lundi 4 août 2003

'Don't sweat the small stuff' We look set to bust the record again. When that thermometer in the shade outside read 30°C well before 10:00 am, it was time to keep an eye on the cat and take note of what she considers the best places to lie on the floor. But I did get to the postbox, Carole, and though this latest arrêt de travail wasn't mailed within the specified two days, it's on the way. The acting desk chief at "the factory", Carole was kind in giving me a title for this entry, since the "small stuff" I'm not supposed to sweat includes a top story still unfolding on my habitual patch. Carole was too busy to linger on the 'phone. She said: "We're waiting for the peacekeepers". Well, I shan't sweat it, though I miss the line though to the correspondents working in the real heat. Total Shit of the Week award goes to the tenacious butcher Charles Taylor, once described by a colleague who met him as "dangerously charming". "Do you envision playing a political role from exile?" he was asked by Tom Masland of 'Newsweek'. "President Bush said I shouldn’t. The most powerful man on the planet besides God is George Bush ... I think if President George W. Bush had two minutes with me as a man of God he will see the light. When he gets to know the truth he’s going to be really upset." It's an interview to be avoided when you're not feeling strong of stomach. zzz Speaking of snakes, I was happy to see netwizards Jean-Claude and François come in for a late lunch at "the canteen". I had a look the other day at the former's home page, which entirely consists of these 'Python Eggs.' Rimbault's riddle is swiftly cracked, unlike his pet programming language. About all I retained from today's lunch was a Flying Circus, François tapping the side of his own egg, and an umpteenth lesson in trying to be too clever. I'm posting J.-C.'s page because I don't imagine many other people have put about 350 Python-related links in one place and I know that at least one of my readers is almost as barmy. zzz François thinks I'm greedy and he's probably right. I did confess to feeling guilty about upping my net connection speed this month to the fastest offered by my ISP. "Planning to cable your whole building?" he teased. Or just to pillage Kazaa? Well, no ... but I am downloading a heck of lot of "trialware" these days, particularly in the open source domain, things I want to check out. "Guilty" because I've reopened the file I worked on pretty hard in Jo'burg early last year, but haven't had time for since, on Africa and the Web. Awareness of statistics such as these on African Internet Status have led to the latest little changes here. So that my work doesn't take forever to load for people stuck with slow connections, I this morning shifted the "heaviest" recent pages packed with photos. You'll henceforth get a "read on" type offer should the entry interest you, with no more than the start of such photologs on the home page. That was a bit of small stuff worth the sweat. Carole told me that I'm not even on the rota any more through till September now! Yikes... I can only hope that some of the things I've been learning during this long absence might be put to good use when I do get back. 11:17:05 PM  link   your views? [] 'The Diamond Age': a pyrotechnic puzzle "Anybody who liked 'Snow Crash' should get 'Diamond Age' as well. Great stuff. As for 'Cryptonomicon', though, I think the whole thing would have benefitted from an editor. And a 200 page cut. And, by damn, Ste[ph]enson should be sent back to school till he learns to write proper endings." Thus lectured Mumin in the Counterglow forum, which lays claim to being "a site for alternate views and debates on the things that really matter in life". With the 'The Diamond Age' (Amazon UK), it's Neal Stephenson who plays teacher of sorts in another near-future nanotech novel, an astonishingly multi-faceted 'Pygmalion revisited'. Nell is the poor little girl from the backstreets who gets hold of The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, a magic book illicitly copied by neo-Victorian engineer John Percival Hackworth, who lives in a lofty, well-protected enclave across the Causeway from Greater Shanghai. It's gratifyingly impossible to pigeon-hole a novel which crackles with wit, brilliant ideas and stories-within-stories. Most of these are dark fairy-tales concerning Nell's quest, with the help of the Primer, to find the Twelve Keys she needs to save her brother Harv from a Dark Castle. Equally hard is to give much notion of the immensely complicated plot, which is part thriller whose chapters bear arch titles like 'Hackworth departs from Dr X's laboratory; further ruminations; poem from Finkle-McGraw; encounter with ruffians'. Stephenson sets the values of his economically dominant neo-Victorian tribe, incarnated in the interactive educational primer, alongside those of a China which has returned to Confucian law and social principles. The portrayal and deeds of several characters on either side, such as the increasingly hapless Hackworth and the Chinese Judge Fang and his sidekicks, often had me chuckling out loud, since the book is full of clever jokes as well as heroes and villains. Two other aspects of 'The Diamond Age' interested me. A confrontation develops throughout between two kinds of technology, one embodied in more or less western notions of scientific advancement and the Net, the other in something Stephenson describes as The Seed (which has a Book of its own). This latter takes us into a more Oriental perspective on social and technological structures, and also gives us a curious creation: the underwater community of "the Drummers" in which it's people who form the network. Sadly, however, I can only agree with Mumin about Stephenson's endings. Here, as in 'Cryptonomicon', he seems to lose both steam and the track in the closing part of the book. A conclusion which leaves plenty to the reader's imagination has never bothered me, but one which gets sewn up with almost every stitch snapping at the seams is something else. This is an irritating flaw on a par with the author's occasional failure to develop an idea sufficiently to give you the wherewithal to pick it up and run, so that the glitter of style gets in the way of substance. The guy probably won his Hugo Prize for all the fun, verbal and technical wizardry and dazzling fancy on the way, but by the time he's done, you could get that dazed feeling that comes after a wonderfully rich meal with just a little too many trimmings. 7:04:32 PM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.