Books on Nanikore

NaNoWriMo 2014: Week 1

Sun, 09 Nov 2014 09:15:41 +0000

So I’ve completed day 8 of NaNoWriMo 2014, and the best way to describe it thus far is ’not bad’. I came into this year’s event completely unprepared - I just didn’t do much beyond decide a concept for the story. This was certainly no master stroke, it was a combination of being busy with personal commitments and really struggling with enthusiasm to be honest. A bit of a departure from my first & last attempt in 2011, but my story idea this year also didn’t delve so much into any particular history or other real factual stance.

That said, here I am. After 8 days, I’ve done about 9,000 words - that’s fewer than the run rate of 13,333, but similar my last attempt, where it wasn’t until day 16 that I hit the run rate, which was lucky as I knew I had to finish 2 days early due to a business trip, whereas this month I should have until the 30th.

Enough of that, let’s talk about what I have done. The story is unfolding fairly well I think - I’ve established a morally ambiguous protagonist, and since this person reincarnates, I’ve already got female and male ‘versions’ on the go. There is also the mysterious and obligatory megacorp out to do bad things. Or are they? One thing I’m trying to do this time is make the morality of the various parties a little less clean cut.

So far almost all of the writing has been done on my Lenovo laptop in the beta version of Scrivener for Linux, on Mint 17 though I did do a few hundred words in the ‘real’ Scrivener on the MacMini also. So where have I been writing? Here’s a sample:

- The dining table - away from other distractions, and with a bit more space.
- The coffee table - sat on the floor, with a different view.
- The computer desk - I only did this once, at the Mac Mini, it just doesn’t seem to work for me.
- In the Kua Aina Burger Emporium - they have wide tables, and acceptable tea and coffee. Burgers are a bit expensive though so I haven’t actually been eating them.
- JR Tokaido Green Car train - this actually went quite well, but it’s too pricey to make a habit of.

As far as a soundtrack, or playlist goes, I’ve been listening to the Rathole Radio podcast a little lately, and trying tracks from that - mainly Creative Commons licensed works - specifically Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys with their “Soft Time Traveler” album.

As for a story title, I have a few in mind, which is amazing for me - I’m terrible with coming up with story titles. I’ll wait till next week to mention any, and see which ones are still with me. Right, back to the story.

NaNoWriMo 2014

Fri, 24 Oct 2014 12:17:32 +0000

It has been three years since my first (and last) attempt at National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in 2011, and though I enjoyed it, and was successful, I just didn’t get to do it in either 2012 or 2013. However, that was then, and this is now, and I’m ready to do it again. I even have a story in mind, and potentially, just potentially, a title. I’m terrible at coming up with story titles. Also, I use too many commas.

If you have no idea what NaNoWriMo is, check out their FAQ, and by all means give it a try - it doesn’t start till November 1st., so there still the option to create an account.

This year again, I’ll be using Scrivener (also a sponsor of the event) but this time, it’ll be mostly written on my GNU Linux based laptop in the beta version of Scrivener.

Book Shelf: The Milkweed Triptych by Ian Tregillis

Sat, 08 Feb 2014 11:38:12 +0000

I waited a bit so I could read and cover all three of these books in one fell swoop - Ian Tregillis’s Milkweed Triptych - Bitter Seeds, The Coldest War and Necessary Evil.

The overall story arc takes place in a forked alternate history starting in the 1930s, and ending in the 1960s by the end of the third book.

Though some one line blurbs pitch the trilogy as “British wizards vs. Nazi superman”, that’s a bit simplistic, and misleading. The books themselves also address this too, quite early on, so lets just lay down the the overarching premise.

The Nazis have enabled humans to control fire, cold, be invisible and other abilities via their willpower by hardwiring their brains with electrodes drilled into their skulls, hooked up to special batteries, leaving them all with trailing wires hanging from their heads. This is the work of scientist Von Westarp, who as the series opens, is experimenting on orphans.

Upon discovering this, the British have looked to a group of old and grizzled warlocks as their own secret weapons. To be straight though, this is not a Marvel supervillain vs. Gandalf story. The warlocks do not perform magic as such, more they negotiate with supernatural entities called Eidolons for actions like freezing swathes of Europe, or providing a fog curtain across the English channel, all of which have a price. These negotiations are conducted in the allegedly ancient language of Enochian, and Tregillis’s descriptions of these characters are superb in places.

Boiled down, the two main character protagonists (or perhaps that should be antagonists) are Raybould Marsh, a British spy, and Gretel, a product of a Nazi medical experiment who is a kind of clairvoyant. Of the supporting characters there is Will, a reluctant well-to-do junior warlock, and Klaus, Gretel’s brother. It can be argued these characters are more three dimensional than the main two, struggling with decisions somewhat made for them. Will’s dislike of the blood prices he exacts to ‘pay’ the Eidolons grates on him, and drives him to breakdowns and swings in character. Klaus lived in his sister’s shadow for decades, trying to extract himself and finally know himself and make his own decisions and more than his sister, embodies the result of living when someone can see your future.

Whilst Klaus’s ability is to become ghostlike and pass through solid objects, Gretel is able to see timelines and where decisions may lead. These abilities cease when the user’s battery runs low, as it amplifies their willpower, so batteries become a strategic tool in the books. The question you find yourself asking by the second book, is that unlike her peers, does Gretel even need the battery? These peers include the sadastic Reinhardt, with his ability to incinerate things, to the mentally crippled Kammler who drools, and must be directed by a handler, whilst his kinetic powers flatten any object.

I should say that it appeared to me that Tregillis hates Marsh - all the worst things in the world happen to him, and he almost dumbly plods on, as just a point of anger, driving the story. He’s not the only tragic character - most of the characters are tragic, such as poor Heike, another product of the Nazi Dr. Westarp’s experiments who is essentially talked into suicide, before her corpse is then the victim of another characters twisted affections.

The first book essentially covers the war, then moves forwards twenty years to a Cold War where the Soviets have been reverse engineering Von Westarp’s work, and then the final showdown in the UK. The title of the final book, “Necessary Evil”, is interesting in that it’s difficult to believe which of the evils was actually necessary, as they all seem like more of an excuse.

It’s a well written set of books, which seems was always intended to be a trilogy, as setups you don’t even notice in the first book pay off in the last. It does feel planned and structured, over the retcon some writers can be forced to do over such a long arc. This is vital though to build belief in Gretel’s ability to divine futures and steer events down the one line she needs. Tregillis outright poses one such line in Gretel having Heike kill herself so the Soviets would put her brain in a jar for study, and that that same jar would be kept in the same facility she is held in, years in the future, so that she can make use of that jar. It’s a combination of talent, foresight and sheer cruelty.

Each book is standalone to some extent, but I really can’t imagine enjoying any of them outside of the trilogy; it truly is a triptych - a whole divided into three parts.

The final book wraps up most of the loose ends and finally addresses the very physical, sexual tension which builds for three books between Gretel and Reybould. There’s more chemistry between those two characters than between Reybould and his own wife, trapped between his hate, and Gretels fear and detachment.

In summary I would say the books are definitely worth a read, and in case you’re wondering, it is a setup where it’s not clear who the ‘good’ side are, and perhaps none of them are - both sides ruin innocence and in a fantastical universe show the way wars make people do deals rational people would never entertain. There are some parts of the ending which I would liked to have been more decisive, but overall, after the three book journey, it does satisfy, and you realise the kind of willpower Gretel possesses not just because of her powers, but as a person, and how far that can drive Reybould to extraordinary lengths.

Bitter Seeds - Amazon.com
Bitter Seeds - Amazon UK
The Coldest War - Amazon.com
The Coldest War - Amazon UK
Necessary Evil - Amazon.com
Necessary Evil - Amazon UK

Bookshelf: Outliers by Malcom Gladwell

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:07:20 +0000

What makes people successful? Is there anything to the nature vs. nurture? What other factors impact success? These are the kind of questions Malcolm Gladwell asks in his book ’ Outliers’, drawing on anecdotes of people, both well known and no so well known about what had to happen for those people to become famous.

He runs through cases such as Bill Gates, and the factor of being born at the right time and with parents able to afford to buy his school a very expensive computer. Certainly, he had skill and acumen, but he was also in the right time at the right time - other equally ‘smart’ people perhaps were not. Some of the anecdotes are interesting, and follow quite long explanations of historical social rules. Some others, such as the opening chapter, illustrate how arbitrary rules like deciding the cut off dates for being in an ice hockey team can enforce an artificial limitation on some due simply to being born at the ‘wrong’ time of year, rules which are likely actually reducing the overall number of high quality professional players.

Though again he extrapolates from individual cases to show a theory or trend, some are educational; whilst I was aware many Jewish people in Europe became shop owners due to land ownership laws, I didn’t realise that in the early twentieth century, many Jewish immigrants became lawyers when the job paid little and many were pushed into merger and acquisition work as the dirty end of the profession - a part which would stand them in good stead in later years as the area took off.

Of course, this is anecdotal, and some of his ideas begin to stretch theories, such as ‘Asians’ being good at maths due to the kanji system and rice growing. For me personally, his assertion that Japanese are good at math due to long school hours, may or may not be true. Having worked in Japanese schools, I doubt it - it’s likely more that the schools here teach to a test, and little else, and it’s rote learning. That said, the idea that a small generation sandwiched between two larger ones has he benefit of more lower class sizes and so on, is intriguing.

Gladwell also has a decent theory that it takes 10,000 hours to get great at something, and many also fall by the way side by the sheer amount of work it can require in going from good to great. It also seems to equate to about years. In all he sees most of the successful as a crossroad of nurture, nature, timing and endurance.

Quirks aside, it’s a readable and personable book, and the telling of individuals’ stories makes it flow nicely, and will at least leave you asking some questions about the infamous ‘conventional wisdom’.

[Buy the paperback from Amazon.com - affiliate link]
Outliers: The Story of Success

[Buy the Kindle version from Amazon.com - affiliate link]
Outliers: The Story of Success

Book shelf - Rendezvous with Rama

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 23:38:22 +0000

It’d been a while since I read some classic science fiction, so I just finished up Arthur C. Clarke “Rendezvous with Rama”. Somehow, this is the first of Clarke’s sci-fi books I’ve ever read, which, given the man’s stature in the genre seems almost strange in itself.

The last couple of first encounter books I’ve read have been quite different. I thought ’ The Mote in God’s Eye’ by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle was well crafted, but somewhat laborious to read, and though interesting, just didn’t quite hit the spot. After that was ’ [Blindsight](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(science_fiction_novel%29)' by Peter Watts, which I found far more interesting, both for the aliens and their native habitat, but also for the rather dangerous relationship between the human protagonists, who appear far more of a threat than even the most aggressive alien. It’s also available as a free e-book still I think.

Of course, most first contact novels work along the lines that they act as a mirror to the humans race itself, as we project our own fears onto the unknown.

’ Rendezvous with Rama’ takes a different tack, partly focusing on the state of humanity at the time of the event, relaying the politics of the planets, but also playing on the fact that actually, first contact may be, as in Rama’s case, a fleeting bypass where we only get a tiny glimpse of an alien civilization as it speeds through on it’s way somewhere else, in this case, in a giant cylinder which is intercepted by a makeshift commercial crew as the only people who could intercept it in time.

The novel plays up the limited time angle well as you know the book is nearing the end and they just don’t seem to have got to the core of the alien concept, and then it looks like they might, only to be dashed as they have to abandon the mission and head back.

I don’t want to give too many spoilers away, but it’s fair to say it’s more about the idea than the characters, who aren’t too deep, but the pacing it excellent, and you’re always checking how many pages are left, hoping they can crack the clues in time. It’s perhaps not true hard sci-fi, but it isn’t fantastical either, and most of the developments follow a well thought out premise and the world and the potential creatures encountered do seem to obey the rules of the world within the cylinder.

It’s definitely worth the read, if you haven’t read any classic sci-fi lately, or if you’re looking for something that just unfolds for you.

Bookshelf: Wool

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 14:23:32 +0000

It’s always good when you happen upon a book series by an author you don’t know, and it turns out to be very decent indeed so here’s one from the bookshelf: Wool. I was actually introduced to the ‘Wool’ series written by Hugh Howey by a friend who happens to be an avid reader. Wool as it currently stands is a 5-part compendium of short stories, and some further prequel reading in ‘Wool - First Shift’. I picked the 5-part omnibus up for 5 USD on Amazon as a Kindle e-book.

I don’t want to give too many spoilers here, but it’s almost inevitable. Essentially it’s the story of the people of the Silo in the future. The remnants of humanity live in a bunker called the Silo, unable to go outside, and indeed forbidden to even speak of the intent.

The silo - 144 floors going down into the earth - has simple governance, a sheriff, a mayor and groups of levels tasked with functions such as hospitals, mechanics, IT, food production etc., all connected via a massive spiral staircase from top to bottom with porters running messages and goods up and down. On the top floor are massive LCD screens showing the brown apocalyptic view outside, the scene coming from cameras mounted outside which gradually degrade in picture quality from the never ending toxic winds until someone speaks the words that they wish to go outside, at which point they are suited up and sent outside to clean, using wool pads to clean the cameras - and hence the title ’ Wool’. They always clean, and they never come back.

The stories get progressively longer, with some characters continuing from one short story to the next. The writing is functional but does lend a certain claustrophobic feel to it, and you can feel the author’s development and confidence grow with each of the 5 initial story lines. Much of the drama revolves around the interactions of the Mechanics who keep the generators running, pump oil and live in the bottom floors, and the IT department and it’s somewhat sinister boss. There are a good collection of characters, and fortunately Howey is willing to kill off characters as required which I count as a plus (I’m looking at you, most manga series!), meaning there’s some good weight and consequence to the stories.

Howey also manages to give more depth (so to speak) to his world as he goes on without any of it feeling too reworked (or retconned) to fit the earlier stories. Whilst some of the twists are a bit obvious he still managed to pull a few from nowhere even in the 5th installment.

Again, I can’t go too much into the plot without spoilers, but much of the revelation and plot drive is based on the simple questions we would have in the Silo - why is it there, who made it, what is it’s history?

For 5 dollars it’s worth a download (or buying the print edition) to find out.

Wool

NaNoWriMo 2011: Week 3

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:17:34 +0000

After twenty one days of writing, of hammering out words at a keyboard, do we really need to talk about the mere number of words? So what have I learned this week in NaNoWriMo? Well, I’ve been in the situation this week where I’m actually less worried about my word count, and more about the story progression.

For one, writing every day is not always that good for your story, or for you. Especially if you work, and probably even if you don’t, sometimes you need to let the story sit in the corner for a while. A couple of times this week I went to the trusty (but not really amazing) Mac keyboard, and started to type, and it wasn’t that I had writer’s block - I knew where I wanted to go - but there was this kind of fatigue about the actual act of writing.

I’m concerned that in my story whilst I’m moving the plot along, it doesn’t feel fleshed out, and more and more I’m leaving bookmarks with comments to say ‘insert scene here about so-and-so’. I probably have a few thousand words of snippets in my character profiles to add in. So the take away from this week has been that you need to take days off from the writing itself, even if you can’t get the story out of your thoughts - just write the ideas down, dictate them into your phone or whatever system works for you, and type them type them up later.

I’m taking this as a good sign - more bits to add in a second draft. In that light one thing I always knew, but at this seeming crunch phase I need to remember, is that NaNoWriMo is about turning out 50,000 words, not a truly finished novel. It’s a first draft, not something you stand outside of publisher’s offices with, pimping it to important looking people as they look to leave for the weekend.

My writing locations are still essentially split between the Mac Mini at my desk in the computer cupboard, and my old Macbook, where the latter is usually on the dining table. At night I kind of like the emptiness of the living room.

I did try a nearby family restaurant, with it’s 180yen drink bar, and that worked, but after a couple of hours, I had to get out, so as to not hear any more Rocky soundtrack, and so I didn’t have to listen to old ladies saying why Italian women weren’t as good at cooking as Japanese women (no, really).

So now I ease into the last week - and for me NaNoWriMo finishes on the 28th, as I will be on a business trip after that, so I have quite a few words to go, but so far, I’m hoping, still, to join the ranks of the ~18% of people who finish each year, and at my first attempt. Will I be doing it next year? No, I think I’ll give Movember a chance!

However, if you must know I am for once, ahead of the game today - 36,050 words against the par of 35,000!

Oh yes, and I still don’t have a title.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

shonaninenglish — 2011-11-24

Good luck with the writing!

NaNoWriMo 2011

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:09:26 +0000

As a bit of a hobby for the last few years I’ve written a few short stories - I even almost finished a full length story (60,000+ words and counting). It’s just mental exercise, a stab at creativity, writing something down. In 2006 I first read about the National Novel Writing Month initiative, where people are invited to write a novel of 50,000 words within the month of November - not to a polished conclusion, but really to get at least that first draft in, and thought that some year I should give it a try.

You can have outlines and such prepared beforehand, but the novel must be something new and original, started on November 1st, and ‘finished’ by November 30th, midnight local time. It’s not deathly serious as you can tell from the site; you become a ‘winner’ simply by uploading your text to their servers in the last week of November to see if you’re over than magical 50,000 word count - it’s largely honour based to get people to actually get something into their PC.

Anyway, after 5 years of watching NaNoWriMo come and go, I decided to give it a go this year, so blog posts to this site might slow or stop next month as the small amount of my personal keyboard time flows into writing some epic work of fiction. How bad can it be? I don’t have anything else on apart from studying for my Japanese test in December, family and work commitments!

All I know so far is that I’ll mostly be writing it on my Mac in Scrivener, and that it’ll most likely be set in some kind of steampunk world, a genre I’ve always kind of liked. More updates on this in a couple of weeks.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Damien Okado-Gough — 2011-10-08

Sounds good chum. I’ve had a fantasy novel swishing around in my head for a few years. Maybe I should follow suit and give this challenge a whirl. Are you doing the JLPT? Which level? Another thing I should be doing!

gurahamu — 2011-10-08

After a long time of not doing JLPT tests, as they’re not very real world, I’ve signed up for N4 (the old 3). I’m hoping I’ll be OK, but over the last 5 years, my Japanese has gotten awful - I speak mainly English at work, and since our first child, I’ve been speaking more English at home with the family for their practice. I really need to work on my grammar - it’s dire. I’m trying to get just back into studying.

The NaNoWriMo thing is probably ill-advised given my schedule, but it is a nice idea to try, so I’m going to give it a go, and again, even if it doesn’t get finished, it’ll have helped me along the road. How bad could it be? :)

(I should point out though that this has spouse approval.)

Damien Okado-Gough — 2011-10-09

I got Level 3 years ago, but I speak hardly any Japanese at all. Now the kids are getting up and I need to sort it out. I can’t have them embarrassed at their dumb-ass foreigner father who needs their mother to read even the labels on food in the kitchen. The truth is though, I hate studying. Let’s ganbare!

Bookshelf: The Four Hour Work Week

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 11:18:31 +0000

It’s been a while since I added anything here on the Bookshelf, though rest assured, I’m always reading something! In fact, I’ve just finished reading Tim Ferriss’s book " The Four Hour Work Week" (4HWW) (he just released another ‘The Four Hour Body").

The book aims to be a guide to ’lifestyle design’ and has gained an almost cult following around the world. Much of the premise revolves around the 80/20 rule which Ferriss adheres to, more commonly known as Pareto’s Principle which Ferriss does acknowledge further on in the book. Basically - you can get 80% of things done / achieved (good enough), with 20% of the effort, and the question is whether than last 20% is really worth it. He shows how you can create a business (initially on the side) which is self sustaining, and from which you can increasingly step away from thanks to outsourcing and subcontractors. If you had a 9-5 job, then the key is remote working agreements, and then you can travel and do what you want to do with your life whilst building that product and outsourcing the rest. This is how it’s a four hour work week.

The resulting book, is one third potentially useful and interesting, one third useful if you’re Tim Ferriss or like him, and one third is almost silly, but it’s all entertaining and really is best described as ‘career porn’. That’s what this book is - a product which can generate money without much work from Ferriss now, so he can, and does, outsource routine matters and is living what he says - and in the book he tells you how to do that.

When you look at reviews for the book, those people who slammed it are generally against the ethos - that somehow this is cheating: he ‘won’ a martial arts tournament by dehydrating himself for the weigh in, then boosting back again adding kilos of weight against his opponents and then pretty much just bear hugging them and forcing them out of the ring to win (there’s a few clips on YouTube of this). Ferriss makes the point that he exploited a loophole in the tournament’ rules, and didn’t break them. It’s very much up to the reader, but that a book elicits that kind of response is interesting in itself.

The truth is Ferriss is very smart, and puts his money ostensibly where his mouth is - perhaps the tournament push-outs weren’t in the spirit of the event, but he did turn up and get in the ring, and that takes a bit of skill and guts as it is.

The book is full of links and product recommendations - most links in there smell like product placement, and yes the whole thing smells like an infomercial, but at least it’s a readable ‘reality distortion field’ informercial if nothing else, and again, you’re simply holding a sample of what he’s talking about - it’s about sales - there’s a reason Ferriss won a " Greatest Self Promoter" award and why his Wikipedia page is relatively bare for someone so high profile online - it’s all about sales - the tips in the book can be found elsewhere - he’s wrapped it up, added an angle and sold it. It’s about sales, sales sales, and expertly done.

You might wonder whether I actually liked the book, and ultimately I did, but not because I believe so much in the message of the book - it isn’t for me - but viewed as a sample product, and as an example of what Ferriss is selling it’s very good, and there’s are some good tips and reminders in there, many of which you can apply to many aspects of your life and work.

For a different angle on this type of idea though, I would recommend Gary Veynerchuck’s " Crush It", 37 Signal’s " Rework" or David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”.

Bookshelf: The Diamond Age

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 13:34:57 +0000

From the bookshelf: The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson, or to give it it’s full name “The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer”.

The full title actually encompasses the story a little better.

I seem to be reading Neal Stephenson books in a wrong order - not that they’re in any way connected in the narrative though. First I read the seminal ’ Cryptonomicon’ (1999) , then ‘Snow Crash’ (1992), and now ’ The Diamond Age’ (1995).

Stylistically then it’s a jump; Cryptonomicon was very smooth, albeit with a slightly flawed last few chapters (though by then, the story you cared about was largely wound up). Snow Crash likely has the best first chapter ever in a sci-fi novel, but then goes off on several tangents before spluttering out. It’s great whilst it works though, and sports the best named main character - ‘Hiro Protagonist’. However, chronologically, you can see Stephenson’s style develop nicely over time.

The Diamond Age’ then, has a bit of both - a strong, yet slightly irrelevant first chapter albeit in the universe, but a much stronger ending, albeit somehow vague. It’s set in a future where there’s a lot of nanotech amongst an almost retro steam-punk society of phyles - the future nations - geographically spread sub-city states, with one of the main ones being the New Atlantis clave, also known as ‘Viccies’ due to their adoption of Victorian dress and behaviour. Basically then, instead of single, contiguous physical countries, all these nations have huge embassies all over the world and almost no central hub.

The plot revolves around an ensemble of characters; Nell, a small girl whose brother at the outset steals her the titular Illustrated Primer which is itself a illicit copy made by a New Atlantean engineer, the original of which was commissioned by a senior Equity Lord for his daughter.

The book is fully interactive, or ‘ractive’ and over the years Nell learns from it both academically and in many other ways, as it leads her on her own real world journey via the stories it tells, to join the New Atlantean phyle. Conversely, the book’s creator, engineer John Hackworth, a respected man in the Viccie phyle is cast out when his illegal copy is discovered, only to go undercover to understand the reasoning behind events involving Doctor X. the man who performed the copy, his own plans, and the events involving the drummers.

The whole thing works quite well, and draws in the hopes of technologies such as nanotech, and how a sponsored age of plenty could evolve, how whole islands can be programmed and created, down to the failing of artificial intelligence, and the reliance in the ractors of humans by preference for interaction. There’s a subtle undercurrent of the role of family in the novel, but also how children can be raised by technology, or how different people from differing layers of society can have access to similar tech, and evolve differently. Case in point is that Nell is mainly interacting with a single female ractor who becomes a mother figure, with her father in the background. The mouse army are poorer, but saved from certain death, through the Primer identify as a force in the book’s virtual world, and later in the real world, drawing strength from each other. Essentially everyone reacts differently to the Primer and it illustrates the choices make in life.

The book then is well worth the time; there are some diversions - the drummers seem a little illogical at times, but seem to be set up as the anti-Victorian phyle to illustrate Hackworth’s fall as he would have initially seen it, and in his search for the the alchemist, which almost becomes a pure plot device to drive the story. That aside, the historical references, the sheer detail Stephenson goes into really makes the world perhaps more so than SnowCrash. Worth a read.

Thoughts on my Kindle

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:27:15 +0000

I like to read. I’m not saying I’m some kind of über prolific reader, but I do get through one or two books a month, although I like essays, short stories, novellas and such as well. So what I wanted then, was an e-reader to buy books to, which would allow me to drop things in to it from gutenberg.org and other public domain locations, then also white papers and other lengthy pieces of text from the net. I’ve been eyeing the Kindle for a couple of years, but between the form factor and the price, I hadn’t gone for it, but with the 3rd generation model having a wi-fi only model available, and the then high on the yen vs. dollar exchange rate, I thought it might be time to bite, so I ordered, it shipped, and now I’ve been using it for almost a couple of months. So here’s my thoughts on my Kindle.

Out of the box, the device is well packaged, and it simply powers on and works. It’s a good first experience.

I’ll be honest though, it’d didn’t work straight away with the WPA2 wireless in my house based out of an old Apple Airport Express access point. It really didn’t seem to want to try, so I looked at the Kindle Forums, and though people were helpful, the tech level there is as you might expect for a general customer device perhaps - it’s addressed some issues, but some of the reasoning is a little off target - there’s a lot of misunderstanding amongst posters, and attempted clarification by helpers on what WEP is and isn’t, what the SSID is and isn’t, what the password is and isn’t and what are your wireless access point details, and what are your ISP router details. At least they’re polite.

I also tried calling Kindle support, and to be fair, their response was what they promised - I entered my number, and a few minutes later, they called me back. I have to say though, I put in a Japan number, but the response was in English and I don’t think the person had any Japanese language skills, so I don’t know what kind of support a Japanese only speaker would get. (Also, the Kindle itself came set to English with no Japanese instructions, though the cover does have Japanese instructions.)

Anyway, I did get it working, and I’ve put the troubleshooting part of that at the bottom, so we can talk a bit more about the device itself now.

Overall, it’s excellent. The readability is very good - it’s not black and white, but a pulp grey and black, and honestly, with a few pages, I forgot I was using an electronic device. I actually caught myself trying to look at the top of the Kindle to see how far through the book I was. It really is as immersive as a book as far as I’m concerned. The Kindle does helpfully tell you what percentage you have read at the bottom of the screen in place of page numbers which obviously aren’t valid as you might alter the font size and so on, and there all the note and bookmark options you’ll need.

The UI is still a bit odd though. You can make folders, lets say ‘Thrillers’ and place certain novels and stories into it. Great. Except they still show in the main listing as well, which for me means it’s already getting quite cluttered, and I’d like to have all my sci-fi together, my comedy together and reference works together. I’m half thinking I’m missing something on this.

I commute to work on a busy train, and even in it’s leather cover I had no problem holding the Kindle for an hour at a time into work, though they’re not that common in Tokyo, so it did get a few second glances.

Some other notes on the physical device: the battery does last as long as it says - at least four weeks with wi-fi off, and a built in memory capacity of ~ 3GB which I think will be enough for now.

Getting works on to the device and into that memory is interesting. When you enable the device on Amazon.com, you get an e-mail address to which you can e-mail acceptable formats and when you connect via wi-fi, it’ll connect to that address and download the works you’ve sent. This is also the way you get the stories you can buy on Amazon itself, delivered wirelessly via the ‘WhisperNet’. You can also connect the device to your PC/Mac and it shows as a mass storage device on the desktop so you can copy files on to it directly. This is all fine, but for many, knowing what’ll work and what wont is a bit hit n miss, and I might not want to use this clunky desktop approach.

One app I’ve been using to get around this is Calibre, which converts files between formats like ePub (which the Kindle doesn’t support but which is popular), text and so on to the .mobi format Amazon does support. It’ll also e-mail the file to your Kindle account for download. Why doesn’t Amazon offer this functionality in it’s Kindle for Mac/PC app?

Buying an e-book from Amazon is pure simplicity. I bought ’ Daemon’ by Daniel Suarez and once purchased it really was just pushed down to my device and I could read it within seconds. Excellent. One disappointing note is that many Kindle books are a bit overpriced in my humble opinion - most are paperback price, some are hardback price (like ‘Freedom TM’, the sequel to Daemon, at the time of writing).

Really? For a file which saves Amazon and the publisher all the physical media and shipping? If you look at the tags on many books, people have tagged them as expensive Kindle versions. This is a real shame at this stage of adoption.

Basically then, it’s an iPod for reading, which is what these things were always meant to be; certainly it’s web browser works, but I don’t see much point for it. Some people on the forums slammed it because for some reason they thought they were getting a 140USD iPad. It’s not an iPad. It’s a book reader, and for that it’s excellent. You can also listen to audio books if you like too, which is no surprise since the leader in that market is the Amazon owned Audible.

Overall, I’m really pleased with this purchase, and the Amazon case I got for it. It gets taken a lot of places, and I’ve already read a lot on it, and I can see it being excellent for trips. Again, if you want something to read books on, get a Kindle. If you have more cash and want a media device and maybe read something, then get an iPad I suppose, though I emphasise, reading for long periods I’m told by friends is not as good an experience. I see this Kindle as being something I’ll actually use more than I expected, and that’s always the sign of a good purchase.

The technical bit

Just to cover my out of the box lack of wi-fi activation. So it couldn’t see my SSID, and when I manually entered the details it said it just couldn’t connect. Allegedly being at least somewhat tech savvy, I decided to give it a try from first principles, but I wanted to see where official support channels would get the average user, that is, if my parents had this issue. Firstly, the forums; as I said they are good people, perhaps not overly technical, but definitely keen, but no real answers unfortunately. I called Amazon’s Kindle support line.

The person went through their script and was very polite, but their bottom line suggestion was to go to McDonalds, to a totally open wi-fi hotspot, register/activate the device and then it might work on my home network. There is a McDonalds down the road, but honestly, I wasn’t drunk (my usual requirement to duck under the golden arches) and since I have full control of my wireless system, and consider myself somewhat technical, I decided to give it a crack. So, I dropped everything to make my system a hotspot and set my Apple Airport Express to factory default - it worked fine. I don’t recommend having anything else on your wi-fi if you do that - it’s not very safe.

I then started ‘rebuilding’ the security - put WPA2 on, made a few other minor changes like the channel, and every was fine. I didn’t get it, then I changed one last setting back to how it had been before: “Connection Sharing” - factory default is to ‘Share a Public IP Address’ whereas I had it set to “Off - Bridge Mode” and sure enough changing that kills my Kindle’s ability to connect to the wireless, no matter what anything else is set to. I honestly have no idea why, and since the box is ~six years old and discontinued I doubt it’s a big thing in the market. I do wonder if anyone can replicate this though.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

bl0ke — 2010-11-24

Agree totally on the price point for eBooks. At the time of writing Ian Rankin’s “Doors Open” is available in the UK £3.86 in a major supermarket, £4.49 from Amazon or… £6.99 in the Kindle store. WTF?

RandomizeME — 2010-11-24

RE: pricing

What happened was that the “Agency Model” got to the Kindle store. Blame Apple for initiating Agency pricing in the first place (since they wanted iBooks to be competitive). Basically, what happened is that the Top 5 publishers (except RandomHouse I think) forced bookstores (like Amazon, etc) to agree that all eBook pricing will be decided by the publishers instead of each single bookstore deciding on its own (takes away the competition). That’s when prices became unreasonable. Amazon just acts like an affiliate for the eBooks that fall under the Agency deal.

brightblack — 2010-11-25

Thanks for the notes on the Agency model.

I can appreciate the desire to make more money, but this just seems so brazen. Perhaps that’s why Amazon makes it so easy to compare pricing for versions of the book? Either way, it stopped my buying the sequel to Daemon (Freedom TM) in any format, not just the e-book. I wonder if the Kindle version will come down in price when the trade paperback comes out. Now that really would define a weird, old model, way of viewing releases.

gen — 2011-01-01

Happy New Year.

I’m on GR with you (as gkanai, iirc.)

I have the same problem as you. New Kindle 3, Airport Extreme set to Bridge mode, and it can’t connect. I will try switching to ‘Share a Public IP Address’ mode, but I really want to only have 1 DHCP server on my network (which I lose when I switch to ‘Share a Public IP Address’ mode.)

One can download books to one’s machine and upload via USB, right?

brightblack — 2011-01-01

Hi Gen

Thanks for the comment.

Let me know how you get on. It seems like an odd ‘fix’ but this was the one thing I could change and guarantee the break/fix my issue. I too don’t want two subnets in my home, but so far I’m living with it. For the record, my Kindle is on v3.0.1. I heard there was a newer firmware so maybe in time I’ll update and see if that fixes it.

I think you can still use the USB method to copy books etc. across, so it’s not all a lost cause, though I don’t know if you can activate via USB.

gen — 2011-01-01

My Kindle’s already activated, so that’s not the problem. It won’t connect to the WiFi.

The other bummer with syncing via USB is that I don’t get copies of the books on my other mobile devices, which I do get if I sync via WhisperSync.

Matt — 2012-01-15

I found a workaround for the issue of not being able to connect in bridge mode: https://discussions.apple.com/message/17294792#17294792

But Amazon really should fix this problem! Thanks for the post - helped me realize I wasn’t alone in this.

gurahamu — 2012-01-16

Thanks Matt. I just read the link, and I’m going to try that this week, but I agree there’s still something a bit odd with the way Kindles handle wi-fi negotiation.

Bookshelf: This Bleeding City

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 23:04:23 +0000

This is another debut novel - that’s two in a row - but this is in stark contrast to the tech thriller which was Daemon. From the bookshelf then: “This Bleeding City” is the first published novel by Alex Preston, and as an English graduate who became a trader in London, and then went on to become a writer, has a certain parallel and insight to the novel’s main protagonist.

However, given some of the events in the book, I hope much of the events are from observation rather than experience.

The prologue opens as Charlie Wales, the book’s main character, forgets that his small child is still in his car in the car park as he gets absorbed with his work. He suddenly remembers hours later, and in a panic pitches through the crowds, returning to find his infant son unconscious - and we don’t know whether he lives or dies. This effectively sets the tone for the whole novel.

Set against the recent economic meltdown in the financial markets around the world, it tells the story of Charlie, and his friends Henry and Vero and their journey from their time at university in Edinburgh through unemployed times in London, to Charlie’s rise as an analyst and finally trader for the Silverbirch company, his dropping out for the woman he loves, and his going back again to achieve greater fortune, though that never seems to be enough.

In some ways it’s a character study, amplified through the greed and constant envy amongst the climbing financial markets. Charlie sees himself as being the poor relation both financially and culturally to his friends, he being from a lower middle class family in Worthington, and they from wealthier parts of England, and in Vero’s case, France, and spends much of the novel attempting to climb to the next rung, and as soon as he makes it up one he almost instantly sees the next and moves off to that.

Having worked on the fringe of the finance sector (the company I work for is mentioned in the book) I can find it fairly believable, and Preston writes the characters well, tracking the innate raw intelligence of most of the characters, which is then undermined by their pathological flaws for either wealth or status or sheer indulgence.

Preston inserts some great characters into the plot - the tragic teeth stained Madison, who completely sees the insanity of her life, but who is unable to pull out of her job, so wed to it is she, and so determined to prove herself with her insight that the markets will soon fail. She is one of the the most fascinating people in the book, and perhaps represents rationality in that those around her aren’t at all interested in reality. She in turn links to the mentored Ray, who is completely outside the financial world as a low income adolescent, and sees Madison’s and Charlie’s choice of job and life often to be somewhat deranged.

Henry and Vero both weave in and out of the world of greed which is constantly associated with the markets, and seemingly are always better off when they’re away from it, though not directly, but mainly via Charlie, they all become entwined in the downward spiral and at the end I only really had sympathy for Henry, but it’s a sort of flawed sympathy somehow.

Charlie himself is carefully portrayed to try to let you maintain some sympathy for him throughout most of the novel, and only really towards the end (not wanting to put in any spoilers here) do we really see how he truly is - or at least what he has become - and eventually, I would argue, he gets what he deserves in many ways. Even then, even through the ups in his social status he maintains a small flat in Lodnon with poor heating, no television and an old car, as he reads compulsively and trawls real-estate website looking at possible future homes.

Overall I’d say this is a book well worth reading, even if you have no interest in the market - and no knowledge of them is needed to follow the story - just to see how someone with a bit of a chip on their shoulder and a fair amount of intelligence can not only wreak havoc in their own life and that of their family, but to almost everyone else they have a relationship with. The writing style is also very smooth, and very fluid given the topic of the storyline which makes some of the more unexpected and shocking events seem a bit removed or glossy which is perhaps the intent as the characters are often on drugs or just have a certain detachment from people and events, which is sometimes the crux of Charlie’s life.

Bookshelf: Daemon

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 01:09:39 +0000

Next up from the electronic bookshelf: Daemon. It’s been a while since I read a tech thriller, set just a little in the future. This one is the first published novel by Daniel Suarez, an actual IT and Security consultant who went into writing. In fact, Daemon was at first a self-published effort, but was then picked up by a ‘real’ publishing house for release in 2009; I actually read this on my Kindle.

Written across three parts separated by several months, it starts with the death of a genius MMORPG and AI designer - Matthew Sobol - which in turn provides the trigger for the eponymous Daemon he has designed which will re-shape the whole of global society, and not just on the internet, and the ‘darknet’, but in actual physical life, using recruits from the games, working in augmented reality rigs, and even controlled cars called AutoM8s. The book primarily follows some key law officers trying to unravel the mystery of the Daemon, and some of it’s key recruits from both the gaming world, but also from criminal ranks.

The book itself comes out quite strongly, though in the first section, primarily about Sobol’s death and the storming of his mansion and the ensuing carnage, is well written, but suffers a little from the sheer number of characters who are introduced, many of whom are never seen or referenced again in the book, which detracts a bit as you’re mentally trying to retain all these names before you realise it doesn’t matter. There are also two key action sequences at the beginning and end of the novel which seem wholly written for a film adaptation, which for me sort of spoiled them a bit, though they are well written and relevant to the overall plot for the most part.

It’s apparent from the opening that the author does have more than a passing knowledge of technology, and seems to be able to write comfortably on it - tech references don’t feel as forced as they do in some books, when the author is dropping in words he learned in the research phase. The only minor thought I had on the tech name dropping was the references to datacentres running Cat5 data cabling. Really? Not Cat5e or Cat6? That’s a fairly nerdy piece of nit-picking though.

The whole world works well though when successive characters sense the futility of what they’re doing, and more importantly, who they’re doing it for. As the book progresses, and the scale and severity of the Daemon becomes apparent, it seems less and less that U.S. Federal forces, in the shape of the initial police, FBI, NSA and CIA members are really running the show, and more and more people and functions are shown to be merely outsourced to private security contractors, who as corporate entities like the Daemon, can be infiltrated.

Overall it was a real page turner, so to speak, and as soon as the sequel’s price drops for the Kindle version, I’ll definitely be snapping it up. The story is a very refreshing read, and makes a more convincing scenario not only for a virus to go global, but also how it could social engineer itself into the real world via operatives recruited online. I must admit that at times some parts did feel like a geek version of ‘ Fight Club’ as people on the fringes of society are recruited for fun, then turned to an anti-establishment goal, but not to the detriment of the storyline, where for once, some police officers are portrayed as the heroes, themselves let down by their system, which cannot decide how do deal with the Daemon, and again, how many of them are actually working for the system anyway and are not merely out-sourced.

I always try to read a new author as often as I can, and Daniel Suarez, even though this book has been out some time, deserves a selection, especially as the sequel to this book - Freedom (™) - was released earlier this year so you can read them closer together.

Bookshelf: Rework

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 11:18:44 +0000

Next up on the (audio) bookshelf: Rework. This is, perhaps, another unconventional business book, taking the passionate elements like ‘Crush it!’ but more tech business based, coming from the founders of 37signals.com. These chaps make web based project management tools, and have built a fairly decent business on it, as well as being we respected in the coding community.

I listened to the book unabridged via Audible and at 2hr 50mins., it’s almost a long podcast. You can also download PDF samples from their website, but the book itself is only 288 pages - it’s a quick read. So how did I hear about it, and why did I read it. Well, I’ve followed their products for a few years, but never been able to use them, and have heard a few speeches of theirs, and seem interviews, so I thought it’d be an interesting book from people who have actually done it. I really don’t find Harvard Business Review type books very interesting at all, and a lot of guru books just seem to be angling for consultancy or speaking gig deals. So how was this raw book?

It comes out from chapter one aggressively, citing it’s from real business people, not from academics and that it flies against conventional wisdom - a point it returns to several times.

They rail against long term planning. ‘Planning is guessing’ so why not called it that - ‘financial guessing’? They go on that planning is inflexible and does not allow for improvisation as you know most when you’re actually doing it.

‘Why do people assume a bigger company is better? If that was true, why doesn’t Harvard and other business schools grow like that? Maybe a company does have a right size.’ It’s a fair point, and it does make you wonder; of course, 37Signals is a private company - they can chose their growth, whereas traded companies can’t. So, following their points - isn’t that their fault for going public?

‘Workaholism is bad…it’s stupid. They [workaholics] make more problems, they miss opportunities and create poor solutions. It also creates the ‘ass in seat’ mentality.’

This is something I see more and more tech startups and such coming back to - not that the goal doesn’t get hit, but the mentality behind it. Ironically, I’ve seen this in Japan for years - yet the ‘West’ lauded Japan for long work hours. But that was it, no awesome results, just attendee-ism, so yes, I think they nail this point in that section.

One section -a mini rant - I quite like is their discussion on support, and when you call a support line you are on hold whilst a pre-recorded voice tells you that you call is important to them - just not important enough to hire more support people right?

It’s an interesting read, and indeed it isn’t an academic approach and whilst it does come from a small company (16 people) and at first my reaction was along the lines of ,“Well, that works in a small web company, but in a big, real company, it would never work…” but actually that’s wrong - headed. The truth is many of the points are true anyway, and you can implement them in any business - perhaps the “we’re too big” is just a default excuse for the rest of us.

Case in point are meetings - they can be useful when focussed but think of them as man hours taken for everyone to see the real cost of a meeting - it’s not one hour, it’s a six man hour meeting. The section ‘meetings are toxic’ kind of sums it up. I’ve actually been thinking about that a lot when I schedule meetings, and think - how can I keep the man-hours for this meeting to a bare minimum.

There’s a good section on interruptions and that they destroy productivity and potentially having ‘alone zones’. Again, why wouldn’t it work? Why not even try it?

All in all then, it’s a quick, worthy read for anyone in any business. For the small business it might remind you a bit on really, what are the growth goals for your company? For those of us in larger companies, it’s really a challenge backed up by the benefits of results and the fact that deep down you get this feeling that quite a few of these points are simply right.

Bookshelf: Crush It!

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:18:40 +0000

From the bookshelf: “Crush It!” is by entrepreneur, wine evangelist and now social media consultant, Gary Vaynerchuck. I was trying to think of how I actually heard about him in the first place, and I remembered it was listening to him on “This Week In Startups”, hosted by Jason Calacanis. That podcast should be listened to to give you a flavour of the man, and in turn, give you an idea of what to expect in the book. On that podcast, he comes across as a passionate and driven man, and that comes across in the book. You can also see him live at the Rails 2010 Conference (if you don’t like swearing, give it a miss!).

The hardback is relatively short at 142 pages, but it’s a fast and flowing read. Let’s be honest though, this doesn’t have that much new in it, and given it talks about social media and came out in mid 2009, some bits appear dated already. However, that’s not what’s of interest in this book.

What Gary ‘Vee’ does in the book is put a lot of things into a framework, and unlike other dry, business oriented attempts to ‘get rich quick from the web’, this truly is written with passion and enthusiasm, indeed that’s the full title of the book: Why Now is the Time to Crush It! - Cash in on your Passion. On page two he lays it out:

“Love your family. Work superhard. Live your passion.”

If you’re used to Harvard Business Review style books which seem to make a few good points, but make you feel they’re just hiding the real meat of the subject so you’ll subscribe or attend a seminar, or just recite dry case studies to pad the book out, definitely read this book. This book is short, but self contained. It’s a basic manual to social networking.

So it is partly evangelizing how to work in a more social media affected, and effected era. He rails against CVs/Resumes, something I agree with, and points out how it’s more about your personal brand, whether or not you are looking for a job, and that since employers - or anyone - looks for your online presence, you need to own it and define it. He also gives a lot of tips on how to do it, and gives real, recent examples, both good and bad about how other people and companies are doing it. It’s not just about “get a blog”, it’s a question of stitching together a blog, to Twitter to Facebook and so on, and driving traffic. He tends to focus on defining a niche and driving traffic at that, but even if you aren’t looking to build a business, that online branding is still very important, interesting - and useful.

Remember that this is exactly how Vaynerchuck himself broke out - as host of winelibrary.tv - which was an online extension to his family’s co-op beers/wines/spirits shop in New Jersey, massively increasing revenue and ultimately growing the business. He then grew beyond that to be a social media proponent, leading to the aforementioned speaking gigs, the book, and now a consultancy.

For the book though, is it worth it? Yes it is; business books tend to be boring, written by academics - this is a man who has done it and enjoyed doing it, so that’s what comes across. Again, this is more about how to mix the ingredients, and that’s what it brings to the table - as he says at one point - the only part of your product a competitor can’t replicate - is you.

Bookshelf: The Windup Girl

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:45:03 +0000

From the bookshelf: The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. This was a book I saw recommended on the ‘Swords and Laser’ website and podcast, otherwise, I’d probably have never have heard about it. That said, I listened to the audiobook version - unabridged of course - from Audible.com.

The story is set in a Thailand of the future, amidst a dystopian world ravaged by the downside of genetically modified foods - blister rust and other diseases have left most crops unviable, meaning the world is scrambling to find enough food and electricity and easy international travel have disappeared with the last of the oil. Now people travel by dirigible airship and sail boats, and store energy in wound springs.

Thailand has somehow shut itself off from the failing outside world, despite mass atrocities across the border in Malaysia, and pressure from global food companies and their ‘calorie men’ to succumb to single grow crops, and keep their own food clean. This self sufficiency and wall against modified crops is ruthlessly enforced by the ‘white shirts’ of the environmental ministry who seek out and cleanse any sign of disease - a cleansing usually of fire and lime.

Into this world, a calorie man called Anderson Lake is sent undercover to a factory which makes springs, as he seeks out the elusive Thai seed bank.

By accident he meets Emiko - a windup - a genetically engineered servant named after their almost clockwork jerky movements - abandoned by her Japanese master to serve in a secret sex club. Plagued in the humid capital of Bangkok by her tiny skin pores her former master requested to give her smoother skin, but unable to break with her conditioning of subservience, she looks for a way out of her life to live in a fabled village of windups in northern Thailand.

The setting is original - I haven’t seen too many sci-fi stories set in Thailand, and the overall feel, with the lack of electricity clashing with the high tech of the genetic rippers produces a world akin to a hot, sweaty steampunk novel, though I’ve seen it referred to as a ‘biopunk’ work, which does kind of fit.

The writing is solid, truly achieving the feel of a failed society, the heat and sweat of a summer in Thailand, and the desperation of almost all the characters. All sides are represented, and whilst much of the story follows Lake and Emiko, the texture of the world is shown through an incorruptible white shirt and former Muay Thai fighter Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, his assistant, and a yellow card, Hock Seng, a formerly wealthy trader from Malaysia who now runs the spring factory since his entire family were slaughtered in his homeland.

The whole storyline twists and turns, and overall, the plot has a satisfactory outcome, winding through politics, military intervention and indeed the indigenous beliefs of the Thai people themselves, and their pragmatic approach to this new world order. It isn’t a book which relies on its setting to prop up a weak story, it balances the two quite well, which makes it easy to get into and quite satisfying right to the end. Indeed, at the end you might realise that the Thais, as underdogs have held together far better as a society, than the west represented here by the huge seed companies, and other nations which have embraced them and fallen.

[ Wikipedia Link]

Bookshelf: The Amber Spyglass

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:13:35 +0000

Bookshelf: The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman. The third and final of the ’ His Dark Materials’ trilogy sees the main two protagonists, Lyra and Will essentially just wandering around. I know they go to the land of the dead and it’s all quite scary, and we learn more about dust (remember that) and daemons, but it just comes off as, well, just wandering around.

Let me put this in perspective - given the build up of the first two books, I was expecting this last one to be something of a ‘Return of the King’, but somehow, the two key children seem to miss the great battle a little and what goes on afterwards seems like Mr. Pullman just didn’t want to type ‘The End’.

Will seems to have forgotten his mother for great chunks of the book, or at least not be too bothered, Metatron gets a nice build up then seems to be gone in a page, as does his boss and Lord Asriel and company, which is a shame as I was hoping that was going to become a showdown with neither or them being good nor truly evil, but probably a lot closer to the latter.

I suppose for many of the adult characters, the point is that they’re arrogant and have more interest in who has the power, rather than the Platonic notion of what they do with it.

The writing itself is solid, but somehow what could have been show stopping, seems to get caught at acceptable. Mary Malone gets scant to do with the rest of the cast, though the mulefa and that story arc was well thought out provided a nice counterpoint of evolutionary concepts to balance the other ‘religious’ sentiment in the books. Ironically, she’s the one who makes the amber spyglass of the title, which gets used but a handful of times.

Of the throwaway characters, the assassin sent by the Church should receive a prize, or be fired for incompetence, were he not done away with swiftly and almost by accident. I did like the concept of his pre-emptive penance though, a nice touch on the concept of the forgiveness of sin.

In all then, it’s an ending of sorts to the trilogy whilst leaving the door open (excuse the pun) for another novel in the universe. In itself its worth reading if you’ve done the other two, but in isolation, I cant help feeling that somehow it loses its shape in the last third.

The Amber Spyglass @ Random House

Back to Books at Last

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:21:25 +0000

Back to Books at Last! I’ve been in the fortunate position for a while now to have a pile of books to read. I hate being stuck without something to read. At a stretch I’ll settle for an audiobook or podcast (or a documentary on my iPod). Preferably though, I like a book. That said, over the last six months, my reading has hit a very, very slow patch.

Some of this has been due to watching The Long Way Round, Long Way Down and Race to Dakar on my iPod, some due to watching Bleach, but generally, after those things, I just haven’t had much time.

The book currently in progress is something a bit unusual for me, and a bit ironic given the time I’ve been reading through it: Dave Allen’s “Getting Things Done”. My inability to finish it, is partly due to the above reasons, but also because it’s so good, I find myself already delving back into the one hundred and twenty pages I’ve already read to re-read bits. In case you didn’t guess, it’s all about getting organised and focused. Something I need to badly do at work and personally. More than that, I think some of this stuff might actually work.

I have my general reading list of things I want to get though in an order which will give me a bit of variety. However, a book arrived this week (kindly bought by my wife), which has jumped the queue to be my next read book: Jupiter’s Travels. This, as it notes on the new printing’s front page, is the book which inspired The Long Way Round. In fact, they bump into the author, Ted Simon, in Mongolia I think. He’s only on screen for a minute or two, but his brief voice over was enough for me to track his website down and put the book on my Xmas list:

“I think the motorcycle is best because it puts you so much in contact with everything. You experience, much more closely, the nature of the terrain, you can almost taste the cultures that you’re riding through. Because it exposes you to the climate, to the wind and rain, it’s a much more complete experience.”

“I think the motorcycle is best because it puts you so much in contact with everything. You experience, much more closely, the nature of the terrain, you can almost taste the cultures that you’re riding through. Because it exposes you to the climate, to the wind and rain, it’s a much more complete experience.”

Essentially, Ted rode around the world in the seventies for four years, then aged in his mid forties. Then in 2001, he did it again for three years at the age of almost seventy. The book is a journal from that first trip, and I’m really, really looking forward to getting stuck into it.

Gaijin Hanzai Informative Magazine

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 14:06:04 +0000

You’ve probably seen this do - Gaijin Hanzai Informative Magazine. There just aren’t enough superlatives to describe just how awful we foreigners are apparently. Well, I say ‘we’, but apparently no Europeans or North Americans commit crime … just the rest of them. Pages here, here and here.

" Gaijin Hanzai Ura File" as the book is known, may well still be available from such hard core right wing establishments as…er…Family Mart.

All in all, it’s just an odd situation, with these fairly normal shops having to apologise and get it off their shelves to save a bit of bad publicity.

This blog is not really the place for me to go into the ‘race issue’ in Japan, or even my own experiences, and though I would say Japan has an inclination to legalised, institutional racism, I wouldn’t say it’s (personally, physically) dangerous, and I don’t think these people represent even a tiny, if vocal, percentage of the population. That said, some foreigners have committed crimes, and I’m not talking about visa overstays either. However, by far, most crime is committed by Japanese, even by percentage.

Overall summary: kind of sad this book can be published in 2007 in what is a very enjoyable place to live.

Two books to download / purchase

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 12:05:29 +0000

The ever useful and interesting Boing Boing over the holiday season. Both are under Creative Commons, and are ‘free’ downloads, but feel free to pay for a copy if you like them! They are tech-lawyer Lawrence Lessig’s “Code v2”, and Peter Watts’ “Blindsight”.

Original Comments

Comments from the original WordPress blog post.

Mirai the Great! — 2006-12-20

Hey Got Mac OSX.4.6 working on my ThinkPad. Using it right now. :) A bit unstable but kinda nice. Boy Mac has changed since the days. It’ll take me a while to refamilar myself. Need to figure out how to change to a Japanese keyboard. Where is everything!!!! !@#@$#%%$^!

gotta go

Mirai the Great! — 2007-03-09

ahahaa….you’s white people crack me up!

Portable Rollins

Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:25:35 +0000

I’ve been reading ’ The Portable Henry Rollins’ on and off for a few months now - it’s a compendium of extracts from several of his books, published in one volume. As it’s essentially a series of diary entries, letters and short stories, you can pick it up and put it down easily. Rollins is a heavy writer so there’s weight in this book, it’s not about happiness, it’s about pain and loneliness in a crowd. It’s also strangely compelling. If you’ve never read Rollins, then get this as a primer. If you already have a couple of Rollin’s books, then still get this, it’s a great compilation.

New Doctorow Novel

Sun, 08 Feb 2004 17:34:41 +0000

Good news from last week is that Cory Doctorow has released a new book - ’ Eastern Standard Tribe’. For those who have never heard of Doctorow, he’s one of the people behind a blog called Boing Boing and also the writer of last year’s " Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom", which was not only a great story, but also the item which introduced me to the Creative Commons license; you see Doctorow makes his works downloadable under license, allowing people to read the whole thing - unimpeded by rights management, and if you like it, you can buy a copy of the book. I applaud this, and yes, I will be buying a copy of the new book too.

Sun and wine

Tue, 29 Apr 2003 14:55:12 +0000

Nice. After a sun splashed weekend, it’s now a national holiday, and yet another beautiful sunny day. Having already spent an hour on the balcony with a book and a glass of red wine, it’s now time to get serious - and head to the park armed with a bigger book, a couple of bottles of water and enough energy to lie down on the grass. Truly a tough life :-)

The throat is now much better.

Something for the weekend

Mon, 24 Feb 2003 23:38:47 +0000

Late post for the weekend - went to see " The Bourne Identity. I also had a great time at a friend’s birthday party on the Sunday.

I’ve also just started reading Alex Kerr’s book “Dogs and Demons”, and am currently about 80 pages into it. It’s about the Japanese government over the last 40 years, and some of the things they’ve been up to - so far it’s somewhere between fascinating and scary.

Also - snow today in Tokyo again…not quite enough to board on though.