Author: clock

A friend gave me a copy of The Corrections, a novel by Jonathan Franzen which garnered many heaps of praise when it was published in 2001. A significant reason this long-awaited literary novel became a bestseller and bubbled up out of the literary world is because Franzen refused Oprah’s invitation to have his novel as part of her book club. This surprising refusal — Oprah’s blessing is worth $$$$$ — moved the book from anticipated by the literati to eagerly anticipated by a wider public… and maybe even means more people read the book. The obvious speculation, that this contrarian reaction was expected, and therefore provoked, doesn’t take into account Franzen’s reputation (obsessive is part of the story).

With all that said, I often wish I could read a book like this without knowing anything about it other than a friend enjoyed it and suggested I would, too. The cover of this paperback edition is filled with more than the usual awards, alongside plenty of the usual puff quotes from recognizable sources. The sum total of my pre-knowledge, therefore, was (a) this book has received a lot of attention (b) it’s author is a fussbudget, putting it politely and (c) a good friend enjoyed it. That last, at least, was enough to get me reading, although I admit that the first two left me predisposed to move this one to the top of my pile.

I liked the book.

OK, lukewarm words, and I suppose I should be stronger, or at least more precise, in my economiums. I thought the story was compelling, even as the individual family members are more or less so. The entire tale follows two parents and three adult children, all playing their family roles, with true personal change only coming as a form of post-script.

I felt like I was reading David Foster Wallace with an editor: that’s a compliment. I found Infinite Jest a crazy, exciting read — but I longed for some reining in of the words and ideas that spilled into pages of footnotes and slowed the story down. Wallace’s story was fun, almost despite his obstructions. Franzen, by contrast, keeps to a tighter focus, while still finding some places to ‘flex’ his verbal flair. None of these authors would be compared to the conciseness of Hemingway. But Franzen tied his tone and verbal confections to the character whose voice or inner mind he was channeling, which I didn’t realize until just now when I was flipping through for an appropriate quote. I won’t find any single quote that represents the novel, but here’s one example of the careful injection of humor along the way.

As a global player, Lithuania has been fading since the death of Vytautus the Great in 1430. For six hundred years the country was passed around among Poland, Prussia, and Russia like a much-recycled wedding present (the leatherette ice bucket; the salad tongs).

To me, that phrase is along the lines of Vizzini [The Princess Bride] saying: “You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The first is never get involved in a land war in Asia. ….” It’s not as funny as Vizzini, but it’s in the same direction: jokes for adults. (I expect I’ve lost everyone with this comparison, but do see The Princess Bride if you haven’t already.)

Let me end this ramble by adding a personal amusing note. On page 435 of the paperback edition, Franzen drops a reference to nbci.com, the unlamented, long-gone site which I spent 3+ years building from 1997-2000 (originally snap.com). Chip, one of the adult children, is leading a team of Lithuanian ‘webheads’ in perpetuating a fraud on American investors, and Chip wants his foreign team to understand what Americans would think of as reliable and cool. “He made [the Webheads] study American sites like nbci.com and Oracle.” NBCi.com died as an independent would-be Yahoo about the same time this book was initially published and NBCi.com was, in many ways, a fraud on investors, too. I and many others were working as hard as we could to make it a service that deserved to be mentioned with Yahoo and the other portals (remember that word in that context?), but the irony is all the tastier to this ex-employee.

Oh yeah… read the book.

Sung to the tune of ‘Regrets, I’ve had a few…’

Dare Obansajo works at Microsoft. His blog is full of strong opinions on software development, among other things. His post on specs in general and ATOM in particular was compelling. I have partially followed some of the RSS-ATOM ‘discussion.’ It was more the general thought Dare expressed here which found me nodding my head.

Every one of them [specs] contains contradictions, ambiguities and lack crucial information for determining in edge cases. Some are better than others but they all are never well-defined enough. Every spec has errata.

You can’t capture the world in a written document. Or, if you can, you’re usually too slow in delivering to affect the market. You don’t learn what the edge cases are until you and, more importantly, others start using your product or service. Nothing against specifications, which I’ve written (well and otherwise), but you have to know their limitations, or you fall into description paralysis, akin to analysis-paralysis. Edge cases do matter, but you have to put your stake down somewhere to define a center before you can find the edge.

Tahoe delivered lots of snow. The boy enjoyed playing in the powder, and so did his parents. The girl couldn’t really tell the difference… yet. Northstar was family-friendly and worked well for us, despite two frustrating bottlenecks: their gondola at the bottom of the mountain and their shuttle buses around the resort. I remembered why I love snowboarding in powder (maybe only in powder), and how wonderfully exhausting cross-country skiing can be. Maybe we’ll do it again in 2004… but not tomorrow.

The real origin of the word blog?

While I know the real history of the word blog*, I’ve found a word that’s too refreshingly close, in meaning and spelling, to be a total cosmic coincidence: blague. On December 29**, in my Forgotten English calendar, the word of the day was blague, with one definition given as “a facility of speech not of a very high order; humbug, fib, chaff.”

I don’t think I’m reading or writing any blog(s) full of lies, but I’ll be the first to admit that this blog, at least, isn’t always (ever?) full of “speech” of a “very high order” — you’ll have to enjoy or tolerate what you get, in my limited free time.

* web log gets shortened to blog… not very complicated.

** Happy birthday, Mom! (just a couple of days late)

The boy is excited for some snow, which we’ll drive to today. He’s seen, and played in, the snow before, but I hope the reality lives up to the anticipation this time, as he’s old enough to really experience it for himself this time.

There is never enough bandwidth. I’ve used dial-up as recently as this summer, and I survived. But I can’t say I enjoyed the experience. Earlier today, I had a few interrupted iSight conversations with various family members in New York, and the connection did not hold up. DSL on my end (SBC, not SBC Yahoo, despite their marketing efforts) and cable modem on the other end (not sure which company… Cablevision?)… and the connection stuttered enough to kill the video a few times. Frustrating.

When I see Tim Bray get excited about the inflexion point of videochats, I want to echo his call. And I remain pretty convinced that the combination of bandwidth, video, and better software will change computing as we know it. But this afternoon was a reminder that we’re not there quite yet. Still, since I wrote those notes about Toysight, I’ve come across a previous incarnation of workable video-computer interaction, for the PlayStation, the $50 EyeToy. Again, gaming showing he way.

Given my slight disappointment this afternoon, I wonder if Bray’s free ‘calls’ home will be up to snuff. Of course, free is a mighty big incentive. But (a) phone calls have gotten rather cheap, at least domestically and (b) the sunk costs of two computers and cameras isn’t exactly free, even if their cost was subsidized previously by separate usage. I hope he’ll write up his experiences in the future.

I had my first audio-only chat tonight, too, with a friend in Philadelphia for the holidays. It was OK, although I expected better with audio only. Clearly, there are some optimizations to try, probably in physical layout. The audio echo is the most noticeable glitch at my end, as the iSight microphone picks up the sound from the speakers. No vicious feedback whines, but a distracting overlay of sound. I have poor speakers, though, and perhaps their position could improve. If I’m ever to proceed past novelty status with this equipment, I’ll have to tweak and test. That’s not likely to happen until the girl is several months older, at least. For now, I’ll just keep stumbling into the future, thankful that my family is willing to forge ahead with some of these experiments.

Presents are open and the boy is bouncing from present to present playing with each in turn. Amazingly focused on each one, actually.

I remember that my younger brother, the youngest of six of us, would always be the last one opening his presents because he — unlike the rest of us — would play with each present as he opened it. That example always made me, and my sisters, jealous. But we didn’t change from our race through the pile.

The boy was eager to open them all. Still, after learning to his disappointment that we were all done, he has moved to enjoying them all. Nice to see.

The girl was a model infant through the whole event, sitting in the middle of the floor grabbing at whatever caught her eye, but never crying or otherwise getting upset. She missed her morning naptime, which we’re struggling with now, but a fun Christmas morning.

Merry Christmas!

The boy got up early this morning (what would you expect?), but I was able to get him to lie down for another 40 minutes before the fun began. He ripped through his stocking, noting quickly that Santa did indeed eat his three cookies and drink his milk (tasty!). Combination of stickers, trains, and two planes. With each of the three train cars he opened separately, he raced to his room to put them in the train basket. The planes (a fighter jet and a stealth bomber) are a huge success… he’s holding them in his hand as he watches his Richard Scarry DVD. Little kids at Christmas remind you why this is all so much fun. We’ll take a break now for breakfast and to build the anticipation back up. Merry Christmas!

Just returned from a late-morning matinee showing of Return of the King, the third in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I enjoyed it, and the seige of Minas Tirith is the spectacle it was cracked up to be. The postscript, which in the book feels important, drags on a bit in the movie.

I wonder if there’s any chance that my son or daughter will read the books before seeing the films. While there are some movies that should be the first encounter one has with a story, the Tolkien books — like many others — deserve the expanse of the printed page. Your imagination must take over. I first read the trilogy in some dingy paperbacks with faded covers. The contrast between the growing force of the story and its dim packaging remains striking to me even now, and I’ve had mental pictures of the fellowship’s characters for years. While I’m glad that the movies were made, and made well, I do regret slightly that the pictures in my head have been superseded. I know my mother had the same fears, although I think she, too, broke down and has seen the films (at least the first two, so far). Given Tolkien’s deep love of language and words and even fonts, his tales deserve to be read first. After all, Tolkein invented several languages and alphabets for these and other tales of Middle Earth. That’s personal passion writ large.

Is there anything I can (or will) focus on with such single-mindedness? To date, the answer is no. While I think that’s good for my family and (probably) me, I do admire stubborn obsessiveness in the pursuit of perfection. These movies weren’t perfect, but they did strive to deliver Tolkien’s vision, and (from all reports) that took a bit of obsessiveness in of itself.

The next major epic to get the New Zealand treatment? According to Slashdot, Narnia is next.

Over two weeks ago, I got out to The Last Samurai, with Tom Cruise as post-Civil War mercenary in rapidly industrializing Japan. I liked it. Only one truly regrettable cliche, where Cruise’s character lives through a suicidal charge that brings down all those around him, sparing him so that he can deliver the moral message at the conclusion of the film. But the rest of the film is certainly worthy of your dollars (or other currency).

I did find out after the fact that the samurai village in the film was created in New Zealand… hardly surprising, at this point. New Zealand is the new Canada when it comes to making film and television in cheaper English-speaking locales.