Author Archives: Josh

Simple, easy, obvious. (Or: Why spotify lost me in 2 minutes.)

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So a while back some rabid fanboy was all like “You’ve got to try Spotify! Best thing since bread in less-than-loaf sizes!” so I got myself an account, realized I had to download some app, wasn’t in a position to do so, and never came back. What is this thing? Not really sure. “Like Pandora” I’ve been told. “Social Music” seems to be a term used.

Okay, but it gets better. I get an email from someone who I’d actually be interested in sharing “social music” with, so okay, you win. I’m at a computer, I have the app, let’s log in!

Spotify demands your username, not your email!

FAILURE NUMBER 1: USERNAMES!

Sorry Spotify, 1997 called. They said they heard you were using usernames instead of email addresses and they wanted to mock you for being behind the times. What. The. Hell? I’m tired of remembering usernames! Someone has always already chosen my favorite username of “josh_the_greatest_dude_ever”, so unless you feel like reserving that for me please make your service use my email address as a login. (Especially now that my keychain isn’t going to sync between my macs, usernames are OUT, but that’s another rant.)

Failure 2: Facebookery.

I know, I’m the only person in the whole of the multiverse who doesn’t use facebook. And if you believe that you should get out of the internet business, especially if you’re trying for “social”. So, now that I finally recovered my username and got logged in I find a really oversized facebook logo in what appear to be the section where I should be able to add the friends I want to interact with. Tell me, did they actually pay you for that much advertising space, or are you just that desperate to suck up? (“Zuck’ up” perhaps? In any case I think we know where you got the “Spotify is so good!” Zuckerberg quote emblazoned on your site.)

So… apparently I’m completely cut off from social interaction due to my lack of a facebook login. I’m immediately cut off from the one thing I was actually sort of interested in: seeing what my friends are listening to. Whoops.

Interaction Failures of the third kind

I’ve finally logged in, found out I’m a one-man island, but I’m not yet completely discouraged. Let’s see what else this thing does for me!

…

…

Well, I’m really not sure. Apparently it scans my “Library”, which since I’m using it on the laptop and not the desktop is empty. I’m greeted by a screen that says I can “take my music anywhere” by plugging in my phone. (Which, since it goes with me everywhere seems potentially redundant to me?) I have an “inbox” where music that is “sent to me” will arrive. (One supposes it will be sent via those friends I have on facebo… oops.) There’s a nice “top lists” tab, which confirms for me that the world at large has absolutely no taste in music, but I already knew that.

Here’s the lesson Spotify. Don’t assume that your users know what your app does. Also: You’re probably not quite yet to that level where you don’t actually have to explain yourself to anyone.

For the record:

No, I’m not an idiot. Yes, I’ve managed to deduce that spotify scans your iTunes and somehow makes all your music available to you in a streaming format. No, I’m probably not going to use it as I’m just not seeing the value in it based on this brief experience. All the music I need rides around with me on my myriad iDevices. Maybe when I break free of the apple ecosystem this will… oh wait, no linux/web version? Nope, it’ll be just as useless then too.

But really, what this whole post was about, what really got my goat, was that error screen. “You must use your username, not your email address”. Seriously? 1997. Somewhere in my snobby little mind that tells me exactly what breed and level of designers and developers you are. Is that the snobbiest and most stuck up thing I could think? Probably. But it’s not completely wrong either, not even close.

A James Morrow Late-Night Double Feature

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In which I review not one, but TWO books, both by James Morrow.

Bible Stories for Adults

A series of short-ish stories always makes for an interesting review. The first story, “The Deluge”, was great, (It won a Nebula, it would sort of have to be!) but I have to admit I felt a bit mixed about some of the rest of them. I suppose I was expecting something more like Lamb, however one should really not go into something with expectations like that. The parody/alternate history stories like “Deluge”, “The Tower” and “Abe Lincon at McDonalds” will leave you wondering “what if”, and the philosophical stories like “Assemblage of Kristin” and “Diary of a Mad Deity” will leave you wondering what just happened. You know, in that good way where you aren’t quite sure where you are but you feel like the trip to get there must have been quite fun?

Some of the stories feel like you probably need to know the actual bible story. I’m not sure “Soap Opera” would be as good if you didn’t know the story of Job. Most of them though require no previous knowledge. The Covenant, probably my favorite story in the book, is an interesting analysis of the ten commandments and what the world might be if they had not yet been made public. “These rules are not worthy of you!”

Every one of these stories is thought provoking. Did I enjoy them as much as I thought I would based on the reviews I’d been given? Sadly no, as I was expecting more Christopher-Moore-slash-Tom-Holt style writing. I was left feeling thoughtful, but not like I immediately needed to read again to understand whatever it is I missed. Based on these stories I would say there is one thing James Morrow knows how to do exceptionally well: get his point across.

I would definitely recommend reading. I may even re-read someday. For now though, I think I know someone who will quite enjoy this book, I think I’ll give it to them!

Towing Jehovah

The plot is explained in the first few pages thusly:

“Our mutual Creator has passed away,” sad Raphael with a sigh compounded of pain, exhaustion, and grief.
“What?”
“God Died.”
Anthony took an involuntary step backward. “That’s crazy.”
“Died and fell into the sea.” Raphael clamped his cold fingers around the tattooed mermaid on Anthony’s naked forearm and abruptly drew him closer. “List carefully, Captain Van Horne. You’re going to get your ship back.”

So… What happens when god dies, his corporeal form falls into the ocean, the angels are literally dying of despair, and the vatican’s chief particle physicist goes riding on a supertanker captained by an infamous tanker captain out to the body? This book has it all, angels, bi-planes, cruise missiles, warped reality, and a recipe for Dieu Bourguignon.

I think perhaps Morrow’s pacing takes a bit of getting used to, but boy is it worth it. Ever asked yourself what happens to the world when god dies? More importantly, what happens to people when faced with incontrovertible proof that the god they may or may not have believed in is dead?

Believe me, the ending is worth it. Well, the almost ending. I really do think it’s Morrow’s pacing that throws me off. The extra bits make the world believable, but sometimes it feels like they lessen the impact of what he’s telling you. Once again though, I feel like I GOT? it. I know what he’s saying, I understand, and I’m not sure reading it again would do much more for me. Maybe that’s good in a book sometimes, but I’m really rather fond of that feeling that I should pick it up again and see if I can squeeze just a little more out of it. I don’t think I can however, and while I may read it someday in the far future, I think my plan for this one is once again going to be to give it to someone who I think will also enjoy it.

“Have you even waltzed naked in God’s navel Tom?”

Sometimes support is fun…

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Doing tech support isn’t always the best job in the world. But it’s better when you get to have a little fun with it. As an example here is a ticket response that I sent out today:

Our apologies for the zombie message invasion. We have uncovered the source of the infection and are working to repair it for you. Because the issue is server-side it will just begin working one day, so you should try to delete messages periodically just to see if it’s working. (Sometimes it will even work before the fix too, it’s sort of random.)
So basically, like with any zombie infestation, just keep trying, they’ll stay down eventually. And try not to get bit, that just makes it worse.

Yep, that’s exactly what you want to hear from you tech support team right? Hope I made your day a bit brighter!

Also, I love it when they give me straight lines like “I don’t know how you’ll respond to this, but…” because it lets me do this:

I think I will reply… in wookie:
wwahhowo ohwowoor rcooananahwhrr rahoworcrarrwo.

Oh, that’s not what you meant. Via email of course!

We actually proceeded to carry on the rest of the support interaction in wookie, which is really quite impressive. “ROFL” takes a lot more to say in wookie though, it’s just not a terse language.

Yeah, there are things I’ll miss about doing support.

Ending the latest tryst

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My dalliance with the latest social networking fad, Google+, has come to and end even faster than normal and ended with me deleting my account on what currently seems to be another useless service.

I just haven’t found out what these services are good for yet, and google’s offering further confuses things by being a number if different offerings that are apparently related? I ended up deleting google+ because I was trying to delete buzz, which appears to be completely unrelated, right up until you try and delete it? Google reader, buzz, google+, and “+1” all appear to be completely unrelated services doing things that don’t really have value unless they work together. +1 should note an item in reader, which should let me choose which circles I want to share it with.

Another minor point about google+ was the fact that I would have the app open in firefox, I’d even have it as the front window, and something new would happen. The browser would update, I would get a push notification, I got an email, and I got the little “new unread items” badge in the open tabs for both gmail and google reader. That’s a lot of notifications. And do you think that marking any one of them as read would mark all of them as read? That would be nice wouldn’t it. I think I’ll stick with my IMAP email, at least I only have to deal with notifications once.

And for the love of almighty Zeus would you please bring back the brilliant “reply in-line to a subset of users” feature from Wave? Circles doesn’t even really help because if I post it to all my circles when someone from one of my circles replies I don’t necessarily want everyone from all my circles being introduced to each other, it sort of defeats the point?

So, aside from complete lack of integration and being unable to understand which bits do what, why did I leave? Because it doesn’t help me talk to you. Utterly useless at it. The noise level is just far too high. Everyone is talking but nobody is listening.? (Believe me, I’m aware of the irony of posting this on my “blog”. Heh. That’s another story though.)
So for now, I’m back to being found here on my website and via email. (You can also see what I find interesting on Google Reader)

Now with more sekretz

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Daedalusdreams.com is now SSL enabled for your convenience and security.Well… more for mine actually. However, it’s worth noting that you can access it at https://daedalusdreams.com/ and browse to your heart’s content with assurances that nobody aside from me knows what you’re up to.

The entire basis of security and authenticity on the internet is an amazing thing. When you make a request to daedalusdreams.com what assurances do you have that the content you’re getting is actually from me on this domain that I own? None. Anybody in the middle could be intercepting my communication to you and altering it. Which is why we have HTTPS/SSL. When you make a secure request you get this certificate that tells you “yep, we promise that anything coming from this IP is actually daedalusdreams.com”, and to help make sure nothing is modified mid-stream everything you get is also encrypted using that certificate.

So yay right? You now know that it’s me, and it’s really what I’m saying! But who ensures that? The root certificate authority that I used is basically vouching for me. It’s okay, they’re trustworthy right?! Well, sure they are, but how hard did they work to make sure that I am? They emailed me at “webmaster@daedalusdreams.com”. Theoretically since I have access to that email I’m the domain owner, and presto certificato we’re “secure”. (Well, technically I also had to buy a static IP for my domain name since you have to have a permanent address.)

Does the entire thing sound a little shifty to you? Yah, me too. At least my host offers a pretty reasonable price for certificates. The entire industry is sort of a racket, so it’s nice to be able to avoid having to shop around through that mess. The process needs to change however, in order for security on the web to become what it should be. That, however, is an entirely different blog post. For now, we’ll be happy that everything here is nice and tidy, and we’ll worry about the entire future of the internet at a later point.

Climbing Olympus – Kevin J. Anderson

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The story starts with our hero on the slopes of Mt. Olympus, the largest volcano in the solar system…

Oh wait, no it doesn’t. In fact I have a hard time recalling if the venerable mountain was even mentioned before one of the characters began to climb it in the last 10 or so pages of the book.

Ah well, what’s in a name right? Kevin J. Anderson writes a pretty reasonable novel in my experience, and this one doesn’t let you down. Sort of the typical monster-of-the-week style story with the your average characters, and no real crazy plot-twists to throw you overboard, this one is a fun read. Poul Anderson did a quote for the cover:

An exciting story… one feels that this may very well be the way the conquest of Mars will happen.

Gotta agree. Unfortunately not much more to say. I enjoyed reading it, but I’m done reading it now and it doesn’t have anything else to offer me. I don’t even have a particularly memorable quote. With a very human quality to the characters, and an arid and dead feeling to the planet, it’s a gritty and realistic tale of homesteading the martian plain. Now, off to powells we go for a trade-in!

Time Blender – Michael Dorn

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It’s WORF right? How could I possibly NOT read this book? So it’s been on my shelf for quite some time now, waiting to be read. In the first paragraph we find out that our character is black, handsome, academic, athletic, and troubled. (Several paragraphs later we discover that “troubled” comes from being an ex bomber pilot who dropped a 2000lb bomb on a building that turned out to be full of children. Also, that our academic, handsome, black, athletic hero was too much of a he-man to be able to stomach seeing a counselor for what sounds like a pretty run-of-the-mill case of PTSD.)

The best part about this book is how our character (along with several others) just manages to deal with anything. If a horde of chopstick-wielding velociraptors came parachuting out of the sky I believe our hero would take it in stride an ask them where the nearest chinese buffet was. Admittedly he does have to deal with some weird shit, but it never seems to take it’s toll.

Here’s a good example of how our intrepid little hero deals with things:

Samurai Warriors.
Samurai Warriors chasing a group of primitive Celts.
And the whole melee was headed straight at him.
There is a time to analyze and wonder, and a time to run for you life. Miller had absolutely no doubt that right now was a prime example of the second option. He turned and ran for the plane.

(It’s worth noting that shortly thereafter Bagpipes become involved. With gems like this, what’s not to love?)

A rousing tale of the adventures of archeologist Tony Miller, the first 25 pages seem a bit slow, but after that it never… stops… being… strange… If you read the cover page you find out that Dorn was only one of three credited authors for the book, something I didn’t know until I’d gotten to the end. Knowing that certainly clears things up a bit though, and I now have a reasonably good guess how the book was written: Each author took turns writing. And then they chose a schizophrenic ADD crack addict as an editor. I did find out an interesting thing about the co-authors though. From the GoodReads page for Jeff Lindsay:

Jeff Lindsay is the pen name of an American crime writer, Jeffry P. Freundlich, who lives in Cape Coral, Florida with his wife, author Hilary Hemingway, daughter of Leicester Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway’s brother.

Lindsay is best known for writing the Dexter series of novels. Many of his earlier published works include his wife as a co-author. Time Blender was written with Michael Dorn. He graduated from Middlebury College, Vermont, in 1975.

So this was co-written by the guy who wrote Dexter, and his wife. (Who happens to be the niece of Ernest Hemingway?!) That really surprised me. Now I really want to know what the writing process on this one looked like!

None of this is to say that I didn’t enjoy the book. I mean, in the last 25 pages the hero of this adventure finds out that the choice he has to make (allegedly to save all of the world and time itself!) isn’t nearly as simple or straightforward as he had been led to believe! New adventures await, exciting decisions are coming! The book ends! Book two was never written! Aaaargh! But what happened to Osiris the god of the dead, the giant quasi-friendly shark, the horde of druids, or the beautiful naked polynesian girl from the undiscovered island of doom? (Dr. Who would never let time get this unbalanced and rickety!)

Thanks. I can’t decide what’s worse, the mediocre execution of a really enjoyable idea, or the cliffhanger that never ends.

In the end, the novelty factor doesn’t make it worth keeping around, but if you have 2 hours to kill sometime and this book just happens to be lying in a pile somewhere there are certainly worse things you could read. I’d give it a good solid 3 out of 5 stars. Reading this book is basically be like watching the entirety of Star Trek: The Next Generation all smashed together, but it won’t take you nearly as long.

Moonfall – Jack McDevitt

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One sentence review: What every “scifi” action movie wants to be when it grows up.
I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone interested in an action/adventure space romp with just enough scifi to keep you interested and keep things realistic.

This book was an enjoyable action adventure set in a heavily science-informed setting, with enough excitement to make me want to skip work and keep reading. It’s the kind of book that would be an amazing movie, except that they never do movies like this right. The words “Lagrange Point Station” wouldn’t make it into the movie, nor would the discussion about improvising a spacesuit and how warm it is in the sunshine of space. The entire “cautionary tale” aspect of it would be utterly removed to add in a few more minutes of screen time for explosions, and they’d find a way to get some zero-g sex in there too. It’s better as a book, believe me, movies can’t be as big as your imagination.

I did include the word “realistic” there, and this one does a great job of it with a few minor exceptions that sort of make it feel a little Hollywood, but I’m willing to forgive them. For the most part the characters were believable, the events manage to be surprising (although the broad strokes were predictable, like almost any action story), and the pacing quite enjoyable. Public figures? Check. Political Intrigue? Got it. Explosions of horrific magnitude? hells yes!

So what’s the verdict for this one? It’s a great read, but I’m not certain that there’s anything to be gained from reading it a second time. I’m actually tempted to create a new category called “give it to someone who might like it” and toss it in there, but in the end I’d rather give it to powells and use the cash to by some other book that I might want. Sell, but maybe read again someday from Library or digitally.

Book Reviews, the first five…

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The cleansing begins with 5 rather abrupt reviews. I hope to be more in-depth later, but I was able to grab some things off the shelf that I already knew the answer to, so let’s get them out of the way.

The Second Coming – John Dalmas

Read about 2/3 of it a while back, was pretty bored, no interest in picking it back up. I was really interested in it based on the blurbs and such, a combination of my love of post-apocalyptic storytelling and “debates about modern faith and spiritual philosophy” seemed like it a nice prospect. In the end though I found the characters flat, the pacing not quite right, and just was generally meh. I sort of wish I’d finished it, maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t strongly enough believe that that might be true to try. Into the “sell/donate” pile it goes.

Grunts – Mary Gentle

This book was great fun. What’s not to love about a horde of orcs magically gaining military technology like Hueys and RPG’s? Discussing a Dark Lord and a Hind gunship in the same paragraph just makes me giggle.
Ultimately though it’s a single-read book. I don’t feel like there’s much more to get out of it, and even if there was I’d be more than happy to have a digital copy, so this one is going in the sell/donate pile as well. If you like military fiction, fantasy, or just an amusing read go grab it from your local library!

Northworld Trilogy – David Drake

Started reading, got about half way, gave up. Direct to the sell/donate pile. Ponderous and slow, I couldn’t tell if it was military fiction or fantasy. In either case, despite the use of battle suits and technology it’s definitely leaning towards the fantasy side of the scifi/fantasy question. I love Norse mythology, and this book seemed to draw quite a bit from that, however it was in this weird middle-ground between retelling/re-imagining and just borrowing some of the interesting bits. Ultimately I think it just felt too fantasy for me.

Gil’s All Fright Diner – A. Lee Martinez

Another fun book, which had it’s share of good quips, one-liners and amusing concepts. “Armageddon with a side of fries” is an amusing concept, and it was well enough executed, but it just felt like it lacked depth. Definitely not something I’d read again, which is how it earned it’s place in the buy/donate pile. Probably not a good book to be in general YA, but the writing feels a lot like YA. Got a giggle or two though, I’ll certainly admit!

Lord Valentines Castle – Robert Silverberg

This series came pretty highly recommended, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of it, but this first book goes to the sell/donate pile. The pacing is slow, except in some random places where it feels like more time should have been spent but wasn’t. The lost king’s journey of re-discovery, this book is very much fluff fantasy through and through, although I am interested in the characters enough to want to know more.? I may even read it again someday, but I’ll be more than happy to do so with a digital or library copy.

Wow, those were abrupt reviews! I think it’s time to pick a more interesting or challenging book to review rather than picking the low hanging fruit.

Vimmification Part 1, upgrades!

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Setting up a nice clean vim install for myself. Tired of my vim feeling bloated and slow, so I’m rolling my own config distro with just what I need.

Step 1: I need the latest version! Snow Leopard ships with 7.2 instead of 7.3, and I just don’t find being outdated to be acceptable. Fortunately macvim to the rescue!

MacVim is a nice OSX GUI wrapper for Vim. Adds that little bit of polish on over the top. Fortunately it also comes complete with it’s own Vim 7.3 install! And its “mvim” terminal command is apparently smart enough to know that it should act like normal terminal vim if called from an alias of that name. So to get the latest macvim set up and linked, all we need to do is: (Assuming you’re using brew, which you should be.)

brew install macvim
ln -s /usr/local/bin/mvim /usr/local/bin/vim

This leaves us with one problem however. The system installed /usr/bin/vim comes first in the default $PATH. In order to get the correct version simply by typing “vim” we need to reorder /etc/paths to put /usr/local/bin ahead of /usr/bin. Once that is done and saved, reload your shell, fire up vim, and you should see version 7.3.

Alright excellent, updated version of Vim ready to roll. Now that wonderful “set relativenumber” line in my .vimrc will no longer throw errors. Time to start setting it up the way I like it.