Things to be thankful for

Holidays are handy things because they give you a chance to get caught up on everything you’ve fallen behind on. Part of my holiday todo list includes posting an update to my blog, of course!

Books and other piles of words

I’ve been reading Neil Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (a three volume prequel to Cryptonomicon) aloud to Susan in the evenings. We’re about half way through the second volume and loving it. I finished reading R. A. Lafferty’s Past Master recently as well. My quest to obtain and read the entire series of Neil R. Jones Professor Jameson stories is proceeding slowly. All of the stories are out of print, many since they originally appeared in the pulps in the 1930s. I’ve managed to obtain copies of about 20 of them so far. The sad news that Jack Williamson has died means I’ll probably be tracking down and reading a few of his out of print books soon.

C Programming
Between the recent burst of mod_virgule work and the DPRG group robot project, I’ve been doing a lot more C programming lately. It’s nice to work on things that are fun for a change. And even fun things result in an occasional patch for something more important. Both projects need to get moved into a Subversion archive. I’ve only been on the user end of Subversion until now, so this will be another interesting learning experience. I’ve completed the basic installation and started playing around with the configuration and web interface.

Jihad Jerry and the Evil Doers

Gerald V. Casale has a new CD out. He’s calling the band Jihad Jerry and the Evil Doers and the CD is titled Mine is not a Holy War. Who else is on the CD? Let’s see, there’s Bob Mothersbaugh, Josh Freese, and, yes, Mark Mothersbaugh. If that seems suspiciously familiar, it should. This is essentially a new Devo CD. Mark Mothersbaugh co-wrote a few tracks but doesn’t provide any vocals. The sound and the subject matter is very Devo-like. They’re not happy about Bush, SUVs, and other forms of stupidity. The lyrics are full of Devo-like mixed metaphors and devolved wisdom like, “remember, you look through your glasses but the rest of the world looks at them.” Recommended.

R. A. Lafferty RIP

I haven’t seen this mentioned on any of the geek news sites that I frequent so perhaps it got missed while everyone was busy thinking of April Fools jokes to post. One more of the great science fiction writers has died. R. A. Lafferty is dead at the age of 87. Obituaries showed up in the LA Times and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Most of his novels and short stories are out of print these days. Amazon lists a very few still available such as the short story collection, Nine Hundred Grandmothers. Oddly, it looks like his one Hugo winner, Eurema’s Dam, doesn’t appear in any of the collections still in print. Good thing there’s eBay.