Carl Burke

linky

2009-11-16T23:24:33Z

I tried to find some of my brother-in-law's artwork online to point to, but it seems there are already other Douglas Johnson's out there with bigger resumes and higher pagerank. However, there is this short (quite short) film by Doug's friend Drury that's of interest.

http://drurybynum.com/_blog/ARTIST_FILMS/post/DOUGLAS_JOHNSON_-_PAINTER/

dilemma

2009-11-16T19:43:58Z

My wife has been gradually breaking the news to me that she's been writing fanfic, specifically a Deathnote fanfic. It's rather long. In fact, as she told me over the weekend, when she reformatted it for printing using 11 point Times New Roman and adding page breaks at appropriate spots, it's 270 pages long. It's a frickin novel, and not a nanowrimo mini-novel either. She's got it in a binder and everything. I'm torn. On the one hand, it's great that she's actually written something, since that was her degree field and her interest. Creative activity is always good and should be praised. On the other hand, it's fanfic and thus stolen property. No matter how good it may be, it isn't done by the same artist and it isn't the actual vision; it's an unauthorized cover of the material, and most times you just don't want to hear yet one more flawed rendition of "Stairway to Heaven". Cover bands and art forgers are not ideal role models.

I'm going to have to read it, and I hope it's good, but it gives me a quease. I mean, I understand the whole community interaction part of sharing your work, and I somewhat understand the internal vetting process that goes on by seeing how well different people understand and reproduce the different characters and settings; it's a socialization thing, and a way of establishing a pecking order. But I don't understand why anybody would sink so much time and effort into a creative product that isn't theirs. Why not go ahead and do all of the fun and interesting stuff (world building, character design) since you're doing all of the hard, tedious, and boring work of description and dialogue anyway? Then you'd have the satisfaction of actually creating something new, as well. Or at least create your own characters within the setting and explore a new part of the space; I mean, if you play a superhero game, nobody really wants to play Superman, do they? They might want to see him around, hear about his exploits, but for God's sake they aren't going to play as an established character. (Maybe there are a lot of people who do. Game publishers certainly seem to think so. But it has no appeal to me. It's not as though there is a shortage of ideas floating around.)

books

2009-10-21T17:15:18Z

"The Sword of the Lady", S. M. Stirling. Arthur plucks Excalibur from the bosom of... Nantucket? This is the latest installment in his series about "the Change", which began with "Dies The Fire". I think I missed that one, but I've picked up the others. Nantucket is Stirling's Tanelorn, apparently; he seems to be weaving together threads from three separate yet thematically related series there. He writes well, even if I have trouble swallowing some of the more mystic trappings, so I expect to keep reading them as long as he keeps writing them.

books n stuff

2009-10-14T17:50:18Z

"Rides A Dread Legion", Raymond E. Feist. Start of another trilogy(?) set in his old D&D/EPT/etc campaign, pitting an unstoppable demon horde against exiled elves who just happen to be coming home, hilarity ensues etc. I actually enjoyed it and will be getting the rest of them, although what I really drool for right now is another Malazan volume. I want that in my hands as soon as possible, but I don't know when it's getting released. I think all ten volumes have been published in the UK... need to check on that. I've only seen eight so far.

Got sucked back into Drawf Fortress for a bit lately. Like the Sims and other city-builders it wears on me after a while, since if there's no victory condition my motivation runs out after a while. I'd almost rather write my own fantasy simulator, if I thought I'd stick with it long enough to finish it. The way those things usually run is that I get the idea, I work out a lot of mechanics on paper, maybe structure some code, and then something shiny comes along and it goes into a drawer, like a journal. There are many many shiny things in the world, and many of those journalish scribblings tucked away down here.

Finished listening to the Teaching Company's Shostakovich biography the other day (I've been working through the Great Masters series, halfway through now although not in any temporal order). It was jarring to immediately throw one of my birthday presents into the player (Mindless Self Indulgence's "You'll Rebel To Anything") and blast "Shut Me Up" at high volume. Ah, rock music, the chamber music of the age. Provided you have very large chambers.

books

2009-10-01T15:35:38Z

"Flood", Stephen Baxter.

There's nothing quite like a good global disaster story, something that pushes the human race into a corner and doesn't let up. This one doesn't have quite the bleakness of "On The Beach", "Level 7", etc, but it is inexorable. It also gives a potential backstory for a Kevin Costner movie.

books

2009-09-14T04:38:43Z

"By Heresies Distressed", David Weber. Another installment in his "Safehold" series, which is basically heroic fantasy with a science fiction premise. Standard Weberian fare. He uses an annoying phonic spelling for names; you know what the name ought to be, but the phonic spelling is usually off by quite a bit from what it should be. Such as the scheming King Nahrmahn Baytz. Dude, stop trying to be cute. Bunch and Cole did it better in the Sten series, Sapir and Murphy did it _way_ better in the Destroyer series, you can't hope to compete in that space. It didn't work in Horseclans, it doesn't work here. Just spell the fucking name out. And naturally, since it's Weber, he just can't resist having the most repugnant villain in the Evil Empire be a sanctimonious, hypocritical, delusional womanizer named Clinton, er, Clyntahn.

For all that, it's still way better than yet another Star Wars novel, Mercedes Lackey EFP, or modern vampire romance.

books 2009

2009-08-30T21:26:49Z

"Rift In The Sky", Julie E. Czerneda.

books

2009-08-04T17:09:54Z

"Kushiel's Mercy", Jacqueline Carey. Closes out the second of her Eluan "Kushiel" trilogies, alternate history romance fantasies with a fair portion of hot kinky sex. Less heavy on bondage elements than some of the earlier ones, particularly the first trilogy (which centered on a divinely-chosen masochist spy.) I'm looking forward to the next trilogy, which starts out in Alba (England) considerably later. Given the teaser at the end of the book, the recently discovered New World may figure prominently in it.

yet another book post

2009-07-15T15:37:52Z

Victory Conditions, Elizabeth Moon. Fifth and final installment of Vatta's War. I love a good happy ending. Makes me wish David Weber knew how to write one. Or an ending, even.

books

2009-07-12T20:23:38Z

The Getaway Man, Andrew Vachss. Classic noir crime fiction. Not as dark and gritty as the Burke novels, but that still leaves you plenty of room for damaged people and bad behavior.

books

2009-07-11T13:24:13Z

Juggler of Worlds, Larry Niven and Edward M Lerner. Middle book in a pre-Ringworld, Puppetteer-centric trilogy. This one largely covers the events of Neutron Star from the viewpoints of ARM agent Sigmund Ausfaller and several Puppetteers, with some additional material never previously addressed. Largely a cop-out, like Orson Scott Card's retelling of the entire Ender series from an alternate viewpoint, but unlike with Card's writing I'm still interested in what Niven's ghostwriters have to say.

books

2009-07-05T23:28:47Z

"Mage-Guard of Hamor", L. E. Modesitt, Jr. Another installment in the saga of Recluce. Order vs chaos and the machinations of empire.

books

2009-07-01T23:52:41Z

"Singularity Sky", Charles Stross. Prequel to "Iron Sunrise"; post-Singularity espionage and travelogue. I may never look at mimes and molerats in the same way again.

books

2009-06-29T03:29:26Z

"Programming Clojure", Stuart Halloway. Clojure is a fairly new programming language, based on Lisp and targeted to the Java Virtual Machine. It takes advantage of the Java environment, and uses a number of new features that make it more appealing to me than other Lisps. Doesn't mean I'll use it on a regular basis, but it's an intriguing tool. And the book is well written, unlike a number of programming language guides; it shows you why a particular feature is important and useful, instead of just proclaiming you an idiot for not comprehending the splendor of the feature at its merest mention (like almost every other Lisp book). Its refreshing lack of snobbery is, um, refreshing.

books

2009-06-23T11:43:49Z

"Evil Genius", Catherine Jinks. Young genius embraces evil, finds soul mate, recants. I liked it a lot; a real page turner. A sequel is in the works, apparently, surprise.

books

2009-06-20T05:17:16Z

"WWW: Wake", Robert J. Sawyer. A story of an emergent AI, apparently the first in a trilogy about said AI. Interesting ideas, although a bit more of a talky procedural than I usually go for. All in all, a lot cheerier than many of these stories go; Colossus, the Adolescence of P1, ... I must be tired, usually I can rattle off a better list of AIs that 'just grew'. Anyway, those usually end badly. This one hasn't, yet, but I suppose if it's a trilogy it's early days yet.

I need to go dig up his Hominids stories, since it seems I missed them.

Randomness

2009-06-16T14:06:21Z

"Naked! Cat on her head!"

Just so I remember that later without all the clicky-clicky.

funky

2009-06-15T23:24:15Z

Why must I feel like that? Why must I chase the cat? Nothing but the dog in me.

Geeze, it only took like 10, 15 years for me to figure out where that 'bow wow wow' riff Snoop Dogg used came from. I suck at musical literacy. *hangs head in shame*

critical mass on Facebook

2009-06-03T05:48:35Z

I picked up a Facebook page a while back because it seemed like something all the cool kids were doing. (Well, Jean did it, and that was good enough for me.) But I didn't see a lot of people on there: a RATMMer here and there, a couple kids from my high school that I didn't know very well, like, ever... not much visible use to me, since hardly anybody I knew was on it. Then came the deluge. Now, it's something I want to log into and make snide comments on. Now, I'm starting to get an idea now people use this crazy thing. It's still hard to find stuff if your circle of friends isn't already using it, but I'm willing to accept that it's not entirely worthless, and that's a big step for me.

books

2009-06-01T17:58:26Z

"Turn Coat", Jim Butcher. Dresden Files, wizard politics, big scary battles. Fun stuff.

video weirdness

2009-05-31T04:09:11Z

About ten years ago, give or take a couple, I remember watching some anime called "Ghost in the Shell", which people recommended highly. I thought it was a talky, incoherent piece of crap, and said so. Tonight, one of the digital channels we recently picked up, Ovation I think it is, played something called "Ghost in the Shell". It was a completely different movie. Much more "Blade Runner"y, not even one scene with talking robot toys, an acceptable level of nudity instead of the grotesque level of fan service in the video I watched before; all in all, a good film. So WTF movie was on that video ten years ago? I mean, if I'm going to diss a piece of crap, I at least want to be sure I'm dissing the right thing.

books

2009-05-29T09:46:43Z

"The Temporal Void", Peter F. Hamilton. Sequel to "The Dreaming Void", second book in the Void trilogy, which in turn is the sequel to his Commonwealth Saga. It being the kind of big near-Singularity space opera that it is, many of the same characters are still bopping around, 1000+ years later. Not a lot I can say without spoilers, but I liked it.

books

2009-05-23T02:53:01Z

"Regenesis", CJ Cherryh. Sequel to Cyteen in all its volumes.
This one was a bit of a slog. Took me forever to get into it. It's not like the Chanur books, where it sometimes seemed she could go half a book without having anybody finish a sentence without an ellipsis or an expostulation; it's more like 400 pages of courtiers maneuvering for favor at Versailles, and then stuff starts to happen. And then it's done.

I had forgotten just how much of a Soviet-style "Brave New World" Union is. (Although given the capitol of Cyteen is named Novgorod, she pushes it in your face often enough.) It's pretty much standard Cherryh: long, agonizing recaps of internal conflicts, political wrangling, and people arguing just to be ornery. The azi are the most sympathetic people in the book. There were a couple of points where I was sorely tempted to just heave the book across the room and have done with it, but I stuck it out in the hopes that it would get better. Which it sort of did. I don't recommend it unless you're a completist.

trackpads, how i hate them

2009-05-22T22:43:36Z

Trackpads have been around for a while now; not quite as long as laptop computers, but nearly that long. You'd think by now they'd be pretty solid devices. Instead, they are buggy pieces of crap that confound me at every turn. Sometimes they hallucinate clicks, other times they randomly ignore clicks or unclicks, and sometimes just decide to stop taking mouse clicks at all. Like just now, which is why I'm over here typing on a machine with a _real_ mouse while my laptop is rebooting. I suppose it might be an OEM-specific issue, but it's independent of PC brand: my EEE is every bit as bad as any Dell. Sure, it's a better device than the track-clit, but why is it so hard to make something that just works? While we're at it, maybe Dell can start making keyboards that don't bounce, so my letters are only doubled when I want them to be. *GRRRAAARRGH!! CARL SMASH!*

Star Trek

2009-05-10T05:26:22Z

When my wife told her friend Vickie that we were thinking about seeing the new Star Trek movie this weekend, Vickie told her "Well, J.J Abrams directed that, so you know there'll be two things in it: time travel and father issues." Dang if she didn't call it. Although I gotta say it's a darn entertaining film. It's a "reboot" of the franchise that makes most of it never happened, or at least maybe never will happen, but it's one of the best Trek scripts ever filmed with a bunch of decent actors and big bold action and it's light on technobabble. Show, not tell.

Purists might take offense to some of the liberties it takes with canon, but the heart is there. Simon Pegg may be a bit broadly comic in his take of Scotty, but his fake Scots accent is a good match with Doohan's fake Scots accent. Karl Urban does a great DeForrest Kelley as Bones, Zach Quinto is a pitch-perfect Spock (the Spock of "The Cage" more than the series per se), ... it all works. John Cho as Sulu did give me a brief thought about "Harold and Kumar Go To Starfleet", but they didn't actually go in that direction. Even Winona Ryder as Spock's Mom worked.

Recommended. RottenTomatoes gives it 96% fresh, pretty much the highest I've seen. It may not be a 4 star movie for you, but chances are high you'll think it was worth seeing. I might see it again in the theater; I'll certainly be getting the DVD.