I'm drinking chamomile tea because I'm too close to a migraine to even think about caffeine and chocolate, but I am.
Oooh, I am.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Monday, February 05, 2007
Monday Monday....
It's Monday. I'm at work. I slept most of this weekend, which was nice, because I had a migraine Thursday and Friday evening.
I did get some things done this weekend though.
I did most of the laundry.
I finished knitting my hat, and discovered that I need to rip it and add more depth to it. However, one of the people I work with, Sarah, decided that she needs a hat and loves my yarn, so I'll whack this little hat into a pattern for her and then she can make it.
I snapped one of my 2mm dpn needles (actually, that was this morning. arrgh. stupid bamboo.)
I did some reading, and found some good books.
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
I've loved Vernor Vinge for a long time. He writes excellent excellent science fiction. It is intelligent, and has very real seeming science stuff in it Which is logical, since he was university science professor.
His characters also seem real. I've read a collection of his short stories, A Deepness in the Sky, and A Fire upon the Deep. The two novels are written in the extreme future, (more than 1000 years from present) and definitely involve some interesting changes from the present. They both get a super-recommendation from myself, if you like science fiction that involves some science. Or if you like science fiction itself.
This latest book reminds me quite a bit of Neal Stephenson, who tends to deal with the immediate future and the effects of modern technology on society. However, this book has some things that Stephenson tends to lack completely, and those are realistic and dynamic characters. I ended up caring about the characters, and felt that instead of the characters merely being flat illustrations to explain differences from the present known world, the characters were dynamic creations in their own right.
With the character of Robert Gu, a world-renowned poet and university professor, Vinge takes a very unsympathetic character and shows how his personality has and hasn't changed as a result of technology and through the events in the story. Gu is and has been verbally abusive and toxic to a nuclear level. He is cured by the wonders of medical technology from old age and severe Alzheimer's which leaves him stuck in a world where technologically, he is decades behind, and in great danger of never being able to catch up and find relevance in a society where the aged must struggle to keep up to their children and grandchildren or become obsolete and wither away.
Gu changes, and is forced for the first time to actually have to work at reschooling himself while he is in a vocational track in the local high school, along with other people in similar state to himself (that is, seniors who have been made physically and mentally mobile to differing degrees) and the rest of the second tier students.
There's also bits about access to information, and how that is changing, and what does that mean? Should we hold onto old methods of storing information? Should these things be made? What use is a library when all the data can be put onto a single disc?
It's an interesting book, and I think everyone should pick it up, if you like science-y fiction. It's good stuff.
I did get some things done this weekend though.
I did most of the laundry.
I finished knitting my hat, and discovered that I need to rip it and add more depth to it. However, one of the people I work with, Sarah, decided that she needs a hat and loves my yarn, so I'll whack this little hat into a pattern for her and then she can make it.
I snapped one of my 2mm dpn needles (actually, that was this morning. arrgh. stupid bamboo.)
I did some reading, and found some good books.
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
I've loved Vernor Vinge for a long time. He writes excellent excellent science fiction. It is intelligent, and has very real seeming science stuff in it Which is logical, since he was university science professor.
His characters also seem real. I've read a collection of his short stories, A Deepness in the Sky, and A Fire upon the Deep. The two novels are written in the extreme future, (more than 1000 years from present) and definitely involve some interesting changes from the present. They both get a super-recommendation from myself, if you like science fiction that involves some science. Or if you like science fiction itself.
This latest book reminds me quite a bit of Neal Stephenson, who tends to deal with the immediate future and the effects of modern technology on society. However, this book has some things that Stephenson tends to lack completely, and those are realistic and dynamic characters. I ended up caring about the characters, and felt that instead of the characters merely being flat illustrations to explain differences from the present known world, the characters were dynamic creations in their own right.
With the character of Robert Gu, a world-renowned poet and university professor, Vinge takes a very unsympathetic character and shows how his personality has and hasn't changed as a result of technology and through the events in the story. Gu is and has been verbally abusive and toxic to a nuclear level. He is cured by the wonders of medical technology from old age and severe Alzheimer's which leaves him stuck in a world where technologically, he is decades behind, and in great danger of never being able to catch up and find relevance in a society where the aged must struggle to keep up to their children and grandchildren or become obsolete and wither away.
Gu changes, and is forced for the first time to actually have to work at reschooling himself while he is in a vocational track in the local high school, along with other people in similar state to himself (that is, seniors who have been made physically and mentally mobile to differing degrees) and the rest of the second tier students.
There's also bits about access to information, and how that is changing, and what does that mean? Should we hold onto old methods of storing information? Should these things be made? What use is a library when all the data can be put onto a single disc?
It's an interesting book, and I think everyone should pick it up, if you like science-y fiction. It's good stuff.
Friday, February 02, 2007
2nd Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Silent Poetry Reading
After discovering while at work (with all my poetry books at home) that today is the Second Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Silent Poetry Reading Day, I find myself looking for an appropriate poem to post in order to join along with others.
City
if one is not looking closely enough,
one might think that the snow had leapt from its tidy boundaries
and spread itself over the sidewalk again
but it is only salt, left behind.
one day,
will the grass not change back to green?
City
if one is not looking closely enough,
one might think that the snow had leapt from its tidy boundaries
and spread itself over the sidewalk again
but it is only salt, left behind.
one day,
will the grass not change back to green?
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