August 2005

Camping

Posted on by Patrick

We went camp­ing on the week­end. [edit: The pho­tos are now post­ed.] I’d nev­er been down to the beach at Minnedosa. It was a love­ly spot, and the stars at night as we walked back to our tent were amaz­ing. We were right down on the beach, too, which was still as glass, reflect­ing the lights of the town on the far shore. Every­thing was perfect…

…except.

There was a wed­ding in town, and a bunch of the par­ty-goers had tents two slots down from us at the camp­ground. Which would’ve been fine except that they decid­ed that 4 AM was the per­fect time to turn on their stereo and blare crap­tas­tic music. I seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered just get­ting up, pack­ing up, and dri­ving home — it’s only half an hour from my house to the camp­ground — but I knew the camp­ground gates were locked. So I lay there and fan­ta­sized about what I would do if I had a mil­lion-can­dle­pow­er hand-held flood­light. Even­tu­al­ly I got to sleep, but it was­n’t what you’d call a qual­i­ty sleep.

How was your weekend?

As promised…

Posted on by Patrick

…my two “Gun­slinger” sto­ries are avail­able over on my writ­ing blog, Fan­tômes. Enjoy!

[edit] Except now, of course, the host that I have my writ­ing blog set up on has been unreach­able for 12+ hours. Brilliant.

New story

Posted on by Patrick

So I sat and wrote for about 2½ hours straight. I neglect­ed my wife, I have a wicked case of numb-bum, and I have a new 2500ish-word sto­ry, a sequel of sorts to an ear­li­er work. Tomor­row I’ll prob­a­bly post both of ’em over in Fan­tômes. Right now it’s time for bed.

By the Numbers

Posted on by Patrick

I almost titled this one “8y 7h3 Numb3r5”, but then I remem­bered how much I hate 1337speak.

So. I went for a bike ride tonight, a nice lit­tle jaunt that took me in a big cir­cle (well, a square) (well, a poly­gon of some kind) from my place down to 34th street, then south and east to the mall, then north to Park Ave, west down to 22nd, and then a straight shot north back to my house.

Some Num­bers
Num­ber of min­utes I was on my bike: 30.
Active heart rate at the end of my ride: 108bpm.
Num­ber of small white dogs that I almost ran over: one.*
Num­ber of big white vans that almost ran me over: one.**
Num­ber of cars with loud “muf­flers” that spat par­tial­ly-unburned gaso­line into the air at $1.039/litre***: two.
Amount of phys­i­cal work that I did: a big fat zero.****

______________

* He was curi­ous, and his own­er had his leash payed out a lit­tle too far, and she (his own­er) did­n’t see me com­ing. I man­aged to slide under some wil­low branch­es, off the trail, so as not to crush the poor wee beastie.
** It was in the for­mer Wal-Mart park­ing lot. I imag­ine traf­fic’s a lit­tle light there these days. I had right-of-way, and he was coast­ing through a stop sign. I don’t know if he did­n’t see me, or if he did see me but is in pos­ses­sion of a brain with pow­er enough to run a chip­munk or some­thing, but the end result is, I braked, he braked (even­tu­al­ly), and I con­tin­ued, unscathed but with pound­ing heart.
*** That’s a bit over four bucks a gal­lon, for all y’all Amer­i­cans out there.
**** By def­i­n­i­tion, in physics, W=mad (work = mass × accel­er­a­tion × dis­place­ment), and is a vec­tor. So, since I start out and end up at the same place, the d term is 0, and so the whole equa­tion sorts out to noth­ing. (So, if I’d set up house­keep­ing, say, down at the mall, my phys­i­cal work would have been some non-zero val­ue. But then I’d have had to write out all kinds of change-of-address cards, and explain things to my wife, who is fine with my geek­ery in a the­o­ret­i­cal kind of way, but prob­a­bly not quite so under­stand­ing as to move just to set­tle a point. So… zero work done tonight.)

Mind you, I was born in Win­nipeg, and that’s two hun­dred kilo­me­ters away. a = v/t = d/t2, and d is 200,000 meters, and… oh crap, t=~1,000,000,000s, square that, and divide by it… The work done in get­ting from there to here, over the course of my life, is, shall we say, negligible.

Oh well.

And yes. I know I’m a geek. Oh yes, how I know it.

1000 words at a time

Posted on by Patrick

A thou­sand words tonight, in about an hour. My nov­el-in-progress, Earth Fleet*, is now at 10,000+ words of a pro­ject­ed 120,000ish.
Snippet:

Cabrell had­n’t been to the hub since the press­gang order had come into effect. He’d almost for­got­ten, this morn­ing, had in fact been sit­ting down to a large break­fast when some lit­tle angel had whis­pered in his ear those mag­i­cal words: weight­less vom­it. Instead of the omelette and sausage, he’d set­tled for some tea and a dry wafer of nutrients.

I have 11 chap­ters so far, of a prob­a­ble 80–100. So things appear to be on course. (Yes, I like short chap­ters. That’s just the way it goes, sometimes.)

_________

*Until and unless I come up with a bet­ter title.

Loud obnoxious goodness

Posted on by Patrick

Bought Rob Zom­bie’s Past, Present and Future album today. It’s his great­est hits com­pi­la­tion CD/DVD, and has stuff like “Thun­der Kiss ‘65” and “Drag­u­la” on it. Great tunes, if you like that sort of thing. The man (and his band, the now-defunct White Zom­bie) pret­ty much invent­ed grind­core, I think. And if they did­n’t invent, they sure­ly refined it and brought it to the Peo­ple. Or something.

Two weird things about this:

  1. I bought it in Wal-Mart. Now I’m in Cana­da, so maybe things are dif­fer­ent up here, but I thought Wal­ly World did­n’t stock music with Parental Advi­sories on it.
  2. Far be it from me to com­plain, but, man, Rob, you’re slip­pin’. What hap­pened to album titles like Astro-Creep 2000: Songs of Love, Destruc­tion, and Oth­er Syn­thet­ic Delu­sions of the Elec­tric Head? I mean, real­ly. Past, Present, and Future sounds a lit­tle like a Lover­boy reunion album or some­thing… (Please don’t kill me.)

Hmmm… there’s a tune on here, no kid­ding, with Lionel Richie on guest vocals. Lionel Richie. And Rob Zombie.

For the unini­ti­at­ed, RZ looks and sounds like this:

And Lionel Richie looks and sounds like this:

Just so’s you know what we’re deal­ing with here.

Pop cul­ture triv­ia time
Even if you’re not a fan, you’ve prob­a­bly heard Rob’s work. There was a peri­od a cou­ple years back when you could­n’t see three movie trail­ers with­out hear­ing a snippet–usually lyrics-free–from “More Human Than Human”, off the Astro-Creep 2000 release.

The best part about “More Human Than Human” is that it’s a song inspired by one of my favourite movies, Blade Run­ner. First off, the title is the mot­to of Tyrell Cor­po­ra­tion, man­u­fac­tur­ers of the repli­cants. There’s a line in the song that goes “I am the Nexus One”, which refers to the Nexus Six line of repli­cants that Deckard has to retire in the movie. And Rob bor­rows from Bat­ty’s dia­log: “I want more life, f@#$er”.

Best. Dia­log. Ever.
Last night Grosse Pointe Blank was on TV. I love this movie. It’s one of my top five, I’d have to say. The screen­play snaps and crack­les, and nev­er slows down. I think my favourite scene might just be Joan Cusack, play­ing John Cusack­’s sec­re­tary, “just tak­ing down the office, sir” bit (as she dous­es every­thing in gaso­line and takes a five-pound short-han­dle sledgehammer–which looks a lit­tle like Mar­vel’s incor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion of Mjoll­nir*–to her computer).

This led me to IMDB, that won­der­ful, won­der­ful site.

Ten points to the per­son who can tell me what TV show this quote is from:

Nor­mal­ly at a time like this I’d ask you for advice, and you’d say some­thing that would make no sense at all, but some­how it would all fit togeth­er. Like, I would tell you, “Sir, I have a prob­lem,” and you’d say, “Well, what is it?” and I’d say, “Well, sir, Lisa wants to have a baby, but she does­n’t want to get mar­ried,” and you’d say “Dave, why milk the cow when you have a fridge full of steaks?” And I’d say, “Sir, that makes no sense,” and you’d say, “Well, it sure made sense when that guy Chuck Con­nors said it in that movie Chi­na­town,” and I’d say, “Sir, Chuck Con­nors was­n’t in Chi­na­town,” and you’d say, “Dave, if I want­ed to have this con­ver­sa­tion I’d have hired that guy Siskel Ebert to do your job,” and I’d say, “Sir, Siskel and Ebert are two peo­ple,” and you’d say, “Dave, just because the man is fat is no rea­son to make fun of him.” 

Every time I even think of that quote, I laugh so hard that, if I were drink­ing milk, it’d shoot out my nose. I try to avoid think­ing of it at break­fast time. Orange juice, I have it on good author­i­ty, hurts.
___________

* The Mar­vel inter­pre­ta­tion of Thor’s ham­mer fea­tures a wood­en han­dle. The myth­i­cal ver­sion from the Norse sources is one chunk of sol­id iron, and the han­dle is short, so short that Thor can only hold onto it with one hand, because Loki, ever the trick­ster, dis­guised him­self as a fly and har­ried the dwarfs as they forged Mjoll­nir. (Yes, I am a bit of a Norse myth geek. Why?)

Short book reviews

Posted on by Patrick

Har­ry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince
J. K. Rowling

Like every­one else on the net, I found this to be a dark­er work than what came before. There were few­er descrip­tive pas­sages this time around, which allowed a greater focus on the action. I under­stand that, at 1Gsec+ of age, I’m not the tar­get audi­ence for this book, and that the tar­get audi­ence prob­a­bly has read the pre­ced­ing five books mul­ti­ple times apiece, but there were sec­tions where I was con­fused by the way pre­vi­ous events and minor char­ac­ters from the pre­ced­ing books cropped up with­out announce­ment or expla­na­tion. Oh well.

My oth­er major com­plaint is that, for all that the books seem to be about per­son­al growth, etc, Har­ry Pot­ter does­n’t seem any more mature at the end than he did at the start. It’s like he’s will­ful­ly remain­ing an obsti­nate child for plot pur­pos­es. Then again, he is sev­en­teen years old, so maybe it’s not that far-fetched…

I’ll read the sev­enth one, too, to see how it all turns out, and then I’ll prob­a­bly set them all on the shelf and let the dust collect.

Going Postal
Ter­ry Pratchett

Res­cued from cer­atin death by a most unlike­ly angel, Moist von Lip­wig* is offered a job. And not just any job, either: a gov­ern­ment job. Lord Veti­nari, Patri­cian of Ankh-Mor­pork, is offer­ing Moist a choice: he can take on the man­tle of Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al for the city, or he can step out a door that leads to a thou­sand-foot fall. Lord Veti­nari believes in choic­es.

Moist takes the job, plan­ning to return to his swin­dling ways as soon as he can. What he does­n’t count on is his “parole offi­cer”, a golem named Mr. Pump, and a whole assort­ment of odd char­ac­ters that peo­ples this novel.

In short order, he’s invent­ing stamp col­lec­tors, tripling atten­dance at local tem­ples, and chal­leng­ing the man who runs the clacks** to a two-thou­sand-mile deliv­ery race.

I thor­ough­ly enjoyed this out­ing into the Dis­c­world’s unique uni­verse. The char­ac­ters were sharply drawn, major and minor alike, be they human, golem, or oth­er­wise. Veti­nari, long one of my favourites, plays a sig­nif­i­cant role, and it’s fun to watch him work. (“I’m a tyrant,” he tells one char­ac­ter, who protests that the Patri­cian has over­stepped his author­i­ty. “It’s what I do.”) Along the way, old famil­iar faces crop up: Cap­tain Car­rot Iron­founder­s­son of the Watch, Archchan­cel­lor Mus­trum Rid­cul­ly and the var­i­ous oth­er wiz­ards of Unseen Uni­ver­si­ty, Hex the think­ing machine, and others.

A lot of fun, and under the laughs, there’s a fair­ly seri­ous look at some of the trou­bles that plague the our-world ver­sion of the clacks system.
____________

* His real name.
** An inter­net ana­logue, with sem­a­phore towers.

1 GSec; Why I’m not a samurai

Posted on by Patrick

Some­time in the last few months I turned one bil­lion sec­onds old. I think the cake requires tiny blue LEDs rather than can­dles. Don’t want to burn down the house…

I went to judo tonight, but nobody showed up. Not a huge sur­prise — it’s sum­mer, and there are a cou­ple of our mem­bers at the Legion camp at the Peace Gar­dens. Sat there and read the intro to Ideals of the Samu­rai. I’m going to have to bor­row it some night, but I should find out who owns it — if it’s the dojo’s copy, I don’t have a prob­lem tak­ing it home and read­ing it, but if it belongs to one of the mem­bers, I’d like to ask per­mis­sion before bor­row­ing it.

I skimmed part of the Twen­ty-One Pre­cepts of Hojo Soun. I think I’d have made a lousy samu­rai. He rec­om­mends going to bed no lat­er than eight at night (since thieves usu­al­ly come between the hours of mid­night and two AM — if you’ve been a‑bed since 8PM, you’ll be awake and aware enough to deal with them) and get­ting up at 4AM. Mind you, some of that is so that you can give the oth­er ser­vants their instruc­tions by 6AM, and have time to do your work so that the mas­ter will see you as a good ser­vant. Remem­ber, every­one, the samu­rai were ser­vants to their daimyo.

But still. The only times I remem­ber see­ing 4AM were com­ing at it from the mid­night side, not the get­ting-up-ear­ly side. Ye gads.

Get­ting down to the end of my PHP project. Gad, I love object-ori­ent­ed pro­gram­ming! Cod­ed up a DB-read page in ten min­utes from scratch, and it worked the first time. Nice. (Grant­ed, the page that adds the data to the DB took longer, but most of the debug­gery was stu­pid errors on my part, typos and the like.)