Arctangential

It’s official, by the way — I’m moving to Seattle.

I finished The Difference Engine yesterday afternoon. Part of it was very good and the other part, no so much.

The first 2/3 of the book is a pretty straightforward biography of Charles Babbage, with a focus on his work on his various computing Engines and the events surrounding that, but also with a fair amount of information about surrounding events. This was pretty cool stuff. The last third of the book is about the efforts of the author and others to construct a fully functioning Difference Engine with techniques and materials as closely as they could. This is some boring stuff — mostly complaints about the difficulty of building the Engine, getting funding, and getting things assembled in time. The book is capped off by the inevitable “Yay, it works!” moment which is not particularly interesting because, of course, if the thing hadn’t worked there wouldn’t have been a book in the first place. This last section sapped almost all of the good will I’d had for the first part of the book, but I think overall I’m glad I read it.

I was going to share some anecdotes and stuff about Babbage and his quest for a thinking machine, but I’m tired and I don’t feel like it. I would suggest this book, or at least some biography of Babbage, to anyone interested in such things.

I’m now reading Terry Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment and digging it about as much as I have the last few Discworld books.

I finished On Camera yesterday afternoon at the doctor’s office. It was pretty good.

As I said before, it’s a guide, produced by the BBC in the mid-80’s, for directors and producers of television programs. It covers the basics of show creation, from basic preparation like research and concept, to more technical aspects like camera placement and shot planning, and then on to more general subjects like how to write for mass appeal and how to interest an audience. It’s not very technical — in fact, the point is very strongly presented that, as a director or producer, you must seek advice from the technical members of your crew as often as possible.

Some of the book is amusingly outdated, like the discussion of video editing using a microscope and micro-guillotine, but it’s interesting to know that people saw the coming of digital video even as early at 1985. A second section of the book goes more in-depth on specific topics, like how to best do overlay graphics and chromakey, how to write and record voice-over commentary, and how to use different camera angles for different effect. It wasn’t really a lot I hadn’t known before, but it was an interesting read, and I really enjoy reading well-written discussion of topics I already know, both for entertainment and also to give me new insights on things.

I’m now read The Difference Engine, by Doron Swade. It’s a popular history book about Babbage and his (almost) invention of the eponymous device. It’s good.

I finished The Innocent last night. I had about 3 paragraphs written about it and then my power flickered and despite my UPS, my computer rebooted. So, I’m not going to rewrite all that crap.

Anyways, it was supposed to be a spy novel and it wasn’t and it was supposed to be good and it wasn’t particularly and nothing actually happened. It was pretty well written, and I enjoyed reading it, but I got pretty bored and I was somewhat put off by the lame attempt at tacking on a plot in the last few chapters. 3 of 5 and I might try another of McEwan’s novels someday.

I am now reading On Camera, a mid-80’s publication of the BBC, about how to successfully produce and direct a television show. It’s not bad.

I finished The Wine of Dreams this morning. It wasn’t exactly great literature, but it wasn’t bad either — I continue to buy these Warhammer novels because they’re reasonably entertaining and they go quickly.

This one is about a young man named Reinmar Weiland, the son of a wine merchant in a small city on the border of an empire. He’s bored working in a wine shop, and wishing there was more excitement in his life. As is typical in these sorts of tales, he gets his wish and then regrets it. A visitor to the shop identifies himself as Reinmar’s father’s cousin, and asks to purchase some “dark wine”. The man leaves in anger, and is shortly thereafter followed by an Imperial witch-hunter, looking for the man. Suspicion is cast on Reinmar’s family, even though they don’t sell the proscribed dark wine, or “Wine of Dreams”, and so to keep him out of trouble, his father sends him on an early purchasing trip to the surrounding wineries.

On this trip, as expected, Reinmar learns the truth about dark wine, the role of the gypsies, and some dark history about his own family. In investigating the source of dark wine, he unwittingly sparks off a long-brewing war between the forces of evil and the town in which he lives. He gets back to town just in time to participate in its defense, and to fight the hidden evils in his own family, re-risen to strike down the town. Of course he ends up saving the day, etc, although since this is a Warhammer novel, the overall picture at the end of the book is significantly bleaker than it was at the beginning, and while they may have won the battle, the war is almost certainly to be lost.

I’m now reading Ian McEwan’s The Innocents, which I am liking pretty good so far.

I finished Seeds of Destiny last night. These books have really been going downhill, and I’m glad this was the last one. Once again, Easton has moved ahead in time by about 100 years — the Gypsies have all but vanished from the stage, and the species that they had raised to sentience has now come into its own as a civilization. However, the Engineers back on Earth have (somehow) managed to find their planet, and decide to send a force there to destroy them. It’s unclear why they want to do this, and it seems like a huge waste to me, but hey, Easton’s characters do all kinds of dumb shit like that all the time.

Anyways, the Engineers get to First-Stop and proceed to thrash the Racs (although they call them “coons” (get it?)). However, their own hubris and the Racs’ natural tenacity leads to the humans’ eventual downfall, but not without losses to the good… Fuck it, it’s stupid and obvious.

Anyways, now I’m reading Brian Craig’s The Wine of Dreams, which is a novel set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. It’s ok.

File under “too obvious to actually be considered news” :

http://www.katu.com/stories/77530.html