Sherman, now set the wayback machine for just over two weeks ago, when I was too relaxed from going camping to blog about it.
Sherman, set the wayback machine for a just under three weeks ago, so we can go back to the 10th and add a new entry or two.
My sister Aysan is in a production of The Belle's Stratagem which opened last weekend and runs through October 19th. It's playing at the West End Theatre which is in the Upper West Side (of Manhattan of course). Naturally I recommend you check it out. TheaterMania sells tickets.
I made it to last night's Neal Stephenson book signing 45 minutes early, but the main area was already full except for a couple of seats in the back row. Following are the rough notes I took, a mixture of what I heard, what I thought I heard, what I abbreviated, and what I filled in to try to make the sentences make sense. Still, plenty of fragments, misspellings and grammatical errors, which may be cleaned up at some point. None of it should be taken as direct quote from Mr. Stephenson, although much of it contains exact phrases and is close to what he said. Updated 2003-09-30.
First Mr. Stephenson first spoke a bit.
Folks that have read Quicksilver have asked me, what is real and what is not — since so much of Quicksilver mixes historical events that actually happened and the activities of fictional characters.
To help answer these kinds of questions, annotations and a FAQ being placed online.
I've been collaborating with Applied Minds.
Check http://www.metaweb.com/
Software based on Wikipedia.
Editable/extendable by just about anyone.
Worried about videotaping, posted on the internet, blogged.
But it is fruitless because you can't avoid people in the future with implants.
Thus interesting conversation can only take place in small groups where nothing is archived.
Every other interaction becomes like a politician.
"grith" - right of sanctuary or privacy, old english word. Was most often claimed in churches and on the king's highway, or in spanish, El Camino Real.
Since we are here at 1010 El Camino Real... Inaugurate a new social convention
Anyone that is giving a semi-public talk here has the right to claim grith
Perhaps will act as a kind of social lubricant.
Create new rights and privileges out of thin air? That's how they get created.
Enough people say it. just becomes accepted.
If you are an advanced genetically base superbeing 10k in the future and are watching a videotape of me tonight, you should know that this isn't the real me talking and if I had time I would say much smarter things, and you really shouldn't be watching this video at all because it is a violation of my right of grith.
Q: can I blog about your concept of grith?
A: yes, but you'll have to on the metaweb. oh go ahead, what the heck. but don't quote me.
Q: following up on ... command line, what do you think about OSX?
A: much wider distribution and reading than expected. has some cultural stuff in it which still makes a bunch of sense. there is a lot of material which is OS-specific that needs a serious update. one of the things on my list is to produce an updated list or something. MacOSX is the thing I've been using the past couple of years and it's pretty much taken over.
Q: What did you do before Sci-Fi? Experience trying to pitch a book, get a publisher.
A: After college got a novel published.
Q: Undergrad edu?
A: Humanities or science? Studied physics and geography.
Q: All 3 books written?
A: Third 98% written, except for the ending which I've gotten figured out.
Q: What novelists currently writing do you read?
A: Not a lot of fiction. Matt Rough - "Set this house in order". Romance, love story between two people who have multiple personality disorder. Sensitive treatment. Amazingly complicated. China Miyaville "pretty dough street station", "the scar". Some graphic novels: "Powers" series of novels set in the world where super-powers are really common.
Q: [Cryptonomicon spoiler. Moved to 'title' attribute.]
A: [Cryptonomicon spoiler. Moved to 'title' attribute.]
Q: Technologies that intrigue and fascinate you right now.
A: Buttons (they fasten your clothes together, they make no sound). Tires are unbelievable. Scissors - cutting floppy things with knives is difficult. Beer - I like beer. Haven't seen much that's come along lately that. Leathermans appear to be a new wrinkle. Clearly much better than swiss army knives. Yet they didn't exist a few years ago.
Q: You implied that information is getting cheaper. But Cryptonomicon focuses on info being a commodity that can be used for exchange. Have you seen a change in trend? If you were going to follow up with this book, does everything change now?
A: Business plan in Cryptonomicon didn't work out, like many in the real world. As to info being cheap, commodity etc., there are ways of making it valuable by creating artificial scarcity using crypto.
Information that used to be only locally accessible is now globally accessible which now leads to some wacky complications.
Q: Who is the girl upstairs.
A: My office is in the basement, and I'm married
Q: File sharing, privacy, SPAM, SCO vs. IBM, and are you going to write something following up to Command Line.
A: File sharing? Something kids do, I don't do much of that.
A: Command Line thing has been surprisingly durable. A lot of design people are reading it which is worrisome. Strictly technical stuff that is in that is really old now. I will have to annotate it and clean it up a bit.
Q: What is your programming experience?
A: Basic when I was 14. At various times have known how to code in PL/I, Pascal, C and variants, Lisp. Never held down a job doing it. Gave it up when it got to the point where you had to spend all of your time worrying about the API of your OS.
A: By the way, new version of SPAM. Victorian SPAM. Spam filters look for dirty words etc. Some now replace "O" with "0". Sooner or later the people that write spam filters will detect those kinds of tricks. Now I'm seeing: "Are you feeling uncertain about your manhood?", the predecessor a year ago would have been a little more blunt. As time goes on, this will be more the case.
Q: Where did he get inspiration for technologies like in Snow Crash and Diamond Age?
A: Thoughts like: Metaverse in Snow Crash is what if VR became as popular as TV is now? I haven't invented any new material in 10 years which is when I stopped writing Diamond Age. Not sure I can do it anymore.
Q: Why did you write Snow Crash in the present tense?
A: Did I? I don't know. Something to do with... When you write something in the past tense it sounds like you are telling a story of something which happened at some time. Writing in the present tense forces you to take a different approach, not sure what going to happen next, emphasizes fact that everything being seen from point of view of character. Not this omniscient narrator laying everything down.
Q: Movement of language in your action scenes - is there something else going through your head when you're writing action?
A: If there were and Is top to think about it, I wouldn't be able to do it. Just reading things back to myself. Does it read well, does it flow well.
Q: Snow Crash and Diamond Age - same universe? Anything before/after Diamond age?
A: Not really - didn't intend them to be in the same universe. I have a soft spot for Diamond Age, if I did revisit something I would probably do that. No plans now. Not sure what I would do. I've thought about writing a more kid appropriate version of it.
Q: Ever tried to productize Young Lady's Primer?
A: A lot of people are trying to do so. Hope that if the Metaweb experiment turns into something it will have some of the attributes of that thing.
Q: How much would you credit the plague with Newton's development and success?
A: In 1664 and 1665 there was a plague which caused Cambridge to be suspended and went home and did what any of us would do with a spare summer, and invented Calculus. My suspicion is he would have done it anyway. Because he had to do it so he could do some other stuff. Not just a lark. Was a thing that was bugging him and that he had to deal with. Never really an attentive student anyway.
Q: Why did write a couple books under a pen name?
A: My uncle and I collaborating. Not an interesting story, but we started this before I had any name recognition. Simpler and easier to have one name to denote that parternship than two big long names on the cover.
Ok, we're going to go to the big book signing extravaganza now.
(applause)
And then after grabbing a quick snack (Basil Melt special) next door at Cafe Borrone while waiting for my range of ticket number to be called, I went and got two copies of Quicksilver signed by Neal in addition to two copies of Snow Crash (one hardcover, one trade paperback reissue) signed as my two "extra signings".
Neal Stephenson is doing a booksigning at 7:30pm tonight at Keplers bookstore in Menlo Park for Quicksilver, the first book of his Baroque Cycle series.
I just watched the televised debate among the CA gubernatorial candidates. My summary:
I sent in my request for an absentee ballot yesterday, and am still undecided about who I will vote for governor.
In other gubernatorial news, this week Governor Davis signed a bill outlawing whistle tips. Of course this is an outrage for all whistle tip enthusiasts. We can thus conclude that popular whistle tip spokesperson Bubb Rubb would vote Yes on the Recall.
I first learned of Bubb Rubb from Brittney, who has moved to TypePad. Update your Brittney bookmark to Brittney's Sparkwood & 21. The layout is nice and clean, and the frequently updated self-thumbnails in the top left are a nice touch. Congrats on your new site Brittney, and your VCB as well. I can only say that I'm fortunate enough to also know something about finding someone very special "who rocks in more ways than I know how to say".
For those that missed it last time, or went and had a great time, Thievery Corporation returns to SF October 23rd from 9pm-2am @ Mezzanine. Tickets are expected to sell out quickly (they did last time), so pick 'em up soon if you want to go.
The typewriter-keyboard conversion is a fictional artifact that has become real. Too cool. I wonder if anyone has built a full Network 23 controller setup. If you've never seen the TV series Max Headroom: 20 minutes into the future this might not make much sense. Go find a feed to watch Network 23 and turn away when you see the flashing "Zik Zak" logo.
So I was trying the the cool new Fussy Parsing favelet that Jeffrey wrote and found what I thought were a couple of problems with the new W3C beta validator.
First, the styling looks completely broken in IE5.1/Mac. I briefly perused the style sheets and didn't find any of the usual suspects that would cause such overlap and misformatting like some uses of 'position:relative'. I'm not sure what style rules are causing the problems. Next steps in analysis would be to first isolate the particular style sheet causing the problems, and then the particular style rule or rules in that sheet.
I thought there was a second problem with the beta validator but realized the "problem" was actually in my code when I double-checked with the current validator. The validator(s) complained about a childless <ul>:
Line 104, column 27: end tag for "ul" which is not finished
<ul class='categories'></ul>
I interpreted this to mean that the red angle bracket at the end was expected but not found by the validator and thus the "ul" was "not finished".
The real problem turned out to be that a <ul> must have at least one <li> inside in order to be valid.
Thanks to Jeffrey's suggestion a while ago, the beta validator contained a friendly note:
Help Wanted! This message (#73) has no explanation yet. If you can think of a succinct way to explain the possible situations that will trigger this error and how to fix it, please consider writing it down and sending it to the www-validator@w3.org list.
So I did.
Yes the problem turned out to be that XHTML 1.0 Transitional forbids an empty <ul> without any <li> elements inside. This is ridiculous. Forbidding an empty list is like forbidding the number zero. Just because something describes emptiness doesn't mean it doesn't (or shouldn't) exist. I've left the error in my markup for the moment so you can see results of the beta validator for yourself.
Nonetheless the improvement in the validator is serving its purpose. Well done Terje and cohorts. Now could you please fix the style sheet to work in IE5/Mac? It would be much appreciated!
As pointed out by Doug and Jeffrey, Verisign is violating the spirit if not letter of DNS. Nice to see some other company doing something boneheaded on the Internet.
Second half of that same post, Jeffrey says:
Virtual PC is not compatible with Apple's new G5 series computers...
.
Actually, since Virtual PC predates the G5, it is Apple's new G5 which is not compatible with Virtual PC. The problem? The G5 dropped a feature called 'pseudo little-endian mode' which Virtual PC relied upon. Of course that macminute article is similarly mistitled (typical of mac zealot press), so we of course do not blame Jeffrey for this minor bit of journalistic bias which was unfortunately propagated. Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft, current publisher of Virtual PC, so I'm probably biased as well.
Update: Jeffrey has written a followup:
...although we linked to material indicating as much, we failed to make explicit that Virtual PC's incompatibility with the Mac G5 is not the fault of Virtual PC, Connectix, or Microsoft. Virtual PC relies on on a feature of G3 and G4 chips which is not available in the G5.
What can I say? Sounds fair and balanced to me.
Finally, Mr. Z has published new favelets for the new W3C beta validator. Although we're quite confident we know that Jeffrey came up with his "Beta Validate" favelet all on his own, we feel a childish need to point out that favelets.com has had a W3C beta validator favelet since November 7th of last year.
Seen over at Zeldman's: Histology-World. I mean really, WTF?
Well, music is stretching it. The guy currently playing really sucks. Oh thank goodness he has finally stopped. Up next, another random white guy with a guitar. What is with this seemingly endless stream of white guys with guitars who think they know how to sing?
Where's Scott Andrew when you need him to put these talentless hacks in their place?
And regarding the aforementioned reviews. In spite of my lukewarm commentary, let me be clear: periodic reviews based on objective principles and criteria are the best annual employee evaluation system I have seen at any company. Let's just say I've experienced much worse at past employers who shall go nameless.
The so-called music appears to be getting progressively worse. Dammit where are my earplugs? Oops I think I left them in my rave pants.
Pardon the semi-random ordering of the past week's events — my memory is apparently neither sequential nor ordered (there are other orderings besides sequential).
Late this afternoon the contractors finished fixing the actual physical windows in my flat so they would stay open when opened.
No, not that Windows.
Long story short: previous windows sucked. had them replaced with period style double hung windows but with a double-pane update for greater value/insulation/noisereduction but greater weight as well which exceeded the counter-weight from the original double-hung windows and thus wouldn't stay open. More weight added to old counter-weights thus balancing new windows so they'll stay open.
While babysitting the contractors (and double-checking their work and making them redo the few windows that still wouldn't stay open and needed even more additional counter-weight) I worked a bunch on writing reviews.
I'm a manager (technically, a development lead) which means that twice a year I complete written reviews for all of my reports. This is something I am terribly inefficient at. Even when employees do their jobs, it still seems tedious to do the written reviews — and it usually feels that way for the employee writing their self-review as well. Sometimes I wonder if this is because I am trying to be more thorough than I need to be. Sometimes I wonder if it is because I am being too picky about my own writing.
I was pretty picky about the windows also. I kept surprising the chief contractor with the amount/depth of questions I was asking. Maybe I'm just detail oriented. I warned him that should he ever consider software development, there are lots of little details that matter. He looked scared.
The food from dinner is starting to kick-in and the inevitable food coma is dragging me unconscious. This, despite the double iced mocha and the blaringly loud acoustic guitar duo that's currently playing.
Oh look, Doug just showed up. It's now 10:10pm. Yes, this short post took over half an hour to write. Ok, I'm almost fully awake now. And at home I have windows that work beautifully and that makes me happy.
The last week has been filled with contrasts. I'm almost sorta caught up with what I'm supposed to be doing. So now I'm at The Canvas, trying to chill out a bit, grabbing a bite and reiterating memories of the past week. A couple of live music (vocal + acoustic guitar) acts just played, and now a guy is performing some decent spoken word. Must be random open mic night.
Taking a few "days off" — I mean really off, not just off from work, but off from phones, pagers, email does really good things for overall well being and state of mind. I think I am going try to at least plan to take a few days off once a month.
But first, let me summarize what I didn't do this past weekend (and might otherwise have if I had been in town):
Instead I went to a most chill campout put on by the Cloud Factory Collective.
We arrived Friday afternoon, setup our tent and went for a swim in the swimming hole / pond. Dinner and other meals consisted of whatever we could assemble from the ingredients we brough in the cooler and whatever other folks had to share. There was electronic DJ music but nearly all of it was what is commonly referred to as "chill" or sometimes "down tempo".
I learned about a new item of clothing which I had seen before but didn't know what it was called. A few women (and men) were wearing Utilikilts.
The waking hours were spent hanging out on the lawn, swimming (see above), chatting with a bunch of nice people, eating snacks sometimes large enough to resemble meals, reading, taking walks through the gardens, and in general letting go of pressures and stresses.
Sunday was quite fun. Amber introduced me to Brian Behlendorf who happened to also be at the campout. Yes, that Brian Behlendorf (someone whose achievements I have admired for quite some time). I also bumped into Wayne who I had worked with at Apple many many years ago. We both laughed about how we missed the reunion.
Mid afternoon they held the first annual CFC raffle. The cost of tickets went toward sponsoring CFC art programs, and all the prizes were various donations of one sort or another. I "sponsored" twenty bucks and apparently held enough tickets to win a few prizes. There were a lot of prizes.
First I won a home-cooked Burmese Dinner by Laura Lagassa. Amber was laughing at the time, because little did I know it, but Laura is Brian's wife. So sometime soon the four of us will be having dinner. That should be fun and interesting.
Next I won one of Amber's CDs, which I already had (of course!) so I donated it back to the prize cache for someone else to win.
Finally I won the grand prize of a whole organic lamb (already "dressed" and prepped). I was actually somewhat dreading winning the lamb because I never liked eating lamb, and my current eating preferences are piscerean (vegetarian+fish) so I don't eat lamb at all these days. I knew I was going to get a hard time from my sister Aytek and my parents later, but I followed my instincts at the time, and simply let them draw another winner for the lamb. Besides, I'd already won a great prize, and letting someone else win the lamb who might better enjoy it seemed like the right thing to do.
On the drive back we were desperate for some espresso and when you travel that far north in California, you drive through towns where they tell you "There is no coffee on Sundays". I have no idea why but I can only guess there is some sort of religious reason that I don't want to know about.
So I called my sister Aytek (neglecting to tell her of my aforementioned lamb abandonment) and asked her to lookup the nearest Starbucks to us while we were driving down 101 near Ukiah. And using the web, she found a location that we would have had no chance of finding by simply driving by strip malls.
For future note: there is a Starbucks inside the Albertsons in Ukiah.
This is how I use my cell phone to look up stuff on the Web. I call someone (using some of my free weekend minutes) who is using a desktop web browser and can quickly and efficiently find the information, rather than attempting to navigate a crappy interface on an impossibly small screen over slow and inconsistent connection which costs some ridiculous per minute or per byte fee for 3G or PCS or whatever service. I have to agree with what Jeff Veen wrote about cell phones.
Further on the drive south, as we were passing through Marin and listening to NPR (we had gotten tired of the country stations), Amber and I were both captivated by a wonderful program on electronic music, it's origins, history, evolution and recent developments.
Finally, I know the URL is live but it's not official until tomorrow, but it's already tomorrow in Europe.
This time we think it's within a few minor changes of being done. Take a look.
Gone camping.
After the Azie Dinner, a bunch of us headed over to Butter for the Pixelbiscuit University (PU) frat party. Frat party photos. Pixelbiscuit photos. Brent, Kim and Porter clearly had a good time. Kirsten, Samira and Amber spun some funky beats. Canyon, Paul, Josh, Keri and Missi were there too. Having not slept much the night before, I decided to call it a night shortly before midnight.
Just finished up at a wonderful dinner hosted by WOW at Azie on Folsom st. in SF. Photos from dinner. It was fun hanging out with Steven, Kim, Matt, Kelly ,Cia, Brent, Eric, Doug, Molly, Porter, Lisa, Bebo and bunch of other nice folks. Thanks to Bill Cullifer for hosting.
Last month I had a very interesting discussion and brainstorming session with a friend and colleague about the current syndication format wars and their apparent silliness. Our followup discussions provided the basis for something much simpler which I had hoped to put to use for this month's blog format (and an updated feed).
It's been a busier couple of weeks than I expected though, and already a third of the month has gone by. The rest looks quite busy as well. So I will admit that it is unlikely that I will get the time to redo the markup of my blog this month, and perhaps try again next month.
What have I been so busy with? Here's a quick summary:
© 1996-2003, Tantek Çelik, All Rights Reserved
Comments: