Snapshots, Bits, and Pieces

Mina Tepes (Wikipedia Image)

I'm thinking how I can, and should, blog. I want to post more of my thoughts, and more snapshots of my efforts and hobbies. However, I am too compulsive lately to sit down and type things down. I will be experimenting with this and succeeding posts. Will see what works. ^_^









Finished these anime lately, and here's what I think of them:

• Dance in the Vampire Bund - Grade:A+
• Sexy, lovely, exciting, and romatic. One of my favorites.
• Sekimatsu Occult Academy - Grade:A
• Sengoku Basara 2 - Grade:B-
• As expected. Nothing new here people. Just passing by.
• High School of the Dead - Grade:A
• Not bad at all; and not just because of the rich fan service.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Wikipedia Image)

Things to do:

• Start (and finish) SAM's Teach Yourself iPhone Application Development
• (Re)Learn Mandarin
• Listening to audio lately. Just have to keep it up.

• Finish Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• More than 50% through the book. Unexpectedly engaging and thought-provoking. Very mature work. A lot of introspection. I'm really liking it a lot.

Reflections:

• Until when will this life of peace and bounty last? Is it possible for humanity to forget the horrors of war? I am not speaking of just regional wars, but truly great wars much like the World Wars. And similarly, when I say "forget," I do not mean mere memory, but the experience and feeling of the horrors of war. Can humans who were born and raised during a time of relative peace truly conceive of a world at war? I mean, beyond mere idea, or fantastical day dream; to truly imagine oneself scared witless for one's life - that at any time, a stray bullet, a wrong decision by a leader, can end it all; to see all around you death and inhuman suffering. When one looks at a historical timeline, one will notice that great wars come and go. From this standpoint, it seems it is merely a matter of time before global suffering will once again cover the world. So sad, but so undeniable. Should I worry? Should I prepare? Or should I just live as if it will not come to pass - to cross the bridge when we get there, as they say?

And yet I while away time:

• TowerMadness
• So addicting. Got the Spooky and Marshland packs for free via FB. Bought the flamethrower and flash bait too!

- Ryles

The Reading Void

One thing I don't like about reading a good novel is that once you've finished reading it, it's so hard to find the next one to read. I become so absorbed with the world the author has created in my imagination, that it is so difficult to part with it. I want more. But there is no more. I've read [almost] every book from the author, and there is simply no more. It takes effort to open a new book; to forget the familiar worlds and start anew. Such is the effect after I've read The Evolutionary Void, the third and last book of the Void Trilogy. Too many praise have already been said about the book that I feel inept. As such I have nothing more to add. Don't believe me? Try reading the reader comments. It is simply a grand space opera, a masterpiece of world-building and story-telling in the traditional Hamilton style.

The worse part is I knew this was coming. Every time I read a Peter F. Hamilton novel, I am met with this frustration at the end. It is a good frustration, but a frustration nonetheless. I would scour the bookstores for the next best thing, and nothing will satisfy. Sad and quite unfair for the next book I read, I assure you.

I need another cake, and I want it to be like the one I just finished. Please?

I wanted to start the Heechee Saga, but I can't find my copy of Gateway. (Damn, where did I put it!) I wanted to try Neal Asher's Polity novels or Iain Bank's Culture series, but I don't have any of the books yet. For now, I return to a work of another distinguished (but unfortunately not as consistently good) scifi writer - Dan Simmons, with his collection of short stories, Worlds Enough and Time.

Kudos to Mr. Hamilton for another well-written novel! I'm sure it will be a bestseller and a classic. I look forward to his next works. I'm hoping there will be a short story collection about the Commonwealth, much like The Confederation Handbook and A Second Chance at Eden for the Night's Dawn trilogy.

^_^)

Just call me Kindle

One week has passed since my Kindle arrived, so I think it's time I say something about it.

First of all, I love it. It's very light, and easy to read with - basically, it lives up to the hype! I've bought only one(1) book so far - The Evolutionary Void. And to limit it to one book really took a lot of self-control. I also loaded it up with my Apple tutorials and other PDFs, and I should say it provides a better reading experience than the iPod (although I had to rotate it to read PDFs with a proper font size).

However, this post is not meant to highlight how good an e-reader the Kindle is. Instead, I want to say something about what name to call it. I've been using the pronoun "it" to refer to my Kindle. In the tradition of ship-naming (and yeah, yeah, male ego), I would normally give my devices female names. In my case, female anime names. After all, my iPod is lovingly named Chibi Mina Tepes - small but tenacious and mature. (Now that I think about it, I probably should have named her Loli Mina Tepes :P) It's a sign of affection, mind you. It's kind of hard to show my affection if I named my iPod Sgt. Slaughter, right? Besides, I would rather people hear me say "it's so much fun to read with chibi Mina," instead of "it's so much fun to read with Sgt. Slaughter." Perish the thought. And, no, I am not inspired to name it after an author.

I've been mulling what name to give to my Kindle, but so far no good name comes to mind. I'd call it Nagato Yuki (who is after all a book lover herself), but it just feels too long and... ill-fitting. In any case, the search for a good name is still ongoing! ^_^

Aside from a name, it's been difficult to find a dress for her. Unlike the iPod, the Kindle is not yet mainstream, and practically nobody (aside from Amazon.com) sells decent accessories that will protect her. I really wished I ordered the Kindle leather cover along with her. Sigh. (-.-') So far, I'm making do with plastic book covers and a pouch.

What? You want to know what features the Kindle has? As I said, this is not what the post is meant to do! :P But, okay, just to satisfy that curiousity, here is a list of features I really liked about her:

• e-Ink display (crisp and paper-like with no backlights - exactly how books should be!)
• 0, 90, 180, and 270-degree orientation;
• Free 3G access (via Amazon WhisperNet) - sooo convenient for buying books;
• Well-positioned page keys at the side (just right where my thumb would be);
• Tactile-feedback keys; meaning: I can feel myself pressing her buttons (no pun intended) - after all, they are physical keys, not plain-vanilla touch interface - and yes, call me old-school, but I prefer them over touch (although swipe would be nice);
• Multiple bookmarks;
• PDF support;
• Loooooong battery life (beat that iPod!);
• Real-time dictionary (very, very handy);
• Screensaver of classical authors and images (see the pic? That is Mark Twain);

She also has an "experimental" web browser and MP3 player, but I haven't used them. ^_^

Gadgets Galore

Ok, I admit I've been a shopaholic lately. What you see here is my new iMac! I bought it two weeks ago, and has been enjoying it ever since. I've never been an Apple fanboy. In fact, I've never really used one! This will be my first time. But after this, I'm becoming a big fan of that particular walled garden now. ^_^)/

Did I mention I bought an 8GB iPod along with it? :P And the nice thing about it is that, in total, both just cost me less than 115,000 JPY! But hey, it's for development use. Yeah, that's right... development use. (^^;


And today. Today, this very unassuming package arrived:

 And guess what's inside! o_o

An Amazon Kindle.

It arrived earlier than expected. I thought I'd get it sometime October - one day, my Amazon account indicated that they will send me an email once a shipping date has been fixed; the next day, it indicated that it has been shipped already, and I am to expect it to arrive a week later! Now that was a surprise. A pleasant surprise. b(^_^)d










 Nice packaging inside, despite the messy outer box.








The USB cable even comes with a power adapter - something I wished the iPod came with.

So what did I get myself into? Tons of distractions! Lolz! Between the games in my iPod and the books in my Kindle, I think I'm going to have to willfully force myself to go to work. :D Well, I'm hoping that means I can catch up on my iPhone programming (self)studies, which was my original intention... yeah, I did intend that.



Time to prove that I can keep my word... especially to myself. ;P

Book Arrivals: Cordwainer Smith and MOG

Last week was supposed to be a 1-week summer vacation. Instead, it became 1 week of overtime work. And like all overtime work, it took it's psychological toll. Mine came in the form of an order for a Kindle, and, in the process of looking through Amazon.jp, 2 new books.

Unfortunately, the Kindle will not arrive any time soon. The first time I checked, it was due to be shipped on the first week of October (plus shipping time from US to Japan).  The last time I checked, it said I will be notified by e-mail. It's now time for the long wait.

Meanwhile, the 2 new books already arrived. I ordered them because they didn't have Kindle versions. At least not yet. And besides, they've been in my wishlist for so long already. I couldn't order them because they were always out of stock here in Japan. I saw both become available, and one of them was marked "only one left in stock" (yes, I checked after it arrived, and surely, it was out of stock again).

The first book is The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith. It is a collection of classic short stories from science fiction's golden age - the late 1950's to the 60's. According to all the reviews, Cordwainer Smith was not really popular, but he wrote some of the best stories, and this omnibus (read: tome) comes highly-recommended. And also as recommended, I will read it in parts.

The second book is Reinventing Gravity by John W Moffat. It is a book about modified gravity (or MOG) theories - essentially, alternate working hypothesis that try to explain the current leading mysteries (and inconsistencies) in physics and astronomy. Lately, I've been finding the prevalent dark matter / dark energy explanations becoming more and more whimsical, especially as the evidences are not coming in. MOGs seem to be a refreshing take on the subject, and I want to understand more about them. However, save for an article in Scientific American some time back, I haven't  found any other sources, until this book came to my attention. Apparently, people really do have a hard time letting go of cherished theories*, and relatively fewer researchers are pursuing this direction.

Along with my other ongoing books (and the soon-to-be-in-my-possession Kindle and Kindle books), I am looking forward to great insightful and enjoyable reads in the near future.

Btw, it's the Obon period this weekend, so I have 4 days to enjoy them before work interrupts life again. I have no plans of rushing through the books. I am going to slowly savor and enjoy them for quite some time.

Oh yeah, Reinventing came with the first 2 pages torn! Torn! I had to wait 1 week (i.e. today) for a new copy to be delivered. The damaged one also got picked up late this afternoon. So everything's fine  and dandy now. They're now both wrapped in book plastic covers and ready to be read. On a side note, I'll probably be finishing Imago, the third and last story in Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood before continuing with The Rediscovery.

* From the first chapter: historically, the Ptolemaic earth-centered view was so entrenched that it persisted for 2000 years... until Copernicus came by. Wow, 2000 years! In comparison, Einstein's Special and General theories of relativity are just a little over 100 years old, while Darwin's theory of evolution just turned 150 last year. 2000 years indeed!