Category: Reviews

Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman
Ever since I read American Gods, I’ve been a fan of Neil Gaiman. Michele bought and read this book before I did and said it was great. She liked it so much that she tracked down the DVDs of the BBC production of the book and watched that as well.
Needless to say, it moved to the top of my reading stack.
The story takes place in a Gaimanesque world where the world is oblivious to the magic world that surrounds and permeates it. After living a normal life, our protagonist, Richard Mayhew finds himself slid out of his reality and into the Underground.
His adventures take place in the world that exists in the under London. Below is a fantastic place of history, magic, and the supernatural where the base currency is one of ‘favors’. Each chapter gives glimpses of the world and then pushes you forward leaving you craving more about what is hinted at. Enjoyably, each new chapter brings more interesting things to ponder.
Like American Gods, the only problem with the book is that it ends. As you finish the book, you want more, much more about the world that Gaiman describes. The story touches on other places and people that you want to know more about.
Supposedly the upcoming book, Anansi Boys, is similar in delving into Gaiman’s vision of the supernatural. I look forward to it with baited breath.
The Merchants of Souls – John Barnes
This is that latest book in the Thousand Cultures/Giraut series that Barnes has created. In this series, humanity is mending itself back together after splitting to hundreds of planets with thousands of cultures. The idea being that planets were colonized based on specific cultures to allow harmony as they developed. Imagine cultures devoted to such varied ideals as Tamil Poetry, Occitan Chivalry, Calvinism, a pure military society, and even a pure hedonistic society. The invention of the ‘springer’ and instantaneous transportation device that can span the light years arrives to weave the culture back together in some fashion. Chaos ensues.
This book takes place mainly on Earth and involves the challenge of the OSP (the good guys) to face down the billions of Earth people living in virtual reality their whole lives. The bad guys want to use stored copies of people’s consciousness as virtual playthings fort their virtual lives. The OSP must stop this.
Barnes touches on several interesting ideas in a future world when machines do the work and all that is left for people to do is think and create. He touched on these ideas in the other novels, but examines then a little more deeply in this book.
Still, it’s science fiction and the story involves murder and misdirection in a hard sci-fi world. Barnes is good in this aspect, with consistency and refusing to solve the issues with miraculous invention in the nick of time. His inventions and culture are fully realized and you can understand the motivations of those involved event though it takes place in the imaginary future.
I enjoyed the book, but it’s for people that have read the first two books, A Million Open Doors and Earth Made of Glass. I’m sure you can find the first book for sale used for only a few dollars.
Idlewild – Nick Sagan
Last week when I was heading out to Utah, I asked Michele for a book to read and she handed me Idlewild. She said was good but not great. After finishing it I have to agree.
The story is a mashup of the Matrix, Stephen King’s The Stand, and a whodunit. Our protagonist wakes up with amnesia and we learn along with him about his world. A good literary technique, but the author won’t get away with using it again.
Central to the book is the concept of IVR, a form of Matrix-like virtual reality where much of the story takes place. Perhaps the Matrix has ruined the concept of virtual reality for sci-fi writers in the near term, since a lot of the ideas felt lifted, but probably weren’t.
I enjoyed the book and Sagan puts in enough red herrings and false leads that I was unable to deduce what was really going on until I read it. Most things follow but in the last couple chapters, things seem rushed with travel over distance happening way too fast and the death of a character happening in an almost unexplained way. I’d bet there are a couple more chapters that the author cut that would have made the story a little smoother at the end.
The book is good enough that I am looking forward to the follow-up, Edenborn.

My Griffin Radioshark arrived on Friday and I quickly hooked it up to our Media Server in the front room.

The Radioshark is a FM/AM radio that plugs in via USB to a computer, Mac or PC. I love listening to the radio on the computer and this device is supposed to give me the ability to record shows automatically.
The quality of the unit seems high with a good feel to it. The software came up quickly and in a couple minutes the radio was playing through the speakers nicely.

The software is, well, eh, not my cup of tea. If I’m using a PC give me the standard PC look and if I’m using the Mac give me the standard Mac look. This look leaves me flat.
The app covers the basics of tuning and setting up a recording. There are a few issues like not being able to enter a duration for the recording and having to choose one of the predetermined one. When I record something I like to record a little extra at the beginning and end. With a locked 60 minute record, you can’t do this.
You can easily schedule a recording based on time and station. The Windows version only record in wma (Windows Media) and wav files. Not the end of the world, but I would have paid $5 more to record directly in MP3, saving the hassle of conversion.
The radio reception itself was good but not great. I really want to record Indie 103.1, a Los Angeles station with a weak signal at my house. My car can pick it up, but the Radioshark couldn’t.

There is an input for an external antenna so I decided to give that a try. I took a standard FM dipole antenna and soldered it into a 1/8th inch audio connector.
For those that don’t know, a FM dipole antenna is specifically made to pick up radio signals and not much else. It’s what we electrical engineers call a tuned quarter-wave antenna.
BTW, I highly recommend those new-fangled butane soldering irons. They are perfect for these quick little jobs around the house.

The antenna worked but I had to get it up pretty high to pick up the signal. After standing in the room holding the Radioshark and the antenna in endless positions, I found that placing it above the curtain rod was optimal and was least offensive to Michele’s sense of how it should look.
The Radioshark was wedged up there and seemed a bit precarious. I couldn’t have it fall down on the girls as they walked by.
I removed the metal based, drilled a hole in it, and was able to attach it to the ceiling, securing it against a tumble.
Summary
Overall, the device works as advertised and most people aren’t going to be listening to weak stations. If you like radio, then the Radioshark is for you. It works, it looks good, and it’s reasonably priced.

In the last few weeks, I finished a few more books. Here’s a brief review of each.
How to Blog – Tony Pierce
Not so much a instruction manual, but a retrospective on Tony Pierce’s writings. Tony is a blogger in Los Angeles. He’s young, witty, handsome, and all the fly women are making a fuss…
Part poetry, part prose, Tony writes about whatever flutters through his mind, women, baseball, politics, even his digital camera. I found his book a refreshing and funny break from my usual sci-fi or history book diet.
Help the guy out and buy a copy, it’s worth it.
The Zenith Angle – Bruce Sterling
Amazingly, I saw this book before it was published in Bruce’s office, in his house at last year’s SXSW party. Sterling’s work has ranged from future sci-fi to steampunk to cyberpunk over the years. In The Zenith Angle he gives us his take on America’s spooks and the role of cyberspace in national security, and a taste of space warfare.
The book was a tasty treat that I consumed rapidly. You don’t always know where the author is taking you, but the road is great. Scenes of the different worlds that Bollywood actors, dotcom billionaires, and government agents occupy are tantalizing glipses of lifestyles we mere mortals don’t encounter often.
The book is a good thriller with enough tech tossed in to differentiate it from the typical DaVinci Code style book.
Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief – Bill Mason
I heard about this book from Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-gram newsletter as a good lesson in security. The basic idea -> “Nothing works more in a thief’s favor than people feeling secure. That’s why places that are heavily alarmed and guarded can sometimes be the easiest targets.”
The book is the story of Bill Mason, a noted jewel thief in the 70s and 80s. This is the story of his criminal career from start to finish. Fairly well written, you begin to feel for the guy as he breaks into places and steals pillowcase after pillowcase of jewels from the rich.
At one point however, he does lose my sympathy as he describes his antics in Florida as he was on trial from one of his crimes as he continually taunted the police and judges. I really couldn’t relate to this. I could relate to his problem solving methods and the way he concieved solving the security issues, but acting like a jackass and treating his family badly was disconcerting.
Worth a borrow from the library, but not worth a new hardcopy purchase.
The French Admiral – Dewey Lambdin
This is the second book in the Alan Lewrie storyline, another Age of Sail hero in the tradition of Horatio Hornblower. I read the first book and thought it was promising. I stumbled into this book at the library and checked it out on a whim.I’d like to say I found the novel fantastic, but it was just OK. The continual use of endless anutical jargon about staysails and other details really doesn’t do much for the tale.
It was interesting to ready about the American Revolution from the British side as Alan meets up with loyalists from North Carolina and tries to escape the Battle of Yorktown. Not many sea battles, but and few good descriptions of land battles and skirmishes.
The book does clear up quite a bit of Alan’s history and the reasons behind his banishment to sea by his father. The look into Britsh marriage law and inheritance rights is fun and makes me glad not to live under the British system of family property.

When time permits, I try to take Michele for coffee in the mornings after the kids are off to school. She likes 7-Eleven coffee, so that’s where we go.
I’ve taken a break from caffeine for a bit and today I was wandering around while she made her coffee/hot chocolate concoction. Scanning the fridges, I saw this:

Yep, you read it right. Beer with caffeine, ginseng, guarana extract, and natural flavor.
Yes, Budweiser Extra has hit the market. Why? I have no idea, but someone at Anheuser-Busch thinks America needs caffienated beer.
Of course, you can count on the Cruft Labs to test this out for you.

I poured a tall glass of ‘B to the E’ and took a nice swig.
In a word, it is foul.
Truly a triumph of conceptual marketing over common sense. Bud Extra tastes something akin to beer with a Flintstone’s vitamin ground up in it. An amazingly terrible taste that is nothing like beer.
Avoid this product at all costs, except if you want to play a practical joke on someone.

I finished up my latest book, Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton tonight. Since I’m still waiting for Halflife 2 to finish downloading, I thought I’d take some time to write up a review.
Just a Geek – Wil Wheaton
This is the first book I’ve read, where I actually know the author and about him outside of what’s in the book. I’ve met Wil several times but wouldn’t consider him a friend, more of a casual acquaintance. We’ve had some beers, chatted, and bumped into each other several times at various events in LA, but not much more than that. He’s a good guy but from our emails back & forth and insanely busy guy as well.
Most of what Wil wrote in his book was not a surprise or relevation to me since I’d been reading his blog for a long time. Wil’s writing on the blog can be a bit scattered and loose when he gets excited and I wasn’t sure what to expect from his book.
Pleasantly, I was happy to find a fairly tightly written book about what was going on with Wil for the last several years, showing both his public face and his private turmoil. Much more than a simple rehash of blog entries that some other ‘famous bloggers’ have foisted on the public.
The book deals with his coming to grips with life and becoming comfortable in his own skin. He give names to his inner voices like ‘Prove To Everyone’ that had him second guessing himself constantly. This was a little hard to for me to empathize with, since my self-confidence level is high. (Remember, I’m that ENTJ guy) But I know that lots of people have real trouble dealing with concerns over what other people think about them. I’m sure Wil’s story hits home for a lots of people.
He never launches into ‘poor me’ mode when looking at the past in the book. He looks back as a man that is finally free of the demons of the past and ready for pretty much anything.
The one thing I’ve was expecting him to discuss in his book was noticably lacking, his relationship with his fans.
Wil is a celebrity and most of the times I’ve seen him, he is dealing with fans trying to get his attention. The net makes it even easier for people to try to connect to celebrities and Wil has left himself wide open. I can’t imagine the onslaught of email and requests he gets from people constantly looking for his attention.
He had an entire community going on his site forums (bka The Soapbox) that grew beyond what he could realistically control. The community was so tight, that it now survives outside of Wil’s direct supervision. Several of the people he thanks in the book are people that he met in his Soapbox forums.
Following his schedule, I can see him getting busier and busier and sweeping more and more people in as his fans. To me the interesting story would be how he deals with the adoration, the requests, and the stalking that most celebs deal with. It’s a side of life that we civilians rarely hear about other than after a famous person gets into an embarassing situation. Wil’s in the unique position to pull back the curtain a little and show people what a celebrity has to deal with.
Now that would be a book.

One of my most favorite movies is The Man Who Would Be King, a movie based on Rudyard Kipling’s novel, that starred Sean Connery and Michael Caine as British soldiers that march into Afganistan and carve out a kingdom.
Several months ago, we were ‘testing’ a conference room at work that had HDTV for an upcoming presentation and The Man Who Would Be King was on in HD. I extolled the virtues of the film. It looked damn good in HD.
A few weeks later, Brad presented me with a book about the real life inspiration for the story.
The Man Who Would Be King (The First American in Afghanistan) – Ben MacIntyre
The book is a history of Josiah Harlan, an American adventurer that went to the heart of Asia and literally become king. In the early 1800s, there were still many places on the globe that were hard to get to and where western civilization had little influence.
Harln left from Pennsylvania to travel the world ended up in India. At the time, India was under the control of Britain. To the north was Afganistan, a place of warfare and tribal control. To Harlan, this was a place to make his own name.
The book goes through the details of exactly how he did this. At one point Harlan was the Prince of Ghor, a huge area. The claim exists today and hs great, great, great, grandson was recently made aware of his royal lineage.
The story is interesting, but the book is a history textbook. I can be a bit slow, but for an avid reader of history like myself, it is a good choice. I needed a break from the spate of sci-fi I had been reading.

Last week I picked up Katamari Damacy. I saw this game at E3 this year. Andy and I agree that it looked like the best game evar.
The game involves rolling a small sticky ball around, picking up objects along the way. As you get bigger, you can pick up bigger and bigger things. You need to get your katamari to a certain size to finish the level.
There is a very Japanese like theme involving the King of the Cosmos (your father, you being the Prince…) and a strange anime family that you see in surreal snippets.
To be honest, I speed through all the translated story line since it makes no sense…

Once you get to the requested size, the King of the Cosmos congratulates you and urges you to get even bigger. The size relationships are accurate, so when you get to be three meters tall, you can pick up people and other large objects. Nothing more satisfying than picking up a pair of large sumo wrestlers.
I love it, the kids love it, even Michele loves the game…

In addition to the single player mode, there is a head to head mode where you can compete. The best is when you can grab your opponent and drag them around.
You should run, not walk, to the game store to pick up this game.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from Noah of Bigha asking if I wanted to try one of the Jasper green lasers that he’s selling. After verifying this wasn’t some strange spam, I said yes. Several days later the laser arrived in a tube and I started to play with it a bit.
Thanks go to James for helping me take several pictures of the laser beam and also to Jason for taking a picture at the gun range.

The little oval black button is the trigger that turns the laser on. Unlike the red lasers, you can keep the green laser on indefinitely.

Here is the laser with the Universal Size Reference Unit, a CD case. The laser comes with a lanyard so you can hang it around your neck and not lose it.

The green laser is incredibly bright. You are sitting there thinking, “Yeah, yeah, bright smight, I’ve seen those little lasers before. How bright can it be?” Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, it’s so bright you can see the beam itself at night as it illuminates the air in the path of the beam.
This is a photo of the beam pointing up at night being used to point out stars.
For the rest of the review, click More.

Continue reading “Jasper green laser”

Here are a couple of albums I’ve been enjoying recently. I suggest you give them a listen. I put in a couple samples to listen too yourself. Due to the current silliness with the RIAA, and considering my job, I’ve only posted partial samples of the songs to avoid legal trouble.
Razorlight – Up All Night
Razorlight is a new British group that Suw told me about. This group is a mix of the sparse guitar/bass/drums sounds today of the Stokes mixed in with a few other things. There’s a dash of 80’s new wave and the occasional folksy riff that floats in and out. I listened to the new Libertines album first (think The Clash) and was suprised by the tasty songs on the Razorlight album. They avoid the ‘wall of sound’ style that’s been so overdone these days. I’ve been listening to them in heavy rotation in the car. The album is an import and the price varies widely, so shop around.
My favorite song on the album: Razorlight – Shuffle and Fall – 60 sec. MP3 – 700k
Northern State – All City
Northern State is a rap group of three New York women that lay down the fresh rhymes. Their first album, Dying in Stereo was fantastic, and this, their second album, does not disappoint. Branching out into a few different styles, the girls stretch their rap further. They aren’t the female Beastie Boys yet, but who knows what the future brings. They are heading out on tour with Cake! OMFG, what a kick ass show that would be. No LA dates announced yet, but I’m keeping my eyes open.
My favorite song on the album: Northern State – Don’t Look Down – 60 sec. MP3 – 700k

I’ve seen a few movies recently and I thought I should write up my reviews. Of course, no one really cares to check my reviews before going to a movie, but I’ll do it anyway.
Zatoichi, The Blind Swordsman – Zatoitchi is to Japan what James Bond is to Great Britain and America, the story of a cultural hero that lives on in movies with various actors and directors. Takeshi Kitano, actor/writer/director of many films including Battle Royale and Brother, takes the reins of the franchise. Finally being released in the US, Zatoichi is on the screen in it’s full glory instead relegated to the DVD route that many international films suffer.
Now, I’m a huge fan of Akira Kuroswa, and all other samurai movies are measured against the Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, perhaps the two greatest action films ever made. Zatoichi is good even in compairison to these films. Takeshi is limited by the bounds of the pre-existing 20+ films that came before and can’t really stretch himself.
The action is good, the villians are evil, the innocents are innocent, and Zatoichi is one serious ass-kicker. You won’t be disappointed. The ronin samurai and his woman are the most intriguing characters in the film. Poised on the edge between a desire to escape ever present violence and their need to survive they have the most interesting story. I sure I missed a ton of the subtle nuances since that Japanese would find culturally obvious, but that simply means I’ll have to buy the DVD for the commentary when it is released.
The one thing I didn’t understand was the closing dance number. Can anyone explain that?
Napoleon Dynamite – When I saw the previews for Napoleon Dynamite I was hoping for a huge blockbuster comedy with plenty of lines to put into casual conversation like Ghostbusters. Alas, it is not to be.
The film is hilarious and well made, but the humor is in the context of the film. The director shot the film at a deliberately slow pace. Compared to the MTV style of many films these days, it was quite nice to have extended scenes with locked camera shots.
The story takes place in present day Idaho, but has the look of an older film. The themes though are universal; feeling like an outsider and the desire to be popular.
For anyone that was not in the popular crowd in high school (meaning most of the Cruft faithful) this movie will resonate.