A Disappointing Pair

The end of a good book often leaves me a little depressed. When I enjoy a book, I don’t really want it to end.

Recently, I finished a book…well, actually a set of three books and it felt more like liberation.

Then, within a few days I finished a computer game and…it felt much the same way.

I was actually both relieved and pleased to be finished with both and that was such an unusual experience that I felt the need to write about it. Plus, it makes an excellent opportunity to write a review of a popular game and an obscure book by a well-known Author.

Fallout 3 was a huge hit for Bethesda Softworks. For those who don’t know, in the game, the year is approximately 2270. 200 years before there was a nuclear holocaust, a war that devastated the planet. Your ancestors, or so you believe, hid in vaults to protect themselves from the radiation. After 200 gears of isolation you leave the vault and head out into the wasteland. I won’t give away more of the story in case you decide to play it.

My problem with Fallout 3 is that it is depressing. The game is well-crafted and well-written, but none of that can hide a depressing story. It doesn’t help that the game uses a rather muted color palette. In an attempt to be pithy, I would describe Fallout 3 as being gray, and I mean more than just the color, which to be honest is closer to sepia. There’s no green, no red except for blood, no bright colors at all.

A couple of times during the game I was tempted to quit, and having finished it, I have no desire to play anymore and no desire to get any of the downloadable content. Fallout: New Vegas looks a little better, but what does it say about a game if the sequel’s most appealing feature is that it doesn’t look as bad as the original?

I just cannot recommend it.

So, on to the books.

Many years ago, not long after it was published, I read C.D. Cheryl’s novel Rusalka. I had read several of her novels previously, most notably Downbelow Station and parts of the Chanur Saga. Rusalka, and the two novels that follow, Chernevog and Yvgenie, are based on Russian folklore. One review said they were based on Slavic Mythology, but I think folklore d better word than mythology, when applied to these stories. I enjoyed Rusalka and went on to buy Chernevog not long after. I didn’t like Chernevog as well as Rusalka, and so, while I still wanted Yvgenie, I never went back and bought a copy. In fact, I remember seeing it in hardback, but never saw a paperback copy.

And then it went out of print.

I spent over a decade watching Half-Price Books for a copy that never appeared. Finally, a few months ago I found a used copy of Yvgenie on Amazon and bought it. When my reading schedule cleared, I started again from the beginning.

Now, I read pretty fast. I have read over a hundred books some years and it usually takes no more than a couple of weeks to finish any book, usually it is measured in days, not weeks.

I didn’t like it as well the second time around. Rusalka went pretty fast, but during Chernevog I started to get bogged down. I finished it quickly enough, but when I jumped into Eveshka it seemed like I was stuck in mud. It took me forever to finish the third book.

Now, I think it entirely possible that Fallout 3 and the Russian Trilogy may have fed off each other. The books are often depressing and much of the stories seem to happen in a brown muddy rainstorm. It also doesn’t help that the books can be confusing at times as the author jumps back and forth between different viewpoints, and it gets worse as the series moves on.

In Rusalka, we jump back and forth between Sasha and Pyetr. In Chernevog she adds one move voice, Eveshka. In Yvgenie, the author just goes for broke and tells the story while swapping back and forth between the inner thoughts of all six characters in the novel.

It is just too much.

And I found the ending less than satisfying.

But, my dual ordeal is over. I’ve already moved on to another book and in just a couple of days I am more than a hundred pages in, and entranced with the story. So, I am happy to be out from under these two depressing stories and on to other things.

The Great Austin Burger Hunt

Terra Burger
10611 Research Blvd.
Austin, TX 78759
(512) 382-5864

Before getting into the meat of my review, I need to point something out. I am in favor of organic produce. Now, that probably seems odd to say in a burger review, but if you know Terra Burger you will understand. Now, I am in favor of organic produce, but I don’t buy it very often. Why? Two reasons, one, the price and two, I can’t taste the difference. Okay, I should add the caveat…usually. I usually cannot tell the difference. I could go further and say that most organic produce is priced out of my range.

This needed to be said because Terra Burger’s biggest selling point seems to be their organic beef. That intrigued me enough to pull in.

I ordered my usual burger and fries, but when it came to a soft drink I was presented with a dilemma. They didn’t really have any diet drinks and being diabetic I avoid anything else. What they did have was came sugar sodas which fits very well with the organic billing. I chose a small cane sugar root beer. I love root beer and this was better than most. A&W fountain root been might be better, but not by much.

Unfortunately, that was the high point of the meal.

The burger was okay, but it was a very average burger at a very premium price. The bun was nice, soft with sesame seeds (I like those too) and with a little more tooth than most. The meat was tasty, a little on the dry side, but I don’t mind that. It came with lettuce which was not crispy and did little to improve the burger.

The fries were a disaster. They were limp and greasy. They tasted okay, but I couldn’t finish them.

Lastly, Terra Burger has no inside dining area. They do however have an outdoor dining and play area with a children’s playscape. One note…you have to cross the drive-thru lane to get from the order window to the picnic area.

I cannot recommend Terra Burger. I expect better when I pay $9 for a burger, fries and a soda.

P.G. Wodehouse

I believe it was my Dad who first introduced me to Wodehouse. I think that means that it must have been about 30 years ago, or more. What I can’t remember is which book I saw first. For some reason, I think it may have been one of the Psmith books. However, what I always truly loved most was Bertie Wooster. Later, I found other books, and recently I found a collection of Blandings Castle stories, which was another delightful find.

If you haven’t read Wodehouse, and I suggest you do, it can be hard to describe the appeal of the stories. The best word I can use to describe them is…fun. They are just fun. They certainly aren’t serious; at least I have yet to find a serious story by Wodehouse. Certainly, Jeeves and Wooster stories aren’t serious, and the most serious thing that happens in the Blandings Castle stories is that the prize pig goes off her feed. Usually, the stories are about one of Bertie’s friends trying to convince some girl to marry him, or Bertie trying to get out of some arranged marriage. Similar storylines abound in the Blandings Castle stories.

The second thing that makes them fun is the era. Well, at least I have fun with the era before the Second World War and after the First. In fact, most of the stories are set before the Great Depression, or at least the Great Depression seems to have little effect on Bertie Wooster.

Bertie leads a life of leisure. He obviously has a bit of money, but I would not actually say that he was rich. He has enough to live without working, to keep a house and a car, and most importantly, a servant. Jeeves, and I don’t believe that we ever actually learn if this is his first or last name, he is always just Jeeves. To continue, Jeeves is Bertie’s valet, his gentleman’s gentleman. Jeeves keeps his house clean, at least we never see a maid, though there may be someone who comes in to clean. Jeeves does occasionally cook, but he is certainly not hired to cook. He keeps Bertie’s wardrobe and generally takes care of Bertie, something which Bertie desperately needs.

The proper term for Bertie is a wastrel, but only if you can find a way to use that word without implying spendthrift, or drunk (though Bertie does drink rather a lot), or in fact, most of the negative connotations of the word wastrel. Bertie does no work, but he does not live extravagantly, except in that he has a personal servant. He makes no contribution, other than the contribution of funds to various clubs and restaurants, by his patronage. He enjoys the good life, but without being overly hedonistic.

Jeeves is the brain of the operation. Jeeves is always ready, with the proper drink, or the proper choice of attire, or good advice, or even a plan of attack for the many small problems provided by Bertie and his cast of friends and relatives, for it usually his old school friends, or his many aunts and cousins who provide the fodder for the stories.

Lastly, I must mention Wodehouse’s amazing prose. At least in the Jeeves and Wooster stories, he lets Bertie relate his story and the style of the storytelling is one of the joys of Wodehouse. In other stories, he may write in third person, but Bertie’s rather intimate narration of the story is always amusing. First is the manner of speech from the time, which I cannot hope to recreate in a few words here, but it is truly wonderful banter. Well, maybe I shouldn’t use the word banter, because that may conjure images of British WWII pilots speaking to each other in their indecipherable slang, but banter is what I mean. Rarely in these stories does Bertie speak in straight lines. I just cannot think of a better way to say it. Other characters are a bit more forth right in their speech, but there is always an sense of trying to work around subjects, rather than just coming out and saying it.

And, though this is not really a plug, you can read some of the stories for Free! Right now, I am reading them on my PC and my phone using Kindle software, and I found two books among the free titles on Kindle. So get out there and read something light hearted and fun. You’ll feel better afterward.

Move More

The page stares back at me, blank and empty. A week has passed and I have missed the deadline I set for myself. Now another week has passed, and still the page is blank. A new year has begun, and the page remains blank, but then again, the year is also blank.

January.

Janus is the roman god of beginnings and endings. January, a month of new beginnings. It also happens to be the month of my birth. So, as I contemplate a new year, I also contemplate getting one year older. I have reached the age where another birthday is not something I look forward to.

It was a tough year, and I don’t think the new one is going to be much easier, but we continue to slog on. The last few years I haven’t slogged quite as hard as I could have, and that brings me to my one resolution for the year.

Move more.

I have been more than a little sedentary over the last few years, and that is one thing I intend to change this year. I don’t believe in resolutions, so I won’t lay out some grandiose plan of exercise and healthy eating. I know myself too well. But, I have spent way too many nights parked in my chair in front of my computer, and that is part of what I mean to change. No plans to exercise several times a week. No plans on how much weight I want to lose. Simple.

Move more.

I suppose that I could also say, do more, but, I want to keep it truly simple. No goals that will fail before February and make me feel bad. No goals that I will look back on at the end of the year and feel a sense of failure over, just a simple proposal for how to end up in a little different place a year from now.

Move more.

Hopefully some of it will be moving the fingers, and this blog will get back on track. Hopefully, moving will include getting some work done and a few projects will move forward to completion. I hope for lots of things, but I won’t put them as goals, because I have always found that those goals fail. The goals that succeed are the ones that I hold in my heart. The goal that I have in my heart is to stop the slow…or not so slow…slide from middle age into premature old age. I am stiff and sore and out of shape and unhappy and bored and….I don’t know what else, but I feel the answer is simple.

Move more.

The Craft of Writing

Writing is a skill, but the word writing is a verb, an action. To write. One can dream about being a writer, but one must perform the action of writing to be a writer. All of us write. Sometimes we actually write letters, though it seems that advent of email is going to kill letters eventually. We write book reports in grade school. We write essays about what we did on our summer vacation. As we move up to higher grades, we begin to write papers. We could possibly call them research papers though that may be a bit of aggrandizement. We write essay answers on tests all the way up through college and generally by the end of our college years we have written at least one paper that deserves the research paper title.

But, there is more to writing. We blog, and we visit forums and though we may not think of it, we are honing our writing skills, or at least we are if we care about our writing. Maybe we take another step, and write fiction. More likely is that we get a job and do more writing. We write reports. We write emails and memos. Once again, most people don't really consider the craft of writing. It is just something that they do.

For a time, I earned my daily bread with my writing. I was doing email technical support for Dell, and then later graduated to working on the Dell Forums. Technical writing is a skill on its own, but I learned a few things that have helped me across all of my writing. These are two things to consider when writing.

First, you must consider your audience. When I was working on the Dell Forums, I was writing to the general public. I had to assume that my audience knew nothing about computers, except how to buy one from Dell. The problem is that some of those Dell customers are extremely knowledgeable about computers. I had to avoid any hint of condescension in my tone. I had to walk a line between giving the novice all the information he needed, and making the expert feel like I was talking down to him. It was also extremely important to say exactly what you needed to say, and no more. I got very good at stating the facts in a way that did not allow for alternate interpretations.

The second is voice. Voice in writing can be a little hard to explain, but it is easy to show what is meant by examples, though I am not sure that I have any handy, as I am writing this. I will see what I can do. Now the viewpoint taken in fiction has something to do with voice. When an author writes in first person, he writes as the character in the story, and he must fit the writing to the character, he must give the character a voice. One can hardly imagine the same story being told by Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, even if it were the same story that involved both of them. Now, that may seem a strange example, but I hope that you see my point.

But voice can even carry over into non-fiction writing. Imagine writing a how-to manual. If any of you have ever read a …for Dummies book, then you know that even a dry subject had be handled in a witty and humorous manner, but for every subject handled this way as part of the …for Dummies series you can find a hundred dry and mostly boring texts.

Some may confuse voice with tone. This is understandable, and they are related. Voice can certainly convey tone, but voice is both less and more than tone. The tone may be conveyed through other means, and the voice can present more than just the tone. I am trying to think how to explain that better, or provide examples, and I am drawing a blank. I will just have to ask you to accept this…or at least accept that this is my opinion.

Because this writing has drawn to a close.

Camp Taylor Memories

Late last night I got to thinking about Camp Taylor. Well, officially it is Samuel P. Taylor State Park and it is in Marin County, California. I grew up not far away in Corte Madera.

Camp Taylor was a family favorite for picnics and day trips. I remember many mornings, being bundled into the car while it was still not quite light. There would be lots of things to carry to the car, coolers, baskets, the camp stove. Then we would all pile into the car, and it was a pile. There were usually at least six of us and often more.

I remember being bundled into the car early in the morning. It would be quite cool, as Bay Area mornings can be, and once you got in among the Redwoods dawn could seem to take a long time, especially on the west side of the coastal range. We would drive out Sir Francis Drake Blvd. It goes out and into the mountains and through the little town of Lagunitus, and then out into the big trees. There is one huge hill on the way, I remember riding out once on my bicycle.

We’d pile out and setup on a wooden park picnic table and my dad would set to work getting the Coleman stone started up.

Now, you have to understand that this was not a fancy propane stove, this was one of the old stoves that ran on Coleman Fuel, the kind with a red tank that had to be pressurized. My dad would sit there and pump away at that stove for what seemed like hours. Sometimes one of us would help, but the job required a bit of a special knack, because the pump was a piston, and you have to hold your finger over a hole in the knob at the end of the piston, but only during the push in. You needed to release your finger as you pulled out, so that air could go into the piston, then close the hole and push in to force the air into the tank. My dad could do it easily, but I could never quite learn the technique.

It was because of this that when I bought my first camp stove, it was propane.

Once the stove was started, my mom would start on the Hot Chocolate. I was raised in the Mormon Church, and coffee was not on the menu. For camping mornings like this, my mother would make up a concentrated cocoa mix…from scratch, and mix it with milk to make Hot Chocolate. My earliest memories are back in the days before Swiss Miss and Hot Chocolate Mix in pouches…or at least before they had reached our stores.

My mom would get the cocoa good and hot. Now, she had a friend who liked hot beverages at a temperature slightly higher than the average human tongue can endure. In my family, this temperature is known by the moniker Bobbie-hot, named after that friend. We would each get our cup of Bobbie-hot cocoa, and after no more than an hour, it would be ready to drink.

Camp Taylor was a wonderful place as a child. There was one particular place that we loved to play. Only years later did I recognize that is was the stump of a truly enormous Redwood. It is hard for me to try to say exactly how large it was, but it seems to me that it must have been nearly twenty feet across. It had been cut some four to six feet off the ground, and generations of children climbing up on top of it had hollowed out the inside a little bit. To us it was like a castle tower and we would have mock battles in and around it. We would climb the tower and hide behind the parapet, even having what amounted to embrasures to shoot out of. Sometimes now, I feel a little sad to imagine the majestic tree that had stood there, but mostly, if I could, I would tell that tree about all the fun I had playing on what it left behind.

There was also a stream that wound its way through the park. I could not in good conscious call it a river. We built boats, and hunted for crawdads and generally splashed about a bit in the water. It wasn't really deep enough for swimming, though I seem to remember a few pools where you could get all wet if you wanted to.

Camp Taylor is not far, as the crow flies from Muir Woods. Both are full of majestic Redwoods, and yet my memories of those two places are totally different. From Muir Woods, I remember the dim light beneath the closely packed trees, the subtle damp, and the quiet. Muir Woods always seemed a little otherworldly and mystical, as if an elf or a fairy might come out from behind a tree.

It is mostly bright sunlight that I remember from Camp Taylor. Muir Woods was someplace you visited. Camp Taylor was a place where you played. To be honest I haven't been there in more than 30 years, but I remember it well. Maybe one day I will get to visit it again.

Oh, and only just last night, more than 30 years later, I found out why it was called Camp Taylor and not Samuel P. Taylor State Park.

Samuel Penfield Taylor struck gold during the California Gold Rush, and with his money, he bought the land that is now the park and went into logging. He built the first paper mill on the Pacific Coast on the property. In the 1870s the North Pacific Coast Railroad was built going by the property. Taylor built a hotel near the tracks and called it the Camp Taylor Resort. California took possession of the property in 1945 for back taxes and later turned it into a State Park.

Written on Windows Phone 7

I was sick last week and missed my usual Wednesday blog post. If anyone actually reads this blog they will know that it is Thursday at least as often as Wednesday and often even later than that, but I do try for Wednesday.

I hope no one is expecting anything profound this week. Profound and typing on a tiny onscreen keyboard do not go together but in my own going quest to put Windows Phone 7 through its paces I thought I would try typing a blog post right on the phone...gives a whole new meaning to phoning it in.

My blog has been pretty solidly Windows Phone 7 for the last couple of months but that is going to change. Windows Phone 7 has become a major thing in my life over the last couple of months, but I don't intend to let it take over. There is lots more to comment on in the big wide world and it is time I got back to it.

Now, I must say that using this keyboard is not the worst thing in the world. I can actually get up a head of steam and as long as I can keep moving I can get what I think down on the page...or screen. My thumbs do hurt after a while, but this is better than the physical keyboard on my old phone. I would still like to have Swype, but I think that this is easier fir real writing than Swype. I love Swype for text messages though.

Now there are a few annoying features. I just demonstrated one of them. I didn't type the period at the end of the first sentence of this paragraph. I tapped space twice and it added the period on its own. The problem is that if you are not crisp with pressing space you may find yourself with extra periods. This can be more than a little annoying, but it isn't a huge problem, just a small annoyance.

The excellent text prediction more than makes up for it. You get a line of words between the keyboard and the text area and you can click on a word in that line any time you want. Sometimes the word is bold and if you hit space or period while a word is bold then that word will replace what you actually typed. It works so well that you can actually type fast and most things come out perfectly.

This was entirely written on my HD7 in one afternoon during breaks at work. It wasn't an unpleasant experience.

I'll try to be profound next week.