on a wheel in a plastic dispenser that could lock the floss in place and slide quite easily in between my teeth. It had the reach right but the mechanism was bad: the lock frequently broke which meant the floss slipped (I had to go back to the dentist once when I had floss stuck between my teeth so bad it was painful). And I still had to force the thing at right angles into my mouth to get at the back teeth.

And then came Reach's Access Flosser with disposable heads. This product is brilliant; the ONLY product I have found that makes flossing every crevice between my teeth easy. Overall, it is more expensive than all other products I have seen but I do not care. Each head lasts one use, but it so easy to get in between every tooth I am amazed this product is not made compulsory in every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, doghouse and dentist in Australia. It first showed up on the shelves of Coles (a big supermarket chain in Aus) and then all the supermarket chains - and I loved it. But a few months ago it became unpopular or something (stupid) and now no supermarket sells it. I asked Coles if they could bring it back and their only response was "it is deleted!". Purely on the basis of this response, I won't shop at Coles anymore.

So, Amazon and Reach: thank you!

See this product (and my review) on Amazon.

Update: (25/05/2010 12:20:39 PM) just tried to re-order this product from the same seller in Amazon and found that for some reason, the Shipping and Handling cost for a $AUD62.69 product comes to $649.10!

Luckily, I have now found that Ritchies IGA have began stocking these again. Yay!

Cleo by Helen Brown

2009-11-02T07:11:00.000+11:00

ISBN-10: 1741759072. Publisher: Arena

*This review contains spoilers*

I really enjoyed this book. It grabbed me from the first moment with a picture of an ultra-cute kitteh on the front (Basement cat never looked so cute), and the blurb promising a sad tale with a thread of joy. Just what I am looking for this year for some reason. Thanks to Mum for buying it for me.

Well, it was indeed a sad tale, with a joyful thread; it is in fact is Helen Brown's true story. I shared her rendered heart when Sam, her eldest boy, was struck down. I felt the warmth grow with each new antic of Cleo. I also felt increasingly annoyed each time she let loose her inner voice whining about some aspect of the budding relationship she was developing with Phillip.

It is strange that Cleo is and is not the main character of this book. She grows up with the family, and "teaches" them how to focus on the positive. Right up until the end, when she is a 24 year old queen cat!

I will always hold this book dear to my heart because of the honesty Helen showed in this telling. The most striking moment in the whole book for me is this paragraph in the first 50 pages:

It was no easier for Steve. A few days after the accident I awoke under a waterfall of his tears. He'd never cried in front of me before. I should have reached out and embraced him then, but I was half-awake, unprepared. Distraught, momentarily confused. I simply asked him to stop. I didn't imagine the request would be taken literally and he'd never express sorrow in front of me again.

This paragraph alone describes what has become of the relationship with her first husband while they are both wallowing in sorrow. I was angry at Helen here: she *broke* her man; but on a deeper level I knew it was just the skin of a bubble bursting. It is a portentous moment of stark narrative clarity in a sea of misery that can only be told in hindsight.

A wonderful book - it makes me want to write the story of my cat, Nebulous - a grand 26 years old and still kickin (purring)!

See Helen Brown's website, upon which you can read the Cleo Launch Speech, Melbourne Australia, September 2009 and a page of letters people have written to Helen.

Jedda's Story - not a Chihuahua

2009-08-16T17:43:00.000+10:00

Jedda loves a
good belly rub!
(Click to view larger image.)One day Mum called me with a strange request. "Robert, would you like a dog? It's not a Chihuahua!" This was peculiar: Mum rescues Chihuahuas after all.

I asked Mum why she picked up a non-Chihuahua in the first place. She told me the request came from an elderly lady, Marie, who lived in a flat by herself but was being moved into a care facility that wouldn't allow pets. (Why do they break up families like that?!)

Walk now?
(Click to view larger image.)Mum explained, "The dear grandmother described the dog to me; black and white, wiry hair, medium size. Her name is Jedda. I knew it wasn't a Chihuahua and said I could only take Chihuahuas in. Marie burst into tears over the phone, 'What am I going to do? I have no one else.' My heart broke and I couldn't say no."

Marie had loved Jedda for five years; Jedda was the light of her life and beloved by her neighbours as well. But recently things had gotten bad and she couldn't walk Jedda any more. Marie couldn't even perform the most basic tasks for herself without agony. Her family were moving her into a home.

Walk on a sunny
Melbourne day.
(Click to view larger image.)Marie told Mum that Jedda was a very active dog: she needed walking every day plus she was the smartest doggie in the world. I have heard this before - the previous Chihuahua I took from Mum (since re-homed) was a "specially trained Hearing Dog" who would tell you when the phone rang or someone came to the door. We got him home and I rang our number from my mobile. The pudgy little fella sat there staring up at us while the phone rang and his tail swished once or twice. I swear the look on his face was either "what's that sound?" or "I know you can hear - answer the phone already!"

The paperwork was signed quickly and Marie said she wanted to let Jedda say good-bye to her favorite neighbour. She said "Let's say good-bye to George!" and opened the door. Jedda bounded out and down the driveway - her tail wagging fast enough to blur - turned left and waited at the gate to George's house, two doors down. Well, that sounds smart to me.

In our local dog
park, looking out for
other doggies.
(Click to view larger image.)So we took Jedda, who is not a Chihuahua, but a scruffy, wire haired terrier. I walk her often through our local dog park. When she meets any doggie bigger than her she tries to boss them around. There is the initial "I smell you, you smell me", then she puffs out her chest and attempts to stare down (up) the other doggie, and sometimes gives a bark and growl! Off the leash I have never seen her do this, which I think attests to that intellect of hers.

Patiently waiting for
us to finish a coffee and
continue the walk!
(Click to view larger image.)When I come home she is the first to greet me, barking and jumping and so outrageously happy that I cannot help but smile and play with her, no matter what sort of day I have had. She is 10 now, and deaf enough that I have to shout to be heard - so some days I have to search her out for that first greeting, which is nevertheless just as ebullient. Her sight is going too. Walking her at night, she does not bound out in front as much as she used to, and often stays so close to me that she is underfoot.

Whenever I am putting shoes or shorts on, suddenly she is there, sitting and looking at me with expectant eyes and tremulous tail, knowing the next step is to get the leash. I try and trick her by hiding the leash and holding out empty hands. She isn't fooled: she has worked out that if I am teasing her about it, I will end up walking her, irrespective of whether I have the leash in my hands. After each walk, she gets a Schmakos, and looks at me just as expectantly every time we get inside the house again.

Belly rub now?
(Click to view larger image.)Like most other dogs, she doesn't like to be bathed and will hide under the lounge room table when she hears me knocking around in the laundry. Once in the tub she is pliant enough, except that if I don't keep one hand on her at all times she will very deliberately shake water all over me! After a bath comes a long brushing, which she loves even more than walks. Each time the brush goes down her spine and touches that sweet spot on her back where her tail bone starts, Jedda shivers in such a way that I am rather jealous!

Oh, you want to take
more photos.. ok. *sigh*
(Click to view larger image.)I have had dogs around me most of my life, cats too. It is marvellous how different they are, and how each fits so perfectly into my life and family. Jedda is an endless source of boisterous joy, bringing laughter to us every time she wags her tail or rolls over to show her belly. My cat, Nebulous, on the other hand, is a much calmer source of contentment. Whenever I lie down on the couch, she curls up on my chest, purrs (and dribbles - she is 25!) and snoozes like a small furry massage device for the soul. Whenever I am not lying down she sits on the floor in front of me and miaows until I do!

I often wonder about Marie; how is she doing, does she miss Jedda - and I find myself wondering the same about Jedda. Does she remember Marie, and miss living with her? Once, while walking down the street with Jedda I passed an elderly lady with white hair and a very friendly face. Jedda jumped and ran up to her in a way I have never seen her do with any other stranger. I think she does remember Marie, and if that's a conceit on my part, I am glad for it. Because when I look into Jedda's eyes, I see someone looking back at me. My friend.

I dedicate this story to my Mum and Dad, who rescue Chihuahuas (and the occasional non Chihuahua). Find out more about them at the Chihuahua Rescue Victoria website.

JLA Classified: New Maps of Hell

2009-07-16T10:44:00.000+10:00

JLA Classified: New Maps of Hell
by Warren Ellis and Guice Jackson.
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: DC Comics (30 Jun 2006)
ISBN-10: 1401209440
ISBN-13: 978-1401209445

Find this on Amazon.

JLA Classified: New Maps of Hell is a Justice League of America comic by Warren Ellis and Guice Jackson. It features Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and the Martian Manhunter. It also features some of the most stunning artwork I have ever found in a comic book.

Like I said, the artwork is amazing. There is a thoroughly realistic look to the human characters, and Lois in particular is striking: smoking hot facial expressions and exquisite depiction of her posture, even reclining on a couch. She is truly beautiful, and not in a smutty way. From the first few pages I was hooked on the treatment of Superman and Lois; more adult and serious - not dark per se, just "down to earth" (pun intended). However, Lois and Superman were the only characters I got this good feeling for, probably because none of the other characters had a "partner" of any sort to contrast with.

Secondly, I was pleased to find a decent level of science fiction in this comic. I readily admit that I am not well read in comics, so maybe this is a norm for super hero comics, but I don't think it is. Superman uses his super-vision to see his environment at a microscopic level; he discovers a weakness in the antagonist by analysing the wavelengths of visual signals. The Oracle at the Bat Cave uses a network of super-hero analysts to decode messages. Some of the sci-fi elements seemed natural to me, like Superman using his super vision to look at the microscopic world. Some elements seemed a bit dodgy, such as telepathic broadband! Does that mean there are some super heroes stuck on telepathic dial up??

A third element I enjoyed was the brief introduction to Lex Luthor as a hard hitting business man who had made himself president of America. I imagine he will be a serious antagonist in this role in future issues.

What I didn't enjoy so much was the overall story. It was too short. There wasn't enough of it to really suck me in, to involve me emotionally in what the characters were going through. Perhaps it is simply a reflection of the relative brevity of the comic. Maybe it needs to be "novel" length to get really serious with the story. Or perhaps Watchmen spoiled me; having read Watchmen recently, I secretly expect the same depth in every comic.

I thoroughly enjoyed this comic for the artwork and science fiction concepts used. I found the story deficient, but not so much that I regret buying the book. 4 out of 5.

Deep Red, Lala Salama, Cup and Table

2008-12-28T12:56:00.000+11:00

A couple of brilliant stories I listened to recently.

Pseudopod 117: Deep Red, written by Floris M. Kleijne and read by Ben Phillips is a chilling horror story that reminded me a lot of Stephen King's Misery. Some might think it predictable or reliant on too great a co-incidence, but I was able to let myself go and really enjoy this story. The horror is chilling, and Kleijne does a very good job of building up the same feeling of creeping horror that movies like The Shining by Stanley Kubrick use. Ben Phillips' execution (so to speak) is flawless. He and Cheyenne Wright are my favourite horror narrators.

Another favourite horror short story I listened to recently is Pseudopod 118: Lala Salama, written by Gill Ainsworth and read by Heather Welliver. It features black magic. The ending was creepy, but somehow not shocking. It seemed to fit, to show that in the end, she realised the warnings she had been given were valid; the magic was black.

This has been done before of course, but I was ok with that. Gill Ainsworth portrayed the black magic very effectively, mixing dream scapes and time warps in a very imaginitive way.

But my favourite aspect of this story by far was Heather Welliver's reading. She made me feel for the character so much - her voice was perfectly pitched: so happy when she announced the new baby, even though I knew it was going to go wrong.

The next story could well have been in Pseudopod too. PodCastle 20: Cup and Table, written by Tim Pratt and read by Stephen Eley. It's an Arthurian tale, my favourite PodCastle of all time, and in my top 5 of any Escape Artist story. The pure fancy of it all is astounding. Tim Pratt captured the very essence of speculative fiction within a relatively modern day Earth setting in a way that pushed all the right buttons for me and brough to mind a few others in a similar modern day almost sword and sorcery vein: Pseudopod 045: Goon Job (by G.W. Thomas, read by Ben Phillips), Pseudopod 052: That Old Black Magic (by John R. Platt, read by George Hrab) and Pseudopod 77: Merlin�s Bane (by G.W. Thomas, read by Ben Phillips).

The Aurthurian roots of this story give it an edge of despair, added to the horror of what the main characters are actually trying to do. The Table appears as an ancient, venerable secret and shrinking society that has essentially come to ruins. Its ultimate purpose having been waylaid by the vicissitudes brought on by the need for making money and the disparate goals of the latest members of the group.

My favourite misquote of the day is from the character Carlsbad, with the line: "That's it then. Only the evil in YouTube is keeping me alive".

Brilliant!

This Weekend in Entertainment

2008-09-15T10:45:00.000+10:00

The Deaths of Ian Stone was a promising but ultimately un-engaging horror movie. The initial premise is that Ian Stone keeps getting killed by some black spectral entity, and each time he wakes in another life, and I found this fascinating. It was what made me pick up the movie in the first place. However, the story becomes confusing as it tries to fill out a back-story for a race of spectral vampires that feed on fear - and it just didn't seem consistent. I wasn't engaged by the movie beyond the initial premise.

10,000 BC, a prehistoric normal man becomes a hero story that again looked promising - especially when I saw a preview of the special effects. But the story fell flat. I just didn't find myself caring about the characters. I stopped the DVD half way and looked this up on IMDB because I had a few questions in my mind... and found that pretty much every single detail of the movie was historically inaccurate. The metals, boats, mammoths, sabre tooth tigers, pyramids, and even the lands they crossed to get where they wanted to go.. all of these details were historically impossible for 10,000 B.C! I found it hard to suspend disbelief for this. Just like Gladiator or 300, some people might go away with this movie in the back their minds, informing just a little bit of their opinions on these times past. It is a little bug-bear of mine. :)

Street Kings with Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker. This was biggest disappointment for me this weekend. I usually enjoy Forest Whitaker's acting, and always look forward to Keanu, but the story sucked and the script didn't give them a chance to do their jobs properly. It is a bad cop makes good story, but there were too many holes in the plot for me. From the start, I just wasn't buying Keanu as a veteran bad guy cop when contrasted against the other weasels in his team. The motivations didn't make sense. Reeves was a bit of a "one note" actor in this, playing the depressed guy all the way through. Forest Whitaker was too nice to be the evil guy he was meant to be. And Hugh Laurie (House) was the most disappointing. Little more than an extended bit part - they used his character to wrap up the ending in a way that really made no sense. How the writers seriously thought that the whole plot of the movie could be construed to be House's plan is beyond me. Worse, his character was just a shade of House - as though they said to him "do like you do in House, only boring it up a little".

I also saw One Man with Steve Berkoff on Saturday night with Dad at the National Theatre. I loved his one man play in two acts. The first was Edgar Allen Poe's "Tell Tale Heart" and the second act a story of his own called "Dog" about a British soccer hooligan with a pit bull. He was brilliant, using mime to incredible effect to show both drama and comedy. I greatly admire the courage it takes to do a single person play - to maintain a dramatic monologue that succesfully draws the audience in and makes them forget the actor and focus on the characters - and this is just what Steve Berkoff did!

Men Martians and Machines

2008-07-31T23:08:00.000+10:00

Men Martians and Machines (Classics of Modern Science Fiction Volume 1)
by Eric Frank Russell
Hardcover: 216 pages
Publisher: Random House Value Publishing (February 1, 1984)
ISBN-10: 0517551853
ISBN-13: 978-0517551851

Find this on Amazon.

A fascinating read! Interesting how dated the writing is. There are tentacled Martians as first order heroes, but no female characters. The narrator doesn't seem to have his tongue in cheek when referring to the only black character as a Negro. Every planet they go to has a challenging range of flora and fauna which they un-failingly get to have a right old punch-up with! Radio is still an advanced technology, as is plate photography. Morality is explored often in terms of how the intrepid adventurer's exploration impacts upon the cultures they find, and on the differences between the aliens they encounter and the humans and Martians doing the exploring - yet in every encounter they still drop a few mini-nukes on the aliens in order to get away rather than finding some less violent solution.

This was originally published in the 50's in serialised form in an SF magazine, and this fascinates me most - wondering how it was accepted at the time. The irreverence of the narrator is refreshing to me, giving the story a comedic style that doesn't get in the way of drama and the more philosophical musings. The problem is that the drama and more philosophical musings aren't as effective as I wanted them to be - something about the way they reveled whenever they dropped a few mini-nukes just bothered me.

Two particular elements I was very fond Of: Jay, the seven foot tall predecessor to Data. And the Martians: tentacled, chess-loving, they can't stand the smell of humans and need a lower pressure atmosphere than we do. The Martians really made the story for me - and I would have liked more just for them.

A review of "Atatürk - The Rebirth of a Nation", by Patrick Kinross.

2008-07-04T00:44:00.000+10:00

"Atatürk - The Rebirth of a Nation" by Patrick Kinross. First published in 1964, the current edition is available from Amazon at this URL: http://tinyurl.com/55qawk.

Paperback: 560 pages
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co (August 26, 1993)
ISBN-10: 0297813765
ISBN-13: 978-0297813767

I found this book to be a highly compassionate view of Atatürk's life.

Patrick Kinross’ narration is insightful and reads like a story; very different from a dry historical text presenting fact after fact. He draws a rich picture of the life of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in terms of the changing political, religious and social landscape of his country in the first quarter of the 20th century. Atatürk literally created the nation of Turkey from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire as World War 1 re-drew the political lines of Europe.

He gives the reader a very personal understanding of the intense sense of purpose and duty that drove Atatürk throughout his life, and also how it led to many contradictions in his life. Atatürk created a secular nation by first engendering the support of eminent religious authority figures, without telling them his aim was a secular nation. Atatürk wanted Turkey to become just like a “modern Western democratic republic”, but became a benign autocrat, leading a one party system where all representatives were hand picked by Atatürk.

Kinross begins with Atatürk’s birth in Salonika and traces his troubled early school years and enrolment into the Military Secondary School where Atatürk discovered himself as a soldier and was given the first name “Kemal”, meaning “perfection”. From his portrayal of Atatürk in his younger years, we are given to understand that Atatürk developed very early a fierce sense of dedication to a country he recognized as flawed and in need of change. He demonstrates an astounding prescience, has a sharp mind, a passion for rakı and debate, and an abiding abhorrence for what he saw as the role of religion in the decline of his country.

We follow Atatürk through the despairing times of World War 1, where Atatürk’s actions and leadership are nothing short of heroic. The insights he develops into the military and political situation of the time picks him out as a potential threat to his superiors, but also identify him as an invaluable commander. For many years he works in the background to develop a network of resistance against the self serving Ottoman authority. Instead of bringing about a change of government, he finds himself pushed to the side as several revolutionaries take the fore, become despots in their own right and are then torn down – such as Enver Pasha. “Enver Pasha killed Enver Bey” is a telling quote I remember.

Eventually the situation for Atatürk comes to a head when the allies of the First World War begin plans to dismantle Turkey and occupy the country. Atatürk, using all his skill and cunning as a diplomat, soldier and hero rallies a new line of defense that pushes the allies out of Turkey and forms a new government, the first Republic of Turkey.

I found some important subjects were left out or not given sufficient attention. There was only a passing reference to the swap of Greek and Turkish population in 1923. And although the Kurds’ role in the independence war was described in some detail and the conflicts between Armenians, Kurds, Greeks and Turks over land was much discussed, there was no evaluation of Atatürk’s attitude towards each group as a people or how this affected his actions.

At times, Kinross seemed too compassionate towards Atatürk, almost apologetic. The book made much of the contradictions within Atatürk, but rarely explored the darker side of his character. Instead, his actions were repeatedly explained or justified by his admirable sense of duty to his country. Nowhere was this clearer than in the portrayal of Atatürk’s involvement in the Independence Tribunals of 1927. These tribunals were brought in to punish the leaders of a Kurdish revolt, but were also used to summarily round up all of Atatürk’s political enemies at the time – including former friends and compatriots without whom the Republic of Turkey may never have come about.

I understand now, why there is still a deep reverence throughout Turkey for this politician and leader, Atatürk, who people still call the Father of Turkey. For he was truly the father of Turkey: he led a movement that completely and permanently changed the political and social face of the nation. Turkey changed from a caliphate to a republic, and that was just the beginning. After that, Atatürk gave the people a new language (yes, “gave” – he helped create it and personally taught it); laws were introduced changing the national costume; and women were made equal to men – all this in less than fifteen years!

I also understand that a major part of Atatürk’s legacy is the shock of such massive changes introduced in such an extremely short time – a shock that still resonates today. At least one of the multiple coup d'état in the latter half of the 20th century (after Atatürk’s death) were instituted by people who felt empowered to act by a sense of duty and revolution that Atatürk himself encouraged. The fact that religion lost its primacy under Atatürk also left his country with a deep and lingering conflict between religious and secular life that is at the forefront of Turkey’s political situation today. Much like present day Indonesia, religious parties have gained prominence and seek to re-assert religion as part of government.

I began reading this book on the plane trip home from my first holiday in Turkey to visit my partner's family. It took me six months to finish the book and has given me a much deeper connection with this beautiful country and the people I met.

If you are a student of history, or if you have ever visited Turkey and wanted to know “how”.. I highly recommend this book.

Brains are good

2008-06-15T13:27:00.000+10:00

I don't know about you, but I like eating brains¹. I love them best raw, dripping mush between my fingers as I bring them to my mouth and moan for more brains and a new victim. As such, I have been doing some study of late (see my previous post for example).

Here are some other materials I have dug up recently that give some really spooky visions of what it means to be a zombie.

Darker Projects' Alive Inside (opens new window) is somewhat of a walking zombie production itself. With only five episodes in around 2 years, I don't expect this to be updated soon. However, those five episodes are amazing: sound effects and voice acting are of a very high standard and the story is creepy indeed. It mixes together a few zombie elements I have seen before, such as not all zombies are slow and shambling and the curse is a virus, so you don't have to get bitten, you just have to die. However, the format is exciting. I can well imagine this turning into a much longer series if they can keep production going.

Drabblecast 36 begins with a real drabble story (100 words) by Kevin Anderson, Outrunning the Bear (opens new window). Naturally, it is short, but added with the other story in the episode (Pumpkinseeds, also by Kevin Anderson) it is well worth the entry fee (free!), even if you don't subscribe to the cast - which you should by the way. I won't give away the plot of those magic 100 words, other than to say, keep running!

Pseudopod 84: The Sons of Carbon County (opens new window) is an amazing story, written by Amanda Spikol and read by Cheyenne Wright. Well done Amanda, for a story that gave me chills picturing the protagonists down the mine, dark, claustrophobic, smelly. So little chance of getting out, and what do they face it they do get out? Their life as described in the first half was just as depressing as getting eaten by zombies..

Cheyenne Wright (the narrator) has the coolest horror story voice on the planet. I bet he would scare the pajama-bottoms off predator toddlers if he read them bed time stories - even a predalien child would go screaming for its mummy. His deep, growling voice adds an atmosphere all of its own... somewhat reminiscent of Sean Connery with a mouthful of marbles - that's a good thing!

Another Pseudopod zombie story, Pseudopod 037: We Are All Very Lively (opens new window), written by Richard A. Becker and read (again!!) by Cheyenne Wright. This is a story set after the big Zombie apocalypse, showing both what it was like as it happened and what it is like now. In this story, the zombies aren't the real scare, or the central focus. Instead, Becker slowly reveals to us how society slowly succumbed to the threat and this particular group found a way to live with a truly gruesome "work-around". I truly enjoyed the slow revelation of just how permanently screwed we all are. No 28 Days Later in this one!

Note 1: I don't actually. I hate brains, raw or cooked. My partner once cooked a 'brains omelette' for me. Fortunately, we had to step out just after she finished cooking it. When we returned, we found our very satisfied German Shepherd sitting under the table, on top of which was an empty plate. Thank you Sheila, thank you!

Drabble Zombie

2008-06-02T18:06:00.000+10:00

I walk, though I am dead. I am vacant except for hunger. I linger in wait, in a most innocent door way until I spy a most innocent passerby. I lurch out from the shadow and moan in my depraved manner: "brains!" I want to eat her brains. I want to crack open her skull and scrape the warm grey flesh from her bowl-like cranium and taste that mush on my tongue, feel it slide down my throat. Hungry, I reach out for her head, but she casually brushes me aside and talks about herself. I am un-dead, and confused.

Listen to the DrabbleCast, narrated and produced by Norm Sherman. It will change how you think about short.

I have started with the old stuff, from ep 20 or so. My favourites to date are Drabblecast 23 - Momentum, by Kevin Anderson and Drabblecast 29 - Code Brown, By Dermot Glennon.

Jailhouse Rock

2007-11-13T09:31:00.000+11:00

A two part podcast story published by Variant Frequencies. Jailhouse Rock Part 1 and Jailhouse Rock Part 2. Written by James P. Hogan. Narrated by Rick Stringer. Voice acting by Will Hoffacker, Phil Rossi, Jan Dalton, Jack Ward, Lonnie Ezell, Ciaran O’Carroll, Neil Stringer, and Nobilis.

High above the stormy southern hemisphere of Mars, a routine cargo transport has turned into a high-stakes standoff between Skyguard soldiers and vicious mercenaries turned thieves.

This is the story of a formative moment in the early career of a new space gallant called Knight. Still wet behind the ears, Knight finds himself an unwitting victim of a mercenary troupe hi-jacking the weapons cargo he was accompanying. However, mercenaries find out that Knight has a level of daring and resourcefulness that is bound to make their plans go astray. All alone, without any weapons - what can Knight do?

This podcast story features engaging voice acting and convincing sound effects to evoke a spectacular sense of space adventure at its best. It is all about daring, quick wits and enormous cojones, chutzpah, sisu. There is no swearing, no gore, no aliens. I could imagine this story in the Firefly universe, or even Babylon 5 because both shows have a somewhat similar sense of cowboys in space.

I would very much like to see this story to continue into a larger adventure. As a short story, the focus was more on action rather than character building. Don't get me wrong, the characterisation of the protagonist was excellent, but I didn't feel like I got to know him very well. I didn't get the opportunity to care about him for reasons other than the fact that he was all alone against overwhelming odds.

I give this a solid 8 out of 10, and recommend it for any space adventure fan. I was hooked from the beginning of part 1 and gritting my teeth at the end of it when I realised I would have to wait for part 2.

One last comment: the title of the story is a sly pun which you won't get until the end of the story!

My Israel Question

2007-11-13T01:24:00.000+11:00

My Israel Question by Antony Loewenstein, Melbourne University Press, 2006, 340 pp, rrp $AUS 32.95

ISBN-10: 0522852688 or ISBN-13: 978-0522852684

Antony Loewenstein's book is essentially about his staunch opposition to the actions of Zionist lobby groups who are determined to portray all criticism of Israel and its policies as Anti-Semitism, in other words conflating the terms Zionism and Judaism. This is the central, and most powerful, message in this book. Antony Loewenstein shows that because of the concerted lobbying of media and politicians by Zionist lobby groups in Australia, the US and UK, it is very hard to have honest discussion on the conflict between Palestine and Isreal.

I found this book very hard to read, and not just because my usual fare is more in the way of fantasy and science fiction. I felt drawn to this book, but I didn't like reading it and often put it down. This book is a polemic, the seed of which is a conflict so ingrained that a resolution seems impossible. The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories is an extremely divisive topic, and I am continually dismayed by stories of the unmitigated hatred that come out of this conflict every week. It is not unique; there are many other conflicts around the world that deliver stories of equally depressing portent, but this is the one I feel closest to, due to my name, my lineage: my own Israel Question.

This book has helped me understand what Zionism is, and how the relationship between Zionism and Judaism involves the longing for a home land - which is what the Palestinian people want too.

There are four main sections to this book, each of which show a different aspect of the same general theme. The first part outlines Antony's family upbringing and how his questioning of faith and politics affected his life. It explores in detail a telling event in recent Australian political history - Hanan Ashrawi winning the Sydney Peace Prize - which was a formative period for the author's own career as a writer. The second part is an excruciating exploration of Zionism and antisemitism, and how criticism of the former is portrayed as an act of the latter in so many different ways. The third part continues this thread, closely examining the role of lobby groups as powerful political motivators that warp this debate all over the world. The fourth part focuses more closely on how this lobby driven bias directly affects the media, making it so much harder to find equilibrium between Israel and Palestine.

There are almost 60 pages of notes and references in this book. They are as fascinating as the text, and show the wide variety of influences that went into what was written. My version was accompanied by a small booklet containing essays of a few selected respondents to this book: Julian Burnside Q.C., Justice Alan Goldberg A.O., Robert Richter O.C., Peter Rodgers and David Marr. Justice Alan Goldberg A.O. called the book diatribe, the others were more positive. Each essay gave a revealing glimpse into the author's history and politics, showing how they have affected and been affected by their Israel Questions.

Read this book to gain insight into the Israeli occupation and the wide ranging political and religious issues that drive the conflict. Read this to understand how critical it is that parties on both sides be able to debate as equals, and how this is perhaps the most difficult goal to achieve.

See the book's own site: http://myisraelquestion.com

See Antony Loewenstein's site http://www.antonyloewenstein.com

See Tristan Ewins' review of this book on ZNet. I highly recommend this review - it is insightful and far more in depth than my own effort.

See the book on Amazon.

Send in the Clowns

2007-11-04T19:57:00.000+11:00

As I was writing about the Union Dues stories, I was wondering when we would get the next one. Turns out, the next one came out three days before I wrote that article!

EP128: Union Dues - Send in the Clowns is written by Jeffrey R. DeRego and read by Dani Cutler. It is the fifth in the Union Dues podcast stories. In this fifth story, Send in the Clowns shows how hard it can be to be a super-hero and obey the Union's rules at the same time. As a super hero, you have to deal with the people on the ground, but the Union sets rules to do with image management that make it hard to work out what action is right sometimes. Even the Union's hypnotically embedded training cannot provide all the answers. The characterisations are relatively personal, and you care about Megaton and Chrome as super-heroes who care more about doing the job, but Chrome gets caught up in the rules. Dani Cutler's reading is good - but has she got a blocked nose or something? Her voice was very nasally, which was somewhat distracting.

This series is strong because it portrays super heroes in a very different light. It eschews the comic book mandate of super heroes battling super villains, showing off super powers and (literally) paper thin plots. Instead, this series focuses on the moral dilemmas that might arise in a world where super-heroes get organised into a union. A union that looks after the interests of super heroes as individuals (training, supplies, marketing) and groups (marketing, legal frameworks, deployment of super heroes where needed).

Iron Bars and the Glass Jaw reveals some of the dichotomy involved in trying to live as a super human among normal humans, and the notion of "super-hero as a job". Off White Lies gives a little hint about where the bad guys might be really coming from. The Baby and the Bathwater explores even further the dichotomy of being a super human among normal humans by showing one reason why the Union is needed and hated at the same time. Cleanup in Aisle Five explores how hard it is to manage the image of super heroes in a prejudiced, greedy and short sighted world.

In this fifth story, Send in the Clowns, which focuses again on image management, this time showing how the machinations of "the greater good" can affect the individual - and how important it is to still try and be yourself.

I notice two common themes in these stories which are worthy of note.

Big Brother. In order to look after the greater good, you need someone to make hard decisions, someone to take in all the ambiguity of real life and decide what "greater good" really means. Inevitably, this leads to decisions that will chew up and spit out, as easily (but hopefully less often) as adopt and nurture. Big Brother means more than that though - it also means ulterior motives, which comes down to whose definition of the "greater good" is really driving the show. This gives the series a touch of X-Files: you have plenty of super (natural/human) and just a few Cancer Man plot devices to keep you wondering.

Dichotomy. This is what I like most about the series so far. Being a super hero is hard. You have to leave behind your family and your community, because they become liabilities. You can't always protect them from yourself when you have powers that might kill as easily as save. You can't protect them from all the baddies that know who it is you love (thought the Union Dues stories have yet to explore this aspect). And you can't protect yourself from the fear many of them will have, fear of you. Being super means being different, it means having awe and jealousy inspiring powers. It also means being held up to a whole new set of double standards: you are not normal like us, but you still can't prevent every crime or catch every villain.

In my opinion the strongest of the series is still the first - Iron Bars and the Glass Jaw - because it gave me my first glance into this new vision of super hero-dom, of a society trying desperately to integrate supers and normals in a world where most of us identify ourselves with our job.

In further super-hero fiction news, another player has just hit the presses! Mur Lafferty is releasing her new superhero podcast novel, Playing for Keeps - look for it at http://www.playingforkeepsnovel.com and Podio Books. I have sampled the first chapter thanks to Escape Pod, and I am dying for more.

Union Dues

2007-10-21T23:38:00.000+10:00

Earlier today I wrote about Path of the Bold, a collection super hero fiction I finished reading this weekend. This post is about a series (four so far) of podcast super hero stories on Escape Pod called Union Dues.

Two elements of super hero fiction engage us by making the heroes accessible, turning them into characters we can understand and identify with in terms of our own lives: awakening and strife. Awakening is the hero discovering something special about themselves and finding the courage to do something good with that power. Strife is the conflict that inevitably follows, in their personal and 'professional' lives. Most adults have awakenings of some sort or another, any time we find we have some skill or talent and slowly test it out. Heroes have the same thing, only their skills and talents are flashy, giving us something to look upon with awe. We all have strife. I once heard a comedian describe life as 75 years of getting kicked in the bollocks in various interesting ways. Like the awakening, a hero's strife is markedly more exaggerated. The key to "Path of the Bold" is that it showed the personal strife as being much the same. Each story struck a chord in this way.

Union Dues is a magnificent set of Super Hero Pod cast stories written by Jeffrey R. DeRego, hosted on Escape Pod. It plays upon the same elements of awakening and strife, tones down the former and tweaks up the latter in a way I have never seen before in other fiction. Like "Path of the Bold" and so many comic books, "Union Dues" is set in a world where heroes are common, almost 'every day'. But whereas "Path of the Bold" and so many comic books show groups of super heroes in small groups like "The Guard" and "Justice League", in the Union Dues world, the heroes have a union!

Being a super hero is hard enough.

Heroes might be super agile, super strong, energy manipulators, mind readers or super strategists. Cool huh? The strife starts young: powers develop early, sometimes while the child is a toddler or baby. An energy manipulator might electrocute their parents to death in a simple temper tantrum. Like a caring Big Brother, the Union looks after heroes by taking them in as soon as their powers manifest (read: legal, mandatory adoption). It indoctrinates the young heroes so that the Union rules and regulations are imprinted on their minds. The Union is a law unto itself, and operates much as other services like the police or fire fighters. The Union provides a valuable service: with thousands of super heroes, who is going to cater to their special needs? Who can train them, provide the equipment, costumes and legal protection for when innocents are hurt? The Union.

Here is the crux of the strife. As much as people like super heroes for all the good they do, we dislike them in almost equal measure. We fear them. They are different, not like us, they think they are so much better than us! And so the stories work by putting the heroes into a contemporary scenario - a government size bureaucracy with unknowable leaders pulling strings - and throwing in a hefty dose of "X-Men" 'scary mutant' xenophobia.

This makes for a lot of well thought out tension, and the protagonists are put through their mental paces. They have to control themselves, and somehow placate themselves into dealing with the normals nicely. Like us, they are trapped - all of us, trapped, in our work-aday lives. This is a very different style of conflict to the gritty gothic darkness of Batman, the edgy uneasy balance of power and romance in Spiderman, and more cerebral than the xenophobia of X-Men. I like it a lot... yet.. I am ready for some action. We need to see the heroes kickin' ass and takin' names a bit more - that tension has to change a bit, develop and grow.

Find all the Union Dues podcasts by searching Escape Pod with key words "Union Dues". Below is a brief synopsis of the four so far in the series.

EP027: Union Dues - Iron Bars and the Glass Jaw. By Jeffrey R. DeRego. Read by Jonathon Sullivan. The introduction story to the Union Dues world. super heroes.. have a union?! I will have to ask my boss for a comic book of my own! Features an excellent intro by Stephen Eley, where he iterates over some of the differences between for a writer when choosing to set a story in an alien world or a world "like ours". This story provides a detailed exposition about the separation of super heroes and other heroes, and how hard it is for all of them to get along.

EP049: Union Dues - Off White Lies. By Jeffrey R. DeRego. Read by Scott Sigler. Now I know where the bad guys came from. I swear I saw an episode of X-Files covering this topic. With a bureaucracy as large as the Union, you have to wonder, where does all the work come from?

EP062: Union Dues - The Baby and the Bathwater. By Jeffrey R. DeRego Read by Mur Lafferty (of I Should Be Writing and Geek Fu Action Grip. Tells of the harsh cost to family of having a super-hero baby, damned either way. Somehow, us normals don't accept the realm of super heroes too well - "X-Men" anyone? What would happen if we tried to live together, I wonder? Could normals and supers really integrate?

EP080: Union Dues - Cleanup in Aisle Five. By Jeffrey R. DeRego. Read by Rich Sigfrit. Carries the same muted, somewhat dark undertones as the other three. Again, this story shows us that being a hero really isn't all that glamorous and that super powers don't make it easy being accepted.

This is a brilliant series and I am eager to hear more. Jeffrey R. DeRego, if you are listening - well done, but I do have a suggestion. I get the gritty "hard to fit in" message. Now can we have some flashy "I love to kick butt" messages? Please? *grin*

Path of the Bold

2007-10-21T16:05:00.000+10:00

This book has been released into the wild!

Edited by James Lowder, this anthology contains fifteen short stories about super-heroes, centred mostly around Empire City.

I was never much into comic books, but I love super-hero movies like The Hulk, Spiderman and Superman. The stories in this collection are set mostly in the same 'reality' and include some heroes and villains in common.

I enjoyed this book's consideration of heroes, as people with fears and hang ups as well as super powers and super images. They seem real in a way that Tobey Maguire's Spiderman captured well. These heroes have concerns such as how they are going to make a living and protect the ones they love.

"Fanboy" by James Lowder depicts the making of a new super villain, showing again how easy it is to find yourself on the path from Anakin to Vader. It is really hard to break into the super hero business when the market is already swamped. They really should have published his comics.

There are powerful themes echoing in different ways throughout these stories.

The theme that found most resonance with me was the awakening. Ordinary people, down-trodden people, crushed heroes or dis-heartened heroes discovering or re-discovering their special power and, more importantly, finding the desire and courage to do something with their gifts. This is what make heroic fiction so endearing. We all want to feel like we are special, and most of us want to make difference in some way.

If you are going to be caught on the news flying through the air and catching falling cars using only the power of your mind, you might as well do it while looking good, or at least .. shiny. Clothes maketh the super hero, as they say. The "Sir Spandex" image of a super hero in bright skin-tight costumes was played upon. Super-heroes are portrayed as living constantly in the spot light of media attention. Some comic books about real life heroes are created by the real life heroes themselves! A costume is important. Apart from whatever enhancements or super powers a costume grants you, it is a focus point that fuses actions with image, ego with a visualisation of self. Costumes become icons, which have a power all by themselves. There was a cool image in "R.A.O.K." by Joe Murphy: Raymond puts on a crude Sentinel mask, and the icon in place he feels like he can help out, "Do what you can...".

"Forever Young" by Lucien Soulban was something different. It stepped far away from Empire City and showed heroes of a different sort. It showed them as reflections of old myth and recent fairy tale, subtly pointing out that we have had heroes for a long time. Only recently did they start coming in skin tight spandex.

This book is one of the most enjoyable accessible and least comic book like source of super hero fiction I have ever encountered. 9/10.

Review by Nathan Brazil at SF Site.
Get a copy of this book at Amazon.com.

What music I listened to today

2007-10-21T15:00:00.000+10:00

Hi-Hop. I like Eminem, Ice T and Snoop Dogg for the speed, energy and rebellion in their lyrics, rhyme and melody. But I feel guilty listening to words that express little than hate and useless machismo. After the mood has worn off, I feel just a bit dirty. Don't get me wrong, everyone needs to touch their inner animal every once in a while - but in general, I want more. I want something that has that energy and leaves me feeling fulfilled, as well as drained. :)

Here is what I was listening to today - several artists that are well worth the asking price at Amazon or your local music seller - check them out, buy the ones you like!

Hilltop Hoods. Aussie hip hop group from Adelaide, South Australia. These guys drive me wild with a sense of how much they are enjoying rapping! Songs like "The Nosebleed Section" really make me want to turn it up and bang my head up and down!

Clown Prince

Breathe

What a Great Night

Recapturing the Vibe

Testimonial Year

The Nosebleed Section

The Hard Road

The Herd. Aussie hip hop group from Sydney, New South Wales. What caught my attention with this group was their version of Redgum's "I Was Only 19 (A Walk In The Light Green)". They deliver a real punch in their lyrics and have proudly taken up the same traditions I loved Redgum for so many years ago. 77% in particular is one of my favourites.

Redgum - I Was Only 19 (A Walk in the Light Green)

The Herd's Version of I Was Only 19 (A Walk in the Light Green)

We Can't Hear You

Parliament

The Streets I love the British accent here! The Streets album, A Grand Don't Come for Free is well worth a special mention as one of my favourite CDs of all time - "Fit But You Know It", "Dry your eyes" is from it. This CD is all that and a bucket of chips! It is a concept album, a story told in poetry and hip hop. The protagonist loses £1000 and it follows his adventure trying to recover the money with a bitter sweet romance thrown in.

Never Went To Church

Fit But You Know It

Dry your eyes

Irony of it All

Macromantics is an Aussie hip hop artist Romy Hoffman, based in Melbourne, woo-hooo! Check out her My Space page. Macromantics is frenetic hip-hop. There is no message in the music - instead she puts on offer a stream of words celebrating phonetics and artful alliteration. Moments in Movement is my favourite CD of hers.

Apple Crumble

Physical

Interview with Melbourne-based hip hop artist Romy Hoffman.

Eh, got to love songs about the Devil gettin' beat!

The Charlie Daniels Band - The Devil Went Down To Georgia

Primus - The Devil Went Down To Georgia

Ej-Es

2007-10-10T19:59:00.000+10:00

Would you rather be smart or happy?

*Some spoilers follow*

Written by Nancy Kress and read by Sheri Mann Stewart, Ej-Es is a slow story that truly creeped up on me and whose ending left me with a feeling of exquisite anguish.

At first I felt somewhat restless with the story because I thought it was going to be a tale of military irony - people go in with all guns blazing only to have some hidden aspect of the world or society turn the tables on them. I already got some of that this week in the disappointing Mother Tongue on Variant Frequencies. Truly loved the Rick Stringer's narration and the sound effects are tremendous, but the story felt two dimensional.

Once I could see it wasn't that type of story, I found myself caring about the protagonist, Mia. Sheri Mann Stewart made her sound bone tired but steel willed in her determination to do good while she still could. Sheri Mann Stewart's voice cracked a couple of times in the story and this added so much to the sense of determination I found in Mia's character, intended or not!

Her crew lands on a planet whose colonists underwent a massive plague some 250 years ago. The remnants of that society are now barely more than primitive humans who are under a continual, permanent delusion of literally orgasmic intensity. They can't cook, they can't build - they can't possibly be capable of looking after themselves. But the crew decides that they shall not extend a cure. It is a "biologically based cultural difference", and more importantly, they are not dying out. Somehow they are actually increasing in population.

The crew leaves and Mia arranges to be left behind with supplies - and the cure. She applies it to the one "friend" she had made, Es-Efeb. It takes days and is painful, but she is cured. Mia teaches her some basics such as water purification, sanitation, food storage and health care. Mia travels to the next place to continue with her cures. And in the night, all by herself, Es-Efeb wails out in the night, a mournful, cry of "I am alone" in her own language.

It was a damning ending. The wailing sadness of Sheri Mann Stewart's Es-Efeb made me do a complete 180 in an instant. I had been hoping that Mia could cure these people, a hope which tasted like ash in my mouth as I suddenly realised what she was taking away from them at the same time. Better happy than smart.

Escape Pod forum for this story.

Noel Pearson: White guilt, victimhood and the quest for a radical centre

2007-10-07T12:55:00.001+10:00

I have just listened to a podcast speech given by Noel Pearson at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as part of a series called Big Ideas: Art Gallery Society of NSW in collaboration with Griffith REVIEW. This was recorded at the Art Gallery of NSW on Thursday 31 May 2007 before an audience.

Noel Pearson: White guilt, victimhood and the quest for a radical centre. Link to the mp3 file.

His ideas are confronting because they made me re-think some of my own ideas about Indigenous Australia.

Welfare. Paternalistic policies are needed, to a certain extent. Inalienable welfare doesn't work for people who have developed an addiction. Conditionality is needed on income support. Don't give money if it is going to be spent on drugs, alcohol and gambling instead of housing, food, clothing and education for yourself and your kids. Instead have structures in place where a responsible adult or welfare agency will ensure the money is used where it is needed.

What is needed is a safe place to live in which indigenous Australians can support themselves.

Victimhood. Much of white and black Australia have inculcated ourselves with the notion that indigenous Australians are victims that need to be helped.

We took the consoling hand of a kind romantic and empathetic Australia. The Australia of those Drysdale paintings with the big hats and the forlorn black figures. I just get a sense that much of that empathy [...] did us no good.

I first came across this idea in Naomi Wolf's book "Fire with Fire" (1994 - ISBN 0449909514) which spoke about women empowering themselves. The idea is that I am the only one who can improve my life. I need to make opportunities for myself. I cannot rely on being given opportunities because society owes me something.

How do these two ideas work together? This is the most valuable question I obtained from Noel Pearson's speech. The two notions of empowerment and paternalism are at odds. How can empowerment be encouraged by policies implemented by white society where, in the main, it will be white people deciding who gets the money? How do you implement paternalistic policies and allow for self determination at the same time?

I feel privileged that I have a job and resources to look after my family, and I want everybody in Australia to have the chance for the same thing. I do feel some sense of collective guilt that "white society" has a lot to answer for. We should make up for it but not by fostering a sense of indigenous Australians as victims we should send money to.

How do we, as a society, ensure that paternalism allows empowerment? I see two goals here. The first is that society has an obligation to itself to provide all members with safety and means for support. The other is that indigenous Australians have a right to maintain their own society, their own culture. Perhaps we need to start with conditional welfare. Then encourage (require?) indigenous Australians to take up those jobs of looking after their own groups. Perhaps we should not be scared to try other things like indigenous courts, ways to let indigenous Australians look after themselves, according to their own culture, to decide how they want to live responsibly for themselves.

I am going to read more by Noel Pearson. I am going to think more about this issue, and who I vote for, based on what policies they put forward for the black fella.

Sacrifice

2007-09-25T19:53:00.000+10:00

Variant Frequencies hosts the story Sacrifice, written by Jason McDowell and narrated by Rick Stringer and Ali Groves.

It could almost be the story of what happened to Cole Sear when he grew up - the boy who could see dead people in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense". Their stories are different, but have much in common in all the right places.

"Unfortunately, the great Roman Catholic Church, for all its history of exorcisms and the like, is no longer much of a believer in the supernatural."

Our protagonist is Father Michael Brannigan, one of few who can see the spirit world. This story has a comfortable, steady build up, showing us Father Michael Brannigan's child hood, allowing us to understand that he is driven to help wherever he can. This is why he joined the church.

He was driven to go to those parts of the world where he might be most needed. He is a compassionate man, passionate about bringing peace - and Christ - to Zaire, Africa.
He will bring The Word to the natives.

"I learned the true meaning of "heathen". I learned why it is that God will allow no Gods before Him."

Father Michael Brannigan could see the spirits, and he could help them to the light, some of them anyway. Those who wanted the light.

"My second sin was lust."

Jason McDowell has crafted this tale well. The first part shows his boy hood, the second part shows his grasping for a manhood he always denied himself. In a heart-beat the third part turns from a leisurely pace to a thrilling dive where all sins are accounted for..

A thoroughly gripping story, with some inspired elements of Cthulu horror. I had to listen to this one twice to properly understand the ending, but it was well worth it. Easy 9 out of 10.

A short discourse the meaning of religion and science

2007-09-24T07:47:00.000+10:00

I am of the notion that the implicit purpose of our religious texts (Bible, Talmud, Koran) is to provide a rule book and moral compass for a society. They tell us how to live. And because we all have a very basic need to believe in something bigger, more powerful, more meaningful than ourselves, these texts are written in terms of the actions and words of gods, angels, devils, saints, prophets etc.

As our societies change, our rules change; our sense of morals change. Unfortunately our religious texts have not changed as well. We are left with books that reveal we are not all equal and that belief in other gods is wrong. We should not look for literal truths in outdated texts. I would rather that we read these texts as parables to be interpreted and changed as we change.

Science represents our best understanding of the world as we know it at the time. Science and our understanding of the world as revealed through science changes in time. What we consider fact now is nothing more than what we can currently understand and can prove in some way.

I see a natural link between science and religion. Science is all about trying to understand and explain things. Many of our myths are religious stories and try to do that too: explain some natural event in terms of one god or other. Eventually, we reached the point where enough people began to wonder if it was really Thor, Guruwari or Yahweh that caused that light in the sky, shaking ground or pestilence among the people. Our curiosity grew beyond the stories we would tell each other, and soon enough our equipment and growing knowledge showed us that there other explanations.

I see this is as being the dichotomy broached in this thread: do we still need religion to explain things to us when science has an answer too?

I believe the answer is intrinsic: science is about what we know and religion is about how we should live. Both of them should change as we change, and we need to understand that what is right today, can be wrong tomorrow. Without this we will find it hard to adapt. [ erm.. evolve. :) ]

One last thought. We have a lot of religious hierarchy who do manage to interpret religious texts in different ways, and sometimes those appear to be positive ways. However, I am not convinced they have the good of society in mind. Instead they have a lot to protect: money and power. I have the same sense of cynicism for our political and business structures. None of these large organisations have the good of humanity at heart, because the need for making money and gaining power is too high a priority. We will never have a good balance between religion and science for this same reason: as long as someone has to be wrong for someone else to be right.

I originally posted this in the Excape Artist's forums.

Guggenheim Collection: 1940s to Now

2007-09-09T19:59:00.000+10:00

Melbourne Winter MasterpiecesGuggenheim Collection: 1940s to NowNew York–Venice–Bilbao–Berlin30 June to 7 October 2007NGV International

This exhibition showed off a wide variety of abstract art from the 1940s up till now. I get it. Rebelling against the idea of art as a self contained picture, abstract art attempts to provide only part of the experience: the art comes about by challenging the viewer in some way to draw in the rest of the experience from their own reactions and emotions. I experienced many different emotions.

Some pieces were confronting.

A table top full of teeth. I walked around the table several times, imagining what creatures gave up those pieces of bone and what logic was used to place them on the table.

A wall of bathroom tiles, slightly dirty. Bulging in some places. In other places, bursting - with guts. Red, bulbous, moist.

A video showing two people copulating. When he withdraws, his penis is topped by a bee hive and bees fill the screen.

Some pieces are inscrutable.

Jackson Pollock is my poster child for inscrutability. Paint scrawled across a canvass. Despite a heart felt invitation to myself to look deep and see whatever my inner self wants to see, there is no meaning. It is just chaos, little more than a child's experiment in colour and contrast and almost but not quite more. There were others, but I only remember his name.

Some pieces were confusing until I let my perspective shift and find something to admire.

A set of large orange boxes placed in a straight row. I walk to the end and stroll back and forh, letting my eyes take in the shifting lines and colors reflected off the surfaces.

Bruce Nauman’s suspended Floating Room. A wooden room, hanging from the ceiling, "Light Outside, Dark Inside". From the outside it is a well lit wooden box. On the inside, it is a sparse white room without any illumination apart from the light outside. I walked inside the room and admired the shifting lines as my eyes pulled in and out of focus. It was somewhat like looking at a 3D Magic Eye image, except no pretty pictures come to the foreground when you lose focus. I would really get a kick out this if I were stoned!

One piece in particular felt like an in-joke:
Maurizio Cattelan in a felt suit. I didn't understand the reference, but it was a comical piece that they made us walk down a corridoor to view, all by itself at the end.

Not all of the abstract art in this exhibition consisted of a single physical object that you could transport whole and hang on a wall. One peice by Felix Gonzales-Torres was a pile of liquorice lollies spilled in a corner. What a crazy idea! The 'piece of art' is really just a set of instructions: get a bunch of liquorice lollies. Find a spare corner. Spill them in the corner. Were they the same lollies displayed all the time?

The same goes for a another piece that consisted of nothing more than two pieces of elastic. One stretched along the floor, diagonally out into the room from the corner. The other piece at chest height, strung between the two adjacent walls.

I feel ambiguous about much of the art I saw in this exhibition - the confusing pieces in particular. What I enjoy is often not the piece itself, but my reaction to it. This is different to a beautiful painting, where my first reaction is visceral, automatic. In this exhibition, many of the pieces are not even identifiable as "works of art" except for the fact that they are all displayed at the National Gallery of Victoria under the banner "Guggenheim Collection: 1940s to Now".

Each piece was surely designed to be appreciated by evoking a reaction in the viewer, fuelled in part by their own history and experience. I read that so I know it is true. That is also why many people won't get it, won't appreciate it, will discard it as a waste of time. The perspective of the viewer is what makes any work of art great - nothing new here. But abstract art seems particularly vulnerable to this. Appreciation of abstract art is not visceral. It needs a conscious mental leap. You have to decide to shift your focus in the right way to see it, to experience it.

Later, on the drive back with Dad, I pondered aloud the fact in the whole exhibition, I liked Jackson Pollock's work the least, but his is the only name I remember - all other names in this entry are thanks to Google. Perhaps there is a meta game to abstract art. It is not enough to bare witness to the work, to view it as an exercise in imagination by letting your reactions and emotions fill in the experience. There is history behind each piece, behind the artist. I do not know much about Pollock, only a half remembered film and less remembered articles. From these, I know that Pollock was a tortured soul, that he poured a lot of effort into his work and that it must have meant something to him. So, I postulated aloud to my father, perhaps appreciation of the work also requires acknowledgement of the artist in some way, to help build the experience. Or maybe I want to justify paying $20 to see, among other things, what seemed to be a child's work on a very large canvass.

Harry Potter: my tale of the completion

2007-09-03T00:08:00.000+10:00

July 21st, 2007. Around 8pm.

The biggest question was how many copies to buy, one or two?

My step-daughter would take to her copy like a ravenous wolf and possibly swallow the whole thing down in under a week. But was I willing to wait that long for a second hand book? Plus I knew she would be excited enough about the book that it might be hard for her to relinquish her copy into the hands of another reader.

I had discussed the possibility of buying a second copy previously with my partner, who told me in clear and concise terms that I would not buy second copy when we would already have a perfectly serviceable book in our house that would be made available to me imminently. But wait, I reasoned, my Dad didn’t have a copy. I would purchase the book, not for myself, but for him. Maybe I would read just a few pages, nay, chapters, in the time between the book’s purchase and the book’s delivery. That was acceptable to my partner.

The thought of the second copy weighed on my mind as I entered Borders that looked somewhat like a circus at closing time. Littered with the detritus of excited purchasers long since gone home, the shop was still haunted by those left behind. Workers patrolled the floor and checkout desks like veteran soldiers, still sporting odd bits of Harry Potter regalia from scarves to glasses, bravely hiding their weariness behind smiles. Customers floated here and there around the shop. No matter what section they inhabited, whether it was picture books, anime, computer programming or CDs, they all carried a soon to be bought copy of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”.

I stopped and checked myself just after I walked in the door. Amazing. By no conscious process of thought or movement I had already accumulated my own soon to be bought copies of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. They didn’t even have to wave a wand and mutter “bookulous, purchasos!” Yes, some of them had wands. The doorways themselves must have been charmed.

But I digress. Why did the thought of the second copy weigh on my mind? Why did I find myself hovering around the pile of un-claimed Harry Potter books, pondering the price sticker, swapping my second copy between my nervous hands and the un-bought pile, trying to see whether one copy or two felt more natural? Why was I trying to let my inner self tell me whether I should buy one or two copies? It was because I had lied. I knew my Dad had already bought his copy that morning; the second was for me, all for me and no-one else!

After July 21st, 2007.

I bought two copies. I owned up when I got home and took my share of dirty looks. I put down the book I was already reading (My Israel Question by Anthony Loewenstein) so that I could start on Harry Potter right away. My step-daughter took just a few days to read her copy, even taking into account the fact that she stopped Harry Potter to finish a school book in between! There was a period of about two weeks when she would ask me where I was up to in the book, annoyed that I hadn’t caught up, peeved that she couldn’t discuss this or that with me. I pointedly told her that she should not tell me anything, even if it was just her opinion of the direction. It was quite a subtle to and fro there for a while. When she had finished (I was about a third of the way through) she let me know that it was “the best that could be hoped for”. She swallowed the rest of the conversation about what her school friends also thought of it; my eyes were glowing and smoke was coming out of my nostrils by that time.

Warning: some spoilers follow.

I finished the book soon enough. In short, I loved it. It answered a lot of my questions about two of the most charismatic characters in the series: Snape and Dumbledore. In quite a satisfying way it filled in their back stories and left me feeling that each was more human, less archetypal than before.

I had not wanted to believe that Snape was an outright villain, even when he killed Dumbledore. I felt there was more to be revealed about his relationship with Harry’s parents. I felt there needed to be a resolution between Harry and Snape, and there was. But the form of it surprised me. I imagined a tense stand-off between the two, where Snape managed to explain some hidden circumstance behind his actions – a devious double cross against Voldemort that ended with his killing Dumbledore, perhaps under an Imperius curse. What we got instead was Snape on his deathbed after being dealt with by his master Voldemort in a casual, almost arbitrary manner. He released his memories to Harry as silver tears for the Penseive. The memories revealed that Snape’s unrequited love of Harry’s mother Lily and hatred for Harry’s father James had driven him to betray the couple and spend the rest of his life paying for it. The antagonistic relationship he had maintained with Harry throughout the series was shown to be equivocal. There was indeed a deeper purpose. He had sacrificed himself to the service of Voldemort at the behest of Dumbledore. He had become the villain Dumbledore needed him to be. He killed Dumbledore because he was told to do so… by Dumbledore.

The tragedy of Snape’s life was laid bare in this book. His dichotomy involved a love that would never be realized, and forgiveness that would never be granted.

Dumbledore had his own dichotomy, though compared to that of Snape, it was not as stark. The reason was simple enough though. The cracks in Dumbledore’s characters, the shadows that followed his legend, were only developed in the last book. The shadows had been growing around Snape from the first.

Dumbledore was not as pure as the driven snow. He had courted power for much of his life. He came to realize that it was a temptation he could not afford to give in to, but the realization had cost him and his family dearly. It is revealed that Dumbledore was already dying at the end, a result of his own foolish hope to apologise to the dead. He ordered Snape to kill him in order to save Draco Malfoy from committing that same act.

This plot device really made the whole book for me. The sense of tragedy imbued to Snape by this act of sacrifice was moving. It was more than the sacrifice of one’s life: it was the sacrifice of one’s moral soul. It wasn’t just “die for me”, it was “become an evil bastard because I am telling you to do so, just trust me!”

This is why I liked the book: it showed some deep emotions behind these two characters.

There were some things I didn’t like so much.

The pacing in some parts of the book felt a bit uneven. Harry, Ron and Hermoine were on the run for months. During this time, Voldemort was in charge of the Ministry of Magic and Hogwarts, through Snape.

Harry, Ron and Hermoine were running, not spending much time in any one place. The passage of time was marked through references to weather and calendar, but not so much in progress towards their goal of finding the Horcruxes or, later, the Deathly Hallows. The book portrayed their decline towards argumentativeness and boredom, a sense of hopelessness driven by the lack of new clues, going over and over old ground. During this time I was more interested in how the larger wizarding and muggle worlds were coping under the increasing influence of Voldemort. The book disassociated from this part of the story though. It showed the social changes through an occasional magical radio show or by overhearing characters talking about the changed world. This felt too forced to me. I would have rather the perspective shifted to another character instead, to show us first hand what was going on – showing, rather than telling.

Harry’s romance with Ginny stumbled and was forestalled in what has become a common moral dilemma for heroes in blockbuster movies of late: “I cannot protect what I love from my enemies, so I cannot love”. This worked for Spiderman 2, but I don’t think it worked for Harry. Why? Because Harry had “Dumbledore’s Army”. Ginny Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Fred and George Weasley were all members of Dumbledore’s Army and didn’t quite get enough airplay. They are fodder for fan fiction writers no doubt, itching to put into stories all the variations, strengths and weaknesses those avid readers imagined while reading the books. Those writers are braver than I, better able to express themselves for the most part. I will satisfy myself by expressing the qualms I felt with J K Rowling’s own creation. I thought that these characters were all strong enough to have books written about them too – so strong that Harry should not have left Ginny, he should have taken her on the road. It should have become Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermoine.

Perhaps the reason this didn’t happen is because it would not have been realistic to let Ginny take such a star position without getting hot and heavy on the personal side of their relationship. She would have been far more than Robin to Harry Potter’s Batman!

This brings me nicely to some overall comments I want to make. What I have enjoyed about the Harry Potter series as a whole, is that it has grown. The characters have grown and the story telling has grown. While maintaining an appeal to a wide variety of ages throughout, J K Rowling has let the characters grow older and the story grow darker. I think this means that new, young, readers will grow naturally to each successive book. This makes for a powerful series overall.

I have finished my journey with Harry Potter. I want to thank J K Rowling sincerely for a most enjoyable ride. I can honestly say that I have never read a book or series that has seemed so equally attractive to teenage and adult readers alike. The greatest gift is a book that I have read and enjoyed with my step daughter from the start!

What happened with my second copy? I thought about it for a while, that book sitting all by itself on my shelf, without any siblings – I had been reading my step daughter’s copies after all. I decided to release my copy into the wild. Book Crossing allows me to share books I have enjoyed with the rest of the world. Hopefully someone else will enjoy this book. Hopefully they will pick it up and decide to journal their own experience with it.

Hopefully I will have helped someone else complete their journey with Harry Potter, walking the worlds of J K Rowling.

Six movies, five minutes

2007-07-28T00:50:00.000+10:00

My five minute review of all the big comic book style movies I have seen recently.

Spider pig, spider pig, does whatever a spider pig does. Can he swing, from a web? No he can't, he's a pig! Look out, here comes the spider pig! It was funny in places. (Simpsons movie.)

Spiderman 3: loved it for the new villains, particularly Sandman. Not as meaningful (!) as 1 or 2.

Fantastic 4: ridiculous plastic women like botox filled barbie dolls that had been left out in the sun for too long. Cool big bad guy (the world eating one) that left me wanting to know more.. but only about that bad guy - the rest of them could go jump in the lake.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: excellent new chapter in the series, but it suffers from Lord Of The Rings'itis: the book was so huge they had to leave out lots and you really noticed it if you had read the books.

Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End: cool special effects, pretty funny movie, but ultimately an anti-climax for me. Like the Matrix, they should have left it at one movie only (but the cash registers just keep ringing)..

Transformers: very cool special effects, music, good humour, moderate hot babe factor. I enjoyed the story line too. They added in a couple of funny characters (the computer geeks) that they didn't do anything with and this was disappointing - I wanted more of them. Despite the fact I wanted to know more, I felt no room (or strong desire) for sequels.

Hating Samsung X660

2007-07-01T11:31:00.000+10:00

I have a Samsung X660, which I purchased a little over a year ago now. It was the first phone I bought with a camera and the ability to download and run Java games, so for quite a while I was in rapture with my purchase.

Over time, though, there are aspects of this phone that have become the source of constant frustration rather than joy.

I was so disappointed to learn that the infra red cannot be used to transfer multi-media. It seems that I will simply lose all of the photos and short vids I have taken when I get my next phone.

It has a camera button on the side, which cannot be locked. This means that while it is in your pocket, it will take a few nice photos for you! I had to delete 400 photos of black last week when I realised this! Prior to this I was using a generic phone cover, which protected the camera button from accidental snap shot taking. I grew sick of the cover though, because it sweats. My choice: sweaty phone or hundreds of photos taken from within my pocket!

I have an extreme dislike for the calendar. This is the first phone I have used with a calendar but I found the interface to be limiting and unfriendly.

The middle button is hard-coded to the browser function. This is disappointing for a couple of reasons. 1) I rarely use this function and would much rather have been able to assign it to something else. 2) I find myself too often accidentally hitting that button when I meant to push up/down/left/right instead and find myself hurriedly cancelling the browser, wondering how much of the opening page has the browser managed to download already.

When responding to a text message, the quick English language option is not available. When I want to respond to a text message now, I start a new message and assign the recipient myself.

I like this phone because it is the first phone I have bought that has a camera and the ability to download Java games. However, I dislike this phone for all the above reasons. Overall, I would not have purchased this phone if I had known about the disadvantages, and I doubt my next phone will be a Samsung.

Some other reviews

From gsmarena.com.
From mobile-review.com.
From mobile-phones-uk.org.uk.

Pseudopod: Were-wolf, President, Clint Eastwood, Nick Cave, Horror!

2007-06-24T15:26:00.000+10:00

Just listened to Full Moon Over 1600, by Christopher Michael Cummings and read by Rick Stringer.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story! I didn't think I would at the start, when I realised it was focused on politics. However, I was hooked from the sentence "when a strange sensation crawls down his nose, into his throat"; this first hint that the President's lycanthropy had pushed him into a world of heightened senses. In other werewolf stories, those senses are used for hunting, fighting and generally eating people. In this story, it is what turns the President into a type of hero; and his eating people makes him a rather horrifying hero!

This is why I like "Full Moon Over 1600": in most stories I hear (fiction and non-fiction), presidents and were-wolves aren't usually good guys. In this story, becoming a were-wolf makes the president into a good guy! I enjoyed how Christopher Michael Cummings turned smell and intuition into a moral sense and it was amusing to find the "media spin" angle working for a good guy.

Perhaps most noticeable about this story is that it isn't just President as Were-wolf. Thanks to the voice of Rick Stringer, it was also Clint Eastwood as President and Werewolf!

There are questions in the Pseudopod forums about whether or not this a horror story. Thinking about this question was what led me to write this blog entry (and forum post).

I think it is a horror story. The were-wolf did some typical scary were-wolf things: i.e. eating people - but did so publicly, on camera, and it only increased his popularity! The contrasting figures of werewolf and president in this story were twisted together so that two common images appeared in one character in a disturbing way. This is what a good horror story should do: disturb the audience!

In a broader sense, the question isn't very important to me. Horror is visceral - therefore it is open to interpretation and different people will classify different things as being horrific. Someone thought it fit the genre, and I enjoyed the story with that in mind. Most of the time, that's all it takes for me. Even if I do find a "horror" story that I don't personally think is a horror story, I find value in the story just by wondering why we might be at odds; why that other person found it horrifying, even if I didn't.

A small side story. A friend once made a tape for me of Nick Cave's The Murder Ballads. Now that is one scary album! Each song creeped me out in a different way, with "O' Malley's Bar" being the song that burnt itself most strongly into my mind with a detailed portrayal of a twisted mind. This song was effective because the "detail" I mention came not just from the lyrics. It was Nick Cave's voice and the jarring melody that really gave me a sense of how insane the man was. I digress: the point being that this album was the most horrific music I had ever listened to (and I loved it!).. but at the end of the tape, my friend had included another song, "Into My Arms" from The Boatman's Call - an album of (ostensibly) love songs from Nick Cave that I had not heard about. The first verse:

I don't believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling, that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch a hair on your head
To leave you as you are
And if He felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms

After listening to a whole album of songs about twisted, murderous minds, this song fit perfectly! Even though I have the Boatman's Call on CD now and have enjoyed listening to it many times, I still think of "Into My Arms" as one of the most subtle and chilling works of horror ever!

Horror is visceral; if it feels like horror, it is horror; maybe not to other people. "Full Moon Over 1600" felt like a good horror to me.

Variant Frequencies: sci-fi, horror and fantasy podcast

2007-06-24T12:39:00.000+10:00

While I was listening to an episode of Escape Pod yesterday I heard about a new podcast, and it is amazing! Unfortunately they only come up with about one a month, so it won't take me too long to catch up, but I will do so gladly!

Last Flight of the Esperanza

Fifteen ships left Earth in search of new places for humans to live. When the Esperanza 15 crashes, only one of the crew is left alive. How will she survive when she is the only human on an entire planet?

This story has sound effects: a sound-scape that intensified the level of imagery invoked by the narration of a magnificent forest world. I kept thinking of the forest as an ocean, and I enjoyed the contrast: slow moving creatures that could almost be translucent jelly fish with their long tendrils, and the height of the trees that felt like the depth of an ocean. Both images (forest and ocean) were imbued in my head with the same sense of age, alien and beauty.

Other themes I greatly enjoyed in this story were transmogrification, adaptation and acceptance - in that order I believe. :) For the protagonist of this story, it wasn't a matter of choice. But it got me thinking of another story I read years ago. "Waiting for the Rain" by Dirk Strasser (found Metaworlds - ISBN 0 14 023766 6). "Waiting for the Rain" is a very sad story with the same themes but in a different order: acceptance, transmogrification and adaptation.

First Born

This was a horror story, which to me seemed a blend of Omen (without the child) with a touch of Dogma (without the humour).

All the way through it, my sense of dread grew as I felt the inevitable conclusion draw me in. It was all in the voices, both written and spoken: the angels were all resigned, even at the start of the story. Resigned to the idea that there was no chance of redemption for anyone anymore, because the big G was gone; without evidence of a divine presence, time leached away their hope. It seemed even Raph was only continuing out of a sense of bloody mindedness.

I find this sense of resignation fascinating in vampire stories too: when they grow so old that they lose the ability to be interested in anything. When they become resigned to the idea that there is nothing worth .. un-living for anymore. In those stories it seems to me that it is fitting and right, because it shows that even their great evil can pass.

It this story, it is horrific - the wrong entities are giving up!

Perhaps the only sequel story to this should fall into the same vein as Louise Cooper’s Time-Master.. eventually, millennia from now, the pendulum will swing the other way.. Lu will be so bored of ‘ever lasting’ dominion that he will face his own sense of resignation…

Spiderman 3

2007-06-17T17:19:00.000+10:00

I have also put this review on IMDB.com and Escape Pod.

I saw Spiderman 3 recently and enjoyed it greatly for the special effects and for the new bad guys it introduces.

Most of all I empathised with and cheered for Thomas Haden Church's Sandman. His creation scene was sad and poignant: a poor man battling so much bad luck. He couldn't keep his family together and now cannot even keep himself together! I found Sandman's creation scene emotionally resonant with the sand blown scene in Altered States - which I imagined to be an allegory for two people who loved each other but were growing apart so slowly they didn't notice it any more.

An aspect of the first and second Spiderman movies that I most enjoyed was the emotional wrangling Peter Parker went through with his love for MJ. He loves her, but he feels as though he should reject that love, because he cannot protect her from the evil in his life. Ironically, he has brought the evil into his own life by choosing to "fight crime", to be a hero.

By implication, he is choosing the life of a hero over the life of a lover, a partner.

Why does he make this choice? What can make Spiderman reject the love of a good woman? Does he find the draw of being a hero, of having power and glory to be greater than the joy and satisfaction of having a partner? I won't mention the sex. Or does the emotional and moral imperative to help people form an irresistible urge that draws him to the inevitable conclusion that since he can't both help people and have a lover whom he can protect, helping people is what must win out.

I think the first and third movies present different answers to this question. In the first movie I felt that Peter Parker was irresistibly drawn to helping people. But in the third movie, he was after the glory! He fights so hard to make sure Spiderman gets good news paper coverage. Sure, he was under the influence of the black gunk - but it just exaggerates what is already there, so Peter loves the power and glory too.

Escape Pod has a very thoughtful review of Spiderman 3. It questions how easily Peter Parker rids himself of evil. He can strip off the black gunk and is immediately absolved of the evil he has committed (at least in the eyes of the audience). "We always have a choice", Peter says, yet in the words of the reviewer Jonathon Sullivan, Peter Parker paid the smallest price for his own evil.

The problem, Sullivan says, is that true evil comes from humans, not from external objects like black gunk from the sky. By relegating the source of Peter Parker's evil actions to the black gunk, we don't get to examine the true source of evil - the dark thoughts and desires in our hearts.

I find this to be a valid and important point. I was thrilled when Spidey managed to wipe the gunk off himself and "gong it to death", and I enjoyed the resolution he found with Sandman at the end.

However, as I was walking out I wondered "how many people died in the scenes they portrayed?" The movie showed lots of buildings and property getting destroyed - but surely all that damage would have taken quite a few people out as well. The aspect of "Collateral Damage" wasn't addressed - did Peter Parker have nightmares about the innocents who died while he was wearing the black suit? Perhaps this is common enough for all superheroes (or police, or soldiers..): in trying to do good deeds, sometimes innocent people get hurt.

Something I really wanted from Spiderman 3 was a bit more acknowledgment that tearing off the black suit doesn't mean Spiderman has torn all evil thoughts from his heart. It just means they aren't being amplified anymore. Some people will say that was reflected by his statement that "we always have a choice" - the choice to follow through with our dark desires or not. That is true, but I still wanted something more: something I see in shows like Law & Order. That final look on the face of the main character, a lawyer, cop, DA, coffee boy etc: thoughtful but uncomfortable. They are thinking: "something bad has happened, unavoidable, necessary perhaps, but bad - and it can never be taken back.. I hope I can live with myself."

Escape Pod: Impossible Dreams

2007-06-17T16:45:00.000+10:00

I recently listened to one of the most memorable short story/audio podcasts on Escape Pod: Impossible Dreams.

The story is a fantasy genre love tale about two lonely souls meeting each other in a Video Store that shouldn't be there.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story, and came away from it feeling satisfied, as though everything in the story fit perfectly together, from beginning to end.

The Magnificent Ambersons. The main character is a movie buff. "He believed in movies the way some people believed in God" and this story portrayed his passion in such an earnest fashion. I did not know about Orson Welle's movie. When I finished listening to the story, I read about The Magnificent Ambersons just to see if it was real. The story behind The Magnificent Ambersons is tragic because it is infused with sense of so much potential lost. I cared so much about the protagonists in this story because I felt that their lives also seemed imbued with a sense of lost potential.

The protagonists are ordinary people in an urban 80's to 00's world. There is nothing special about them, they are lonely, they are struggling, they are trying to do the best they can. I empathised strongly with the characters because of this. The story wasn't sappy or romantic; it portrayed a burgeoning attraction that made my heart beat faster, hoping it would have the chance to grow into something more. The resolution of the story was satisfying: it painted the final details of the characters perfectly, their actions succinctly matching the images I had built up in my head for each of them.

It was simply beautiful: think of the most soulful love song you have ever heard, and you will be playing that song in your head as you think about this story later..

2007 Hugo Nominee!

"Impossible Dreams" by Tim Pratt.
Read by Matthew Wayne Selznick.
First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2006.

Eric Bana and the Incredible Lycra Shorts.. err, Hulk!

2007-06-16T21:51:00.000+10:00

Saw this in 2003 and loved it!

My IMDB review from 2003! (Text below.)

thought The Hulk was an amazing movie.

I nominate it for First Prize in all movie awards in the `Make-Up and Special Effects' category for the most stunning effect in the whole movie: Eric Banna/Bruce Banner's Super Stretchy Lycra Shorts!

I grew up with Lou Ferrigno's Hulk and it was a wonderful surprise catching his cameo.

Even though I never read The Hulk comics, I greatly appreciated the added color (apart from green!) brought to the movie by the comic book style `split screens, wipes, fades, and boxes'. The story told by the movie shows a warm compassion for my favourite main characters, Eric Bana (Bruce Banner), Jennifer Connelly (Betty Ross), Sam Elliott (Betty's Military Dad) and Nick Nolte (Bruce's Father - a most satisfying anti-hero).

The Hulk effects were very exciting on the big screen, and it fit perfectly with the efforts made to fill in the story of Bruce and his father.

I was getting a tad restless in some parts towards the end of the movie when the energy of the film starts to slide a bit, but I was just too hyped from the action scenes!

My favourite scene: watching Eric Bana's charismatic face made huge, green and angry and then sad, lost, confused and somewhat love struck by the tender face of Jennifer Connelly (Betty Ross). (For some reason, it reminded me of a very funny Eric Bana in Channel 10's Full Frontal - used to be on Australian TV 1992 to 1994.)

Babylon 5: Thirdspace

2007-06-16T21:47:00.000+10:00

Just aw it today and loved it!

Check out my IMDB review (text below).

loved this movie - I have been so thirsty for more Babylon 5, that even the elevator scene didn't faze me.

The aspect I love most about this movie is "One mistake out of so many." I love it that the Vorlons.. almost the "angels" in Babylon 5 universe, are ultimately as screwy as we are. They have things they regret; they made enormous errors. A poignant example of this arrogance is trying to reach another dimension thinking they would be Gods there too.

This thought brings another question to mind: why are the dominant race of the "Third Dimension" so hooked on wanting to kill everybody else? Working on a common underlying theme of Babylon 5 - that no-one is all bad (or all good) - maybe they thought of themselves as Gods once too, just like the Vorlons. Maybe they brought up some other race out of the 'dark ages' only to be savaged and almost destroyed by them, so from that point on they took the view that they should protect themselves by killing everyone else. This thought occurred to me as I was wondering what their story was, when the Vorlon memory inside Lyta said they were "anti life".

The elevator scene certainly didn't really belong - mostly because AFAIK it didn't link into any other love interest between those two characters in the rest of the show.

I found the ending to be quite satisfying for the most part. Galactic devastation avoided by the narrowest of margins.. *phew* :) Of course, the stunning effects played their usual brilliant part.

Two aspects of the action at the end didn't make sense.

1. What happened to the ships that made it through when the device was destroyed? Surely there were plenty that had come through. Surely they wouldn't have simply been destroyed by the gate being destroyed.

2. The being that Sheridan encountered inside the Gate seemed like it was an ancient and malevolent intelligence. "Intelligence" being the operative word, why didn't it pay any attention to the BOMB Sheridan placed there?

If it was the same tentacled thing that inhabited Ivanova's dream, it seems to me that it is smart. It seemed prescient enough to know that Centauri females would be enough to seduce Vir and that Ivanova was rebellious enough that she should be killed. Maybe I am incorrectly interpreting the dream, but it seemed to indicate that there was a driving intelligence in the background, something that could read peoples *intentions*.

So why did it seem to ignore the bomb? Perhaps the bomb was so alien to the ..um.. alien, it didn't know what to make of it and wouldn't have been able to de-activate it anyway. But the movie only showed the alien trying to stop Sheridan leaving. I felt it should have showed some curiosity about what Sheridan left there; I refuse to believe the alien simply didn't see or understand what Sheridan was doing!

Overall, I really enjoyed this movie and would give it a solid 8 out 10. It filled my hunger for Babylon 5 (for now...).

Podcasts I love

2007-06-13T06:34:00.000+10:00

My iPod and radio transmitter (and bud earphones, and shell earphones, and $100 computer speakers and sub woofer) are daily companions of mine, providing the kind of on-call entertainment that the radio's unforgiving schedule never can!

Below is a list of my faviourite podcasts. You can search for any of these by name in iTunes.

So many shows from ABC's Radio National. I love our Australian public broadcaster!

Background Briefing

Big Ideas

In Conversation

Late Night Live

Movie Time

Music Show, The

Philosopher's Zone

The Law Report

The Media Report

The Night Air

The Religion Report

The Science Show

Technical podcasts, can be Java specific or not.

Aussie Tech Head

DrunkAndRetired.com Podcast. Usually on topic Java talk, sometimes amusing off topic talk, sometimes "I wish they were retired - from podcasting!"

The Java Posse. Excellent chat about everything Java from guys who sound like they know what they are talking about!

this WEEK in TECH. Wide variety of coverage for anything tech related (rarely programming related though. Cool range of panel members, sometimes annoying when they all talk over each other.

Comedy

Kasper Hauser Comedy Podcast

The Chaser's War on Everything - another ABC product, this time from ABC the TV Station

triple j Raw Comedy - another ABC product, this time from our "youth oriented" Radio Station

Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror!

British Science Fiction Podcast

Escape Pod - brilliant, excellent podcast for sci-fi short stories

Pseudopod - brilliant, excellent podcast for horror short stories

Sci Fi Saturday Night

Sci-Fi and Fantasy Podcast

The Sci-Fi and Fantasy Podcast

Variant Frequencies

Gaming.. as in computer games or RPG's

Have Games, Will Travel

One Life Left

Writing

Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Maths: Long Division, or DMSCB - Does McDonalds Sell Cheese Burgers

2007-06-13T00:29:00.000+10:00

I might be a programmer, but it was recently revealed to me that I couldn't remember how I was taught long division in school.

Finished laughing at me yet?

I searched around and found the technique, but didn't find enough examples that I understood the technique again straight away. Here is my attempt to clear that up for anyone else who forgets how to do long division (not that I am implying anything of course...).

The rule: Does McDonalds Sell Cheese Burgers.

A.K.A. DMSCB
A.K.A. Divide Multiply Subtract Check Bring down.

Example: 956 / 18.

Divide


   +-----
18 |  956

18 into 9? No.
18 into 95? 4 times.

       4
   +-----
18 |  956

Multiply


       4
   +-----
18 |  956

4 * 18 = 72

       4
   +-----
18 |  956
      72

Subtract


       4
   +-----
18 |  956
      72

95 - 72 = 23

       4
   +-----
18 |  956
    - 72
    -----
      23

Check that that the result of your subtraction is smaller than your divisor.


       4
   +-----
18 |  956
    - 72
    -----
      23

23 > 18 ... made a mistake!

Start over again..

Divide


   +-----
18 |  956

18 into 9? No.
18 into 95? 5 times.

       5
   +-----
18 |  956

Multiply


       5
   +-----
18 |  956

5 * 18 = 90

       5
   +-----
18 |  956
      90

Subtract


       5
   +-----
18 |  956
      90

95 - 90 = 5

       5
   +-----
18 |  956
     -90
    -----
       5

Check that that the result of your subtraction is smaller than your divisor.


       5
   +-----
18 |  956
     -90
    -----
       5

5 < 18 ... whew!

Bring down digits that haven't been divided yet.


       5
   +-----
18 |  956
     -90
    -----
       5

Bring the 6 from 956 down to the 5, to make 56.

       5
   +-----
18 |  956
     -90
    -----
       56

And repeat..

Divide Multiply Subtract Check Bring down.


       5
   +-----
18 |  956
     -90
    -----
       56

18 into 5? No.
18 into 56? 3 times.

       53
   +-----
18 |  956
     -90
    -----
       56

Multiply


       53
   +-----
18 |  956
     -90
    -----
       56

3 * 18 = 54

       53
   +-----
18 |  956
     -90
    -----
       56
       54

Subtract


       53
   +-----
18 |  956
     -90
    -----
       56
       54

56 = 54 = 2

       53
   +-----
18 |  956
     -90
    -----
       56
      -54
    -----
        2

Check


       53
   +-----
18 |  956
     -90
    -----
       56
      -54
    -----
        2

2 < 18

Bring down... nothing to bring down, so we have our answer.


       53 R 2
   +-----
18 |  956

956 / 18 = 53 R 2

Another example with much better presentation (but without the Cheese) is given by mathsisfun.com.

The first example of DMSCB that I found in my search helped a lot. It is on Shannan's Math Web Site on AngelFire, but I didn't find it sufficient because it didn't explain the Cheese. :)

On the same site I found an example of another technique, which I think is more useful for numbers larger than 4 digits. Check out this Partial-Quotients Example.

True story: I learned for myself what the Cheese was, when I made the very mistake I showed up top (18 goes into 95 only 4 times)! Yeah, you can laugh at me now. :)

Test image with rollover

2005-11-27T02:40:00.000+11:00