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Using the last 200 years of American history as his template for Martian history, Robinson projects his tale of Mars’s colonization from the 21st century, in which settlers successfully revolt against Earth, into the next century, when various interests on Mars work out their differences on issues ranging from government to the terraforming of the planet and immigration. Sax Russell, Maya Toitovna and others reprise their roles from the first two novels, but the dominant “personality” is the planet itself, which Robinson describes in exhaustive naturalistic detail. Characters look repeatedly for sermons in its stones and are nearly overwhelmed by textbook abstracts on the biological and geological minutiae of their environment. Not until the closing chapters, when they begin confronting their mortality, does the human dimension of the story balance out its awesome ecological extrapolations.

Last week I finally finished “Blue Mars,” the final book of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy. It picks up immediately after the end of “Green Mars” and spans another 100 (Earth) years on the colonized (and now terraformed) planet.

The first portion of the novel covers the aftermath of the second revolution and the formation of the new Martian government, free of Earth/United Nations Transitional Authority control and complete with its own court system and political parties (the old revolutionary branches like the Reds, Greens, MarsFirsters, Free Mars, etc. etc.).

The terraforming effort continues throughout the book: the sea of shattered ice wrapping around the northern hemisphere of the planet has started to melt into the great Northern Sea. Eventually there are islands, boats, canals, sea life, even coastal towns.

In the middle portion, we are finally taken back to see the situation on Earth first-hand. Nirgal, the Martian native and son of Coyote, visits the “home” planet for the first time along with Maya, Sax, and Michel in an show-of-goodwill ambassadorial mission. They want to be able to help Earth with the overpopulation issue (made critical by the rising sea levels) without flooding Mars with immigrants and making the political, social, and environmental issues there any worse. It was cool to “see” Earth through Nirgal’s eyes (so much water, so much sun, so HOT!).

It’s evident to everyone that Mars is not the ultimate solution to Earth’s population problems. Continued advances in technology allow the human race to explore out even further in the solar system (which Robinson calls “the Accelerando”). One chapter takes place on Miranda, a moon of Uranus, where Ann tries to escape to the primal beauty of a landscape (as of yet) untouched by human endeavors.

Finally, the remaining First Hundred are now over 200 years old, thanks to the longevity treatments. But old age is finally starting to catch up with them and there are a few quick deaths in succession. Facing their own mortality, Sax is determined to find a cure for the “quick decline” which plays out across a few chapters on memory and brain research.

As with the prior two books, Robinson tells each part of the story from a single character’s point of view and uses the quick introductory text of each portion to move the story along (sometimes by a few weeks, sometimes by decades), which is necessary when telling a story that covers more than 100 years. I found it difficult sometimes to remember what (Earth) year it was in relation to the other books, trying to grapple with just how much time had passed. Having three or four generations’ worth of characters didn’t help either, but the breadth of detail Robinson has created was just amazing and fascinating . Overall, I really enjoyed this series start to finish, and will probably read “The Martians” just to be complete.

Next, though, I’m about 30 pages into Neal Stephenson’s 1008-page “Anathem.” It’s going to be another long ride …

This evening my wife and I went to Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater to see Harry Connick, Jr. who’s touring in support of his new album, “Your Songs.” This was either the fourth or fifth time we’ve seen Harry in concert (we couldn’t remember exactly) and it was a great show as always.

The way the musicians were arranged on-stage helped showcase the three different styles of music we would be hearing. On the left were the strings for the orchestral numbers, in the center were the drums and bass, which combined with Harry on piano for the traditional jazz combo style, and then on the right were the trumpets, trombones, and saxophones for the big band numbers. For two hours he played a good mix of songs from the new CD and other recent releases plus a few of his trademark New Orleans jazz combo numbers. In addition to singing and playing the piano (of course) he also played trumpet and bass! “I suck” he joked, but of course he was pretty good.

During the breaks between sets he would talk and interact with the audience, which is always entertaining. He talked about how great it was for New Orleans to have the Saints as the Super Bowl champions (he apparently went to the game and got to meet a lot of the players afterwards). He jokingly talked about how 94% of the country doesn’t understand the “who dat?” chant and proposed (and briefly sang) a more understandable “who is that?” version. He told a funny story about his recent trip to the Grammys where he met Jennifer Hudson and had “her junk” on his arm during a photo shoot (“and she has a lot of junk!”). Another memorable  moment was when he said one of his daughter’s friends said he played “grandpa music” and the four women in his house would rather go see Kesha than him (which prompted  him to sing a few bars of “Tik Tok“).

Like my “Good Eats Live” experience last summer, however, there was a negative aspect to the show that will taint my memory of it … the super-annoying lady sitting directly behind us was a “woo girl.” Yes, at the beginning of every song she recognized, she had to shout “woooo!” at the top of her lungs in her ear-piercing, high-pitched voice. And not only that, she took advantage of silent moments to yell out song requests (“play ‘Come By Me!’”) or inappropriate comments (“Harry’s hot!”). By the end of the concert I was ready to turn around and strangle her. Arrrgh! There were a few other annoying hecklers in the crowd, but Harry dealt with them good naturedly (“it’s my name on the marquee, I’ll handle the comedy.”). Of course the theater had a strict policy on photographs and videotaping, but at the end of the show Harry posed for a picture with a lady in the front row and all of a sudden everyone had their cellphones and cameras out and were snapping photos. It must have been driving the ushers mad.

Overall, it was a great show and a good time. My favorite performance is still the one we saw in Cleveland during the “She”/”Star Turtle” tour when he was playing with the funk band in the mid-90s, but the jazz and big band shows are really good too and I’ll always go to see  him when I have the chance.

We went and saw “Wicked” this afternoon at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, using tickets we purchased about five months ago. It’s an incredible show and I highly recommend you see it if you have the chance!

This was the third time for me (once on Broadway with the original cast, here in Tampa during the first tour in 2007, and now again in 2010) but the first time my daughter had seen it, and she absolutely loved it. She’s actually falling asleep in her room right now listening to the soundtrack. She had read “The Wizard of Oz” (but actually hasn’t seen the movie) so it was fun to watch her put the pieces together as the story of Elphaba and Glinda unfolded on stage. I bought her the novel on which the musical is based (Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West“) a few months ago, but strangely she never got around to finishing it … I’ll be she does now, and I’d like to read it  myself once I catch up on my current backlog.

This was the matinee show so a few of the understudies were performing the main parts. I guess I’m a little spoiled because after seeing Edina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth belt out “Defying Gravity” on Broadway, the traveling company just didn’t pack the same punch. Not that they weren’t good! Here’s a funny note: Richard Kline is playing the role of the Wizard. I wouldn’t have recognized him except the playbill specifically mentioned he “is best known as Jack Tripper’s best friend, Larry Dallas on the classic sitcom ‘Three’s Company.’” That’s right, this guy is currently the Wizard of Oz.

Wiz Zumwalt, ex-Cupertino programmer and now mighty wizard in a sword-and-sorcery world, must contend with the need to act as a leader in the Council of the North, the need to teach his new magic programming system to others, and the need to rewrite his spell compiler system. He also learns of incredibly destructive ends his spell compiler is being put to, as well as growing resentment of humans by the magical creatures of the World, which may culminate in war.

I just finished “Wizardry Compiled” by Rick Cook, which like the first book in the series I downloaded for free from the Baen Library. I started reading this book in iSilo format on my Treo, but switched to an iPhone in the middle so ended up finishing it in Stanza. While I never had any problem with reading e-books on my Treo, I have to admit the e-book experience on the iPhone is a lot better!

“Wizardry Compiled” takes place about two years after Wiz defeated the Dark League in “Wizard’s Bane.” Having earned his place among the Mighty and a seat on the Council, Wiz finds himself mired in bureaucracy, typical of large committees. The other Mighty are skeptical of his new magic and his attempts to teach them magical “programming” are going frustratingly slow (partially due to his poor instructional skills). His work on the compiler is progressing, but he soon discovers that someone has modified his ‘ddt’ spell (for safely dispersing magic) into a “hacked” version called ‘demon_debug’ that simply erases anything magical from existence. The humans along the Fringe of the Wild Wood are using demon_debug to move back into the forest, simply nullifying anything in their way … which will shortly cause an out-and-out war with the magic creatures who live there. On his way back from a trip to see the effects of demon_debug first-hand, Wiz is captured by the remnants of the Dark League who still inhabit the shattered City of Night.

The book splits into two separate narratives at this point. While Wiz is a fugitive in the City of Night trying to evade re-capture, Moira (the hedge witch, and Wiz’s wife), travels back to our world to recruit a team of programmers to work on the spell compiler. Soon, there’s a whole managed project going on as the team attempts to understand the workings of magic and Wiz’s new programming language. Can the team complete the compiler, and can Wiz escape from the City of Night, in time to prevent war?

Like the first book, I enjoyed the juxtaposition of programming and code with the world of fantasy and magic. In addition to the technical programming concepts, Cook adds the team and aspects of managing a large software development project (another area I’m familiar with due to my consulting background). Also, in a reversal of roles from the first book, Moira travels to California and gains a better understanding of Wiz’s world (and gets to try pizza!).

I’m going to continue the series, so I’ve already purchased the next volume (“Wizardry Cursed and Consulted“) from webscriptions.net for a mere $4.

Google’s forthcoming Chromium OS has gotten a lot of buzz recently. My trusty old EeePC 4G Surf has become quite the sandbox for trying out different netbook operating systems, so of course now it is running Chromium. I downloaded the latest of Hexxeh’s Chrome builds, copied the image onto a 1gb thumb drive, and then installed the image onto the SSD in my EeePC. It boots to the signon screen in about 15 seconds:

You login using your Google/Gmail credentials, since this is an OS for the cloud (of course, I had to login with the default ‘facepunch’ from Hexxeh’s FAQ first so I could join the netbook to my wireless network before it could authenticate my Google login).

As you can see from the login screen in my video above, it’s not well suited for the smaller 7″ screen on my EeePC. The settings dialog, for instance, goes off the bottom of the screen and the usual Alt+mouse to drag a window doesn’t seem to work. Also, since this was installed as an image, the SSD drive looks like just a 1gb drive so I’m missing out on the other 3gb for storage. Graphics performance isn’t that great either.

Other than that, I’ve successfully turned my netbook into a almost fully functional Ubuntu machine into a device that only runs a browser. Hmmm. I guess this is the simplicity Google is shooting for, but it’s almost too simple for me.

Oh, and while I’m talking about Google … why won’t they let me put my iGoogle tabs back on top of the page instead of on the left? It’s a ridiculous waste of space, and it’s even worse on the smaller screen of my EeePC.

The sequel to Red Mars details an early 22nd-century Mars controlled by Earth’s metanationals, gigantic corporations intent on exploiting Mars. Debate among the settlers–some native-born, some the surviving members of the First Hundred–is divided between the minimalist areoformists, who have come to love Mars in all its harshness, and the terraformists, who want to replicate Earth. As the surface of Mars warms and is seeded with genetically altered plants, the settlers await Earth’s self-destruction, which they hope will give them a chance to claim their independence.

It took almost two months since finishing the prior book (I haven’t had a lot of free reading time lately) but I just finished “Green Mars,” the second installment of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy.

“Green” starts roughly 14 (Earth) years after the end of “Red.” To the new generation of native-born children, Mars is the only home they’ve known, and due to the effects of growing up in the lower gravity of Mars, they’ll never be able to go there. But they don’t care about Earth … these children (the ectogenes) are splintering off into more semi-political groups like the Reds or Marsfirsters as the planet continues to struggle with the metanational corporations back home. Meanwhile, the terraforming efforts continue to change the face of the red planet: algaes, lichen, and moss are being joined by stunted trees, shrubs, and flowering plants. The surface temperature, atmospheric pressure, and oxygen levels are slowly rising, as the CO2 levels are getting lower. Pumps all over the planet continue to fill the lower basins with water from below the surface. It’s all broken ice now, but eventually it will melt and become the new Martian seas.

Jumping forward about 50 years, the majority of the book takes place in the early 2120s, and the reader is reunited with several of the First Hundred who originally landed on Mars nearly 100 years earlier. The space elevator is back, and the latest massive construction project is the soletta: a 10,000 kilometer wide “magnifying glass” orbiting halfway between the sun and Mars, intensifying the sun’s rays providing more light and heat.

Some things never change, though. The remaining members of the First Hundred are still in hiding, as fugutives since the first attempt at revolution. Political and cultural pressures continue to pull everyone in different directions. Will the future see an independent Mars? Or will history repeat itself with another deadly revolution like ‘61? Read the wiki article for a better summary.

Robinson’s writing is incredibly detailed, both at the scientific, cultural, and political levels. Just like in the first book, each major part of the story is seen from a particular character’s point of view. Even though I read these two books back-to-back, it was like being reunited with old lost friends from the first novel: Maya, Nadia, Sax, or Ann. I’m looking forward to starting the final book, “Blue Mars” over the upcoming holiday.

Ever since I started playing Kingdom of Loathing a few months ago, I’ve been listening to the “120 Minutes of Jick and Mr. Skullhead” podcast/radio show. Through them, I was introduced to Nerdcore hip hop since the Asymmetic crew are friends with MC Frontalot, the artist who coined the term.

I’m not actually new to Geeksta rap … I’ve had MC Hawking and Minibosses tracks in my collection since at least 1998 (and of course a few specific songs by “Weird Al” Yankovic like “It’s All About the Pentiums“).  This is first time I’ve heard it categorized into a specific genre (other than parody), however. Now I’ve been listening to new (to me) stuff by groups like Optimus Rhyme.

Want a quick introduction to nerdcore hip hop? Check out the Rhyme Torrents compilations.

It all began when the wizards of the White League were under attack by their opponents of the Black League and one of their most powerful members cast a spell to bring forth a mighty wizard to aid their cause. What the spell delivers is master hacker Walter “Wiz” Zumwalt. With the wizard who cast the spell dead, nobody can figure out what the shanghaied computer nerd is good for — because spells are not like computer programs.

“Wizard’s Bane” by Rick Cook was my latest iSilo/Treo e-read, which I downloaded for free from the Baen Library.

Computer programmer Walter “Wiz” Zimwalt is mysteriously transported from his job in California to a different world, summoned by a powerful spell cast by the wizard Patrius with the assistance of Moira the hedge witch. Patrius is killed during the summoning so no one knows why Wiz was chosen by Patrius. Stuck on a world with no computers, no technology, no pizza, caffeinated sodas, or even coffee, Wiz is completely out of his element. But the dark wizards of the South don’t realize Wiz is powerless and will stop at nothing to capture him and prevent him from helping out the League of the North.

As the story progresses, Wiz begins to learn that magic is similar to coding: anyone can really do it, but without proper training it can cause serious problems (or, in the case of a miscast spell, be deadly). Using his analytical and programming skills, Wiz begins to build a framework for writing spells as if he were writing code … a programming language for magic! Can he really use his spell-casting programs to take on the dark League? Or is he putting everyone, even the whole world, in danger by messing with a power he doesn’t completely understand?

Being a programmer myself, this book was a fun “fish out of water” story. I could relate to Wiz’s situation (what would I do if there were no computers?) and the programming, coding, and development references were cool. It’s not exactly Tolkien-level fantasy, but a good leisurely read.

Jolicloud just wasn’t cutting it for me, so now that the beta of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) has been released, I’ve put it on my EeePC 4G Surf (the fourth distro I’ve run on that netbook this year). Ooooo, pretty:

I haven’t had a lot of time to play/tweak, but so far all the important stuff (wireless, Fn keys, sound, etc.) is working.

What could be better on a Saturday afternoon than a family trip to the movie theater for the Toy Story double feature? Seeing these classic Pixar films on the big screen again (and in 3D!) was great. It was also a fun first-time experience for my daughter who wasn’t even born when the movies were originally released.

You get the same pair of polarized 3D glasses Disney used for “Up,” which got a little annoying after almost three hours, but the resulting visuals were great. Since the original films weren’t animated with 3D in mind, there are no in-your-face-make-you-jump-out-of-your-seat gimmicks, just enhancements to the original film which make it a joy to watch.

In between the two films there’s a 10 minute intermission during which they show some Toy Story trivia. A clock in the corner counts down the minutes so you know exactly how much time you have to go to the bathroom, grab some new refreshments, etc.

The one thing that surprised me was the lack of a new trailer for “Toy Story 3.” I had read that a new trailer would be shown in theaters only, but the place we went to only showed the teaser trailer we had already seen before “Up.”

If you get the chance in the next two weeks to see the double feature, do it! Both movies for the price of one? It’s a no-brainer.