Three more books

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.

Cabling

I don’t often talk about my work here on Cruft. While I find professional television and computer technology a fascinating career, many are more interested in my adventures in my kitchen instead.
Here’s a little tidbit to show you how my somewhat irreverant style surfaces in my professional life.
One of the trade magazines I read is TV Technology, a fairly good source for news and opinions. My favorite column is by The Masked Engineer, a TV engineer that hides behind a psuedonym while he/she writes about the FCC, industry players, and other TV trends in a humorous way.
In a column last year, The Masked Engineer wrote about cabling in facility. His/her viewpoint was so far out of whack with reality that I was forced to reply. I sent in my rebuttal soon after and was suprised to find it in the current issue.
(Loyal Cruft readers might recognize the use of photos and humor to make my points)


Of course, the Masked Engineer and Belden are full of crap in their idea that reasonable tie-wraps can hurt the signal quality. Belden is the same company that once advocated running SDI video over Cat 5 cable. If anything would be bad for signal quality it woud be running CCIR 601 over unshielded cable designed for ethernet.
We’ve had a fully SDI plant for ten years now, with tie wraps, and without any troubles with cabling. By far our biggest signal troubles are with RS-232/422 cabling long lengths and patchbay jack failure, neither of which have anything to do with tie wraps.
Perhaps we’ll have an Indiana Jones style showdown at NAB…

More change to LA radio

This may be old news, but it looks like Arrow 93.1 ‘The Best Classic Rock’ is now gone, replaced with 93.1 Jack FM ‘Playing What We Want’.
More change to the LA radio scene is probably a good thing, but alas it is not a Top 40 station like Kiss-FM going away.
I’m listening now to it and it sounds like a mild rock station with 70s & 80s stuff.
There a few googleable articles on the Jack FM format here and here that shine some light on what to expect.
Taking a look at Yes.net will give up the details.
This morning, they’ve played:
SUPERTRAMP – Goodbye Stranger
MARCY PLAYGROUND – Sex And Candy
THE STEVE MILLER BAND – Abracadabra
WAR – Why Can’t We Be Friends?
BON JOVI – You Give Love A Bad Name
LONDONBEAT – I’ve Been Thinking About You
STYX – Too Much Time On My Hands
BONNIE TYLER – It’s A Heartache
DEF LEPPARD – Animal
THE BEATLES – Get Back
THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS – Heartbreak Beat
JOURNEY – Any Way You Want It
SHAWN MULLINS – Lullaby
TALKING HEADS – Once In A Lifetime
CARL DOUGLAS – Kung Fu Fighting
ZZ TOP – Legs
Well, that is some playlist. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide whether it is good or bad.

What to do at a party in Austin

The traditional end to SxSW Interactive was a party at Bruce Sterling’s house on Tuesday night. With Bruce living in Pasadena for a year, this presented a problem in 2005. Thanks to the marvels of corporate sponsorship, the party was still held at the American Legion Hall.
One of the sponsors was Wired magazine. On every table were tons of little postcards about their Nextfest conference. Martin made a video about what I did with the cards.
Check out Martin’s post and watch the House of Cards.

Where did your domain name come from?

I watched a panel today at SxSW and the moderator, Lynne Johnson, asked a great question of the panel. She asked each of them to explain where the name of their weblog came from. Hearing their answers was great and I think everyone should explain where the name of their weblog comes from.
So, I encourage you to explain the origins on your own weblog and use the tag ‘blognameorigin’ to help people find our post.
For those new to posting tags, basically a tag is a kind of flag to search engine on how they can sort your post. If you put this code in your post, it should work.
<a href=”https://technorati.com/tag/blognameorigin” rel=”tag”>blognameorigin</a>
And then you should see a link like this appear: on your post. If you click on that link, you should see the posts of all others that used that tag.
With that said, back to the main idea…
The Story of cruftbox.com
Back in 1997 I registered the domain name pusateri.org as a personal site for photos and stories. It served me well and in early 2000 I started using pusateri.org/cruft for my nascent weblog. The word cruft was a word I liked since I had first heard it in college.
To me the word represented exactly what my site was, random bits of unimportant crap.
In late 2001, I decided I wanted a site for the weblog alone, to keep the family stuff a little separate from my ranting weblog. I wanted cruft.com as my domain name, but alas, it was taken.
John Walker, founder of Autodesk, had already registered cruft.com, .net, and .org. I emailed him and asked about his plans. He said he wasn’t doing anything with them, but that he was saving them for something ‘good’. I apparently didn’t count as ‘good’ and he didn’t want to give me any of the domain names. (It’s four years later, and e still hasn’t done anything with those domain names…)
Back to the drawing board I went, trying to figure out what to do. After a bit, I came up with the idea that the site was realy a container for my cruft and not so much cruft itself. At that point, I started playing around with names like cruftcan, cruftstuff, and boxocruft. I finally settled on cruftbox, mainly because it was a easy to pronounce word and it ended with a X, the mark of all things high tech.
And so, cruftbox.com was born.
What’s your story?

Giveaway



Giveaway, originally uploaded by Argyle.

If you find me at SxSW and say hello, I’ll be happy to give you this fine, limited-edition Cruftbox can/bottle opener.

Michele made this for me and I’ve got a bagful to give away!

SxSW ]I[

I’m sitting in my hotel room in Austin sipping on a cup of coffee.
This is my 3rd SxSW conference. It’s starting to feel quite familiar.
Last night at Break Bread with Brad I talked with many people, drank beers, and even got into a discussion about metadata, nomenclature, taxonomy, and archival of assets with people that actually knew what I was talking about.
The conference shifts into high gear today with the Keynote kickoff.
If you’re at SxSw, say hello!