WIJFR: A Princess of Mars

Ex-confederate army captain John Carter finds himself unwittingly transported to Mars, while fleeing Apache Indians. This new world is populated by a race of monstrous Martians, whose culture is based on the ability to fight for their race. Fortunately for John, the gravitational difference between Mars and Earth has endowed him with the strength that he will need for survival on this hostile planet. John Carter battles ferocious Martian creatures, but gains the respect and friendship of the Barsoomians. He also encounters the beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, and earns her everlasting devotion.

Technically I just finished listening to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “A Princess of Mars” thanks to a free download from audible.com. A neat feature of audio books (at least on my iPod) is the ability to change the speed of the playback. Thus, I was able to “read” the entire book in just a few commutes back and forth to work this week.

I knew, in the back of my mind, that this was classic science fiction, but I had no idea just how old it actually was. Burroughs wrote this first story in his Mars series in 1911, before “Tarzan of the Apes.” So it wasn’t exactly the classic SF I’m used to (like that of Asimov, Bradbury, or even Wells), but more of a pulp sci-fi novel (just check out some of the cover art to see what I mean).

It’s a tale of adventure, swashbuckling, and romance as Virginia gentleman John Carter is mysteriously transported to the red planet and fights to survive amidst the green and red “men” of Mars. He learns their language, their customs, and eventually, their loyalty (no more spoilers here).

While I enjoyed listening to this first of the series (again, it was a free download), I’m not sure I liked it enough to pursue the remaining books (at least, not now). Maybe some time, though, I’ll return to this classic series to see just what John Carter, Dejah Thoris, and the other Barsoomians get into.

WIJFR: Next

I do a lot of reading and figured I would write up some quick reviews here as I finish a book … here’s my first WIJFR (What I Just Finished Reading) post.

Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There’s a new genetic cure for drug addiction–is it worse than the disease? What’s coming Next?

So I just finished reading “Next” by Michael Crichton and have to say I was slightly disappointed. This is the second Crichton novel that has underwhelmed me (the last book I read by him was “Prey“). Maybe it’s because the science wasn’t science-fictiony enough for me (like “Jurassic Park” or “Timeline“), or maybe it was just that there were so many different story lines that got tied up way too quickly (almost abruptly) in the end.

The underlying theme of “Next” is genetics and it does raise some interesting topics including gene patents, tissue ownership, genetic engineering, and transgenic animals. Off the top of my head I can recount seven separate story lines and their associated cast of characters (some human, some transgenic animal like Gerard the African Grey parrot or Dave the humanzee). It just seemed too busy and crowded. Peppered in between chapters are news articles and clippings on various genetics topics (like “Blondes will be extinct in 200 years!”). For the first half of the book I was wondering if any of these threads were going to intersect and what exactly the plot was. Eventually everything comes together, but by that point you’re on the last few chapters (hence my feeling of an abrupt ending).

Despite all of that, it was an easy, relatively quick read, and it certainly hasn’t turned me off to Crichton’s work (he’s had me hooked since “The Terminal Man” and “The Andromeda Strain.”

On Amazon’s page for this book I found a link to NEXTgencode, a website tie-in to the book that tries to look real and references a lot of the genetic products talked about in the book (check out the PermaPuppy!).

Kids say the darndest things … in church

So occasionally at my church, instead of the priest giving a homily, the local librarian has all the kids come down to the front and he tells a story based on the day’s gospel reading … a homily for kids. He also asks the kids questions and lets them answer into the microphone for the congregation to hear.

Today’s gospel reading was about Jesus appearing to the disciples in their locked room after the Resurrection and the story of how St. Thomas wouldn’t believe Jesus had risen until he saw Him with his own eyes (the origin of the phrase “Doubting Thomas“).

So Mr. Mike asks the kids: “which disciple was missing when Jesus first appeared?” Hands go up and he selects my daughter (who’s in the first grade) to answer, at which time she proudly says into the microphone: “Judas.”

As you can imagine, if you’re familiar with the story, this causes quite a chuckle in the congregation. Judas was the disciple who betrayed Jesus and then later regretted his actions and hanged himself. So obviously he wasn’t present in the locked room with the rest when Jesus appeared. Mr. Mike took this in stride and moved on with the rest of his presentation.

Near the end of his homily, my daughter raises her hand again and for whatever reason, Mr. Mike lets her speak into the microphone again. She asks: “So there were only ten disciples in the room?” More chuckles from the congregation.

It’s amazing how a new perspective (even if it’s from a 7 year-old) can change how people look at things.

Funny segment on TWiT: Bob the TSA Blogger and the MacBook Air

There’s a great segment on this week’s TWiT podcast where the gang is talking about Bob the TSA Blogger screening the MacBook Air. The video is hilarious by itself, but when you add the commentary of Leo, Dvorak, Wil Harris, and Jason Calacanis … well, let’s just say I haven’t laughed that hard during a TWiT episode (while driving home from work no less) in a long time.

The segment starts at 1:06:15 and goes through 1:16:16. Check it out.

First post!

Welcome to my personal blog!

In *nix-land, ‘chmod 644‘ means “world readable.” I have no delusions of grandeur that the “world” is reading this, but it’s an accurate description of a blog’s potential audience thanks to the web.

For now though, first post! Let’s go!

TiVo MyDVR Expander

WD MyDVR ExpanderI got my hands on the TiVo-verified Western Digital My DVR Expander. It’s an external 500gb drive that connects to my THD’s eSATA port. Setting it up was as easy as turning off the TiVo, connecting the drive with the supplied eSATA cable, and then powering up the TiVo again. The box recognized the external storage and now I have 94 HD hours (or 888 SD hours) of recording capability.

The drive itself is relatively quiet and has a soft orange circular LED on the front. This box is in my office, so extraneous noise/light isn’t an issue, but this unit should even be fine in a bedroom environment.

If you have questions, check out the eSATA FAQ on the TiVo Community Forum.

TiVo HD

TiVo HDI’m back up to four TiVos. 🙂 I couldn’t resist the new TiVo HD to go in my office with my Sony LCD TV. It’s time to retire my trusty old TX20. The THD is sometimes referred to as the “S3 Lite.” It doesn’t have the OLED display, isn’t THX certified, only has a 160gb hard drive, and doesn’t come with the premium Glo remote (I got one anyway, thanks to TiVo Rewards), but it supports a single M-Card for dual-tuning capabilities, the CableCARD slots have been moved to the front, and it does all the other HD-goodness its bigger brother does. Now that MRV (multi-room viewing) and TTG (TiVoToGo) have been enabled for the HD boxes in the 9.1 software release, it’s all good!

Ubuntu Linux

I inherited an old Dell OptiPlex GX270 desktop PC from work and decided it was finally time to retire my old Linux laptop running Mandrake 10.0 and make the switch to Ubuntu. I built the box using Feisty Fawn (7.04) but a few days later Gutsy Gibbon (7.10) was released so I did an in-place upgrade.

It’s going to take me a while to get used to using ‘sudo’ all the time since Ubuntu doesn’t let you (or, rather, strongly discourages you) from logging in as root. But other than that, a Linux distro is a Linux distro. I do have to say, though, that so far I love apt-get! So much easier than using RPMFinder and then getting stuck in package dependency hell (Mandrake 10 might have had some sort of built-in package management, but I never used it and did things manually … that’s how we learn, right?).

My new server is running pretty much all the same things the old Mandrake laptop did: Galleon and pyTiVo for serving photos, music, and video to my TiVos, the Apache web server, NUT for UPS monitoring, Nagios for network monitoring, Gallery for my photos, and Folding@Home just for fun.

Wii want to play!

WiiI tried to find one locally, but after constantly finding empty shelves, I broke down and bought a Nintendo Wii on eBay (for a slight premium, of course).

I’ve only tried the included Wii Sports disc, but the use of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk controller is very intuitive. Swinging the controller like a bat to hit one out of the park is pretty cool.

Philips DCP850/37 portable DVD player

Philips portable DVD playerOur old Polaroid portable DVD player wouldn’t work off of just battery anymore since a tiny plastic latch had broken off. After researching the cost for a new battery, I decided to just sell the whole thing on eBay and get a brand new player.

At Best Buy, I found the Philips DCP850/37 portable DVD player and was really  impressed with it after just a few minutes of playing with the demo model.

The unit sports an 8.5″ tilting/rotating LCD screen, an SD card slot, dual headphone jacks, a remote control, and an iPod dock. It supports all of the various DVD formats and will even play DivX files.

Having all of those different options for playing media on the go was a big plus. Before going on a trip, I’ll download a bunch of recordings from my TiVos, convert them into DivX format, and burn them onto a DVD. That way we have to carry fewer discs. Or I can put them into my iPod Video and then dock that on the player and show them on the larger screen. If I happen to have a few videos on an SD card (which I usually carry in my Treo for more portable video playback via TCPMP) I can pop that in as well. It’s a really well-designed video playback device.