Phillip Pullman: Dreaming of spires

The way a novelist "researches" - this one, anyway - is quite different from the coherent, focused, disciplined sort of reading which I imagine you need to do if you want an academic career. Despite my three years at Oxford, I never mastered that sort of grown-up reading: I couldn't do it then, and I don't do it now. Instead, intrigued by this patch of colour or that scent, beguiled by a pretty shape or blown sideways by a wayward breeze, I flit from book to book, subject to subject, place to place; and it is only later, in solitude and silence, that I begin the laborious process of changing it all into something else. Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee. Doesn't that describe a good weblogger? My writing leans lepidopterous rather than apiary. Pity.

I posted this for that one line, but I highly recommend Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. They are dark and frightening, compelling and mythic. After all, it's a retelling of Paradise Lost! Though marketed as "Young Adult" lit., adults of all ages will enjoy.

My biggest disappointment: by the time Milo is old enough to read this (another year or so, when he's 11), he won't let me read it to him. Or maybe he will.   

9:50:47 PM  comment []    

Seattle Times: Sharing Net with the neighborhood

David and his neighbors are pretty keen on their budding arrangement, but some big-name Internet services aren't so sure.

The 40-something computer professional has a high-speed Internet account that he is offering to share with his Wallingford neighbors using a new and quickly spreading wireless networking technology dubbed Wi-Fi.

Sondra pointed out this Doonesbury strip last Sunday and said, "I didn't think that was possible." It is.

How much you wanna bet that they try to get a law passed making un-paid-for WiFi access to the net illegal? Actually, what they should do is run a big data pipe into someone with a tall tree's house on every fourth block and offer a tiered WiFi plan.

Right.

I have a redwood tree in my back yard. If a broadband company offered me dibs on a shared T3 line for free if I let them drop a little data center in a box (Linux box + UPS) in my basement and plunk a transmitter atop my tree, I'd jump at the opportunity. Then let them sign up 200 neighbors at $10/month. That pencils out a lot better than 15 at $49/month.

But they're not that smart.

I'm convinced that in densely-populated areas, the amateurs will be driving out the professionals. Why not bill for it just like gas, electricity, water, or sewer? How much bandwidth did you use this month? OK, here's your bill.  

2:07:48 PM  comment []    

Ouch

1:15:32 PM  comment []