BillSaysThis

VH1’s Best Week Ever has a blog and tried for some laughs on NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg’s doofusite comment on Atkins. I left on comment, wonder if anyone’s gonna click through to here.

Garret Vreeland calls his website dangerousmeta after a warning about dangerous meta characters he found funny but if I would pick any description of him after reading his site for the last three years, many emails and a few phone conversations it would be genuinely humble and gentlemanly. My grandma might have called him a true mensch, unlike a mutual acquaintance of ours who only thinks he’s one.

Many people of good will have connected across the internet as I have with Garret, helping out, answering questions, enjoying honest conversation. But I’ve found few who will go to the same lengths and a simple example came along just last week. He went to school at Princeton and then lived for awhile nearby, which is close to where my folks live now, and TS1 and I were hoping to get in a little sightseeing. I shot him off an email and in return I got something that would barely be out of place in a travel guide!

For the last few years he’s made a living as a web site developer, an independent contractor/consultant, though you’d hardly know it from his own site as he makes no mention and gives no links to customer sites. Perhaps you recall Behind the Curtain, one of the first big global community web projects, which Garret conceived and implemented. Mention of that effort is the only self-advertisement you’ll find on dangerousmeta!

And the ease with which he moves through technology is pretty impressive, just from what you can see by observing the site over time. In fact, he started having problems with MovableType early in the week and by this afternoon he completely migrated to WordPress, a server-based blogging system written in PHP. With a completely new, very attractive design as well. Over the last few years, the site has changed underlying tech several times: first the free Userland editthispage.com system, then their Manila server, a Zope/Python application Garret wrote himself (though I don’t recall him ever offering the software for others to use), then MT and now WordPress. Perhaps now that an A-Lister is using it, people will start thinking of WordPress as cool and worthy of reference as WP?

So where am I going with all this? I guess I was spurred by the tech migration to comment in some manner and let the post get out of hand. Then I wanted to verbalize my impression of the man, who probably would have been a Latin scholar or modern agronomist if he’d been born in 1859 instead of 1959. Add a bit of gratitude for his help, advice and insight, not to mention the traffic he’s linked my way. Plus some hot fudge and whip cream, because those go good on a Friday night dessert. Cheers dude!

I wonder which network will reassure us that there is no such thing as too low to go by showing a reality series that is (or might as well be) named White Girls on Dope. The Simple Life came dangerously close but this probably needs to be on cable to capture all the wretchedness.

Goodnight, Captain: Was he the funny man on the screen when you were a toddler too? Only 76 but a full happy life.

Happy Birthday, LordB!

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just when you roll on with the mouse using SantaKlauss tech courtesy of Nick Bradbury.

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Humpph: American Empire: The Victorious Opposition is the seventh novel in a sequence of ten books through which Harry Turtledove explores what might have happened if General Lee’s Special Orders 191 reached him in 1862 and the Confederacy went on to win the Civil War. Since it’s somewhere in the middle of a long story (this volume alone has more than 500 pages), a review is difficult, though it is the conclusion of the American Empire trilogy and therefore ties up some of the threads; it covers the years 1934-1941.

Turtledove has adopted an interesting approach in the series, almost like that used by TV soap operas, creating many characters, devoting a few pages to each, and constantly cycling through their stories. These characters are all over the map geographically and demographically, though few–quite unlike a soap opera–ever meet. Opposition essentially focuses on a character named Jake Featherston, now president of the Confederate States of America, and the effect his actions have on his own country and the USA (which now occupies English-speaking Canada).

If you’ve followed the story this far, keep reading; if you haven’t, start at the beginning and not here.

recommended

I generally prefer not linking Yahoo! News stories because they evaporate after a week. However, this headline is too good to pass up: Some ads to run during Super Bowl. Those ads, BTW, include all three prescription pills to make you hard and plenty of beer.

Frum and Perle ask an interesting question in a NY Times OpEd piece: What will the Democratic candidates due about the Saudi Problem. Trouble is, Bush hasn’t given an answer either; last night’s speech was a farce of the highest order, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Pot, meet kettle.

I read these three books, finished just before the trip, and thought I’d wait a few days for my thoughts to percolate. Interesting aside: though the cover credits them to Ian Douglas, this turns out to be a nom de plume for William Keith, who explains some of the publishing industry machinations in regards to pen names. Unfortunately he hasn’t updated the site in the last three or four years and following these convoluted trails on Amazon is not for me.

The trilogy is comprised of Semper Mars (1998), Luna Marine (1999) and Europa Strike (2000). The focus of the stories is a group of Marines as they defend American interests off-world after the discovery of ancient alien artifacts on, well, Mars, the Moon and Jupiter’s moon Europa from the years 2040 to 2067. Keith pulls together some interesting speculation (the so-called Face seen in fuzzy photos of the Martian surface turns out to be part of a huge, 500,000 year old alien colony), then intertwines some aspects of our past (the pyramids in Egypt turn out to be older than currently thought and part of a different, more recent visit by a different set of aliens) and mythology (these aliens portrayed themselves or were perceived by our ancestors to be gods).

Stack politics on top and you have some solid military SF. Keith definitely knows his marines, or at least he knows their ways better than I can dispute, and the political developments forty plus years in the future are not too improbable. If anything he was too conservative in projecting technological progress and, for instance, should have known better than to put specific details (such as quantity of memory and CPU speed in a PDA) in the pages. The books hang together well, I guess I’m saying, though the alien artifacts at the core of the last novel were a bit stranger than necessary; the ending seemed as if the author hoped to extend the series further as no conclusion to the underlying story was offered.

Recommended

A few minute later: Well, a quick trip to Amazon showed that, though Keith’s website has no mention, he has written a second trilogy that follows on to this one. Book One of the Legacy Trilogy is called Star Corps and was just published last year. Can’t find any mention of books two or three just yet.

I used to read the Star Trek novels religiously up until about three or four years ago. A lot of them were pretty good, some were even terrific and because of the franchise value, some of the better science fiction authors were willing to mold their story ideas into the ST universe. Nowadays I read more on the web and less fiction but sometimes one of the novels will catch my eye.

The Last Roundup is an Original Series book written by Christie Golden set in the months between the sixth (The Undiscovered Country) and seventh (Generations) movies. The bridge crew has dispersed to various parts of the quadrant: Spock, Uhuru and Bones are working on the details of the Federation-Klingon peace agreements, Scotty is vacationing on a lake in Scotland, Sulu is (still) captain of his own starship, Chekov is not finding a ship of his own to captain and Kirk is bored as instructor at Starfleet Academy. Two of Kirk’s nephews, young men in their 20s who James T. ignored as his own career boomed, come to him to ask for his participation in a new colony they plan to found.

Reluctantly he agrees, bringing along Scotty and Chekov and, of course, almost instantly the colony is in the middle of a scheme for revenge by a never-before heard of species whose primary complaint is against another species, one of whom is an Academy student who followed Kirk to this planet. The aggressors, who provided the planet to the colony as a front for their plans which will, of course, threaten millions of lives and destroy the galaxy as we know it.

Golden is a veteran of the ST Universe and though that short description seems riddled with cliches, she did a decent job and so I’d say that the novel is better than, say, an above-average ST TV episode. Characterizations are real, very little cardboard. Kirk, for instance, is facing his age and not just protrayed as the instant female magnet who can solve every problem by snapping his fingers. Though he does in the end fix everything–even Golden can’t avoid the requirements of the formula.

Recommended

Don’t you just love the way the Bush Administration is protecting our right to be obese from those nasty foreigners!

USA Network has given the green light to a very strange sounding take on the Frankenstein story; first as a movie and possibly as a weekly series after that. The monster and the doc are 200 years old now, living in Seattle.

New York Times Link Generator: Avoid that nasty registration requirement.

Except for the cold, the no air, and the pink and red color scheme, Mars looks like a great place to visit (many other interesting photos and such on the Spirit Imagery page).

For sure I’ll be buying Dawn’s coming novel when it comes out, though I expect her to ask me to read it first. Because I want to.

We were in Jersey this weekend to visit my family, which was really nice except for all that rain, snow and cold, and all was well, the Eagles went down in flames. But the Fates were not without their jokes. Trying to be a good son I volunteered to shovel my parents’ short driveway. Of course there was a big icy patch and I fell. Turns out that thrusting one’s hand out to stop the fall is not a great idea and to teach me that lesson I know have a splint wrapped around my hand for the next week. Uggh!

Krugman: Deciphering tonight’s SotU Address. Short answer: look at actions, not words even though tonight will be full of words.

That Saha saga I related the other day? As expected, Fullham has come to their senses and taken the £12M transfer fee and ManU will be even stronger across the frontline now that Louis has passed his physical.

Several American players have now jumped to the EPL and Europe in this window. In fact, Saha will be replaced in the Cottagers’ lineup by Brian McBride after the team beat a $2M transfer fee offer from Blackburn Rovers; the 31 year old McBride is leaving behind the Columbus Crew for a salary that is more than $1M higher plus an opportunity to really show his scoring touch. Forward Clint Mathis is going to Germany, joining Hannover 96 of the Bundesliga after four years with the MetroStars, on a free transfer since he was out of contract; Hannover already has fellow American national team member Steve Cherundolo on their squad.

We received in the mail today a beautiful, thoughtful holiday gift, a pair of stainless steel Zepter Home Art cooking tongs, from our dear friend Annie in Hungary. What a sweet person! These really are lovely and I can’t wait to use them to make a delicious meal.

Prototype Marvin costume revealed

Karl’s gone green!