(no subject)

[prog]

I am reading William Gibson's Pattern Recognition which has finally come out in paperback, and enjoying it far more than I thought I would. I knew something about it because some of my friends described being annoyed at it describing for me what annoyed them. I nodded sympathetically and silently thought hmm that sounds kinda cool. And lo it is. If you're into that sort of thing.

It reads entirely differently from every other Gibson I have slogged through, which is to say: it is not boring. I think that real-life technology has actually caught up with him, so now he gets to write about real things while putting as much love into this yes-actually techno-wonderland setting as he ever has into any of his SF novels. Setting is the reason I read SF, and this novel makes me happy in the same way even though it's not really SF.

(I like it enough to forgive Gibson things like the fact that he sometimes flubs the most minute details about what URLs look like or how browser history menus work. I recall how he once asked his own fans, via his weblog, how to make a hypertext link, which showed that Mr. Neuromancer not only didn't know rudimentary HTML, but also had no confidence using Google. Or maybe it just showed his supreme laziness, which I can actually vaguely admire. (Anyway, I can't imagine how many responses he got to that. Can you imagine all the kids fighting for bragging rights over teaching Bill Gibson how to make an <a> tag?!))

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Crucial hair news: I have found that when my hair gets long enough to comb, I can instead just assault it with a blow dryer. This generally makes my hair look less blandly puffy and more aggressively gorgonic, a couple of steps more Heat Miser-y than usual. I like this effect.

No combs ever.

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I like the WP article on Gary Kasparov, and didn't know that he recently announced his retirement from serious competitive chess. If I'm reading it correctly, he basically retired because he ran out of new titles to win, and was just taking home the same honors year after year. In one way it's big of him to step aside and let someone else win for a change, but the way it's phrased makes him sound more petulant than that. (Which may be accurate; I recall his embarrassing crankiness when computers have beat him.)

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I haven't written about my iPod Shuffle since the half-complaints I noted the day after I bought it. The truth is that I really like it, now; I consider it worth every penny. It still sometimes gets into a weird state where I have to cycle its power before it works again. This also makes it lose its place in its playlist, forcing me to hit the fast-foward button a bunch of times if I want to get back to the spot I was before. Annoying, but it only happens when I leave in on idle for a long time... maybe it's from accidental in-pocket button-mashing in the interim. There is a button-lock feature but it's a pain to use (hold down the play button for 5 secs to toggle) so I don't bother. But really, I like it a lot.

It seems to have some favorite songs of its own. My iTunes library is presently 12 times the size of the Shuffle's storage capacity, but I swear that Radiohead's Paranoid Android has gotten itself on there during the last four or five random loads. This evening it started just as I was heading home from the Harvard campus. I estimate that the distance up Mass Ave between Harvard and the street I cross to go to my house is around 1.3 PAUs.

• Questions for you
  • Could you stop the noise?
    • Trying to get some rest
    • Unborn chicken voices in head
  • Why don't you remember my name?
    • I guess he does
    • Off with his head, man
  • What's that?
    • Things I may be
      • Paranoid
    • Things I am not
      • An android
    • Things I sound like
      • The Talking Moose
• Things that will be first against the wall when I am king
  • You
    • Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
    • Kicking squealing gucci little piggy
  • Your opinions (inconsequential)
• Origin of rain
  • From a great height
  • From a great heeeiiiiii
  • Eeeeiiiieeiiii
• Things that will rain down
  • "That's it sir, you're leaving"
  • Crackle of pigskin
  • Dust and screaming
  • Yuppies networking
  • Panic
  • Vomit
• Things God loves
  • His children
  • Yeah

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

PAUs?

What is that a list of? Or is that the song?

[prog.livejournal.com]

furrfu, wait for me to format my posts correctly before replying to them. :)

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

But I'm bored now.... :)

and what's a PAU?

[prog.livejournal.com]

Paranoid Android Units, natch.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

I liked Pattern Recognition a lot. Definitely my favorite Gibson since Neuromancer.