Strange and Fishy

I haven't seen this before; evidently with the thaw yesterday a lot of the fish in the pond swam to the top of the ice and then couldn't get back under before they froze. There were several of these fishy lineups. Very strange.

After the Lord of the Rings

This post is dedicated to those that have read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and perhaps the Hobbit, and wish to dig a little deeper into Middle-Earth. Tolkien's fiction is unique in it's depth and lends itself well to further reading, but where do you start?

Tolkien's son Christopher, a professor of English Literature in his own right, has released many books relating to, editing and sometimes even finishing his father's works. The obvious first choices are The Silmarilion and The Children of Hurin. The are both indispensable, in my opinion; in particular, the Silmarillion has much of interest to LotR fans, including the origins of Sauron, an explanation of what a Balrog is, where dragons came from, and so much more, including a retelling of the creation and early history of the world, from the point of view of Tolkien's elves! It ends with the history of the events leading up to the War of the Ring itself. However, at best, it is a much more difficult read than LotR or the Hobbit, since Tolkien never meant it to be a linear story, and much of it is written in an archaic style of English.

My real suggestions are a little more off the beaten track:

1. Unfinished Tales It contains several stories and other works relating to Middle-Earth, from what Tolkien refers to as the First, Second and Third ages. This is by far my favorite of Christopher Tolkien's works on his father. For an LotR fan it has many special treasures, including:
   
   
   
   • unpublished essays on the wizards (such as Gandalf and Saruman) and the Palantiri (the far-seeing crystal balls)
     
   • a compilation of several unfinished essays on the origins and history of Galadriel and Celeborn of Lothlorien
     
   • a "historical" essay about the Ringwraithes' hunt for the ring in the Shire and elsewhere
     
   • an unpublished story of the history of the Hobbit, from Gandalf's point of view!
     
   • much more
     
   
   
2. Professor Tom Shippey's non-fiction book The Road to Middle Earth. Professor Shippey more or less followed in Tolkien's footsteps in academia, and has much interesting information about the inspirations for Tolkien's work in ancient English history and literature. I find this sort of thing terribly interesting. There must have been a mythology available to the Germanic inhabitants of post-Roman England, equivalent to that of the old Norse, but we only have tantalizing hints about these, evidently due to the lack of writing by the pre-literate English and also because of active suppression, first by the church and later by the Normans after the invasion of 1066. Professor Shippey shows us many of these hints and how Tolkien developed them into a new "English" mythology. Wonderful stuff.
   

I'd also like to mention a work with a hidden treasure, The War of the Ring, Part 3. A slim book in the series of Christopher Tolkien's books about his father's writings, it has one truly outstanding piece, Tolkien's original Epilogue to the Lord of the Rings, a sweet story from the life of Sam Gamgee in the Shire AFTER Frodo and Bilbo sail into the west.

Tweak!

Gen. Eric Shinsecki as Secretary of Veteran's Affairs; take that, Bushies!

Suggestion to the Car Companies

I don't want to see the car companies fail; I think the fallout would be terrible. But I do believe that there should be MAJOR conditions attached to bailing them out, including the ousting of all the current management.

However, I'd like to make a suggestion to the car companies, something that they should do without being forced to, something terribly symbolic of what their attitudes should be going forward: no more lobbyists. Fire them all, and promise to never again attempt to turn public policy in their interests.

If you think about it, the car companies have run themselves into the ground by their own inflexibility; they opposed all safety and environmental regulations and ended up making their recent money by exploiting a loophole in the current regulations, the one that allowed SUVs to exist. If car companies no longer lobbied, they would be tacitly committing to deal with the world as it is, rather than as they'd like to see it. I think that would be wonderful symbolic gesture, and car manufacturers, wouldn't that make your jobs more interesting? ;)

Mini Review of the Sanyo Xacti HD1000

This isn't meant to be a comprehensive review, but I really enjoy this device and would like to share my thoughts about it.

To begin with, I've now owned three Xacti devices, and although I always enjoyed the sensation I would cause when I pulled one out, I had been rather disappointed by the performance of the cameras.

The HD1000 is another kettle of fish entirely; I am very pleased with almost all aspects of the performance of the device. Now, you shouldn't expect a $700 device to have the performance of a $3K pro HD camcorder, but I am very happy with the quality of the video. In any kind of decent light it is very nice looking and very HD. However, unlike earlier Xactis, it is not totally useless in low light; the picture degrades in a pleasant way and is still quite watchable.

The HD1000 has compromised still picture size for better HD movie quality (rightly, IMHO). However, even though the stills are limited to 4 MP, I am quite pleased with the way they look, especially the colors. If 4 MP is large enough for your needs (and I never need to blow up beyond 8x10, so I'm fine with it) I think you will be pleased with the still quality of this little camcorder.

The audio sounds good. I recorded a bunch of video at a rock show and the camcorder was able to handle the sound pressure level nicely.

I was unable to test HDMI output, but the component output from the camera dock works very well. I wish the camera had some kind of digital audio out to go with the component video (it has stereo analog only), but that's a nit pick, really; I'm out of HD inputs on my receiver and it's a pain to switch an input to analog just for plugging in the camcorder.

The PS3 is able to play the videos directly from the SD card, or from the internal hard drive. A DVD is evidently too slow; they'll play, but it'll be choppy.

If you are interested in buying a Xacti-style camcorder, you are probably (like me) going for form over function a little bit. However, you will probably be quite pleased with the HD1000.

Naughty

I blush to admit how much pleasure I get from making naughty passwords and typing them in over and over again.

Tony Blankley, Oh My God

I'm not sure I can listen to Left, Right and Center anymore. I never agree with anything Tony Blankley says, but at least I can usually listen to him; he speaks well and never becomes outraged and hateful like so many other conservative commentators. But a couple of days ago he went on NPR and did an editorial where he said that the CIA throwing away the tapes of waterboarding of prisoners, a clearly illegal act, was exactly the right thing to do because if those tapes ever got out they would make our lies about waterboarding less plausible to the Islamic world.

He also said this on Left, Right and Center, and followed it up by stating that the national interest clearly outweighed the law in cases like this.

I wish there was a nice Facisistic state Tony could go and live in, rather than trying to destroy mine.

Whipsawed

Listening to random songs in my car. First up: "Larks Tongues in Aspic Pt. II" by King Crimson (live version by the "double trio"). The power, masculinity, intellect and sheer fun of the music makes me pound my steering wheel with my fists as I wait at a light.

Next up: "Polegnala E Todora (Love Song)" by Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgare, to me pretty much the epitome of the beauty, gentleness and (since I don't know the language) mystery of femininity.

Whipsawed by humanity, I cried a little. Sue me.

iPhone, good God

I played with one over the weekend, and it is perhaps the most beautiful and intuitive piece of tech I have ever seen. Too many downsides for me to switch now, though: no tethering (using the phone as a modem for my laptop), no ebooks, no 3G, no overseas use. And iTunes is too limited for the various music file formats I want to use, as well as video formats.

Apple has really screwed up doing the exclusivity contract with AT&T, though. Stuff like this:
$4800 iPhone Bill

iPhone Bill Surprisingly Huge

is inexcusable, and really does damage to the brand.

Why a War "Czar"?

There has been a lot of speculation as to why the President wants to appoint someone to be in charge of prosecuting the war in Iraq (the so-called "War Czar"). As many have suggested, doesn't the Commander in Chief already hold that position?

I don't actually mean this as a "snark", or sarcastic comment, and I don't really even mean it in a cynical way, but I think this might actually be close to the truth: the President is sick of dealing with Iraq, and probably overrode Karl Rove (despite the political problems such a move would cause) to make this happen. He has a history of getting into business situations and failing at them, and then either bailing or getting someone (like his father or his father's friends) to fix the situation for him. This is just true; read anything you like about the history of Bush's business dealings.

Isn't this the most likely reason for such an odd and politically risky move?

The new Plasmabat album is now available!

The new Plasmabat album is now available!

http://cdbaby.com/cd/plasmabat2

It is an album of mostly delicate guitar instrumentals, all composed and performed by me (with a little help from my friends Lynda and Serge)

I hope you like it! I've also updated the Plasmabat Myspace page:

http://myspace.com/plasmabat

If you feel like it, do me a big favor and review it!

Hugh

Hooray for the New Congress

This is the first time since I've been old enough to know that I have been proud of my Congress. I don't care about the pork, I don't care about the fact that the Prez promised to veto the war spending bill before they even drafted it.

This Congress took a principled stand on the most important issue of the day, and used all the tools they had to make it happen. I'm proud of them.

I am, however, confused about the reaction of the mainstream press. Every story I've read or heard about regarding the bill seems to make the assumption that the President's anticipated veto is not only inevitable but is somehow the Congress' responsibility. That somehow they should have crafted a bill that would both satisfy the public that elected them and the President, without any kind of compromise on his part.

But as far as I remember, the Legislative and the Executive branch are equals, so why doesn't the President have to compromise and the Congress does? The entire country (no, the entire world) know that the President was wrong in his execution of the supposed "war", and yet when the Congress finally expresses the will of the people of the United States, as they should, they are excoriated by our own press.

This is the main stream media that went along with the personal destruction of President Clinton by his political enemies, and the one that allowed George Bush to push his reactionary and constitution-weakening agenda without fear of criticism.

I'm damn sick of it.

It would be a joy

It would be such a joy to travel to 17th century Leipzig and tell the harried J. S. Bach that today he is arguably considered the greatest composer of all time and that his music is probably heard by someone every second of every day (just like I'll be performing his Mass in B Minor this weekend).

Or to tell William Shakespear that he is the greatest playwrite who ever lived to people in the 21st century and that even people who have never seen one of his plays may have seen "West Side Story" or "Ran" or even "Shakespear in Love" or used a phrase like "in my mind's eye" or "a rose by any other name ...".

Elvis probably knew how important he was. But it's not too late to let Chuck Berry and Fats Domino know.

It's too late to tell John Lennon. I'm sure Paul McCartney knows. But tell him anyway ;)

Location of my Myspace blog

http://blog.myspace.com/batmensch

myspace?

I think I'll do my next few postings to my myspace page. You don't have to be subscribed to that crappy service to read them (I don't think) but at least there my myspace friends will know about it.

Check out http://www.myspace.com/batmensch

Singing in December

I'll be singing Bach's Mass in B Minor with Bella Musica on December 8 and December 10. More information here:

http://bellamusica.org/concerts.html

Welcome me back!

I'm back! We'll see how long it lasts. Much has happened since my last posting, but some things remain the same:

1. My back still hurts, not enough to keep me down
2. I have played World of Warcraft most every night for most of a year now
3. I'm working on material for a new album. More information soon.
4. I still don't sleep well, but not badly enough to mess me up
5. I have a new job, similar to the old job
6. I'm starting to plan my 10th wedding anniversary with my wife already. Hard to believe it's been a decade.
7. We have the House and the Senate! And by "we" I mean the "Democrat" (sic) party ;)

Update on my Herniated Disk

At this point I am able to work full days, exercise, basically do whatever I want. I have occasional flashes of pain in my shoulder and arm, but not too bad. I rarely, if ever, take any pain medication anymore.

I had a consultation with a neurosurgeon a couple of weeks ago, who told me that with this much recovery I'm not a good candidate for surgery anymore, or even for cortisone shots. Basically, I should try all my old activities and if they hurt, don't do them.

I can live with this!

Return to Nokia 9500 Place

I recently sold my Sprint Treo 650 and bought a GSM/EDGE Nokia 9500 Communicator.

You can't go home again.


Just before I was hired by Neomorphic I was the IT manager at a startup just across the street from Neomorphic in Berkeley. In these early days of digital phones I had the Nokia 9100il Communicator; limited to 9600 baud networking over the phone, and not really much bigger than other digital phones of the time. I had many a pleasant hour with my Communicator laying on the grass in Aquatic Park, reconfiguring and doing remote maintenance on my Linux servers.

Later, I sold the device but never upgraded to other Communicators because Nokia was so slow to move to modern phone services such as GPRS, at least with the Communicator. Therefore, I hopped onto the Handspring Treo wagon, first with a B&W Treo 180, then the Treo 600, then the Treo 650. They all had their limitations, but the 650 is a very powerful and elegant device, third generation Treo hardware, and most of the problems with earlier phones have been fixed.

I enjoyed my Sprint Treo 650, despite the slow and patchy service (although not slow compared to my old Communicator!) but eventually the latest Communicator, the 9500, was released, and was significantly smaller than the old ones but still supported the wonderful flip-open 640x200 coloer display, so handy for SSH sessions (although there are several free SSH clients for the Treo 6x0, they are all extremely difficult to read). I was also interested in moving from CDMA to EDGE, as it should provide a significant boost in data performance. Also, I just wanted to shake things up a bit ;)

So, I put in bids on two Nokia 9500's on Ebay, just to make certain I'd get at least one. Unfortunately, I got both of them. I ended up having to sell one of them immediately; however, they both looked and worked fine.

Then I tried to get back into the swing with the Communicator, but eventually the poor design just got to me. Not necessarily the phone itself, although it was so big and bulky compared to the Treo that I never really got used to it. However, little things mean a lot to a Mac user ;)

1. It is underpowered. Symbian is a nice multitasking OS, but it took between 30 and 60 seconds just to open the RealPlayer application; the 100 Mhz or so processor was just not up to the tasks.
2. The audio connector (the so-called "Pop Port") is really terrible; the connector falls out very easily and yet is very difficult to reconnect. You need an expensive adaptor from Nokia just to plug in a pair of regular headphones. Besides that, the audio adaptor is noisy on my car radio.
3. The headphones I bought with the built in FM were only stereo for radio broadcasts, not for internal audio! Plus, the cable is all wrong; the little FM tuner on it is kind of heavy and clumsy, it needs to be attached to something. However, the lower part of the cord is too short to allow it to be clipped to a colllar, and the upper part is too short to allow it to be attached to a belt. It would only be tolerable if you had a shirt with buttons, which I rarely do.
3. RealPlayer didn't recover well from dropouts.
4. No streaming MP3 player I could find.
5. Dataviz, to access an MS Activesync server, was $100 extra at least, whereas that funtionality is built in to a Treo (however poorly).
6. No eReader (for e-books). Although there is a version of eReader for Symbian 60, it doesn't work for Symbian Series 80 (Communicator). I hadn't realized that Symbian wasn't Symbian Everywhere. I'm used to being able to carry books around.
7. No Audible for Symbian (yet).
8. It's just too big. It is not comfortable carrying in a pocket, and Nokia's holster, which you have to purchase separately, is terrible.

Finally, it was just too much; I went back to the Treo, this time on Cingular's EDGE (enhanced GPRS) network and it works much nicer than Sprint; fewer dropouts and much faster connections and downloads. I learned my lesson.

More on Back Problems

I'm doing a lot better. I have been unable recently to sit in my office chair or drive my car without considerable pain; I am now able to do both these things. My pain meds, which before were simply useless, are now quite a lot of fun ;)

And the only things I am doing are: 1) resting 2) not running 3) not lifting weights 4) getting traction at the physiotherapist's office 5) swimming

The thing is, no one, including the first doctors I saw, gave me any real hope that I might just recover. Even my beloved wifey-wife, who is a Worker's Compensation lawyer, told me that only surgery had the possibility of given me relief. I'm glad to prove them all wrong.

Feeling better. Crossing my fingers.