WIJFR: Ender’s Game

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the Buggers. This futuristic tale involves aliens, political discourse on the Internet, sophisticated computer games, and an orbiting battle station.

I just finished re-reading “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card. I first read this book about 25 years ago when I stumbled across it in my high school library. With the movie coming out next month I recommended it to my daughter, who unbeknownst to me had already read it, so I read it again myself to be prepared for the inevitable letdown of the film version (although maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised, and I’m looking forward to Harrison Ford’s portrayal of Colonel Graff).

I won’t go into any plot summaries or spoilers here (you can read the wiki entry for that), but even though I still remembered the major elements (and obviously, the ending) of the story it was an enjoyable read. I’ve read a lot of SF novels over the past 25 years and can almost see the influence of “Ender’s Game” (and its sequels) on the genre. For example, the Buggers (or Formics as named later in the series) are a hive-mind species, with all central control being performed by a queen. This, along with their sheer unstoppable numbers reminded me of MorningLightMountain and the Primes from Peter F. Hamilton’s “Pandora’s Star” and Commonwealth Saga novels.

Card’s personal views have been the subject of controversy lately so we’ll have to see what happens once the film is released. I’ll probably still take my daughter to see it, though.

Gotta love October: sports, politics, and more

Today is my birthday and while it’s not as cool as past ones, there is a ton of stuff going on today.

2013 MLB PostseasonBut the best gift is post-season baseball, and this year it’s a mixed blessing. Two years ago, the Rays’ push for October baseball came down to the last day. This year, the last day of regular season play on Sunday had three teams all fighting for the two AL Wild Card spots. My hometown team, the Cleveland Indians ended up clinching one of them but my current town team, the Tampa Bay Rays, ended up tied with the Texas Rangers. But last night, the Rays beat the Rangers 5-2 in the tie-breaker game in Arlington. The Rays now travel to Cleveland for another one game playoff, the winner of which continues on to play the Boston Red Sox in the ALDS.

That’s right, my two favorite teams finished second in their respective divisions, are in the post-season, and they’re playing each other in a single game tomorrow night. It seems like a win-win situation. My Indians haven’t played October baseball since 2007 when they lost to the Red Sox in the ALCS. My Rays had eliminated by the Rangers on their last two October pushes in 2010 and 2011 (so it was a welcome victory in game 163 for multiple reasons). Either way, I’ll have a team to root for when the ALDS starts on Friday. The Indians are my childhood team, and I still haven’t lived in Florida as long as I lived in Ohio, so tomorrow night I’ll be wearing Wahoo and cheering on the Goon Squad. Go Tribe!

As if that weren’t enough Cleveland/Florida sports excitement, both my Cleveland Browns and Tampa Bay Buccaneers are dealing with quarterback controversies early in the season having recently benched their starters in favor of new blood. This has worked out better for my Browns (who are  now 2-2 and will be starting Brian Hoyer for a third time) than the Bucs (who’ve started out 0-4 and have now announced (leaked?) that Josh Freeman has ADHD).

Quite a first day of October! Oh, and thanks, Google, for the custom birthday Doodle! 🙂

Google birthday Doodle

WIJFR: Homeland

While attending the Burning Man festival, Marcus receives a USB drive from a hacker, Masha, with more than 800,000 incriminating government documents, and she advises Marcus to publish the material if anything happens to her. Meanwhile, a contact at the festival recommends Marcus to California Senate Independent candidate Joe Noss as a webmaster, and he has his first real job, but can he fulfill his promise to Masha and keep his new position? Doctorow sends readers into a world of Darknet secret websites, Occupy protests, kidnapping and interrogation, and hacking.

Clearing out my queue of “young adult” novels, I just finished “Homeland,” Cory Doctorow’s sequel to “Little Brother.”

“Homeland” starts out at Burning Man, which was timely since the festival just ended a few weeks ago while I was reading (you can check out some cool videos here and here). 19-year old Marcus Yallow, the protagonist from “Little Brother” runs into his old nemesis Masha who gives him a thumb drive with over 800,000 incriminating government documents with instructions to publish them everyone if she should disappear. The next day, at the end of the festival, Marcus sees Carrie Johnstone, the former DHS agent who waterboarded him in the previous book, snatching Masha right before an explosion rocks the playa.

Back in San Francisco, Marcus and his girlfriend Ange struggle with how to review and anonymously release the trove of sensitive and controversial documents without being snatched themselves. Marcus finds himself walking a fine line when he gets a job as the technology ninja for the independent Joe Noss Senate campaign, trying to use the documents to further Joe’s campaign against the established parties without implicating himself (or Joe) in their release. Government interests, politics, large corporations, kidnapping goons, occupy-like protests, rootkits, paranoid virtual machines, and cool hackerspace technology all play a role as the story unfolds.

I read “Little Brother” over four years ago, so trying to recall some of the plot lines, characters, and their relationships was difficult. That being said, you don’t have to have read “Little Brother” to enjoy “Homeland.” Having read it right after “Pirate Cinema” I was stuck by the similarities: a male, teenaged first-person narrative involved in somewhat underground and political movements trying to change society for the better with a healthy dose of current events and technology. It’s another timely read, given the recent controversy around the NSA’s PRISM program and other world events.

Automatic Link

Automatic LinkFor a while I’ve been wanting to get some sort of OBD-II adapter and software (like Carbonga) so I could troubleshoot the occasional check-engine light on my ’03 Toyota Highlander. After reading about the Automatic Link back in March, the allure of a shiny new gadget for $70 (with no additional service fees) was too strong to resist so I pre-ordered it.

Four months later in early July, Automatic started shipping the Link as part of a limited private beta and I was lucky enough to be a part of the testing effort. Earlier this week, the final 1.0 release of the app and device started shipping, available to everyone.

Continue reading ‘Automatic Link’ »

Disney Labor Day weekend 2013, Day 3

Normally on Monday morning we would spend some time in the hotel pool before checking out but we were doing a lot of stuff differently this trip. Since we already swam in the pool yesterday, we got up early, finished packing, bid the Boardwalk farewell, and drove over to Animal Kingdom for the Extra Magic early hour.

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Disney Labor Day weekend 2013, Day 2

In another change from our usual Labor Day Weekend modus operandi, we decided not to go immediately to one of the theme parks this morning. Instead, we walked over the Swan hotel across the waterway from the Boardwalk to grab a light breakfast and from there continued walking to the Fantasia Gardens and Fairways mini-golf course. The Fantasia side is beautifully designed and fun to play, but difficult! The Fairways side looks like a real golf course (and is supposedly even more difficult). The shaded areas of the course were cool, but by the 18th hold the late-summer Florida sun was beating down and we were sufficiently hot and sweaty for the walk back to the Boardwalk.

Continue reading ‘Disney Labor Day weekend 2013, Day 2’ »

Disney Labor Day weekend 2013, Day 1

We got up early this morning and walked (it’s so cool being within walking distance of two parks!) over to Hollywood Studios for the early opening Extra Magic Hour. I’m sensing a pattern with our Saturday morning Disney visits on Labor Day Weekend (laziness? or efficiency? 😉 ) as we immediately got FastPasses for Toy Story Mania, then rode the Aerosmith Rockin’ Roller Coaster (twice!) while the lines were short, and I hit the Tower of Terror by myself (unable to convince my daughter to go on it again).

Continue reading ‘Disney Labor Day weekend 2013, Day 1’ »

Heading back to WDW for Labor Day Weekend

It’s been three years since our last Labor Day Weekend trip to Disney so we were excited to hit the road this evening after work and school and get over to Orlando to start our vacation.

We weren’t as lucky as in years past, however, and were delayed on I-4 due to an accident. Our attempt to take the back/side roads to circumvent the jam ended up in just more traffic so even with our early (before 5pm start) we weren’t checked into our hotel (Disney’s Boardwalk Villas) until around 7pm.

After getting settled, we walked over to Epcot and grabbed a light dinner in France. It was raining when we were done, so we fast-walked back to the Boardwalk, avoiding the raindrops as best we could. The weather eventually tapered off so we grabbed some warm drinks from the bakery and a funnel cake and watched what we could see of the Epcot (and Hollywood Studios) fireworks from the Boardwalk before turning in for the night. Extra Magic early morning hours at Hollywood Studios tomorrow morning!

WIJFR: Pirate Cinema

Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household’s access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal.

Ok, yeah, it’s another “young adult” novel like “Little Brother” but who cares? I just finished Cory Doctorow’s “Pirate Cinema,” which recently won a Promethus Award (along with Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon,” another personal favorite).

“Little Brother” tells the story of Trent McCauley, a British teenager whose obsession with making mash-ups using commercial movies gets his family cut off from the internet for a year. This turns out to be a bigger punishment than Trent anticipated, however, as his sister needs the internet for her school studies and his parents need it for work. The strain Trent has caused on his family is too much for him to bear so he runs away to live in London on his own.

What follows is a tale of being homeless, squatting in abandoned buildings, making new friends, showing movies in the sewers and cemeteries, politics, government, lawsuits, intellectual property, art, and copyright law. It’s a lot of heavy (and topical) subjects, but Doctorow does a good job of making the content accessible (and exciting) to younger (and, ahem, older) readers, all in a sort of Londoner writ and tone I haven’t seen him use in previous novels (the book definitely has its own “voice”).

If you’ve followed the news around SOPA and PIPA recently, or enjoy watching mash-ups on YouTube, you” probably enjoy “Pirate Cinema.”

WIJFR: Kill Decision

Linda McKinney is a myrmecologist, a scientist who studies the social structure of ants. Her academic career has left her entirely unprepared for the day her sophisticated research is conscripted by unknown forces to help run an unmanned – and thanks to her research, automated – drone army. Odin is the secretive Special Ops soldier with a unique insight into the faceless enemy who has begun to attack the American homeland with drones programmed to seek, identify, and execute targets without human intervention.

Together, McKinney and Odin must slow this advance long enough for the world to recognize its destructive power, because for thousands of years the “kill decision” during battle has remained in the hands of humans – and off-loading that responsibility to machines will bring unintended, possibly irreversible, consequences. But as forces even McKinney and Odin don’t understand begin to gather, and death rains down from above, it may already be too late to save humankind from destruction at the hands of our own technology.

Today I finished reading “Kill Decision” by Daniel Suarez, the author of “Daemon” and “FreedomTM.”

A series of terrorist bombings has put the United States on high alert. A secret Special Ops group knows, however, that the bombings are actually drone strikes, aimed at very specific human targets, and are desperately trying to find (and stop) the source of the drones. Professor Linda McKinney, an ant specialist who has developed a software model of how ant colonies swarm and attack, is suddenly swept up into the world of Special Ops as Odin and his crew rescue her from a drone strike and inform her that her software model is being used to control the behavior of autonomous killing machines.

What follows is a fast-paced, technological thriller on par with Suarez’s previous books. At one point, the swarm of thousands of drones intent on killing the team reminded me of scenes from “Matrix Revolutions” (think about the machines invading Zion, or the machine city near the end). As usual, Suarez is able to take real-world existing technology and push it just into the realm of science fiction (or is it?), but not enough to make it completely unbelievable, just scary.

In what seems to be a recent pattern, my reading has coincided with real world events, including a recent unmanned drone landing on a Navy aircraft carrier and a Colorado town passing a law to allow drone hunting!