any sufficiently advanced blogging is indistinguishable from blather

Move along, there’s nothing to see here…

On the day I finished reading The Accidental Time Machine, I got a used copy of Tad Williams’ City of Golden Shadow in the mail, woohoo! I’m on page 80 of the book and I really enjoy it. I’m glad it’s nice and long so I can savor it… and then I’ll savor the three other 700 page books that come next in the series.

The Accidental Time Machine was not my type of book. Haldeman’s style can be funny at times, but his dialogue can get confusing since he likes to omit “he said, she said” and just lets you figure it out. There were too many obscenities that had nothing to do with the story. Tsk tsk!! The ending was getting really exciting with some awesome foreshadowing, but I thought the final “explanation” for it was complete trite, and the resolution after the climax was… blagh.

Just my opinion of course. 😛

I’ve been thinking about buying a C4 3D Engine license… but it’s $200, which is quite a lot. Still, it looks very nice. I’ll have to look for more demos first and explore their wiki a bit more. My other option would be to spend $100 and upgrade my 3D GameStudio, which includes a very nice engine, but I don’t like 3DGS’s C++ integration much… still, it’s $100 less and I already have experience with it… but I’d like some more C++ power… I can’t decide.

I finished reading Robert J. Sawyer’s Rollback a few days ago. I’d probably give it a 6 out of 10. (Anything above a 4 in my rating system is considered “positive”, 4 itself being “neutral”.) The premise involved an old couple who undergo a medical procedure to make them young again, but it only works on one of them.

I think I’ll blather about ageism for a while, when some age group judges another by their age. In one sense, it’s so natural that everyone will do it automatically, whether or not they think they’re prejudiced. For the most part, being around someone closer to your own age will instantly make you more comfortable.

When you’re really young, being around someone older than you instantly makes them more of an authority figure. When you get to a certain age, you realize older people can be just as stupid as young people, but you’ll still probably act differently when conversing with someone decades older than you, whether you’re talking louder because you think they’re deaf, or you’re more conscious of your manners in an effort to be respectful. The key is, you’re much less likely to be able to “relate to them” because they grew up in a different time.

Conversing through the Internet can help break this barrier, obviously, since you’re not subject to responding to a physical face (not to mention age can be completely lied about anyway). Just look at how many people converse freely through email and online forums, but still aren’t quite comfortable with posting videos of themselves on YouTube.

One aspect of ageism that I find quite angering is when an older people assume that age has automatically increased their intelligence or when older people think they can easily relate to younger people simply because they themselves were that age once. There’s a particular part in Rollback in which Don, the main character who is in his 80’s, tells a young woman that she’s never really experience loss, she’s never really suffered, because he assumes she’s too young to have had such life experiences. It immediately bites him back, but when such things are said in the real world, it probably hardly ever bites back… what is a young person going to do? How would blathering about past misfortunes in an effort to make someone else think that you really have suffered be much different than whining?

And of course younger people can make the same judgments, assuming old people have forgotten or never had to experience turmoil in youth, or that age automatically reduces worries and hardships.

Along with ageism I could probably add moneyism, assuming people who have more money don’t suffer as much, or happyism, assuming people who are happy have not experienced as much pain in their lives, which is what allows them to be so happy.

Don’t be judgmental; don’t assume you have any clue what its like to be anybody else. A character in Rollback quotes Plato: “Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.” Even if it’s not necessarily true, don’t assume any sort of life experiences can help you tell the difference.

Anyway, I’m now reading Tad Williams’ The City of Golden Shadows. It’s quite a big book, will probably take me a while to get through, but so far I love it.

Eventually I want to do a post about my favorite books of ’07, now that the year is gone. But for some reason I started thinking about books I enjoyed when I was younger, so I’m just going to write a post about that.

I wasn’t a big reader when I was young (actually, I’m still not that big of a reader… and I’m still young) but every now and then I came upon a book that really engaged me. Here are some books that I remember very fondly that really aren’t famous… of course I read Avi and Nancy Farmer and Brian Jacques, but their books are still around and still very well known in the children’s sections at bookstores and libraries. The books I mention here are more of the “underdog” books… books that didn’t really become famous.

One of my favorites was called The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan. (Looks like it was recently just rereleased in paperback in 2007.) From what I remember, it was basically a collection of short stories, each a different daydream from one quiet kid. I remember losing track of time reading this book, which is probably the best thing that can happen to you while reading. The daydreams were sometimes a bit creepy, but they had a flow to them so that I always wanted to know would happen next. It hasn’t gotten the greatest of Amazon reviews, but I remember checking it out of the library more than once because I enjoyed it so much.

Unfortunately these next two books are out of print as far as I can tell, but I remember loving Anne Lindbergh’s Travel Far, Pay No Fare and Bailey’s Window. The former book involved a young girl with a magical bookmark which allowed her to travel into the world of a book, and so with her cousin or brother (I can’t remember) she would dive into some classic novels like Alice in Wonderland and mess things up. She couldn’t go into contemporary novels, of course, since that would involve copyright infringement. (By the way, do the Potter Puppet Pals pay any license fees, or is that just more infringement?) Bailey’s Window portrayed a young lad with the power to paint pictures (windows) of other worlds and then walk right into them.

Finally, I remember reading all of Bill Brittain’s “Coven Tree” books, such as The Wish Giver, Dr. Dredd’s Wagon of Wonders (I remember reading that book in one night being so captivated), and Devil’s Donkey.

I’m not sure what I’d think of these books were I to read them today; surely I’d be much more critical. But I have fond memories of these books… always nice to have books that you look forward to reading… it’s when you start those long stupid books that reading seems a chore.

Last night (or early this morning I guess) I finally finished another short story! It came to about 6,100 words in length, though it’s still in rough draft form. I’m going to wait a week or two with it off my mind so I can come back to it with fresh eyes and try to do some editing… hopefully I won’t end up hating the story; I already think certain parts might seem far to too sappy.

The story is called Oberon’s Paradise. Here’s the opening, which pretty much shows what the story’s about:

“Oberon,” the large bearded man read from a scroll without looking up, “in order to pay for the destruction of the Marcelin Glass, which you caused with your carelessness and lack of consideration for other people’s feelings and a bunch of other bad attributes you have, you have chosen to accept, for the following three nights, a decade’s worth of the collected nightmares of all the residents of Brokenhill Fort, freeing us all for a decade of the burden of bad dreams. After your sentence has been carried out, you will be rewarded with permanent residence at Glanendale Palace. So let it be.”

“So let it be,” the gatherers echoed monotonously.

Hmmmm… is that engaging? Or… not?

What I’m thinking about doing is joining the Critters Workshop to get my story some serious critiques. I’d have to wait a while for the story to get through the queue, and I’d have to write some critiques myself for other people’s short stories, but that could be very helpful.

And then I’ll sell the story to a magazine, sell the rights to a film, and make a whole lot of money and never have to work again.

The semester is finally over and I’m free for a month! There’s lots I’d like to do, but only a little I’ll actually do… because that’s the way life is.

I got the complete series of Firefly for my birthday and I watched the first episode last night… it was great! Even better than the film Serenity, which is based on the series. Can’t wait to watch the rest of the series over the next month. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the special effects were. I was expecting to have to settle with cheap corny effects that sometimes prevail on TV sci-fi shows, but I didn’t have to. Awesome. Yay. Blah blah.

According to Wikipedia, the creator of Firefly, Joss Whedon, is producing another show called Dollhouse for FOX. Wikipedia says that the premise for the show is:

In Dollhouse, Dushku plays a young woman named Echo, one of a group of men and women who can be neurally imprinted with “personality packages,” encompassing things such as memory, muscle memory, skills, and language. Sheltered in a secret futuristic dormitory/laboratory named the “Dollhouse,” these individuals are imprinted with customized personas for performing any of a wide variety of assignments, which can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, illegal, etc. After completing an assignment, they are mind-wiped into a child-like state with no memories. The series follows Echo as she begins to develop a persistent memory and self-awareness across imprints and wipes. Beyond Dushku’s character, the show will also revolve around the people who run the mysterious “dollhouse” and two other “dolls,” a man and woman who are friendly with Echo. Then there’s the federal agent who has heard a rumor about the dolls, and is trying to investigate their existence.

Personally, I think that sounds pretty awesome! Of course, it’s the treatment of the idea that really matters, it could easily be destroyed, but the idea itself is inspiring. So… I look forward to this show, if and when it ever happens.

Sweeney Todd comes out tomorrow, hopefully I’ll get to it on Friday or Saturday pulling along any family members I can. Been looking forward to the movie since I learned about its being made back in March. Woohoo!

I still don’t have all my Christmas shopping done, hopefully will by tonight, though I sort of fear the stores may not have exactly what I want…