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I started Salt: A World History a while ago, even before I started and finished a few of the other books this summer. I finally finished this non-fiction scan of the centuries through a prism of salt while flying to New York a couple of weeks ago. It’s a fun idea for a history, and it certainly was an important “rock that you can eat” for ages, until it became easy/economic enough to produce to become less than a commodity. I will say I slowed down in it because Mark Kurlansky’s habit of throwing in historical recipes for color dragged me to a halt many times, even though I soon learned to glaze over them. Also — and I’ve found I feel the same way about in the past about Michener books, for instance — any historical scan of several centuries almost inevitably leaves me eager to get to the present-day, so see why this topic still matters… if it does still matter. Salt doesn’t matter much anymore, which leaves you disappointed in the end. I think there is a larger story in the 20th century transition for salt (and other edible necessities) from expensive commodities to run-of-the-mill items. And, perhaps, the transition of water and other items from run-of-the-mill items to ever more precious items.

So the kid has his first day at preschool, and I come home and ask him about how it went, and he’s thrilled to tell me that they have diggers. Diggers… aka, excavators, bulldozers, graders, etc. I don’t remember being that excited about (a) school or (b) heavy equipment. But I’m glad he wants to go back tomorrow.

I am in the Adirondacks, in northern New York, and the weather has been brilliant so far this week, so I guess we were due for a bit of grey. Enjoying the high-speed access at the Paul Smiths College library.

Going to be quiet for another stretch, so let me leave you with a definition from my “Forgotten English” daily calendar.

lipwisdom – an appearance of wisdom in discourse without practice

Attribution: Daniel Fenning’s Royal English Dictionary, 1775

If I ever need another name for a blog, I’ve got it!

OK, this is ancient, but witty all the same. Read this GameSpot review of the biggest game of all, real life. Or read the thread on Slashdot. Someone knows how not to take their job too seriously.

I have various things I’d like to read/scan at some point, mostly gathered over the past several weeks. But I hate the clutter in my Safari bookmarks bar, so I’ll dump them here… easier to find in the future. Follow at your own risk.

• 5 patterns quiz – Gotta love self-assessment, hokey or not
• Caring for your introvert [Atlantic Monthly] – Never sure whether I qualify or not, but I do have tendencies.
• The Second Coming – A Manifesto – An essay by Gelernter that extends over six web pages. Unfortunately, undated.
• Microcontent and Metadata trends – Commentary by Rajesh Jain on Joi Ito’s post on this topic. “Context instead of content” is the best one-liner.
• Syndicating topics – More about metadata by Bill Kearney, found via Rajesh Jain.
• Make your calendar an RSS feed? – While I admire the creativity, does anything think we’re seeing everything as (RSS) nails since we have a new (RSS) hammer?
• Mailing list participants, by type – Fun, even if mailing lists are diminishing as the medium of choice for public discussion.
• Newsreader feature ideas – Gary Burd, referencing a longer post by Phil Wolff.
• Characteristics of great project managers – We all end up project managing from time to time.
• Valuing conferences – I’m not much of a conference-goer, so not really qualified to judge, but interested all the same.
• Text summarizers – Been curious about where these could work effectively. I know of one place at work where a home-grown one is in active use.
• Portable file server, Sony style – More and more, the keyboard and monitor are just a way at getting at your personal data store.

I’ll stop there, until the next cleaning frenzy comes on.

I need to do some work to figure out the best way to use two computers in the house effectively. The problem is most applications, and their data stores, are designed with single-computer use in mind. I have server-based storage spage, but it’s not the easiest thing to manage documents/data on the server at all times, especially when one of the computers is a laptop which is not 100% connected all the time. Makes you think sync is more and more important. I’m not going to solve these problems this month, but I’m eager for pointers to helpful sites on this extended topic.

And the drumbeat continues. I just finished The Ionian Mission, the next Aubrey-Maturin novel. O’Brian must have felt the momentum of his series building by this time, since he spends very few pages on (re)introducing his cast of characters before launching them off to the Toulon blockade. Overall, this stanza feels like a quieter part of the tale, with more focus on life in the Royal Navy, especially its privations and boredom. The mission of the book’s title comes at the end, as Aubrey and Maturin are dispatched to help choose between three potential allies, all of whom are nominally Turkish, but quite independent minded. The plan is simple enough: pick the right leader to ally with and provide guns to them in exchange for (armed) help moving the French out of a nearby town. There are many competing agendas, however, and Aubrey makes his choice somewhat abruptly, based on personal rather than political opinions. He salvages his reputation, though, by routing two larger ships sailed by one of the jilted would-be allies after they had pirated the guns meant for Aubrey’s chosen ally. O’Brian ends the battle on the last page, so I’ll have to pick up the next one to learn whether the French are displaced from the village in question (Marga) and whether Aubrey is appropriately recognized for his victorious actions. Since his superior officer is someone whom Aubrey cuckolded many years earlier (and the officer knows it), true reward seems… unlikely.

Since I only brought three of the Aubrey-Maturin series on my vacation, I wanted to slow down and wait before jumping into the last of the three. So I found a paperback thriller, A Certain Justice, by John T. Lescroart. About what I expected. 500-odd pages fly by. The author throws in a few twists and turns, but you know where it’s going the whole time. This is a prime example of what my mother calls “an airplane book” — read it on the airplane and then forget it. No need to fill any space on the bookshelf. Kudos at least for a clear author website.

The Surgeon’s Mate jumps right into the breach where The Fortune of War left off, in Halifax, Canada. I wish these books had maps in them, as geography matters a great deal. I know Halifax is a seaport on the eastern shore of Canada, but I cannot pinpoint it more thoroughly. Nor, when Aubrey, Maturin, and Villiers take ship for England, and are chased through the Grand Banks, do I have more than a foggy (appropriate!) sense of where they are. Not O’Brian’s fault, of course, that my bearings are rough and ready, but with tales that span oceans, the modern-day reader might benefit greatly from such.

Aubrey and Maturin are captured on a lee shore in France and are taken to Paris to the Temple (a prison). They escape, with the help of some Frenchmen looking out for their future if Napoleon should tumble from power, which seems possible at this late point in the war (~1812). Having read all of C.S. Forester’s Hornblower series, I couldn’t help but think of when Hornblower and his coxswain were captured, escaping through a more dramatic, athletic course down a French river to the sea. Neither escape is necessarily plausible, but there is certainly less ‘life of the mind’ in Forester’s novels (which I love dearly).
(Yes, I’m catching up on my posts.)