Goodbye, old computer...

I'm writing this post from my old computer. It's the first time I've really used this computer in, oh, probably some time in August. I used it then to check websites while my laptop was otherwise occupied (I was playing Oblivion). Now it's been so long that even the keyboard feels strange. I can't believe I'm saying that. I used to hate laptop keyboards. It was my reason for thinking that I would never want to own a laptop. And then when I finally did buy one, I sort of assumed that I'd still be using this computer for word processing and such. Now I'm so used to the laptop keyboard that my old keyboard is uncomfortable. I suppose I should have expected as much, but I didn't.

My series of posts on the drama associated with my laptop really aren't that far back. It all seemed so uncertain then. I was glad that I had this machine to fall back on. Now that the laptop is working and I'm acclimated to it, this thing is looking as obsolete as, well, as it really is. The laptop takes up a fraction of the space and does everything better. Everything. Well, close enough, anyway. I probably can't run Lords of Magic on the new computer without some sort of emulation or adjustment. The same goes for a few other old games, including Diablo. If anyone knows of a good way to play old computer games on new computers without paying money for it, please let me know.

So I had already copied almost all of the files on this computer to my laptop (pretty sure I posted about that). One of my reasons for doing that was so that I could actually use those files without having to get on my old computer. Another reason was to preserve them if this computer were to die. At the time, there was no indication that it would. Well, with that out of the way, this became an auxiliary computer. And I had it running all the time. Not the monitor or the speakers, but the computer itself. I think that's the only reason I can write this post from this computer now. If I had shut this thing down every night, component stress would have killed it. Probably.

Since I didn't need the computer, and since it would be off for five weeks while I was on vacation, I shut it down early. I forget when. And I stuck to using my laptop only for September. And then I went on vacation. Well, when I came back, one of the things that had happened in my absence was that my parents painted my room. My mother kept saying she was going to while I was gone, that it would be the perfect opportunity to or whatever. I asked her not to. I forbade her from doing it. She wouldn't listen. So they moved all of my stuff out, boxed it, and painted the room. They did more than that, actually. They also removed a shelf and changed the closet. Oh, and they put new blinds in, which really was pretty necessary: the old ones were hideous.

Well, I had to finish uploading photos to Facebook and do other things, all with my laptop. None of it involved this computer. When I did get around to booting this one up, I left the room a short time later, and the thing crashed on me. Then I spent several hours trying to get it to boot up again. I kept getting messages about the boot record being unavailable and I had to go into the BIOS screen a few times. I was pretty sure that the old computer was finally dead. Maybe my parents had busted it when they'd moved it. Or maybe it was finally worn out. It didn't really matter. The only things I would miss would be one story I'd barely started writing that had never been transferred over (not sure if I like it anyway) and some gaming things, mostly my Diablo II characters.

I was giving up because it wasn't worth the trouble when the computer finally booted up. But then after a few hours, while I wasn't in the room again, it crashed. Fortunately, it didn't refuse to boot up again. I tried to figure out why it crashed, but eventually decided that the computer was still probably dying. I used it for a while and went to bed. When I woke up, I saw a blue screen, which had probably been sitting there for several hours. I restarted the computer, then shut it down again. I gave up. I figured I would try to boot it up again long enough to save my Diablo II characters, then abandon the computer entirely. But I never got around to it.

Well, now it's December. And for the month of December, there are two things I must attend to. Or rather, two categories of things. Oh, and I'm excluding work, I suppose. Firstly, there's getting ready for school. If I were a more self-disciplined person than I am, I would totally be brushing up on integral calculus or something right now. Yes, right now. Two in the morning. A perfect time for calculus, yes? I like how my fantasy version of myself is so unrealistic that actually saying these things forces me to sneer over it. I'm weird. Secondly, there's getting ready to live in Seattle. Well, dealing with this old computer thing and figuring out what I'm finally going to do about this machine is part of that second issue.

Instead of doing things that have anything to do with either school or moving, I've been playing Oblivion. So I decided that it was time to finally address this one thing. I still have a lot to do as far as moving goes. But, in principle, figuring out what to do with the old computer shouldn't be a big deal. One thing I wanted to do was remove the case and clean out any dust, just in case that was having any effect on the components. I ended up not even doing that. I just moved it back to the spot on the floor it used to occupy, fixed the speakers (my parents had put the computer up against the desk for some reason and had made everything backwards with the speakers), and turned on the power. The computer booted up just like it always used to. And it hasn't crashed yet. Maybe it will after I fall asleep. We'll see.

So yeah, apparently this computer still works perfectly (or as well as it was earlier this year). But now I'm moving. I don't really see any reason to bring it with me, and I don't think I want the computer to be where it is now if other people in my family will be using this room at all (two people have expressed interest in that). So I think now the plan is to keep this computer running for most of this month. I'll shut it down and move it into storage right before permanently occupying the apartment in Seattle. And maybe someday I'll have an opportunity to use it again. But maybe not. I don't know.

Agleridon

A while back, I posted that one of my qualms with Oblivion, which I was playing a lot, was that the leveling system forced me, completist that I am, to do the things necessary to have a character that can do anything. When I did Runswithsnails IV, I waited until I was higher in level to do the quests with leveled items. I started out spamming illusion spells so that I could take advantage of invisibility as soon as possible, then exploited that alongside ever-improving magic skills all-around and the ability to slug things out with a big sword and heavy armor. Eventually, I was switching to blunt weapons and light armor, not because they were better, but because I had maxed out my heavy armor and blade skills. Toward the end, he was invincible, although I could probably have made him invincible even earlier if I'd tried.

I said that I would like for the game to be more "choose your weapons." Well, I finally broke down and started another character, determined not to go all crazy like I did with the first one. Runswithsnails IV will always be my super-powerful character in that game. He's the only one I'll have done all of the quests with. But I figured I'd do some specialist characters that would explore aspects of the game I neglected at earlier levels and emphasize them, getting some replay value out of this game, I guess.

Agleridon is my first attempt at a real specialist character. He's already quite accomplished. His primary specialty is alchemy. He's an evil character that loves poisoning everything. As such, his next favorite skill is marksmanship, giving him a vehicle for delivering all those wonderful poisons. But if that doesn't work, he can fall back on chameleon potions and sneak attacks with powerful magic daggers. Right now he's using light armor, but that's really just a means for me to keep increasing his strength. Once his strength is maxed out, I'll probably switch to no armor. I just realized that I totally had that wrong. Light armor skill increases improve speed, not strength. And his speed is already maxed out. But I'm keeping light armor with this character because I want to and because armor rating is good. So there.

I should probably cut back on playing this game so that I don't have to go cold turkey in January when I'm in school and busy. Or maybe I should rush to do everything I can with Agleridon beforehand? No, that's probably a bad idea. So far, his accomplishments include restoring Deepscorn Hollow (the base of operations I had in mind for this character before I even started him), restoring Frostcrag Spire (even more useful for alchemy than Deepscorn Hollow), completing everything for Dunburrow Cove, completing the thieves guild questline, acquiring Mehrune's Razor, mastering alchemy (but he still needs the equipment to take advantage of this), taking down the Gatekeeper, finding tons of nirnroots, and murdering lots of people, some of them deservedly. But he still needs to complete the dark brotherhood questline at least. Maybe some more beyond that. I'm not sure yet.

Some other ideas for Oblivion characters I might do...

• One that uses blunt as a primary combat skill. So far I've always done blade-wielders.
• A mage character that doesn't use armor or weapons much. I could also rely on alchemy a lot again. Now that I've gotten some experience with alchemy, I like it.
• A good character. Agleridon is pure evil. Runswithsnails IV started out evil, but redeemed himself and used the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal to lead a double life. I should have an actual, honorable character.
• A character that uses the atronach birthsign (it sounds fun and is totally different).
• Playing a different game. Seriously, I'm playing this game way too much.
  

Seattle

I got in, just in case you didn't already know, which you did. One of the things that happened in the month I've been away from this blog is that I was accepted into the University of Washington. I received a letter informing me of this two days before my birthday. I suppose my birthday was another thing that happened during the period of time I've been away, but it was rather uneventful other than the electricity being out. Anyway, I guess finding out for sure that I would finally be transferring to a university was sort of an early birthday present. It was a birthday present from me to myself, because I am awesome.

Come January, I'll probably be super busy with school. But that's not the only news. I'm also moving. Being closer to school will be convenient, but it's also a bit intimidating because I need to secure a job of some sort. Actually, I don't just need to secure a job of some sort: I need to secure a job that fits my school schedule. I've been sort of nervous about this and I still am. Fortunately, I can still work as a substitute for the library system. So there's that. It doesn't eliminate my concern, but it helps.

Agitatingly, I still have to wait like almost two weeks before I get my orientation. I have no idea what my schedule will be or what classes I'll get to take. I have to wait.

But most importantly, better living through chemistry, oh yeah!

NaNoWriMo

I see that, since returning from vacation, I wrote one post here, then left again for a month. I'd be embarrassed, but I did have my reasons. Well, one reason, anyway. I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo. So for the entire month of November, I was writing a novel instead of doing the things I would normally be doing. Well, not all of the things I'd normally be doing. I'll post more about that later. In fact, missing a month has left me with a whole lot to tell you. And I do plan on catching up. So there will be several new posts here about what's been going on while I was away. But those ones can wait for a moment. This post is about my novel.

The title is Adventures of Xad Volume One: Worldweaver. It's an extremely cheesy science fiction book with spaceships and laser guns. I described it a couple of times as verging on "Flash Gordon" levels of cheesiness. In the end, I don't think that's quite true. But it really is a silly book. It's not the sort of thing I'd always wanted to write. But I had a month to write 50,000 words. I didn't want to get caught up in trying to go back and change things. I didn't want to worry that my project, my baby, was turning out awfully. I didn't want to say, "This is completely wrong. Why am I even doing this?" I wanted something that I wouldn't be too attached to, that I wouldn't have to take seriously. I didn't take any of my old ideas or abandoned projects. I didn't try to make it awesome. I just tried to meet the goal, and in the end, I did: it wasn't even close. By November 30th, the novel was 60,000 words.

Now, I know you're wondering when you'll have a chance to read it. Well, I'll try to make that happen, but it might take a while. NaNoWriMo isn't about getting to a completely polished, publishable work in one month. It's about writing a rough draft in a month. My novel needs some heavy editing. I made everything up as I went along. I don't think there are any major continuity errors, but some sections definitely need revising. I need to move events around and add to some portions that I feel are incomplete. If I find the time to do this, and I hope that I do, I won't be at all surprised if the final product is a lot longer. How much longer, I won't say. But for now, it's 60,000 words.

I recommend NaNoWriMo. I don't know if I'll do it again because I see now just how big of a commitment it is to actually finish. It's not the effort: it's the time. I mean, presumably you have to work. A project like this could suck up all your free time for a month. But it's also educational. I learned much about my own writing habits along the way. I sort of always thought of myself as a competent writer. I've read plenty of things, even by professionals, and thought, "I can write better than this." I don't think it's pure delusion. I have written things. Some of them really are better than what I've seen from certain purported professionals. But I've never written anything on the scale of a novel. Short stories, yes. Essays, of course. But a novel is an entirely different animal.

I thought I might get lost in it and not be able to continue the story. That I'd get stuck. It didn't happen. I thought I would probably be energetic about this in the first week, drop off and fail to write in the second week, try to play catch-up in the third week, and go for broke in the fourth week. That didn't happen either. In a way, I don't believe it. I always procrastinate. Or I used to. I practically planned to procrastinate. And instead, I wrote 2,000 words a day. There were a few busy days where I wasn't at my computer and caught up over the next day or so. But generally, it was a constant pace. This is the first time in my life that I can recall ever properly pacing myself in anything at all. It's sort of amazing.

I think I wrote good characters and a more-or-less coherent plot. The biggest deficiency in my rough draft is with the setting. In my mind, as I was coming up with things to write, I could envision the characters and the circumstances they found themselves in. But scenery was either not there until I needed it for the plot, or not important enough to write down. It's not that everything in my head happened on some blank, empty field. But I was thinking so much about the characters and the dialogue and the action that what a place looked like didn't seem important. Maybe it's me. One place is much the same as any other place to me. So that's something that needs work. But I know I can fix that with editing. I just wasn't focused on it while writing the rough draft.

So yeah, I've written a 60,000-word novel, by far the longest thing I've written so far. And that's why I haven't been updating this blog for a month. But I've been busy with some other things too. I'd tell you about them right now, but I have to go to work. So you'll just have to wait for my next post, whenever that is.

The Return of, well, ME!

It's been a while, but then again, I said it would be. After all, I have been on vacation. I did get back almost a week ago, but things have been a bit weird, I guess. For one thing, my mother messed my room up. Before I left, she kept threatening to paint it while I was gone. I told her not to, but she did it anyway. She also removed the shelf built onto the western wall of the room and boxed all my stuff. I'm in the process of putting the room back together, but progress is slow on that front.

If you haven't already seen them on Facebook, I ended up taking over 11,000 pictures while on vacation. And one thing even the people who closely followed the pictures on Facebook wouldn't know is that one thing I did was upload pictures from the camera's memory card to my computer every night before I went to bed. What that means is that on my computer, I have a separate folder for each day of my vacation. With the pictures organized like that, I can easily look back and sort of retrace my steps, using the pictures to help remember everything. Until a few days ago, one of my plans was to use this blog (or start a new one) doing just that. One post summarizing each day of my vacation, with pictures thrown in too. I took pictures in Europe 34 days in a row, so that would be a lot of content. But I'm not doing it. At least, not for now.

The reason I'm not going to take the time to blog about my adventures in Europe (at least not yet) is that I've decided to write something else instead, and I don't think I'll have the time to do both. I've officially signed up for NaNoWriMo and plan to write a novel in November. If I do make it to 50,000 words, it will certainly be the longest thing I've ever written (longest single work, anyway). I'm trying to get other people to do this too, so if you're reading this and it's still October, come on and join the insanity. Anyway, I haven't written a word of my novel yet (that would be cheating) but I do intend for it to be a really bad science fiction story, just in case you were wondering.

Speaking of books, I read two of them while on vacation and probably should have brought at least two more, but whatever. I read The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov. Not much to say about that, because it's by Asimov, so of course it's good, but it's also one of his earlier ones, so of course it's also sort of silly. I guess it counts as part of the robots series. Next was Stardust by Neil Gaiman. It was a fun little book, but not really that interesting. It deployed that thing where there's an excerpt from another book by the same author, in this case The Graveyard Book, which looks like something I'd be more inclined to read than Stardust but whatever. Also, I'm now reading The Stars, Like Dust and that one is also by Isaac Asimov.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Vacation starts today

Technically, my vacation that I took from work doesn't start until Tuesday, but shut up. I know I haven't talked about this vacation on this blog, but no one reads this stuff anyway, so I don't feel the need to explain myself. Later today, I will be in the sky. And that is awesome. I probably won't be writing about much else besides this vacation for a while, so get used to it. Anyway, I don't leave yet. First I should sleep or something. That is all for now.

Book review: Spectrum 5 edited by Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest

Another science fiction anthology purchased at one of the library book sales. I've had this one for several years. It was on the top of the tub of books that I have but have yet to read. The book was published in 1966, but all of the stories it contains were originally published in the 1950's in Astounding Science Fiction except for one which was published in Galaxy.

This is vintage science fiction. It's the sort of stuff that not everyone would appreciate, but that I find fascinating. It's usually not very good, but it's sort of a time capsule, a glimpse into the future of the past, or something. The fact that it's interesting from a literary or psychological point of view or whatever is good enough for me. But it can also, at times, be totally hilarious. In one of these stories, characters who arrive on a planet using faster-than-light travel do calculations using slide-rules. There's some kind of dilemma when writing a fiction story that takes place in the distant future. You can invent fantasy technologies and not describe them, but too much of that is, well, boring. You can add more detail and mix technologies that are theoretically possible but not yet worked out with real technology and with concepts that are purely imaginary, but the more detail you add, the greater the risk that things are going to look stupid later. Great science fiction writers typically try to strike a balance, from what I've seen. They don't always succeed at doing so, of course, that's because it's challenging and that's why pulling it off is an attribute of greatness.

This was a quick and altogether pleasant read. I don't know that I'd ever heard of any of these old-timey authors, but some of them I rather like. The editors, not so much. In the introduction, they attempted to be bold, which I appreciate, but once I'd read the whole thing, I thought they were really pretentious, which maybe worked out because it gave me low expectations for the anthology as a whole.

Student Body by F.L. Wallace: A classic example of bad science fiction. Humans land on alien planet and are unprepared for the native fauna. The science it butchers is biology, which leaves me wondering how much had to do with the ignorance of the individual author there and how much had to do with the state of the whole field or public understanding of it at that time.

Crucifixus Etiam by Walter M. Miller: A story about terraforming Mars. I didn't even know they had stories about terraforming Mars back in 1953, so I'm impressed. The story is hilariously dated in several ways, but is actually pretty good. I was annoyed that a few pages were ripped partially or entirely from the book here.

Noise Level by Raymond F. Jones: Reminded me of The Toynbee Convector. To be fair, this story was written way, way before The Toynbee Convector. But it's also far inferior. By the end, I just couldn't suspend my disbelief. One page was missing here, so I didn't get to read part of the beginning, but the story goes something like this. The top scientists are brought to secret government project with military guys and one psychologist, where it is revealed that some random nobody demonstrated his anti-gravity device in a secret military demonstration, but it malfunctioned somehow in the second test and the inventor and the device were destroyed. The scientists are tasked with recreating the device before the Russians can invent anti-gravity themselves. The main character is a physicist who is good friends with the psychologist who is inexplicably working on this project and spends a lot of time talking to his friend. One of the scientists keeps trying to insist that anti-gravity is impossible (for a reason that doesn't actually make any scientific sense in the real world, but whatever), but the rest of them figure that since it was on video, it must have happened, and try to figure out how. The main character is out fishing with his psychologist friend and invents a new theory of gravity that would make such a device possible, so he begins working on it. Simultaneously, the guy who kept insisting that anti-gravity was impossible has news for everyone. He has meticulously gone over the labs and libraries of the supposed inventor of the device and has come to the conclusion that the whole thing is staged. The labs don't look like real labs that anyone has ever used and nothing about them makes sense. It's all some big hoax. No one listens to him and they insist he's had some sort of mental breakdown. Everyone teams up with the main character to build a device based on his brand new theory. It works. Yay, they did it. Then the psychologist reveals that yes, the original video and everything really was fake. It was a ruse to make the scientists think outside the box or something. Human beings can achieve anything if they get past the mental blocks that make them think things are impossible. I am not making this up.

Grandpa by James H. Schmitz: I guess in the 1950's it seemed totally plausible that if we could use faster-than-light travel, we'd find lots of worlds with nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres and water and plants and animals. The plants and animals evolved in different ways from ours, but somehow they'd be biochemically compatible so they could eat us and we could eat them and such. Still, this is a decent story.

Mother of Invention by Tom Godwin: I'm pretty sure that scientists did have a theory for ferromagnetism back in the 1950's and that this author just missed that somehow (in the story, magnets were some big mystery because even though everyone knew they worked, no on had a model explaining why they worked). Despite some annoying silliness with things like that, some of this is really cool. The character aren't threatened by man-eating aliens or anything like that. They discover a planet with seemingly benign biology. It's the geology that's the problem: the place is full of diamonds. Sandstorms are a lot more vicious when the sand is more diamond than quartz. Neat idea, even if parts of the story are just silly.

The Far Look by Theodore L. Thomas: A story about astronauts on the moon, but written long before there were ever really astronauts on the moon. Probably even worse in retrospect, but the whole concept is rather fanciful anyway. The idea is that the moon is just so harsh and barren and removed from the world the astronauts know that they'd completely lose their heads except they're sent in pairs, so they're able to rely on each other to remain sane. Once they come back home, reconnecting with the human race causes them to have some sort of super-wisdom and be total aces at whatever they choose to do.

Big Sword by Paul Ash: Another alien story, but I really like this one. Much better written than most of the stories here.

Commencement Night by Richard Ashby: Very, very silly. The nations of the world collaborate to build an island paradise on which to place infants who never have contact with anyone from outside so that they can form their own society and be spied on constantly. That way, we can learn about human nature and figure out how to prevent war. But aliens secretly communicate with the islanders, and the whole thing turns into one big hippie mess, except this story predates hippies by like a decade I think. Whatever.

I read some more books

The book I was talking about that I was reading while I made my last post (which was about another book that I had already read) was Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character (which is actually all the stories from two older books: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, and What Do You Care What Other People Think). I finished it a while ago though. I guess I forgot to say anything about it here. Anyway, I'm still kind of sick right now (stomach was killing me yesterday) and don't feel up to giving this book a proper review, even though I have a lot that I could potentially say about it.

Actually, I'm kind of torn when it comes to this book: I don't know whether it's a fascinating and quirky set of mostly lighthearted stories that make for an easy and entertaining read or a mindblowing collection of some of the most profound stories I've ever read. Which one would be preferable anyway? I do highly recommend this though, especially since it's more convenient than reading the original two volumes separately.

Since then, I've finished another book. So now I need to find something else to read before I go to work today (would have already done so if I hadn't been sick in bed all yesterday and this morning). The book I just read is Blackout by Connie Willis. I don't normally read science fiction novels (or any novels for that matter) that are less than ten years old. Not out of principle or anything, it's just that there are so many good older books for me to read and they tend to be easier to find. Well, I'd read the two previous books in this "series" (or whatever you'd call it) earlier this year, and found out about this one while I was reading one of them, so I put it on hold.

My tendency to not read books that are too recent has probably just been reinforced. At first, I was excited to once again explore the world of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog: How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last. Comparing it to them, I found that there were more returning characters from the former, but that thematically it seemed more like the latter. About halfway through, I started to become a bit irritated, though. My train of thoughts went something like this, "The book keeps jumping back and forth between all these characters, but doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I'm already halfway through this and I'm only just getting into it. This book isn't nearly as good as the other two. Well, finally we're getting somewhere. Wait, there doesn't seem to be enough book left here to finish the story. There's not going to be any room for denouement here. Something is wrong. Am I reading an unfinished book here? But nothing indicates that this is unfinished. Well, just a few more pages left, so let's see what happens. It's definitely implausible that this story will be finished by the time I reach the last page, but let's finish this weirdness. What's this? 'For the riveting conclusion to Blackout, be sure not to miss Connie Willis's All Clear. Coming from Spectra in Fall 2010.' Oh. Dammit, I'm never reading a recently published book again."

So yeah, somehow I'd missed the fact that I was reading the first volume of a two-volume story, the second of which is not even released yet. I know that there are other people who do that sort of thing. Like the people who waited eagerly in anticipation of each new book in the Harry Potter series or whatever. But I've never really been that guy, nor wanted to be. Enough of this. Time to find something else to read.

Book Review: The Hidden Forest by John R. Luoma (and a note about what I've been doing)

I haven't posted much on books here lately, and that really is because I haven't been reading as much. Up until this week, a lot of that could probably be attributed to playing Oblivion all the time. I've eased up on that for now.

Runswithsnails IV has come a long way since March and passed up his predecessors in every respect and then some. In fact, it's one of my little qualms with the game: it could be fun to do a character that focuses on blunt weapons and healing or one that only uses bows for damage and backs then up with illusion spells or one that uses poisoned daggers and sneak attacks or whatever. The possible specializations, while finite, are quite extensive. But because I'm such a completist, I had to go and make my first character one that can do anything.

Sure, I could make a character that specializes in only a few skills, but that character would be strictly inferior to the one I spent so much time on already, so there'd be no point. I mean, I do like my invincible character, I really do. But I wish the leveling system were more "choose your weapons" and less of a counter-intuitive mess that leaves you with a puny character if you don't know what you're doing, but lets you take as big a slice of the broken pie as you want if you are willing to put in the effort. And I ended up taking the whole pie.

Right now, Runswithsnails has completed every quest in the entire game (including all the official plug-ins and the expansion) that can be completed except for the ones that require the character to get kicked out of a guild and one other one. Also, when I called him invincible, I kind of meant it: his gear gives him 101% Reflect Damage and 110% Resist Magic, so the only things enemies can use (successfully) on him are arrows, and he'll win any shoot-out because he has maxed out armor rating, insane healing, maxed out marksmanship, a bow that will eat your soul, and the option to become completely undetectable whenever he feels like it. So while I haven't cleared out all of the dungeons littering the world, it's basically a formality.

And with all that in mind, I've been cutting back (somewhat) on video games in favor of reading and stuff. I'm halfway through a book that is absolutely fantastic, so I suppose I'll say some words about my most recent read: The Hidden Forest. I borrowed this book from a friend a while back. I initially declined the offer because I knew from circumstances at the time that it would be a while before I'd have a chance to read it, but he insisted, and now I'm kind of glad that he did, as it's not a book I would normally have read. I think it's the only book with ecology as its main subject that I've actually read, and broadening my horizons is cool.

The most impressive thing about this book is, by far, the content. It's a short read, about 200 pages, but it's packed with interesting information. I've studied biology and had some notion of most of the processes that Luoma writes about, but not at this level of detail. While I don't know how many books have that information, I know that lots of books carry information of the same sort. But the parts about the history of forestry, up to very recent history indeed at the time the book was written (1999), were unlike anything I'd encountered before and were certainly the main force behind this work. Given the choice, I'd read a more general account of the history of forestry rather than this one, which is more specifically confined to a single research forest, but it was enlightening nevertheless.

That's the good. Now for the bad. Maybe I'm spoiled because lately I've been reading good science writers. I know bad science writers are out there in droves, but I've been reading the really good ones. Luoma just doesn't compare to the great writers I've grown accustomed to. If it's possible to rate style and ignore actual content, I'd say that while none of this is awful, none of it is great either. It looks like it should be a draft, perhaps a late draft, but not the final product.

On a lighter note, The Hidden Forest is dated, sometimes hilariously so. And 1999 doesn't sound like a long time ago to me, but I guess it was. I got a kick out of him using "World Wide Web" with the capital letters like that and a bigger one from "electronic mail" (I hadn't seen e-mail called "electronic mail" since, well, probably before this book was written). He also made some of the technologies he described researchers using sound awesome and oh-so-very advanced when now it all seems pretty routine.

If that was the worst of it, I'd be praising this book as a solid introduction to the topics discussed. But sometimes, The Hidden Forest inexplicably takes a turn for the stupid. Since I still haven't returned the book, I just flipped through it for a particularly egregious example...

...or not. Wait. Oh wow, that's even worse than I remembered. I was planning to write something emphasizing that my issues with this excerpt aren't just me being pedantic, but that this is seriously messed up. I would then have addressed the problems. But now that I've transcribed it and seen just how many errors there are, I don't even want to bother. So I'll just color the offending parts...

Snap a photograph with a camera and you engage in a photochemical instant: a pattern of light moving through the lens hammers its photons at a silver-sensitized bit of film, photochemically reconfiguring the molecules into a pattern that will become an image on a negative. Similarly, a photon hurtles its way into a molecule of the pigment chlorophyll and triggers a chain reaction, destabilizing a "light trap" molecule so vigorously, and exciting its spinning electrons so wildly, that one electron from a molecule in the green light-trap literally achieves escape velocity and spins out of orbit. All in an instant of time, that wildly careering electron hurtles its way into the orbit around an atom behind it, in turn energizing and destabilizing that atom, until one of its own electrons spins out into the next atom in the chain. The pattern replicates in the next atom, and the consequence blazes through the green membrane and into a wet solution of water and proteins. There, the sheer force of energy that moved electron to electron severs the strong bonds between hydrogen and oxygen in a water molecule. The foundation act of photosynthesis has been accomplished.
The split of a water molecule leaves free atoms of oxygen, which snap furiously together in pairs and then diffuse out of the leaf's stomata, the pores that allow it to breathe O₂—the oxygen of the atmosphere. Trees and other plants manufacture the Earth's atmosphere. Virtually all of the oxygen in the air we breathe was made by green plants, photosynthesizing over hundreds of millions of years, ripping apart molecules of water for the benefit of their hydrogen, sending the residual oxygen into the skies.
In the leaf, the liberated hydrogen proceeds through a series of tightly linked reactions with enzymes in a complex process called, with intimations of mysticism, the dark phase. Just as oxygen has diffused out of the stomata, carbon dioxide has diffused in. Now the hydrogen atoms and enzymes react with that carbon dioxide.
The finished product is a molecule made of one carbon, two hydrogens, and an oxygen. You can find it abundant not only in the sap of the living tree but, for that matter, in packets on the table of any diner. It is sucrose, simple table sugar. The sweet of the sugarcane or of the beet or of maple sap is simply an amplification of the sugar-rich bath in which every plant cell lives. It is photosynthate, the child of sun, and carbon in the air, and photosynthesis.
Scientists, in their labs, have tried to replicate this wonder. To a degree, they've succeeded. With enormous, detailed effort and excellent equipment, a trained scientist can indeed produce a few motes of sugar from the same basic chemical recipe. But perhaps an ornamental maple sits outside the window of that clever scientist's laboratory. If that tree happens to be mature, and in full leaf, it offers to the sun, in layers, about half an acre of total leaf surface. That half acre of leaf absorbs some 188 million calories of sunlight per hour, just under thee billion calories on a long midsummer day. If each square meter of leaf is photosynthesizing optimally, it produces about a gram of sugar per hour. Over the course of one growing season, the biochemist might dither with high-tech equipment to produce an iota of sugar. In the same time, the tree silently produces about two tons.

Red = Complete factual error.
Orange = Misinterpretation of the facts.
Yellow = Doesn't make sense.
Green = Really stupid diction

And that's just the parts I could note by changing the word color. All this leaves me wondering just how accurate the rest of the book is. I was easily able to spot errors like the conflation of glucose and sucrose because of my chemistry background. But when Luoma writes about fields where I have little knowledge, I'm a lot less likely to catch such errors.

That's the bad. Now for the ugly.

The end. Seriously, the end is the worst part. It gets very, very ugly. Luoma kept things relatively apolitical for the first 200 pages or so. He covered controversy and disputes over logging, but did so in a convincingly journalistic manner, not taking sides but telling story and at least looking like it's an objective rendition (whether it is or not is another matter). Then in the last handful of pages, he goes off the deep end, delving into philosophy of science (a field that Luoma is apparently clueless about) to explain why ecological research isn't getting enough funding, then seemingly arbitrarily hating on the space program and advocating that ecological research should get that money instead.

This is one of my pet peeves. There are lots of people who think that sure, space is cool and all, but we have so many problems down here on Earth, so let's just stop spending so much money on space and use that money for things that are more important because, after all, space will still be there once we deal with this other stuff. Do I really need to point out that, with that line of reasoning, we'd be cutting ourselves off from space travel forever? There will always be something more important or more pressing. Suck it up. If you want more funding for ecological research, fine, but don't attack the space program.

Sleep (too much)

On weekends, during the summer, and generally whenever there's been an ordinary day that I haven't had school or work in the morning, I have, for the past several years, had the strange habit of sleeping in rather late whenever I'm in my own bed and getting up early whenever I happen to be sleeping anywhere else. I forget when I first noticed this, but there have been points in the past when I found it irritating. Lately, I've been pretty accepting of it, generally staying up late. But I don't sleep in because I stay up late. No matter how early I go to bed, I stay there until at least 11 in the morning if there's nothing to motivate me not to. I've sort of rationalized that I'm not a "morning person" or that I was just weird: when I do have to get up at a certain time and I set an alarm, 95% of the time I wake up right before the alarm would go off and check the clock and I don't know anyone else who does that.

Today may have been bad enough to make me do something about this crap. I woke up around 7 and, because the clock indicated that it was too early to get up, I kept trying to fall back to sleep. I would wake up, see that it was still before 11, and actively try to go to sleep, even though I wasn't really that tired. I must have done this for at least two hours. Then I woke up at about 11:30 and felt miserable. I didn't need that much sleep. It was a waste of time and I felt worse than I would have if I got up earlier. So I say enough is enough.

I've been spending most of my free time playing computer games or doing nothing of importance on the internet or whatever. Starting today (tomorrow, but whatever) I am going to get up earlier and use that extra time to do something productive. Maybe I'll update the chemistry blog or something cool like that. The point is, I am totally doing this. I resolve to, so that means I will.

What if you're wrong?

This is something that's been bugging me for a while, so I'm going to try to be thorough, meaning that this post might get longwinded. We'll see. Bear with me, anyway...

Some time ago, my father asked me what if I was wrong, in the context of not believing that there is a god, I guess. I forget what his exact words were. At the time, I immediately made a connection to Pascal's wager, and he later added to his question in a way that essentially turned it into Pascal's wager. However, I do have to admit now that "What if you're wrong?" is not necessarily the same thing as Pascal's wager. I think it's more like Pascal's wager is a specific subcategory of that more general question.

For those who don't know, Pascal's wager goes something like this...

• If the Christian god is real and you believe in him, the reward is infinite.
• If the Christian god is not real and you believe in him, the cost is negligible.
• If the Christian god is real and you don't believe in him, the punishment is infinite.
• If the Christian god is not real and you don't believe in him, the reward is nonexistent.
• Believing in the Christian god is clearly the best bet, so you might as well go with it.

Some people take this very seriously, although it seems from what I've read that Pascal himself was just using it to try to spark discussion. I guess that plan worked? Anyway, the argument has lots of flaws. Of the top of my head...

• Believing something isn't usually a conscious decision. I cannot, for example, choose to believe that there is an anteater sitting on my bed right now. I can pretend that there is. I can lie and tell other people that there is. But I can't believe it just because I want to. Even if you held a gun to my head and were going to shoot me if I didn't believe it, the best I could do is pretend.
• Most Christian groups do not contend that merely believing is sufficient for attaining salvation and escaping damnation. Many of them even stipulate that one must follow the exact teachings of their particular sect, and there are lots of sects that profess this. Just going by Pascal's wager, it's most likely that one would arbitrarily guess the wrong sect, as there are so many choices. Perhaps all of the extant sects of Christianity have it wrong.
• Similarly, there are lots of other religions with their own gods and this wager is falsely limiting the possibilities to "our particular god" and "no god at all."
• Wagers require some basis for predicting how likely the intended outcome is, not just how big the reward is. Raising the reward/punishment to infinity doesn't cancel out the need for evidence.

But that's Pascal's wager. Just asking a general question about potential wrongness isn't subject to any of these criticisms. I think in the past, I failed to appreciate that. So I'm appreciating it now. However, this was not my biggest error. Rather, my problem was that I took "What if you're wrong?" to mean what the words literally suggest. What thing happens in the even that I am wrong? Well, my retort to that would be, "Wrong about what? Wrong in what way?" Pretty sure I said those exact words to someone at some point. And it would be fair if the person were actually trying to ask what would happen in the event that I was wrong, as I can potentially be wrong about a lot of things and I can be wrong about many of those things in more ways than one. But I saw later that such is not the case: people don't mean something so mundane as the literal combination of those four words (five if you count the contraction as two).

So for a time I went with the assumption that the question was shorthand for "What if you are wrong and I am right about the topic of discussion (in this case, religion)?" I once saw a debate between atheists and apologists in which an audience member asked the atheists, "What if you're wrong?" One of the atheists said, "Then we go to hell." Both sides were rather poor debaters, actually, but until recently, I considered that answer to be succinct, perhaps the perfect answer to the question. It's painfully obvious now how wrong I was.

"What if you're wrong" in that context can't mean something so mundane as "What happens if you are wrong and I am right about religion?" It's obvious that the questioner knows the answer to that and that the questioner knows that both parties know it. So it becomes a rhetorical question, in which case my question becomes, "What is the person asking this trying to get at? What point is he or she trying to raise?"

"What if you're wrong?" isn't a simple inquiry into the consequences of one's error. It's a request to consider the possibility of error. It's a plea for self-evaluation of one's position. I don't know if that sort of thing counts as a question, despite linguistically appearing to be one. But it's a good question if it is one and if not, it's a good whatever-other-thing-it-should-be-considered.

I think I can confidently at least say that to my father and anyone else asking me that the question: "Good question." But what follows? What's my answer? What if I'm wrong? Not just that, but what if I'm wrong and Young-Earth-Creationist Christians are right. Well, here's my answer. Here's what it means...

If I'm wrong, then it's not by a little bit. It's not due to one slight miscalculation. I'm way, way wrong. And there's some reason for it. Something I don't see. If I'm wrong, it means my understanding of the world is compromised. I have a flaw in some of my fundamental models through which I attempt to comprehend reality, and everything that's built on those models is probably useless. How did this happen? What started the process? Where do I look to find the error of my ways? I'm wrong, so where did I first go wrong? Was I wrong on my own or was I consciously manipulated by others into being this wrong?

If I'm wrong, it means the scientific method itself is going wrong somewhere. If I'm wrong, we're all doomed in some sense. Our greatest tools have gone to waste. If I'm wrong, the world is still a strange place, but it's strange in different ways from all the ways I thought it was strange in my own experience, so in short, if I'm wrong, I've been living some sort of lie. If I'm wrong, chemistry is wrong. Biology, geology, astronomy, physics? Is mathematics wrong too? If I'm wrong, I wasn't standing on the shoulders of giants. We'd all fallen into some sinkhole. Me and the giants. If I'm wrong, all bets are off. The greatest treasures of knowledge I thought I'd encountered were false, and I had a chance to see that, to search for the real gems, but I failed.

And finally, if I'm wrong and you're right, I'll know. I'll be surprised. I'll be baffled. Confused. Overwhelmed. But it will be a sure thing. And apparently I'll have all eternity to wonder. I'll have forever to agonize over my own wrongness. I'll be able to endlessly guess at the truth, however few hints of it I receive. And maybe I'll never ascertain it. Maybe, somewhere in eternity I'll happen upon a conjecture that perfectly captures the truth, but with no means of testing it, I won't know it from any of my other thoughts. But whatever I never know, one thing I will know is that I was wrong. That's what if I'm wrong. Damnation. Fire and brimstone. Unimaginable torture. Fine. I'm sure that's all very important, but to me, having my consciousness somehow preserved to discover my own wrongness about virtually everything is the greatest mercy. A privilege. There are so many ways for me to be wrong and not to know it. I'm an optimist about some things, but if you're right, my greatest hopes will have been exceeded. And my worst fears will have been exceeded too. Both at the same time, that's what if I'm wrong. It's bizarre and paradoxical to think about, sort of dizzying. But I think about it. I think about it a lot.

So there it is. My answer. I've given it some thought, but I think it's a good question and deserves thought. What if I'm wrong? I think about it all the time. Do you? Do Young-Earth-Creationist Christians ever try to answer that question? Do they ever ponder their own error or the possibility of it? Do any religious apologists? I'd think some do, but I don't really know. One thing I do know is that Pascal's wager certainly doesn't tell the story here either. Oh no, it's not, "If I'm wrong then I die and cease to be and that's it so the exact same thing that happens to you." No, no, no. If you're wrong, you've wasted your wonderful mental faculties on delusion and emptiness. If you're wrong, you exchanged truth for lies. If you're wrong, you know nothing about anything. Not the world. Not people. Not gods. Not life. Not even yourself. And if that doesn't bother you, then I think you aren't even capable of answering the question. You fail to address the prompt correctly. You can ask me what if I'm wrong, but at least it means something to me. You either have no imagination or you refuse to use your imagination. And in that case, well, I just feel sorry for you.

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Roche turned and looked at Kivrin. "Are these the last days," he asked, "the end of the world that God's apostles foretold?"
Yes, Kivrin thought. "No," she said. "No, it's only a bad time. A terrible time, but not everyone will die. And there will be wonderful times after this. The Renaissance and class reforms and music. Wonderful times. There will be new medicines, and people won't have to die from this or smallpox or pneumonia. And everyone will have enough to eat, and their houses will be warm even in the winter." She thought of Oxford, decorated for Christmas, the streets and shops lit. "There will be lights everywhere, and bells that you don't have to ring."

Book Review: The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison

This is arguably the first book in the "high fantasy" genre, although fantasy fans may find it basically unrecognizable were it not for the similarity to The Lord of the Rings. And that seems to be the work that this book always gets compared to, so it bears emphasizing that The Worm Ouroboros predates The Lord of the Rings by decades and probably influenced it a great deal. It's also reminiscent of Icelandic sagas. Actually "The Lord of the Rings + Icelandic sagas" is, in one line, practically the best description I can think of. There are some baffling quirks that such a description doesn't cover. The setting is specifically stated to be the planet Mercury, even though Eddison completely ignores scientific knowledge about Mercury, which did exist even back in 1926. He introduces the world and some of the characters through a random man on Earth who is taken there in what would seem to be a dream except that his guide (a swift, although I had to look "martlet" up on the internet because no one calls swifts martlets anymore and I don't think I'd ever encountered the term before in my life) tells him that he is totally not dreaming. It's all very weird.

I know I'm against popular opinion on this one, but here are some rather obvious reasons that this book is better than The Lord of the Rings.

• In The Lord of the Rings, a midget with no claim to fame other than that his uncle is famous among midgets goes on a long journey to a fiery mountain in order to dispose of a piece of jewelry. His companion is his best friend who happens to be another midget. In The Worm Ouroboros, the king of the Demons goes on a long journey to a fiery mountain in order to rescue his brother, the greatest warrior in the world. His companion is his best friend who happens to be the second greatest warrior in the world.
• In The Lord of the Rings, the main villain is some being that never actually appears in the books themselves, but who is like, totally an evil tyrant or something. In order to even understand what he's about, you have to read a completely different book. In The Worm Ouroboros, the main villain is the king of the Witches. His hobbies include conjuring hellspawn to whisk his enemies off to fiery mountains, falconry, sex, and sending armies to conquer every place on the planet, even the really lame ones.
• The Lord of the Rings has a deranged monster that used to be a midget and is obsessed with a piece of jewelry. The Worm Ouroboros has a goblin philosopher/alchemist/explorer/lord who seems to have a case of chronic backstabbing disorder.
• E.R. Eddison is a better writer than J.R.R. Tolkien.
• The Lord of the Rings interrupts the story with a song or poem that some character recites and that Tolkien made up. The Worm Ouroboros interrupts the story with a song or poem that some character recites and that is from LITERATURE! Classy.
• Passage up some dangerous mountain is made even more dangerous in The Lord of the Rings by a spider. Passage up some dangerous mountain is made even more dangerous in The Worm Ouroboros by manticores.
• At the end of The Lord of the Rings a wizard villain who wasn't dealt with earlier prolongs the story with his boring takeover of one insignificant settlement that is thwarted anticlimactically. Possibly the worst part of the whole story. At the end of The Worm Ouroboros, the main characters, having killed all of their enemies and essentially conquered the world, decide that peace sucks and arrange for the gods to bring their enemies back so that they can do it all again. They got the idea because the gods seem to like them and the gods gave another character that they liked eternal youth and peace, so they figure eternal youth and war might be doable. I truly believe that this point alone is sufficient to make the case that The Worm Ouroboros is the superior book.
  

I wrote this whole post and then forgot to put a title on it. Oops.

I am done with this quarter. Once I leave the campus this afternoon, I shan't be returning for the foreseeable future. It's an odd feeling to be leaving again, although, I think, not nearly so odd as returning was. In all, I suppose the experience was—satisfactory. Oh, and I guess I won't be using the wireless internet here. At home everything is all cumbersome wires. I should do something about that. Maybe I will.

On my other blog, the one that someone might actually read (the chemistry one), I caved in and turned on comment moderation. The spam was too annoying and now I can at least console myself that other people won't see it if I don't catch it first. I would have preferred murdering the spammers with an axe, but this solution will have to do. Also, the unintended hiatus is over. Yesterday I made a new post. And it won't be an anomaly. I will write at least two more posts this month. Maybe more. No, really.

So now that I'm out of school again and have like, totally massive amounts of free time (or not) I am resolving to get some crap done that I should have been doing all along.

Most importantly, I need to re-apply at the University of Washington. I have plenty of time, but let's just get it out of the way now.

I should also get a passport. Fesler was harassing me about this. And it's something I might as well do. He was also harassing me about completing a FAFSA thing, but my rebuttal to that was totally sound, so there. But the passport thing, yeah, that makes sense.

More posts on the chemistry blog. For real.

I'm not going to forget all about German just because I finished the two stupid quarters of it here. And man, they were disappointing, but bitching about that is a subject for another entry entirely. I have plenty of resources for progressing in my proficiency with German and I'm going to make that a goal or whatever.

Calculus. I will attack that monstrosity anew. Not sure how yet. Any suggestions? It's important to me, but it's also sort of overwhelming.

I'll get back into the swing of Legacy and help Nick build more decks, hopefully going to some tournaments at some point.

And while we're on the subject of games, I still need to get strong enough in go to beat a computer opponent, even if it's a relatively easy one.

And while we're still on the subject of games, I'm working on finishing another Diablo 2 character. We'll see how the demons like it when they have to face down thirteen skeletal warriors, thirteen skeletal mages, a clay golem, a dude with big trident or something, and up to a dozen revived monsters, all while I'm cursing them and turning the corpses of their fallen comrades into firebombs.

And let's finish my Oblivion character already. He's already completed virtually every quest except for the main questline.

There will be more writing, and not just on this blog or the chemistry one or Traversing Sinnoh, but some actual fiction. Because I've been reading and now that I've stopped to think about it, I'm totally a better writer than some apparent professionals. I might as well at least make a hobby of it. I have some fun stories that I've thought of over the years. If I think they're good enough, you may see them.

Speaking of Traversing Sinnoh, I'll finish that too.

Once this knee injury recovers, I want to get in better shape for judo and do some more judo tournaments. I think I'm seriously improving.

Is that too much? Should I say that I'll do even more stuff? I think I should.

It looks like someone beat the crap out of me, which is only true if my floor is "someone."

Hey there, what's up? I just wanted to say that this morning, I got out of bed, put on my slippers and my glasses, and then promptly tripped over nothing and fell right on my face. Yeah. Just wanted to share that. Also, this quarter of school is almost over. So that's cool. I don't really have anything else to say right now except that my lips hurt and that I'll try to post something more interesting next time than, "I totally fell on my face." Not saying that I'll succeed. But I'll try. Well, I have to go to class pretty soon (my finals are basically over though, so I'm not even sure why I'm bothering).

Inventory of the tomes

My mother saved the table legs. They're somewhere in the kitchen now. And she complains about my dad being a packrat...

Paperback series
I have several books from some popular science fiction and/or fantasy series, all of them in paperback. So it makes sense to have this as a category. These books are individually rather small, but there are so many of them that they take up a lot of room. I have...

• 7 books from the Battletech series. I got into these after I started playing Mechwarrior II. I forget how many books from the series I read over the years. Some of them, particularly the Michael A. Stackpole ones, are actually quite good. These seven are pretty much random ones that I got as a Christmas gift in, I think, 1999. I had already read two or three of them, as it wasn't like my parents kept track of which ones I had and hadn't read.
• 4 Darksword books. The complete original trilogy and the odd companion book, Darksword Adventures. All I'm missing is the sequel, Legacy of the Darksword. Got into these because they were written by Weis & Hickman.
• All 7 books of the Death Gate Cycle. As before, got into it because it was the same authors that originally did Dragonlance. Easily their best work, though.
• 2 of the Star of the Guardians books. The Death Gate Cycle aside, these books seem to be convincing evidence that Margaret Weis wrote better without Tracy Hickman than with him. Their fans will be sending assassins after me right about now. But it's true.
• All three volumes of the Rose of the Prophet trilogy. Weis & Hickman's second best work, probably.
• 15 Dragonlance books. I have no idea how many Dragonlance books I've read. Dozens, easily. Maybe a hundred. Nothing particularly good about the ones I happen to own, except for what seem to be first editions of the Legends trilogy and the first volume only of the Chronicles. Also, I just remembered that I read one of these before I read the Chronicles. Presumably the same copy sitting on the desk now. I wonder where I originally got it. I didn't really get into this series until J.T. loaned me the Chronicles back in 1998 or so.
• 1 Redwall book. I am not positive, but I'm pretty sure that I read every single Redwall book that was published up to this one, although I'm sure there are a lot more now.
• 2 volumes of His Dark Materials. Missing the first one.
• 2 Magic: the Gathering novels. The concept of books based on a card game just seems too silly to me to bother with. But I have to say that back in the day, they actually got some good authors to write these things. You'd think that they'd just exploit the popularity of the game to make a quick buck, which of course they've done, but there are some real gems to be found here. Not anymore, of course. That's why I said "back in the day." Now the books are tied to the sets as part of their storyline. Some of the old books were good. These two, unfortunately, are not among them.
• 1 of the Chronicles of Prydain. I read the whole series in 1996 or 1997. The last one is pretty bad. This is the first one.
  

Science fiction and fantasy
Asimov: The End of Eternity, Prelude to Foundation, Nemesis, I, Robot
Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, Podkayne of Mars
Other: The Complete Chronicles of Conan, Cyberdreams, Thor's Hammer, Man Plus
"Classics" that are also at least kind of sort of science fiction: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Brave New World, 1984

Classic literature because I have class
John Steinbeck's two best books, two Poe books (one of which is complete works, so the other is redundant, but it does look nice), and then two others, one Russian and one French, both translated into English because I am too lame to know more than one language.

Ostensibly classics, but they suck
Three books. Should I say which ones, or would that mean more assassins?

Kind of miscellaneous
This old King Arthur book for children or some such creatures and also The Lovely Bones.

Picture books
Watchmen and Quick as a Cricket. We used to have more Audrey Wood books, but somehow this one ended up safe with me and the others have probably been ruined. Personally, my favorite is The Big, Hungry Bear.

Drama
Picnic (ugh), Hamlet, and three books of George Bernard Shaw plays. My great grandma got me those when I was really into Shaw. I don't think I've read anything by him in years now, but I still think they're some of the best plays ever.

Non-fiction
Eight or so books. No particular theme.

Useful reference texts that I should store somewhere easily accessible
Dictionary, calculus cliff notes, organic chemistry lab manual, old microbiology textbook, statistics textbook, biology textbook, plant identification books, general and organic chemistry textbooks, organic chemistry solutions manual, book of quotes, calculus textbook.

Not so useful reference texts that might still be of some use
Microbiology textbook from microbiology class, old chemistry textbooks, psychology textbook, American history textbook that was never for any class I ever took but it looks mediocre, newsletter production manual (huh?), books from philosophy of science class (all bad), books of photographs, my dad's old torn up book of frontpages from the Los Angeles Times, English textbooks, ancient zoology book.

Books that I have not yet read, but might some day
Logic puzzles, a strange book about mathematics, a 1940's mystery novel, a 1960's science fiction anthology, an Isaac Asimov book, a Colette book, King Lear, a book of Mark Twain quotes, Othello, a Neil Gaiman book, another anthology, Gravity's Rainbow, some book about science and politics, the complete works of Jack London, The Dilbert Principle, another Carl Sagan book, a Fyodor Dostoevsky book, a book of Dryden poems that is 110 years old, Henrik Ibsen plays, a Charles Dickens book I was supposed to read a while back but never did, Moby Dick (I've read part of it but never finished it).

Not really books
Or perhaps books intended for me to write in them or something. I found four lab notebooks and an old spiral notebook from junior high. Oh, there are also some instruction manuals, like the one for my globe and for my chemistry model set thing. Also, computer game manuals.

For the lulz
Books that I don't really intend to actually read, but that I do find amusing and happen to have for some reason include some funny self-help books, this really bad book that I don't know how to describe exactly, a book about IBS that someone must have given me because of my intestinal spasms, a book about how to become a millionaire by starting a mail-order business, and this awful fantasy trilogy that someone must have given me.

Do not want
Do you want any of these? Now is your chance...

• Patriot Games by Tom Clancy. Ugh, Tom Clancy. How could I ever have tolerated him?
• Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy. Seriously?
• Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Mission of Honor. Not even actually by Tom Clancy. Stupid, really. Glad I never read this one.
• The Charm School by Nelson Demille. Looks like a wannabe Tom Clancy book. Ugh.
• The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells. Not sure why I used to like H.G. Wells either. I was young and stupid.
• 4 resume guide books or whatever. Not that I'd read a book written by a total stranger for help with my resume. My sister got them when she graduated from college and she didn't want them, so she gave them to me. I don't want them either.
• Some algebra workbooks.
• An old Christian apologetic book. Oh, I guess this is my dad's. I'll just sneak it onto one of his shelves or something. He probably wanted me to read it, but I'll bet he never read it himself anyway. Besides, I read the first bit of it and it was really boring and pointless.

And that's it, aside from five books that I threw away because of extensive mold damage. Now I just need to figure out how to make this stuff take up less space...

Cleaning part of of my room.

This has shifted from an attempt to gather, catalog, and do something about my books this evening. It has become something entirely more monstrous. I ostensibly cleaned this room out back in 2004. And yet, somehow I am finding object that not only shouldn't be in here, but that never belonged in this room and never belonged to me to begin with: relics of our move to this dump of a house back in 2001, during which I was incredibly sick and it fell to the rest of my family to pack my stuff and put what was thought to be mine in my room. But along with most of my stuff, a lot of other junk came for the ride. And some of it, nearly a decade later, is still here. I'm not even touching the closet for now. I'm already surrounded by junk. I'd take video of this with my laptop if I didn't think I would die of embarrassment.

The rest of this house is still worse, though. But forget that. No matter how awful the rest of this house is, I am going to do something about my room. Something. Not sure what. Can't possibly do it all tonight. And I do need to use the bed at some point, so I should probably figure out a way to remove the stuff that's there now. So, no video footage, but I will provide a written record of my sins. In this venture, I have discovered...

Table legs. Not just any table legs. These went to a table that has never existed in this house. Presumably the rest of the table was moved in a different box and didn't end up in my room. I think it was breccia or something covered in glass, so it was probably broken and thrown out shortly after we moved here. I think I actually knew that these damn things were still somewhere in my room, but I blocked it out because it was too stupid to consider. I am giving these to my parents because it seems good for a laugh and there's a decent chance that my dad won't actually throw them away and that they will survive to end up in some museum centuries from now along with the rest of the crap unearthed from our house, preserved only by virtue of the building's ridiculously bunker-like design while the rest of the neighborhood perished in some natural disaster or something.

A pocket calculator still in its box. Might be nice if it were something actually useful, instead of stupid and obsolete.

Mix CD's that Eric made and later gave to me. They were sitting on a book. They should still play. Not that I ever bother to put a CD into the drive on either of my computers. But it's a nice idea. I'm saving these, of course.

A pad of sticky-notes from GRCC. Probably from when I first started there back in 2005. Why would I keep these? I never use sticky notes. These go in the trash.

A blue slip of paper with text in blue Sharpie reading, "I got you the BEST bookmark ever! Love you. V" Are you kidding? I'm totally keeping this. If it was in a book at the library and I pulled it out and brought it home, then it is clearly worthy of my collection.

Audio cassette tapes featuring Ravi Zacharias and Zig Ziglar: two people whose opinions I couldn't care less about. Just about all of my dad's other tapes were destroyed by being in our garage. Most of my family's possessions were in carboard boxes there for storage. When my mother tried to move some, she found that even though the boxes looked normal, when she tried to lift them, the tops and sides of the boxes would pull away, revealing that whatever was in them was completely ruined. Our garage didn't flood or anything. It's just so humid and mold-infested that nothing left in there is safe.

One of those flashing light clip-on things that doesn't even work, possibly because it has the word "Boeing" on it, meaning that it's from when my dad worked for Boeing.

A nerf dart gun. Awesome.

I think these are 3-D glasses. Whatever. I don't need them.

Underwear. Um, I have no idea how these got here?

A dozen plastic grocery bags. I laugh at the oceans. Or is it cry?

My checks. These should last me for the next 50 years or so at this rate.

Drugs. And the "discard by" date hasn't even been reached yet.

The adapter for my mouse that I bought. I forget what this adapter is called, but I don't need it. Might as well keep it somewhere in case I do? I don't know. I don't want to be a packrat, but this is potentially useful. I might be able to use it to connect the mouse to my old computer or something. I think my old computer is too old even for that...

The test of a sea urchin, specifically a "sand dollar." I've probably had this for like, a really long time. Might as well keep it.

My flash cards for reactions in organic chemistry. Excellent.

A handheld game called "Radar Sea Combat" that still works. Amusing. How old is this thing?

Magic CD's of the old Microprose variety. I never bought these, but I think I salvaged them from our garage and my brother must have gotten them somehow. I should try to install this stuff on my old computer, although I already got some of that software from the Home of the Underdogs back when they had it.

This amazing thing that I stole from my dad. No way am I giving this back to him. It's a miniature poster thing of the electromagnetic spectrum and presents it better than just about anywhere else I've seen. Really cool. I say I stole it from him but in reality he let me borrow it and I've just never given it back. That being said, one of the reasons for me not giving it back was that it was hidden behind a wall of books on my "bookshelf." And no, I didn't forget that it was there. I just didn't want to give it back to my dad. I will treasure it forever. Uh, I mean I will give it back to my dad at some point.

A beaten up page of sleeves for cards. Useless.

A laminated map of the good old U.S.A. One of those ones where Alaska is in a box with a different scale from the rest of the map so that it looks smaller. The state of Texas undoubtedly cut this company a check.

A 2005 calender that I am guessing my mother gave me because it's a Pink Floyd calender. No need for old calenders.

A GRCC schedule for last quarter. I'm sure I have much older ones around here somewhere, though. Throwing this one out.

Award certificate things from high school, mostly from wrestling. Amazing how hard my name is to spell. No, it's not "Steven." And it's not "Stephan" either. I am Stephen Bahl. Is that so confusing? I also see my promotion certificate to green belt in judo that I thought I looked everywhere for back when I was supposed to make a copy of it for my next promotion. Whatever.

A tumbler from Jet City Pizza. I think the phone number changed, so the one on it is no good. I hope that place is still around, actually. They might not be. Does anyone know? Wait, this is the internet. I can just look it up. Looks like it isn't. That's a shame.

Another map, but this one is my "First State Quarters of the United States Collector's Map." And I did complete it. This thing is worth big money. Like we're talking $12.50 at least.

Some sort of Leatherman knockoff thing that I've had for like 15 years. Maybe more. Be prepared.

Okay. I think that's everything but the books, which is sort of like saying that's a small fraction of the mess I'm dealing with, since the vast majority actually is books. But this is already running on and I haven't even started on the books. I'll report back on that issue later.

Still more about books

Something needs to be done about this mess. I had most of the books I bought at that library booksale sitting in a spot on my floor between my bed and my desk (actually between my bed and a big plastic container of Magic cards that is itself between my bed and my desk). It was supposed to be temporary storage until I could figure out where to put them. Well, when I pulled them out, there was slight water damage on some of the ones that had been directly on the floor. I relocated the whole mess to my bed and later to the top of my dresser and now to my bed again. Books. It's out of control. I just cleared off my whole bookshelf, which is really not a shelf at all, but a large area that takes up most of my entire desk (and it's not a small desk).

I am going to organize this shit somehow. I should separate what I have read from what I haven't and what I want to keep from what is junk. Also, I'm finding some interesting things that are not books at all. Also, my hand started aching after my exam today and it's still painful, so I don't want to type a lot. I'm going to cut this short.

Before I do that, I'm going to say a quick bit about the last book I read. To Say Nothing of the Dog: How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis. Not a full review, because I can't manage that right now. But I'll likely finish the book I started after it (one of my old books that I've had for years and never read) soon, so let's just get it out of the way.

This book is awesome. Glowing recommendation. Will definitely be reading more from this author in the near future. Best time travel mystery story I've ever read. Actually, it's the only time travel mystery I can think of right now. Whatever. #14 or so on my still-in-need-of-reworking top 50 list. Glad to be reading good science fiction again.

First update in a while, mostly about books

I actually have been doing things other than playing Oblivion. No really. I've been reading books. Not just for school and not even just at work during my break, even (but mostly). Traditionally, I've talked about the books I've read in my old journal even when I wasn't updating with anything else (usually). I'm going to finish another book soon and it's the best one I've read in quite a while, but more on that some other day. I'm still not done with it yet.

Tonight was the first time I had training partners for judo since right about the time the high school judo season started. Pretty cool. I competed in a tournament earlier, by the way. Like two weeks ago or something. I sucked and I didn't feel like writing about it here. But now you know.

Geology class is kind of cool, but also annoying because it seems so dumbed down. It's definitely got me wanting to learn more about geology, especially the chemical aspects of it. Not saying that I want to necessarily pursue a career in geochemistry or anything, but it is very interesting stuff.

In a month or so I should be reapplying to the University of Washington, I guess. We'll see how that goes. Eventually. Probably.

So the first of the two books I read was The Future at War Volume I: Thor's Hammer. I bought it at that library book sale a while back. Like Cyberdreams, it is an anthology. It's the first in a three-part series of anthologies compiled by Reginald Bretnor. I would read the other two, but there's no way I'm going to hunt for obscure 1970's science fiction paperbacks. Out of the question. I can glean, from the introduction, how the trilogy was supposed to flow. This volume deals with war on Earth and in near-Earth space. The second volume moves outward to war in the solar system and the third volume moves all the way to intergalactic war.

Not to bash the previous anthology I read, but this one definitely takes editing to another level. As far as that goes, I could say that Reginald Bretnor gets an "A" for effort. Instead of just, "Hey here are some stories from our magazine that all have something to do with one of three or four completely different things" he actually has a real theme. The book includes both science fiction short stories and articles written by science fiction authors. Between pieces, Bretnor chimes in briefly and thoughtfully to give background. He doesn't try to bash the reader with some sort of message or digress into his own opinions on the material. He lets the stories and articles do the work themselves.

Unfortunately, Thor's Hammer leads with its trump card. And it's rather blatant about doing so. I picked this up because it had Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson's names on it. I mean, not solely for that. It was also because it looked like an interesting concept for an anthology and I was getting books for very little money. Anyway, right after the introduction, the very first thing this book gives us is Robert Heinlein's The Long Watch. It is excellent. It would be impossible to keep up that level of quality the whole time, but this definitely made the rest of the book look worse than it probably was.

Charles Sheffield's Fixed-Price War was pretty good. Tom Purdon's Moon Rocks was also good. Poul Anderson's Marius was decent. Rick Rubin's Final Muster was interesting. Most of the rest was disappointing, although it might have seemed better had they saved the best for last rather than throwing it out right away.

One thing that I learned from most of these stories and almost all of the articles is that the 1970's was a completely different world from the one I live in now. I mean, it wasn't, of course. That's silly. But I learned it. So I guess I learned a lie? A pretty convincing one, though. I went into this with Man Plus, but only a little. Mainly, I guess the way the Cold War dominated science fiction fascinates me. Technically, I do remember the Cold War. But I was so young that even if I had been able to understand what was going on, no one bothered to keep me informed. The only times I can recall adults referring to it, they simply called it "the war" and didn't bother to go into detail. I learned more in history classes in school, but not much. Most of what I know about the Cold War I learned from reading on my own.

When I say that the Cold War dominated science fiction, I don't mean that futuristic science fiction invariably dealt with a world in which it was still going on. That did happen a lot. But even in futuristic scenarios that have nothing to do with the Cold War as we know it, the idea of the Cold War still applied. I almost feel as though from reading enough of this that I have a sense for a particular brand of nothing much actually happening but almost everyone being convinced that major shit is about to go down that I don't think I've ever directly observed in real people in my whole life. But in science fiction, either some flavor of that expectation or some component of it or it in combination with a few other things is virtually nonexistent before and after the Cold War.

Also, I could write a whole post on Jerry Pournelle's article, Lasers, Grasers, and Marxists. Not because it's particularly bad or particularly good. It's because there's something about his article that is entirely terrifying and which he is aware of and is part of his point, all while there's something about his article that is entirely terrifying in a way that he could never have intended. I'd say more, but this is already probably so long that I lost everyone. Maybe later.

Anyway, the other book I just finished is Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden. And it's also from the 1970's and yes, it also got me thinking about the difference between then and now, although for entirely different reasons. Carl Sagan was a knowledgeable and proficient science writer. While this has probably never been held up as one of his great works, it's not a bad book and I have no reason to believe that he slacked off on this one. However, the most prominent thing about The Dragons of Eden is quite possibly how useless it is.

The subtitle is, "Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence." Sagan gets into the nature of intelligence, how to define it, artificial intelligence, intelligence in other animals, intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, how the human brain works, and some weird symbology that I found a bit annoying, but not nearly enough to ruin the whole show. However, three topics that get relatively huge sections in this 250-page book are computers, neuroscience, and phylogenetics. They aren't the only three fields of science touched on, but the intersection of these three is the focus of The Dragons of Eden. And if you were to randomly draw names from a hat of scientific and technological fields, you would spend quite some time before you hit on a combination that has seen more progress since 1977 than those three. I guess that's a very longwinded way of saying that almost the entire book is outdated. But I think it explains why so much of the book is outdated. Science changes. Science is expected to change. It's a good thing. Science writing becomes outdated. It happens. But when it comes to science writing becoming outdated, you aren't usually going to write a book tying three disparate research fields together with a single theme and have those turn out to be three of the most rapidly changing fields after your book comes out. Yeah, it's been over thirty years. Long enough that much of the science writing at the time would be outdated anyway, but not, I think to such an incredible extent.

This post is over.

Blogger is giving me title suggestions that don't make any sense and have nothing to do with the content of this post...

See what I did there?

The future is now. I am at school. Not new. The power is out. Not new either really. I am updating this while the power is out. Now that's new. Yeah, apparently the wireless internet still works even though the electricity is down all across campus. I'm not surprised. Because it's the future. If this were the past, I would totally be surprised. But I am not, as this is the future, after all. Such things happen in the future.

So I've still been playing Oblivion far too much to get anything done. When I got the game, my brother decided to get it for his PS3. He'd played it before on the XBox 360, but no longer had one because he'd gone through two of them. Everyone else though, who knows about the game and has heard that I have been playing it, have only commented that it is old. This is perfectly true, but it just seems odd to me, mainly because the games I'm used to playing are from mid-90's. 2006 just doesn't seem that long ago. Compared to the games I was playing before, like Diablo 2 and Lords of Magic, Oblivion looks amazing. The sky, the landscape, everything. But of course, now it really is old. This leads me to think in terms of accelerating changes in technology, but I don't want to argue that the singularity is totally here, man, or anything like that. I'm just saying, it kind of weirds me out.

Mainly, I just figured that I had to post once I realized that I do indeed have internet despite the power being out. If the power is out at home, I won't have internet and will probably flip out, but this is probably pretty local. Das ist alles für heute.

I didn't get my Toll House sandwich...

I left my wallet at home this morning, which I almost never do. I actually realized it because I didn't have much to eat for breakfast at home and was going to buy something before geology class started, but then I noticed that I had no wallet with me. This also meant that after my test today, I didn't get any of the delicious ice cream, as is my custom. Maybe tomorrow to make up for it?

Also, I'm tired and my eye itches a lot. I wonder if I got something in it or it's infected or something awful.

I need to figure out some stuff as far as re-applying to the University of Washington goes. And somehow this has got me wondering about physics, which I'll eventually be taking (unless I die from whatever is bothering my left eye or something). I should brush up on calculus. Also chemistry. Also everything.

Oh, and now that I'm totally used to having a laptop computer, it suddenly occurs to me how much better this is than trying to find a computer in the library to log into and crap like that. It almost makes me wonder how I survived last quarter, which is silly, of course.

Whatever, I'd promise that my next update won't suck so much, but I'll probably just play Oblivion a lot and not update for a really long time.

Stop: petty time

It's been a while, I know. I have things to talk about, but the one thing that is finally getting me to update is sheer pettiness. Something trivial, really inconsequential, but I'm still annoyed about it. This doesn't really affect anyone at all, but I'm going to go ahead anyway...

Yesterday in German class we went over some stupid dialogues with apartments and houses and whatever. Well, here are the relevant bits, which I am translating...

Anna: Who cooks?
Jörg: All of us. Benno, Verena, and myself.
...and later, skipping some other lines that don't matter...
Anna: How much do you pay per month?
Jörg: 200 euros.

So when we came to that last line, the instructor asked how much the house costed. I forget his exact words, but it was confusing. At first I thought he was asking how much it would cost to buy the place. Then I thought he was asking how much per year. Finally, I realized that he was asking how much the total rent per month was, the idea being that everyone is paying an equal portion (which may or may not be a reasonable assumption—I have no idea how it works in Germany). So I answered (in German) that it was 600 euros. I based this on the earlier line about who cooks the meals: if three people cook, and everyone who lives there cooks, that means three people live there and if furthermore each of them pays 200 per month, the total paid per month is 600. Simple enough. Well, understandably, since this was all in German and the instructor worded the question in a confusing manner, people in the class were thrown off and various people were giving different answers. Some people thought four people were paying rent because they added Anna to the count and some others thought five for some reason. The instructor said that it was 800. When I still said 600, he joked that I shouldn't need a calculator and that of course 4 times 200 is 800. I was a bit baffled by this. I thought to myself that I must have misread the text and that Anna, being a prospective tenant, was being told how much she would pay, which would be the same as the three existing tenants, so the total would be 800. Fine. The line about the calculator was rude (and yes, it was to me specifically and not to the class in general because the instructor said my name). It's not that I can't count, it's that I'm only beginning to learn German. Whatever.

Well, this running start student in the corner of the room kept running his mouth for like a whole damn minute after that. Maybe not quite, but close enough to a minute anyway. I only knew he was talking about me because I heard him say my name. I couldn't hear everything he said, but it was along the lines of how I need to take a math class and how I can't even count and such. I was so angry that I couldn't focus on anything for the rest of the class. I have no idea what we went over after that. I was too busy not throwing any teenagers through the window.

I was still seething over it for a while, then ate lunch and forgot about the whole thing—until just now when I was doing my homework and noticed that in the stupid dialogue, there's nothing about Anna even being a prospective tenant at all and the question that is asked is, "How much do you pay per month?" Not, "How much would I pay per month?" Big difference. So basically, I was right, just like always. Now I'm angry again.