Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

When I went off to SXSW I finished three books I had been reading.
For Us, The Living by Robert A. Heinlein
I saw this book and was startled. I have read every Heinlein book written and this was not one of them, until now… Evidently, Heinlein wrote this book in 1939, before he really began his successful writing career. The book has been missing and rarely talked about for years. Robert James, a Heinlein scholar, tracked down the book and got permission to get it published. Amazing story. Literally, there was one last manuscript in the world, unnoticed for almost 50 years, and he found it.
The book is not for general science fiction fans. The story is rather weak and has a few major holes. Heinlein fans on the other hand, will find it fascinating. This book, from 1939, basically lays out the world view that Heinlein expounds upon in his novels for the rest of his career. The novel is the genesis for most of his themes on personal liberty, sexual freedom, libertarianism, military service, and even information technology. His vision in this book carried his stories well into the 60s where he found widespead fame.
If you’ve never read Heinlein, this book is not for you. If you appreciate Heinlein, this book is worth the read.
Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow
This is Cory’s second book and I devoured it in a couple of days. I really enjoyed his first book and was looking forward to this one. He doesn’t disappoint. Set a little over 15 years into the future, the novel touches on many interesting ideas like the world spanning tribes, communication technology, electronic currency, industrial sabotage, and even police methods.
But the book seems rushed. Not that I can point out a hole in the storyline, but everytime I wanted to know a little more about something, we were off to the rest of the story. The book zips through the story in record speed getting to the end and leaving the reader wanting to know more. I don’t know if was an editing decision or Cory’s own fast paced nature, but I was left wondering where they put all the extra stuff. Are the deeper explanations of tribes and their history stored in a folder on Cory’s laptop? If so, I want a copy…
I’m not asking for Cory to go Neal Stephenson style, but he should feel freer to expound upon his ideas and characters in the book. Perhaps his experience in writing short fiction is where this comes from, where you write to size and brevity matters.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great book and you should go pick up a copy immediately. You’ll enjoy the book immensely. I just wanted a longer novel.
The Knight by Gene Wolfe
This is the first book in a new series by Gene Wolfe. I assume that since the subtitle is The Wizard Knight, Book 1 and it appears Book 2 is to follow.
This is a fantasy book that combine some elements from the traditional elf/giants/magic realm and mixes in a little ‘fish out of water’ story with (of course) the courageous hero.
Our hero appears in a new world by magic and doesn’t seem too concerned that he has left the modern world and been thrown into a magical land of monsters and adventure. He quickly becomes a player on the stage of this world and gets himself into all kinds of trouble.
Wolfe doesn’t bother with much of the Tolkeinesque order and cohesiveness. Sir Able simply falls in and out of Aelfworld and the reader is given little explanation as to what is really going on. Kinda like watching a movie and every 10 minutes you fast forward though 5 minutes, getting a flash of images, but not really understanding how we got to where we are.
The overall prose is great with the detailed scenes conjuring wonderful images and characters. The various characters encountered are great and look to be fun, ongoing presences in the ongoing storyline. Wolfe’s vision of how a Knight acts and behaves is an interesting take on the concept of the Hero Knight that has been written about for centuries.
I look forward to the next book in the series and will try not to let my desire for details and logic to derail my enjoyment of the book.

The LA Times website sucks.
I subscribe to the physical newspaper and read it daily. Today I read an article in the paper and wanted to send a link to it my brother.
Going the latimes.com site required me to login, as do many newspaper sites. I resent this, but logged in anyways. I was surprised to find that the article was hidden behind the pay only portion of the site. They wanted me to pay them money to get to a news article on the internet.
You know, fuck that.
It’s enough that I pay money for the physical paper. It’s enough that I log in to the site. It’s enough to endure the relentless ads on the site.
But it’s too much to pay for news on the web.
The LA Times people but have their heads buried way up their rear ends. Go check out Yahoo News or Google News. There’s no barrier to entry to get the news there.
I eagerly await the day when Yahoo or Google print me a customized newspaper nightly and drop it off at my house, replacing the old school and destined to fail LA Times. If I can get the NY Times at my house every morning before the LA Times arrives, I’m sure there’s a place for custom printed newspapers in the near future.
LA Times, wake up or you will find yourself going the way of the typewriter.

There are a number of anti-war protests going on today. I read this in a Yahoo News story:

In Cincinnati, several hundred people gathered in a downtown park to call for a U.S. troop withdrawal. Claire Mugavin, clad in a biohazard suit, pretended to look for weapons of mass destruction beneath benches and garbage cans.
“We figure they’re not in Iraq,” said the 24-year-old Cincinnati resident. “So we figured we’d come look for them in Fountain Square.”

Hilarious.

I’m a bonafide publisher now, and you can be one too.
A couple weeks ago, Cory Doctorow relicensed his book Down and out in the Magic Kingdom with the least restrictive Creative Commons license possible. Basically, I can take Cory’s book and do what ever I like with it as long as it’s non-commercial and I give Cory credit for writing the original book.
I got to think about what I could do and quickly realized that there wasn’t much I wanted to do with his book. I considered taking the text, reformatting it and publishing with the new instant book publishing systems. But I want Cory to make some money off of the book, so I dropped the idea.
In the shower one morning, I was pondering what book to read next. I had just finished my latest book and needed something different. The John Carter, Warlord of Mars series popped into my mind. I pondered re-reading it. But I didn’t have the books and would have to visit the library or buy the books. Then it hit me. The entire book series is in the Gutenberg Library online.
The Gutenberg Library is an online collection of FREE books that you can download and read. Truly amazing. Almost 10,000 books are available currently.
Then I knew what I wanted to do. I downloaded A Princess of Mars, the first book in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Warlod of Mars series. It took me about 45 minutes to format the text into the right format and add a table of contents. Cafepress offers instant book printing and make it extremely easy to do. If you can make it into a PDF file, you can publish it. Within about an hour, I had everything uploaded to Cafepress and ordered a copy.
About 4 days later the book arrived, and I was amazed. It was a real book, like any paperback you could buy in the book store.

I get questions about Dr. Pepper, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Dr. Slice, and Mr. Pibb all the time. For the record, here’s the deal.
Dr. Pepper is a separate company from Coca Cola and Pepsi.
Dr. Pepper makes agreements to bottle and sell Dr. Pepper in areas sometimes with Coca Cola and sometimes with Pepsi.
Mr. Pibb is a Coke product that is found in towns where Coke does not distribute Dr. Pepper.
Dr. Slice is a Pepsi product that is found in towns where Pepsi does not distribute Dr. Pepper.

This year, before SXSW I had great plans to blog and write lots of stuff while I was there. I did none of that. Why? I mean last year I blogged up a storm while I was at the conference. This year was different, though. Two main things had changed.
First and foremost, my brother Matt had come to SXSW with me. Suddenly, there was someone around that I was coordinating with and talking to all the time. Last year, I spent much of the time between sessions quietly reviewing the previous session and making notes for blogs. Between sessions now, I was chatting with Matt and others about what the panels were like and what to do next. I really enjoyed having someone that was with me at the show. With acquaintances, you often run out of things to talk about. You both want to keep chatting, but you run out of things in the common frame of reference to discuss and you get those weird lulls. I never get weird lulls talking with my brother. If we stop talking it’s usually because one of us is napping.
The second thing that had changed, was that I knew people and people knew me. Promptly as I arrived in Austin, I started bumping into people I knew from last SXSW and other interactions during the year. I was quite surprised to have people walk up to me knowing my name. I knew who they were, but I didn’t know if people were going to remember me. It turns out that lots of people knew who I was and I found myself fully part of the SXSW tribe. Surrounded by friends and constantly meeting new people, I found myself with little time to write anything down.
Toss in that the schedule of events starts at 10AM with the first sessions goes until the wee hours with various parties, and I found little time to be able to reflect on what I saw and heard.
Here are a few of my observations:
The Cult of Mac is growing – Everywhere I turned, there was a little Apple logo staring back at me, unblinking, almost mocking me. I don’t know what it is about the Mac Laptop, but many people are slaves in it’s thrall. I suspect that Apple has engineered an addictive gas that is released when people use their Macs they renders them susceptible to Steve Job’s mind control software.
Complaining works sometimes – When I got to the Austin conference center I was warned that ‘they’ were cracking down on people using power outlets and using cameras. After a bit of wingeing at the right people, these restrictions were removed, and there was much rejoicing. However, I was unable to get the problem with VPNs fixed. For some unknown reason, VPNs we getting blocked by part of the net access infrastructure. I spoke with the Austin Wireless people, the SXSW staff, and some of the Conf Center people, but nothing got fixed. For all my efforts to secure my wifi, I was completely and utterly thwarted in my endeavors.
The Echo Chamber is in full effect – There has been a lot of talk about the echo chamber is some blogging circles lately, where the same people are commenting on the same ideas and new ideas don’t make it inside. This year I saw its effect. In session after session, the ‘group think’ was crowding out the new ideas and any idea that ran counter to the prevailing meme. Trying to convince people that wikis have a high barrier to entry, that they have to become simpler and more WYSIWYG, fell on deaf ears. If it made sense to them, they suggested it made sense to everyone. Similar kinds of thinking in sessions about blogging. To hear people talk, every social problem in society can be solved with a liberal application of weblogs like some sort of magic first aid creme for society. Trouble with large media companies? Use weblogs. Trouble with government? Use weblogs. Economic needs in third world countries? Use weblogs. Unhappy workers? Use weblogs. The trouble when you only have one tool in your toolbox (weblogs) is that everything looks like a nail. The SXSW tribe needs to invite some people to interact that actively challenge the weblog worldview and force them to think about it and defend it.
SXSW people are still shy – I’m a confirmed extrovert. No hiding it, I like meeting other people and don’t have a problem introducing myself to strangers. Many of the people at the conference were hesitant to introduce themselves. Once you got them going, it was like a firehose of thoughts and information they had, but you had to prompt them to get them going.
More when I have time. I’ve been traveling for 14 hours and I need some sleep.

I’m in Austin, Texas for the SXSW Interactive conference. More to come when I get a chance.

A couple months ago I wrote about Space Food Sticks. Yesterday I recieved a note from Eric of retrofuture.com, maker of the Space Food Sticks. Here is what Eric said in his note:

Michael,
Your review of Space Food Sticks was really entertaining to me. I run Terra Firma Products (i.e., the Space Food Sticks Preservation Society) and it was nice to see these crazy efforts I’m making noticed by someone. So thanks. Having your kids judge them really resonated with this father of three.
The part that really made me laugh was your comments about the BMX bike rider on the package (aka, WTF?). You have no idea how many times I asked the folks in Australia if they could change it back. Either that or just change the name to Bike Food Sticks and be done with it! Finally I gave up and changed the packaging myself. Strange but true, I’m actually paying folks to take the sticks out of those boxes and put them in new packaging that emphasizes a space theme!
The reason I’m writing is to tell you some real news. I am working with food engineers here in the States who are going to make new peanut butter SFS based on the original formulation. They’ll be wrapped in silver foil and retain the original shape. Hopefully the packaging will recreate the original as well (it won’t have any BMX bikers on it I can assure you).
Anyway I thought you might like to know a bit more about what’s happening with SFS because it’s something you might want to add to inform folks. Your article is influential so it would be nice (for me) if you could keep it up-to-date.
Eric

So there it is folks. Breaking news on the future of Space Food Sticks from the source. Cruft continues to bring you valuable scoops like this while traditional news journalists are focused on this pesky war & the dumb presidential election!
A couple weeks ago I snagged a box of CARAMEL Space Food Sticks off ebay. Mighty tasty I tell you. There’s a few boxes up for auction now.

It’s confirmed that Spalding Gray is dead.
For those that don’t know, Spalding Gray was a monologist. He told stories to people. It sounds simple, but he was a master. In today’s world of movies and TV, here was a man that could keep you spellbound with simply the sound of his voice.
Michele and I have seen him perform half a dozen times over the years. Each time was great and once I even shook his hand. We will miss Spalding.

Last night Michele and I took the girls out to the Glen Friedman opening at Sixspace. This was the first time we’ve taken the girls to an art gallery instead of the museum.
We were concerned that the feel of the gallery would weird them out or that they would go wild knocking frames off the walls. But they behaved well and had a good time. Zoe said, “Let’s go to another gallery now!” as we left. Looks like Michele and I will need to scope out age appropriate shows going forward.
I snapped a phonecam pic of Sean at the gallery.